Top Ten Signs You're Addicted to Boardgaming

#10 After ordering games online, you check the ‘track shipping status’ every hour.

Happyface

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend.  Hope you had some tasty food, spent some good time with family, and got some gaming in.  Maybe you got some good deals on Black Friday (hopefully you did not punch anyone to do so. That would be bad).  Hopefully you had a thanks to stop and take some time to, you know... be thankful.

As for me, I did have a great thanksgiving weekend.  Got some great food - my mom's homemade thanksgiving dinner, my mom-in-laws thanksgiving dinner leftovers - spent some good quality time with family (see above), and got some gaming in.

Nothing special or noteworthy as far as gameplay goes.  Nothing crazy happened.  I didn't pull out any brand new games or try something I'd never played before.

I did finally get a chance to teach my mom Dominion (it's hard to get 4-player games in with my family when usually there are anywhere between 5-15 people around).  Dominion was a game she was apprehensive to try, thinking it to be too complicated - but i'm happy to report, she liked it (it helped that, even though she didn't win first place, she beat my dad.  Incidentally, my wife killed us all.  She's really good at board games).  I also taught Ticket to Ride.

A very special moment happened later that day, though.  Just as we were leaving, my mom gave me a hug goodbye - and she thanked me for having a hobby that the whole family could enjoy.

The Human Malfunction

There's been a lot of talk (and action for that matter) lately regarding digital versions of boardgames.  We've got smallworld, Catan, and even Ticket to Ride on the iPad now (and in some cases, our phones.)  We've got online versions allowing you to play against other players, as well as versions designed for playing against the computer.

Listen, I'm not really against digital versions of board games.  They can certainly be convenient, especially if you want to play with a friend across the country but can't exactly fly them in for the evening.  They also increase the exposure of board game franchises, hopefully to the point of increasing sales of the physical product, which would in turn grow the industry and hopefully result in even more exposure but more importantly, continued production of high-quality games.  (This is all speculation, by the way.  I don't think there's any solid evidence so far that iphone apps increase the sales of a corresponding physical product).

But here's the thing.  I'm not really a big fan of digital versions. It's not that I have a thing against video games.  I actually generally enjoy video games in addition to this more-prevalent boardgame hobby of mine. 

Free Falling!

I've heralded it before.  It's fun, fast paced, easy to learn, and energetic.

And now you can get it for free.  Sort of.

While the very fine quality Paizo version of the game ("The Goblin Edition") is still quite available for a reasonable price of $9.99, James Ernest, the original creator, has released the PDF files for the original version, downloadable, for free, over at Che Apass games.  All you have to do is print and cut out the cards yourself.

I highly recommend you try this game because it is zany, hilarious fun.  Don't know anything about it?  Read my review here.

Replayability

When board games (and video games) are reviewed or critiqued, its "replayability factor" is often one of the core elements that is brought up.

It makes sense.  After all, if you lay down $50 for a game, you're going to want to play it more than once, or it becomes one expensive hobby.  And of course, you want it to be fun every time you play it.  Otherwise what's the point?

But what is it that makes something replayable?

My Brain Hurts Part 2

Yesterday I shared my impressions of games including Agricola, Kingsburg, and Ascension.  Today I'm finishing up the 'convention' post with a few more games, though not as many new ones - at least to me.  Starting with...

Fallen Heroes, Chapter 3: Flying Heroes

Picking up right where we left off, our heroes were taking a leisurely ride on an eccentric old dwarf's airship. It was, perhaps the calm before the storm, as they were heading towards the ominous "Fortress of Souls."  As far as they knew, this was the only airship in existence in the entire world.

Not too long after resting up, the players find themselves on some floating mountain islands.  In the sky.  Why the detour?  Gakkeren, the dwarf, had visited those mountains many times before, and their friendly Skypeople inhabitants.  But something was wrong.

FTW

There's a funny thing about my personality.  If you know me, you know that I'm pretty quiet most of the time, and very laid back, and generally not that competitive.  In fact, though my dad had some dreams for my high school career as a star kicker in football, I never really got into organized sports.  This is not because of an outright rejection of sports - I could hold my own in a pickup game of basketball or touch football - I just didn't appreciate how much time and effort and lack of actual fun were involved, because organized sports are not about playing, they're about winning.

However, despite my lack of enthusiasm towards sports, I do have a competitive gene inside me, and when I played games, I played to win.  Winning was the most important thing when I played any game, even RPGs.