Playing the board game "World at War" at the Lancaster Host Resort and Conference Center on Friday afternoon are Don Stanley of Canada, left, and John Hogan of Los Angeles, right.
Playing a game at the Lancaster Host Resort and Conference Center on Friday afternoon are, from left, Rick Northey of Massachusetts, Gene Riccia of Pennsylvania and Scott Hopatcong of New Jersey.
A group of men spent Friday afternoon hunched over a sprawling map of Europe, placing aircraft carriers and discussing the finer points of diplomacy.
A 196-page rulebook perched nearby and was consulted often as the men simulated World War II. It was a game, but for the players it was more than that.
"It's a calling," said Joe Brophy, one of the 1,500 people at the Lancaster Host Resort on Friday for the World Boardgaming Championship.
"There are a lot of eccentric people who play board games," he said.
"It's like a Las Vegas casino," the convention's organizer, Don Greenwood said. "They don't go to sleep."
Men paraded through the resort's conference rooms in red fez hats, called "Sandman" caps, awarded for winning 6th place in a tournament.
A player who successfully rolled a six, scoring a blizzard to thwart his opponent, stood up and screamed, "It snowed!"
A group playing 1920s gangsters stalked the hallways with water-pistols to soak unsuspecting competitors.
Tales were told of fights that broke out between players, and the time a disgruntled losing opponent packed up his board in the middle of a tournament and went home.
The weeklong tournament started in 1991 and has been held in Lancaster the past six years.
"Boardgaming doesn't have the same acceptance as gardening," said Terry Tai, a 2005 Harvard alum. "There's a huge stigma."
But Tai, sitting at a large oval table with fellow board gaming enthusiasts from New York City, insisted his hobby is a great form of social interaction.
The group spent a couple minutes picking on Rob Renaud, 26, the two-year reigning champion of "Race for the Galaxy."
"You spend 30 hours a week playing that game!"
"That's like a part-time job."
" … But you don't get paid."
Brophy, now a successful trial lawyer, whetted his appetite for board games as a child.
"It's totally nerdy," he said.
"When I was a little kid, I was a fat nerd with coke-bottle glasses. That's why I started the games.
"I'm still that little kid."
Brophy, to his wife's dismay, began pursuing the highly specialized, often out-of-print games again 20 years ago, putting "opponents wanted" ads in gaming magazines.
Although the convention's title sounds official, he said, most people treat it like a family reunion, a chance to see friends they've made throughout the years.
The convention has 150 games in active play — ranging from Brophy's "A World at War," which takes about 60 hours to complete, to more laid-back offerings.
Mark Giddings, of West Sand Lake, N.Y., tried his hand at "Trailer Park Wars," a game where you can earn points by spiffing up your property (adding, say, a beer vending machine, or a fake palm tree), and attempting to devalue your opponents'.
Giddings' next move? Marry his opponent's tenant to "Faded Rose, a middle-aged, chain-smoking broad," to get him evicted from the property.
The convention ends Sunday and is scheduled to return to the Lancaster Host Resort through 2015.