HUNDREDS of Freo’s nerdiest descended on the Town Hall last weekend in a “huge celebration” of tabletop gaming culture in the port city.
Hosted by Tabletop Freo, Roll For It 2025 saw almost 400 wizardy warlords gathered to play games such as Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and Warhammer, as well as several other board games.
Tabletop Freo co-founder Nick Petrou says he hoped the event was “a beacon” to “get all of the nerds out of the woodwork” and into the Town Hall to build community while playing games.
• Hundreds of people from all ages turned up to Roll For It 2025, a homage to face-to-face gaming over the board.
“I think there’s a lot of people who don’t know that [tabletop gaming] exists in Fremantle, and a lot of people just game alone on their computers which can be quite isolated… this is why we started this whole thing, for people who want to play more games but struggle to find gaming groups to sit down and play with,” Mr Petrou said.
“It’s not such a leap to shift to playing tabletop games in person with real people, getting outside of the house, making friends, and truly connecting with people.
“Tabletop gaming is becoming a much bigger industry and people are realising how fun and fulfilling it is.”
Community is “at the core” of Roll For It, according to Mr Petrou.
• Roll For It founder Nick Petrou (left).
“We’re not just playing games together, we’re friends, and this is a support network… this is a place to come out and express yourself and to be accepted, to feel that you belong, and to get excited about the things that you love,” he said.
“It’s especially relevant now when it’s so easy to just stay inside in front of a computer screen, where you can still socialised, but it does not hit the same as sitting at a table face to face with someone you know, interacting physically.
“Human beings did not evolve to sit behind the computer screen.”
The whole Town Hall was set up for players to “cross-pollinate” and try their hands at different tabletop games.
“One of the things I really loved was the age demographic… we had 12-year-olds and 60-plus-year-olds playing games together, which you don’t typically see at these types of events,” Mr Petrou says.
“Typically in the gaming space, people find their game and play it, and talk to people who play their game, so it was really nice to see the gamers mixing it up.”
Mr Petrou says it’s “inevitable” Roll For It will be back next year and is keen to find a more permanent space for the event so it can be held more regularly.
“We also want to make sure that we keep the soul of it and make it feel like a community event where you come to play games with people… we don’t want it to be commercialised.
“We feel like we’re doing something really good here, because when we interact with these people, we are genuinely improving people’s lives and Fremantle needs more of that.
“We want to weave ourselves into the fabric of Freo…if we had our own space, we could do it every month and bring hundreds of people into this beautiful town.”
by KATHERINE KRAAYVANGER