Rolling the Dice: Finding Space at LSU’s Tabletop Games Club

By Liv Tees and Morgan Carter

Loud, raucous cheers  on LSU’s campus — celebrating victory and mourning defeat — usually means you’re close to a sporting event.

But there is also the Tabletop Games Club where students find community and sanctuary with each other. The club is a place where students put aside the chaos of schoolwork and college life to play board games such as Risk, Catan and One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

Finley Thurman, the club’s outreach adviser before she graduated last month, said people are slowly losing these vital third spaces in their communities. To Thurman, these spaces — like the club — are essential for maintaining her mental health.

“When you only have work and home, you go nuts,” Thurman said.

Thurman said her troubles of being without a third space were heightened when she was working in DisneyWorld for five months last fall.

“I could tell my mental health was deteriorating but I couldn’t tell why until I found a group of outside people,” Thurman said.  “It was harder to do than it should have been because I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said.

She said during her time at Disney, it was very hard to find a third place that made her happy. Faced with finding a new place worries her.

“I am very grateful to be back on campus where I have the Tabletop Games Club,” Thurman said last spring. “I can come and sit and exist in public with this group of people who are pleasant, nice and enjoy things we all care about,” she said.

Finding a club, park or weekly trivia night is just as valuable to life as eating and sleeping.

“On campus there’s actually some decent opportunities to find people as long as you look for them,” she said, “but off campus I’m scared.”

The current president of the Tabletop Games Club, Gage Deshotel, said he discovered the club right after COVID and it changed his college life for the better. As the president, he takes pride in providing that same comfortable space for others.

“It’s meant to take the stress of people that are coming,” Deshotel said. “We’re here to help people relax and be comfortable. We want to help people destress because college can be a lot.”