The Die is Cast: Board Game Group Proving a Winner
What’s behind that strange red curtain right by the register in La Plaza? It isn’t Narnia. Most days, it’s simply a decorated lounge for special events; rarely touched, rarely inhabited. That is, until recently. Now, on a random weekday night or a Saturday afternoon, you can find anything from a small group of people playing Dungeons and Dragons, to multiple tables of different board games one could only dream of. This isn’t just a fad or a small group from the same command passing the time together, it is Rota’s hottest new community group born from a single Facebook post.
“When we moved to Spain, I made an infographic about me to try and make some friends,” said Maggie McNabb, the founder of Naval Station (NAVSTA)Rota Community Board Game Group and spouse to a chief who served at Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit (EODMUE) Eight. “I had a picture of all the board games loaded in the back of my car. There was such a big response on my post from other people that were wanting to find people to have game nights with.”
McNabb, who is a board game collector and enthusiast since childhood, had received many responses on the post, that there was a need for a community board game group, but no one had ever put it into motion. McNabb was about to change that. “I was just hanging out in the Lodge and I figured ‘what better time to make it,” McNabb reflects. “I just remember being really excited when I had 25 people who joined my Facebook group.” One could be mistaken that the group is simply about traditional board games. Now, the group manages entire WhatsApp communities with devoted channels to multiple gaming genres: board games, Dungeons and Dragons, video games, trading card games, puzzles, and large-scale strategy games like Warhammer. This has only increased interest amongst the community and has drawn in gaming aficionados to lead gaming events, as well as help new players learn more about different games.
Damien Bruniany, a civilian working at Forward Deployed Regional Maintenance Center (FDRMC) Detachment Rota, has played Dungeons and Dragons since he was 11 years old. He has used his expertise to serve as the “dungeon master” for the community’s Dungeons and Dragons group.
“None of us knew each other at first, but everyone committed to the game right away, and that created an immediate sense of camaraderie,” says Bruniany. “That bond has only grown over time. New players who’ve joined since then have integrated quickly and naturally, which says a lot about the group dynamic.”
That situation is a shared experience throughout this burgeoning gaming community. Make no mistake, this isn’t a squad that has known or played with each other for years like in Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” Arriving overseas can be daunting and a mentally taxing experience. Like McNabb, many service members, along with potential family members, arrive with no friends prior to coming to Rota, while the remainder of their families are halfway across the world. Escaping from the pressures of daily life; the challenges of making new friends, the grueling workday, finances, and learning a new culture. It can all become overwhelming, unless they are transformed into something positive.
“Games offer a healthy form of escapism where you get to step into a role, collaborate, and meaningfully influence a shared world; something that can be harder to feel in everyday life,” mentions Bruniany. “Sitting around a table, using your imagination, and talking face-to-face with other people fulfills a very basic human need for storytelling and connection—something humans have done for thousands of years.”
Through this basic human need for interaction and friendship, the gaming community’s bonds are growing into an ever-stronger link. Many members host regular board game nights within their homes and attend gaming tournaments with friends they made through the group. The NAVSTA Rota community has even extended its reach past the base gates, increasingly gaining steam through its partnership with the Rota gaming group, Club Kraken. It only takes one to start the chain reaction, and there’s much more on the horizon.
McNabb launched the group in October 2024, and since then, the group has grown to almost 200 members. By mid-2025, the community had outgrown its humble beginnings of game nights hosted at one’s house or a venue in Rota, and needed to find more space. The room behind the red curtain was the solution to this conundrum. This room now regularly hosts large-scale gaming meet-ups, now featuring the snazzy MWR logo and advertisement in the Vamos magazine to boot.
“To see it having grown to this relationship with MWR, I feel like it’s just giving us such a broader channel to create an even better community where people feel supported and have people to turn to that have similar interests as them,” said McNabb.
While McNabb and her husband may have left Rota, the NAVSTA Rota Community Board Game group remains strong with new leaders with a similar vision for the future.
“We will strive to always put out a good vibe to come enjoy some new and different board games for everyone,” says new co-group leader and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Justin Fraissinet, who works at the 725th Air Mobility Squadron.
McNabb does continue to drop in from time to time to check in on the group and all the friends she had made in Rota. The decision to start the group was a dice roll, but it brought a fortune of friends and fun for many on NAVSTA Rota.
“I think at the heart of why I made the group was because I didn’t have a community around me and I was somewhere new,” said McNabb. “It’s become something way bigger than I ever could have imagined.”
Where do you imagine your story taking you? Roll the dice. It might take you to a room behind a red curtain in La Plaza.
