Gaming has probably been one of the highest influences in my
entire life next to movies & TV, comic books and music. I’ve been gaming
since I can remember and I can’t think of a extended period of time when I wasn’t
doing some sort of gaming in my free time for any prolonged period of time.
When I was a lot younger I remember playing board games with my Mom and my
brother (and if he was wasn’t working my Dad) and we had a few of the classics
like Scrabble, Cluedo, Monopoly, Trouble, Connect Four (my personal favourite),
Snake and Ladders (obviously) and a couple of others whose names elude me at
this point1. It’s funny how much you don’t realise that some of those games really do teach you a couple of things2, and as much as I
hated Scrabble back then I kinda like it now and I can get pretty aggressive at
Monopoly. Unfortunately like most people the older you get, the less you play
such games, and with the invention of home computers and gaming my gaming
desire were sated elsewhere (specifically the Commodore 64 at the time).
For the sake of being truthful and to taking the long route
to get to the point, I have a confession to make. When I was a young kid I
hated Star Trek, and for the life of me I can’t truly understand way because it
should have been a show that I would have loved. I think it just never took my
imagination at the time but I do remember being distinctly put off by the theme
music (yes I didn’t like the woo-ee-oooh voice over the music) but I think it was
also in combination of the static picture of the grey big headed alien that
used to creep me out3. Along came this thing called “Star Trek: The
Next Generation” and by that stage I was a little older (but not much as we’re
about to see) and I became a rabid fan of that particular incarnation... well except
for one thing, and by thing I mean person, and by person I mean Wesley Crusher.
Wesley was a little bit older than me and by all accounts he should have been someone
I should have looked up, and yet I didn’t, I just couldn’t stand him. I think it
could have been the great combination of ‘whiny’ mixed with ‘know-it-all’ but
alas the true reason is locked up within the mind of a 10 year old4.
Either way like most imbeciles I transferred that grudge to the dumb actor that
played him and I held that particular grudge for a few years, mostly because I
was a dumbass teenager and that’s what you do. I wish I could go slap that
idiotic version of me and say “HE’S JUST AN ACTOR, BLAME THE CRUMBY WRITERS WHO
COULDN’T WRITE A KID TO SAVE THEIR OWN!” But I digress... a lot as it seems.
During this time I pretty much stopped playing “bored” games
altogether, amiright? Ha ha, actually I still liked playing board games but
opportunities presented themselves few and far between. Typically the only
times I ever got a proper chance to play any was playing Scrabble when we were
suffering from regular power black outs, mostly because it was the only game
mom insisted on playing.. stupid learning games when I could be playing Amiga.
By the time my brother left home we never played any, although one year my
parents bought me the 20th anniversary Star Wars Monopoly set, which
to this day remains my favourite version of Monopoly (especially as the Pewter
tokens where taken from the same moulds they used for the RPG lead figurines).
Sadly as much as there was a flurry of monopoly playing, it kind of fizzled
out, but not until one epic game on one of my birthdays when a match lasted
until 4am, at which that point I was so tired I called the game and kicked my
friends out of my house so I could sleep.
Cut to a few years ago and I remember reading about PVP and
how Scott Kurtz had met this person who was surprisingly cooler than anyone
really gave him credit for, his name was Wil Wheaton. What. The. Hell??? One of
my favourite web cartoonist likes Wesley Crusher??? Well luckily enough (for
me) I had grown up a lot since then so instead of vowing to stop reading PVP, I
started to look into the worst thing to happen to Star Trek (well until
Enterprise) and was surprised to learn that Wesley had become an author, “because
obviously he was a fucking terrible actor har har!” my incredibly dumb teenage
inner nerd probably said, and so I started reading his blog. Just for
clarification this was about the time that ‘Dancing Barefoot’ had been published
and I think ‘Just a Geek’ was in the process of being completed, but it was an
incredibly good point to start reading as his skills were starting to get
really good (as his earlier blogs are a bit... well, self-absorbed crap is
probably a bit harsh but kinda fair, yes I went back that far). And so I
started to like Wil, but the Wesley thing still was in the back lurking5
but was financially (and geographically) unable to get his books so I never
truly became a fan... until a couple of years ago.
Since after High School the only gaming that wasn’t in front
of a TV screen was role-playing, which was sometime in front of a GM screen (if
I was running it), I had pretty consistently played Advanced Dungeon and
Dragons 2nd Edition from 1997 until around the time 3rd
Edition came out. Athough around 2001/2 I had “graduated” to playing the more serious
RPGs like Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: The Ascension. After a few years of
playing these games I slowly got tired of the weekly RPG grind, and other
associated dramas, so I quit playing for a few years. I eventually returned for
a short spell but between early morning wake-up for work and late night RPG
sessions were very taxing, as well as other dramas that where much like the
other dramas, made me quit once more. Since then I’ve joined other games and
they either went nowhere, or people became unavailable so the games never
continued, or I got so tired of turning up for a campaign and spent 95% of the
time twiddling my thumbs because I had nothing to do.
