Just about every Saturday and Sunday evening, Jerry Prochazka invites eight or so people of all ages to his home in Las Cruces, NM. They bring food, gather around a large table in his living room, and start playing. It’s game night.

And not just any game like Monopoly or Risk. “I choose games with cooperative or semi-cooperative dynamics for new groups. Games where players work together, tell stories, and make space for each other.” Prochazka often picks Forbidden Island, Mysterium, and Cartographers, or role-playing games with lightweight rules like Fate Accelerated or Kids on Bikes.

The longtime community organizer and video game executive is working to create an intentional community connecting people who are single, childfree, or living outside traditional family structures. “To me, this work is a rebellion against loneliness. It’s a community built around showing up—with joy, accountability, and curiosity—for one another.” 

Prochazka brings his organizing skills to game nights. “I’m very intentional about how I invite, set up, and run a table,” he wrote in a post on the online Weave Community.

He invites people who might be feeling isolated—those new to town, teens and young adults without much support, elderly folks, those in recovery, or anyone who seems socially anxious or neurodiverse. “I also deliberately invite people from different generations and backgrounds to sit down together. I’ll often pair an experienced player with a new one, so there’s built-in mentorship.”

Whenever he invites someone new, Prochazka shares ground rules to create a welcoming environment. “We are explicit that you have to leave your politics outside. This is a place to connect with people and have fun,” he says. “Folks are hungry for spaces where you don’t have to do identity screening and just show up and be themselves.” 

And he sets rules to help to smooth the social interactions: no alcohol, no phones, no snark, no dominance, and everyone’s voice matters. He says even in cooperative games, you can have a dominant player who takes a leadership role and tells everyone what to do. “We are very clear from the start that we don’t want that. We give everyone the time and space to make independent decisions, and even if they fail, failures create a lot of fun shared stories and opportunities to learn.”

Before his guests start playing, they talk about their week. “They start sharing stuff that has nothing to do with gaming. They ask for advice,” he says. They might talk about wanting to change jobs or go back to school. “It helps deepen the bonds.”

Once people know each other and have built a healthy dynamic, Prochazka might suggest more popular and competitive games, like Settlers of Catan. But for the most part, he aims to keep the dynamic collaborative. “Cooperative games allow people to feel like they are on the same team without anyone feeling that they didn’t do well or that they lost,” he says. “There are many other spaces where you can go if you want to be the best at a game. Here, it’s all about creating community and relationships.”

As he tells others about his game nights as a force for weaving, the idea is starting to spread. There’s been a lively discussion of weaving through gaming within the online Weave Community after Prochazka posted there. 

He believes that game nights, with a few rules to make it about weaving rather than competing, is an easy model for people who want to build community and connect neighbors. It doesn’t have to happen in a home. People can try it in libraries, community centers, recovery programs, and senior living centers. “If we can get 10 more people running inclusive tables in different corners of the community, that’s impact,” he says.

Learn more, ask questions, or share your own experience using games to build trust and relationships by joining Prochazka’s discussion in the online Weave Community. (It’s free to join the online community, if you aren’t yet a member.)