Tables/Tops, Games, and India

It’s been almost 3 months since I arrived in India. While it’s the longest time I have been away from the States, it also happens to be the longest stretch of time that I have not table-topped gamed since 1994.


The thing I’ve learned about myself is that it is actually possible for me to survive without D&D, albeit in a not as happy state. I haven’t done any sort of search for a gaming group in India and I don’t even think I’d want to play with people here, minus the initial cultural curiosity that would prompt me to see if they did in fact game the same way. And why doesn’t the word “curiosity” contain the letter ‘u?’ Does anyone else think that’s weird?

Doing some initial searches of gaming and the industry itself net pretty bleak results. “D&D Mumbai” search will give you a forum question and answer about the board game. “Gaming groups in mumbai” list no value results except a few deceptive leads that take you to forums where people speak about the Mumbai attacks. There does seem to be a few stores in Mumbai that at least sell the D&D core rulebook, which is pitiful. We are talking a city almost 3x’s the size of NYC – think about how many stores in NYC sell specialty Indian Books (20)! Tabletop gaming’s appeal is just not permeating the Indian youths. Of the entire country of 1 billion people, Bangalore appears to have the most forum results but that’s a college town and an IT town which together spell D&D but even those reults seem pallid and slim compared to what a town that size should be encompassing; I guess there is some comfort that at least somewhere around here people are doing a little tabletop.

“LARPing in Mumbai” nets such irrelevant results that I felt even more pathetic for typing it in google in the first place.

Do Indians just hate magical fantasy games?  I don't buy it.  The country that created chess has got to love complicated strategic games and it's obvious by the Knight, Bishop, and Rook that they are a sucker for a party based system (rogue, priest, warrior anyone?).   I guess we'll be finding out soon - Blizzard just launched the first WoW server in India this summer.