Well lets start with the easy stuff, the straight autobiography. I’m an architect in Houston, Texas, who grew up in California, Orange County, San Jose, and Berkeley. I went to school at Berkeley. After working a few years, I moved out to Houston for grad school and have been there since, even though we would like to move back. I live with my girlfriend and two rabbits. I waste a lot of time on picking up an dropping hobbies, currently, board games (and talking about them), Tai Chi, Harmonica, and Rock Climbing. Previous victims were an abortive attempt with the Banjo and Photography.
Boardgaming has been a recurring hobby in my life. I’m not sure where it got started, but I suspect it was because I grew up with very limited TV in the house. We had some computer games, but that was also quite restricted. I definitely read a lot and we played some boardgames. That said, it was just me and my sister so we didn’t play that much because she wasn’t so into heavier games. I remember playing a bit of Parcheesi and a little Rummikub and Egyptian Ratscrew. I think at some point my dad taught me Nine Men’s Morris, which I took to junior high and played a with a friend. I didn’t play a ton with my parents, but I played a little bit of Xiangqi with my dad and grandfather. I never got good at that game. I remember hearing about Weiqi (Go) but I don’t think they ever played it. The other game I learned from my grandparents was Mahjong, which is still one of my favorite games – though only with people who play at a HK style 3 point minimum.
Aside from that however, I didn’t get to play too much as I grew older because my parents (dissatisfied with both public and private schools) pulled us out to be homeschooled furing high school which limited the crowd I could hang with. During this time I came across Avalon Hill through the old chain Game Keeper. With a couple old junior high friends, I had limited play with Blackbeard, Civilization, PanzerBlitz, and Squad Leader. I still own them and the two that would still keep my interest are Titan and A House Divided. Even if I didn’t get much play I definitely picked up the “new game box” buzz and the joy of reading rules. Well actually I think the joy of reading came first, the rules were just really fun things for me to read – and not just the rules for designer games but all kinds of rules. In fact I find traditional game rules more interesting because the games are tied into a culture group. They provide a glimpse into another life.
My last couple years of high school I attended the local community college where I learned and played Thirteen between breaks. I don’t think this was my introduction to climbing games – I learned Big Two before that – but this is the beautiful game, just constantly flowing. Each deal and hand shaping up in front of you, a quick assessment and then the card play. Repeated again and again. I also learned the rules to Magic the Gathering, but I never really got into cardboard crack. I saw the expense of the game from afar and I didn’t have the funds!
College at Berkeley was a pretty quiet time for gaming. Architecture school is an intense experience, and I hung out with artists, chatting through the night about life the universe and everything. There were a couple forays into games, but the pressure to perform in school that kept me from really enjoying games. Maybe there was a level of misplaced Avalon Hill snobbery, so I didn’t even bother to try Settlers of Catan even though I had heard about it. I suspect I also avoided this popular game because I knew that a lack of funds would be a constraint and didn’t want to get sucked back into a world of shrink wrapped boxes, each promising a new gaming experience when I didn’t have any disposable income. I did make an impromptu chess set with spray painted bottle caps, which got a good amount of use with a couple studiomates. But I could never grasp the spatial nature of that game. My mind is wired for card games where there’s more of a back and forth and semi-expected ups and down. Chess games require long term look ahead and serious planning, neither of which I enjoy in my games. I like my games with tactical with twists and turns, as long as the game provides ways to pivot amidst the chaos.
I did have one abortive attempt at getting into Magic while at Berkeley. I heard about drafts and thought it would be a good way to play the game without going broke, but after one Friday Night Draft, I realized the amount of skill it required and I had no interest in getting that good at the game. I still do enjoy the general system, but not that much.
When I went to Rice for grad school, and the situation stayed the same – tight on cash and tight on time. However, Rice is a much smaller university, and with the claustrophobic environment, I needed to get out, spending my little bit of free time hanging out at a local gamestore. The kids were really into Magic, and I tried to get back into it, but once again the skill level was too much. I did meet a fellow student that had a shoebox full of cards, and we did have a lot of fun with that. I also tried playing Munchkin, which is actually a fun enough game with the right crowd, and Chez Dork which is a really fun game but I soon realized that if I wasn’t going all in on MtG, there just wasn’t much reason to hang out there and so I slipped back out of gaming.
During grad school I also met my girlfriend and we picked up a couple games, Trias and Carcasonne Hunters and Gatherers, but we didn’t play them aside from chasing her during a three year losing streak in H&G. I also picked up Alhambra around the end of grad school. I was still gun-shy about jumping fully into gaming due to the cost, but also because a lot of these games just aren’t that great for two. You’d think I’d have learned how to use BGG since I had joined this site almost as soon as it had opened, but the user interface on the site really is a major barrier to full entry, and even worse, every popular game invariably has a fairly convincing thread where someone states that game XYZ actually works great for 2P even if it really isn’t a good 2P game!
The one game that got regular play during that time was Cribbage. I have no earthly idea why I decided to learn the game, maybe just because it was a classic game and the convoluted rules made it an interesting challenge. But once we got into it, we were hooked. I doubt either of us were great at it, but I think we got pretty good playing by feel. Kind of like my climbing game obsession, I play the game but without counting cards, and that only gets you so far – but far enough to have a lot of fun.
And so it stalled for a while, until we picked up Ticket to Ride. Wow. That game caught fire. We played it maybe every other night, so much so that I burned out on it. I was starting to get hooked, I got more serious about BGG and I also found out about all the published game rules that are available online. This was so freaking cool for me cause I love reading them, but I was still constrained by our 2P requirement. So I pretty much just stuck with TtR which we played every other day all year until one fateful weekend in early 2009. My buddy from LA was going to come out to Texas on a business trip. At the last minute, her company canceled the trip and so I suddenly had a free weekend. It was the weekend of OwlCon – the annual gaming convention at Rice University. So I thought, well crap, for $18 I’ll get to try out some games, hopefully avoid buying some bad ones and maybe meet some people. I did. There isn’t much open gaming out there, but there is a little and I met a woman who told me about the Friday Night Group which happened to meet a few blocks away from my house.
And so its been ever since. I have my “church” on Friday afternoons….with plenty of gamers to commune regularly, I’ve become seriously addicted to this hobby.
I have no idea how long it will last, presumably as long as I have fellow players. If we end up moving then who knows, but interest has stayed at a fairly high level, except for when I went though a recent foray into indie story games which lasted until I realized my girlfriend was not into them. Once that happened, I was fully back on the BGG bandwagon. To me, there are few consumer purchases that are as gratifying as opening up a new box of games imagining and hoping for all the fun you’re gonna have. Even though I am so often disappointed (I’d be lucky if 1 out of 5 games was a hit), I just keep coming back.
Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com