I’m not sure exactly what happened but I was thrown back
into the world of Wil Wheaton after reading more about some of the things he
had been working on. I remember that he was in an episode of Numbers playing a
jackass comic book publisher, but I ended up downloading the episode because it
was also set in a comic convention and also guess starring Christopher Lloyd. I
really like the episode and I did like what is possibly the birth of Evil Wil
Wheaton. Around this time I find this thing called “Memories of the Future” in
which Wil starts writing humorous plot summaries of old TNG episodes, but wasn’t
able to find all of them at the time. Then Wil starts popping up all over the
internet in things and I go back to his blog and I’m immediately hooked back
into his world, but I wasn’t truly a fan until I started to listen to “Memories
of the Futurecast”. Wil’s delivery combined with his reviews just killed me and
I needed more, so I got all of Radio Free Burrito. At this time Lulu had
finally started delivery overseas and I had a job which allowed me to buy more
crap off the internet, it was like a match made in Silicon Heaven. Needless to
say I got all his books, his podcast, his audiobooks (which are also in the
car) and started following his blog again. It was because of Wil’s cameos I
ended up becoming a huge fan of both Leverage and Eureka, both of which I’ve
rewatched numerous times are both some of my favourite tv series of all time (independently
of Wil’s contribution to the series but his cameos did inspire me to watch them).
Finally we reach to this time last year and a web series
that I can honestly say has changed my life for the better. Whilst I still love
playing video games to this day, and will probably finally get started on the
buttload of new DLC for Mass Effect 3, RPG gaming was either getting stale or
games were being cancelled or never started6 despite best efforts,
so the whole ‘social’ gaming stuff just really wasn’t happening and I don’t
care much for MMORPG. Any way suddenly there was this announcement that Felicia
Day was creating a new channel on YouTube that was finally showing the new
season of The Guild, along with a load of new showing including... wait, what?
Wil Wheaton? Hosting a show about gaming??? Shut up and take my money! It
turned out to be a show dedicated to table top or board gaming, but not your
regular Monopoly/Cluedo/Scrabble ventures. It was intriguing to see this show,
never thinking that within a few short weeks I’d be playing the games involved
within the show itself! Whilst I spread the word to a few of my friends about
the show, it was my friend Adam who I’d only known for a short time beforehand
(and yet strangely enough helped him move before I really got to know him) had
a couple games, including Settlers of Catan... and so we played it... and I was
hooked. My other friend Eric had gotten a decent job and was also starting to
build up a collection of games from TableTop, so we arranged a game’s night
with Adam... which then turned into a weekly gaming night (including RPG
sessions) and we included more people7. Whilst we haven’t gotten
around to getting all the games that have been played on TableTop, the ones we
have played have been incredibly good (and in some cases downright hilarious)
that we also tend to take several games to PC or Console gaming nights to have
a break from the monitors and have some fun.
So far between Adam, Eric and myself we have the following
games played on TableTop or derivatives of: (in order of episode appearance)
- Smallworld (not a big fan, but I’m warming up to it)
- Settlers of Catan (one of my faves)
- Tsuro of the Seas (the sequel to the one played, and
possibly a better game)- Ticket to Ride (a personal favourite, and a story I’m
hoping to share in the future)
- Munchkin (originally just Space Munchkin but a group
effort has expanded this to included many of big box expansions and loads of
the littler expansions to the point we have at rough guestimate over a 1000
cards in the set)
- Cthulu Gloom + Expansion (spin off of the
original Gloom, still very fun)
- Say Anything (THE best party game with a bunch of funny seedy
people)
- Elder Sign (slow to start with, but can be one of the best
group games)
- Dixit (like Say Anything, can depend on the group, fun but
I think I prefer the other one)
- Pandemic (pure evil)
- Fluxx / Star Fluxx / Pirate Fluxx / Zombie Fluxx (we were
playing this before TableTop was made, but I think my preferable deck is
Zombie)
That’s it so far, we’ve been trying to get the rest but they
are either hard to get, sold out, or cost too much/can’t afford at this moment.
Strangely enough we hardly every take any photos of us playing these games and
with today being International TableTop Day, here is a photo from Thursday when
we were playing Cthulu Gloom.
1 – There was this absolutely awesome ‘haunted house’ board
game that I thought was pretty fun, unfortunately my recollections are
incredibly sketchy at best; however I remember that if your character got
scared you had to put this little plastic glow in the dark scary face on it,
which was kinda awesome.
2 – I swear Connect Four and Battleship helped me learn more
about strategy then Chess ever did.
3 – One day I’ll reveal why I didn’t like Doctor Who has a
kid as well... but not today.
4 – Whilst the VHS copies where available here, it didn’t
debut on TV for a couple of years afterwards, probably a good thing too as I
vaguely remember watching an episode on VHS and had no idea wtf was going on
with the series... by this stage I had gotten over my fear of the old series
was becoming a fan of the movie series, so I didn’t know why there was no Kirk
or Spock at that stage.5 – Well until a few years ago when as an adult I re-watched
every TNG episode and saw some absolutely fantastic Wesley episodes I must have
missed as a kid, and got a greater appreciation for the character and was
actually happy to see him in Nemesis.6 – I’m not entirely blameless, I’ve had a Ghostbusters RPG
on the boil now for nearly 2 years and just haven’t had time to work on it let
alone run it.7 – Which keep being run until Adam and his fiancée were
forced to move house at short notice and the drivable distance isn’t feasible
to make regular trips from my house or at least whilst I don’t have a job and
can’t afford the fuel.
I'm the guy on the left! :P
ReplyDeleteGreat read, great post!
our gaming nights will return...the Hero Base is coming!!!
ReplyDelete