too long since last update - here's some information you don't care about.

It's been far too long since my last update, and I'm certain no one is currently following this, so I'll have to actively direct you to it. Hopefully I can say something slightly meaningful.

I have been thinking a bit about my gaming history, and want to write in that direction.


My experience is as follows:

In 2003, I was introduced to Settlers. We played it continuously for 2 years, and formed a group, "Seattle Settlers," which officially met every Sunday after eating dim sum, but informally met 2-3 times a week for some Settlers. There was some exposure to some other light games in there too, on occasion, such as Fluxx or Carcasonne.

Eventually, someone discovered Puerto Rico. We alternated between that and Settlers (primarily) for over 2 years. I created an account on BGG somewhere in here, (as that's where the person found PR), but didn't do much with it.

Then I went to Austria for the first time (and turned a good friend into a girlfriend), and literally spent an hour in Salzburg looking for a game shop which was supposed to have a copy of the "hard to find" Die Siedler Von Nurnburg" there, in the rain. It was acquired. I've since seen that game in about 5 different places in the US, albeit 2-3 years later.

A friend of mine got me Deflexion for Festivus that year, after I posted about drooling over the laser setup. Most people still wouldn't play it with me :(. I got War of the Ring for Christmas from my brother (played it once with Seattle people, otherwise only with my brother), and perhaps something else from my parents...(I don't remember, but it was more likely my yellow rain jacket which was great for hiking in Seattle in the winter, but not so useful here in Tucson). I went to Vienna again, and picked up Caylus (which was hyped at the time) before it was out in the US.

Then I went to live in Vienna for 3 months. I discovered many games there, and had some friends who were on holiday visit. I had discovered a game library there, and checked out RoboRally, which we had all been interested in trying, playing it on an island on the Danube. I played it several times with Anna, but two-player RoboRally wasn't very good. Got Anna to play War of the Ring (yes, I brought it with me, along with most of my board game collection at the time) a few times, but she doesn't and didn't like the theme of Lord of the Rings. I also found a fellow gamer in Vienna who helped me find some great games (like Antike), as well as a few I disliked (Tigris and Euphrates). I got onto BGG more frequently, and listened to podcasts like The Dice Tower, and thought they were full of useful information and knew what were good games and what were bad ones, listening to their advice on what to investigate further (ha! I say now.)

I came back from Vienna and was still surrounded by a group of friends who I loved and didn't want to ignore, but they had no interest in the games I was interested in, so I mainly played Settlers and Puerto Rico with them. I got them to play Ticket to Ride, which they loved...and subsequently couldn't stop playing. So I played that.

I had another acquaintance (who never quite became a friend, unfortunately, he had too many other people/things in his life for me, I think) who had game night every other week, and was generally more open to more difficult games. He was also brilliantly good at these, and would win ~50% of the time. He was polyamourous, and another poly couple would join, and it would often be the four of us, which made it awkward as I was not part of their poly group. I started going to some poly events right before leaving Seattle, but it was too late to generally get in with that crowd. This group was, as a result, always a bit awkward for me, and I'm still not 100% sure that I was 100% welcome. A lot of the poly crowd in Seattle are gamers, and vice-versa, it's interesting that the two mesh. I now wish I'd gotten into this crowd a bit more heavily before coming to Tucson (where the gaming crowd consists heavily of religious conservatives, many of whom work for something I don't agree with personally, Raytheon). As liberal as I am (and sometimes take a bit of joy in making others aware of that), I can usually get along with the conservative nature of the group here. There are some ridiculous things I will not tolerate, such as a swear jar, putting underpants on a picture of a naked statue in a board game, or writing "root" on a card where you drink Beer (root beer). But generally, I don't talk about my ideals unless they try to shove theirs in my face (which very, very rarely has happened).

In my search for other groups in Seattle, I also came across a terrible one, filled with people who played a ton of board games (the guy had 200+ games), but had no idea how to play. I would consistently beat these people, and they didn't understand either simple rules or strategy. I was still new at this time, and found this group to be a bane. I left it after 2 sessions, although I liked one or two people, and got to play my first game of Antiquity (which I won after 7 hours, due to two of the four people not getting the game at all). A woman at this group, I recall, told me about her belief in ghosts, and how she seriously believed one was trying to contact her.

Before I left for Tucson, I got a glimpse of some of the gaming culture when Scott Nicholson came to Seattle and wanted to have a game night. I met with some cool people, played some interesting games, and several of us decided to try to form a more serious game meet-up, once a month. I only made it to one other meeting, but it still lingers in my mind, with many of the games that I played and others played as having become mini-grails simply due to their presence at this event (such as HamsterRolle, Stephenson's Rocket, and Graenaland). It's too bad I left for Tucson right as this was starting to pick up. But through this group, I met Julie and Peter, friends of Seth's, who told him to look out for me and vice-versa. Seth and I don't generally agree on which games we like, but we share some common interests and have become friends in the 1.5 years since. If only he liked WC or Container still (I somehow missed out on the phase where he played it 15+ times..)

But, leave for Tucson I did. And, conservatives or no, I have opened up to the gaming culture much more effectively here as a direct result of not having the group of casual-gaming friends around, so I haven't been torn between which events to go to.

And I've since played so many games, and really learned what I enjoy in games and what I don't enjoy in games. I'm still learning, of course.

And now I've started to read game theory. I'm just finishing Straffin, 1992, "Game Theory and Strategy," and am likely moving on to Von Neumann and Morgenstern's "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior," which is the equivalent of 2+2=4 for game theory, as this was the first collection of game theoretical ideas. I'm guessing it will provide the missing mathematical details from Straffin, and provide a good basis for further game theory reading.


Well, that's a rough history. I'm sure I've missed details/people in my blind writing of < 1 hour.

I've gotten onto BGDF chat a lot more lately, but I think there is less interesting discussion there than I had hoped for. Actually, I'm having quite a good one right now with clearclaw about theory as applied to board games.

Maybe I'll write on that next. Hopefully it will be soon.