Never Board of Games (or puns)
Firstly I will warn you, this is possibly going to be a blog of many tangents, or just the one large tangent. We'll see how it goes.
I grew up playing board games with my family from a very young age. My earliest memory of playing was a game called "No Room At The Zoo" which, if memory serves me involved trying to off load animal tokens to the other players so as to not have an over populated Zoo. The mechanic must have been quite simple as I remember being a toddler when playing it, or at least I hope I was a toddler, that way my crying and bawling because my brother kept loading his animals onto my zoo doesn't seem so ridiculous.
When friends would come over I insisted on playing a board game regardless of their protests, and despite their reluctancy they always ended up loving it as much as I did. You see as we all grew older the majority of my friends were going off and doing the cool teenager things. Hanging out with friends on street corners, football, girls, underage drinking etc (of course it was all of the parent approved levels of these things, my friends weren't complete deviants.) None of these things really interested me, yes I am and have always been a football fan but not a religious one so to speak. My crippling shyness and conservative upbringing meant the idea of pursuing or even talking to girls was wholly unappealing, and as much as my parents would offer me an innocent alcoholic drink either with a meal or otherwise, I never to took to the taste. No, I was much happier at home, playing games, reading books and indulging myself in my love of all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. I had friends similar to myself who would be happy to spend time doing these same things but regardless of this, board and table top games always seemed to be the one thing they were too cool for, unless it involved a deck of cards and gambling.
As I came into my late teens and started college, there seemed to be fewer people in my circle of friends to get a game going with as we moved on to more high tech geek activities, video games and computing being our main focus, networked multiplayer games of Doom being a favourite. This was also the time I got involved with making and recording music and the beginnings of a social life started to manifest. After that came my first job, more social life, a busy aspiring music career and years passed without me touching a board game.
There was a small period, whilst living on the Isle of Man, that my house mates enjoyed the odd board game, mainly the popular ones such as Cluedo and Monopoly. I will just mention how Cluedo has, and always will be one of my all time favourite board games. I hate Monopoly. Eventually, house moves and relocations meant that once again a found myself drifting away from my gaming friends, and again a few years passed without rolling a single dice.
Tangent 1.
I've been a fan of Star Wars for as long as I can remember, I was born the year Return of the Jedi was released meaning Star Wars has always been in my life. I was so young when I first watched the films that I cannot recall the first time I watched them, as far as my memory is concerned there was never a time when I hadn't seen those films. Star Wars defined my childhood and was the seed from which my obsession with science fiction grew.
Star Trek on the other hand didn't come onto my radar until I was about ten or eleven years old, it was something I was always aware of but never really interested me, surely nothing could be as good as Star Wars. I don't know what changed but Star Trek quickly became as important to me as Star Wars, to the point I now go through genuine emotional turmoil when asked which I think is best (I think I might be leaning towards Star Trek though).
I do know it was The Next Generation where my love of Star Trek started and on of my favourite characters was (wait for it) Wesley Crusher. Maybe it was seeing someone roughly my age at the helm of a starship doing all those awesome sci-fi things that I wanted to do that appealed. I know a lot of people who feel quite the opposite about Wesley Crusher, I recall one of my friends saying, and I quote; "He was the Jar Jar Binks of TNG." I disagree, and from watching youtube vids of Q&As at conventions and reading interviews, it seems I'm not alone. The number of people that have gone onto study the sciences and engineering and then pursuing careers in those fields because of watching Wesley Crusher on Star Trek is phenomenal.
In turn I became a huge fan of Wil Wheaton, seeking out anything I could find that he starred in, the movie Stand by Me being a favourite. When he started to appear in The Big Bang Theory as a recurring character it made an already amazing TV show even better. I've watched the online show The Guild in which he also stars, sporting a rather fantastic kilt, and now having discovered he's in the show A Town Called Eureka, I intend to start watching that. One observation I have made, seeing these things he's done recently, he plays being a dick really well.
So where does this lengthy tangent tie into this blog? I hear you ask. Well being the Star Trek fan that I am, I of course subscribe to the Star Trek Facebook page and several months ago they posted a link to this.
Little did I realise at the time that when, in his first episode of The Big Bang Theory, he is referred to as being a "huge gamer" how true it was. Wil Wheaton, before he was even on Star Trek, has always been a complete and utter geek, a lover of Sci Fi and Fantasy and above all else, gaming. During one of the episodes he talks about how he used to spend his time between shoots on Star Trek in his dressing room painting Warhammer 40k models. He opens every episode of Table Top talking to camera about the game they'll be playing which always inevitably involves him telling the story of how he first discovered the game.
The Star Trek Catan episode was the first episode of Table Top I watched and I have now gone onto watch every episode of the currently two seasons long show, some of them I may have watched more than once (understatement).
I immediately went out and bought a copy of Star Trek Catan as well as the original Settler of Catan from which the Trek edition originated from. In the short time since discovering this show, aided by a job that gets me 50% staff discount on board games, I have since gone from owning zero board games to… I actually haven't counted, but it's a lot and I've managed to rekindle my love of board games. I know have a weekly (roughly) games night where friends, who actually want to play games, come over and generally kick my ass at everything I own.
Tangent 2.
To put it simply I have aspergers, it's very mild and hardly noticeable which is why I was 24 before anyone spotted it in me and that was only because they were describing the symptoms over the dinner table one day and I came out with - "Well isn't that normal?" and "Doesn't everyone do that?" But like I say very mild and in no way crippling. It does effect me in some ways, I suffer from social anxiety, meeting a new person can be stressful for me but I think I manage to cope well enough with that to the point people are surprised when I tell them. Meeting lots of new people all at once can be panic attack inducing which is why at parties with unfamiliar faces I'll stand to one side forcing on a grin and hope to a god I don't believe in that no one wants to introduce themselves or try and talk to me. What looks like a friendly grin is actually clenched teeth.
It makes me obsessive, when my mind locks onto a task or activity I cannot think or concentrate on anything else until that thing is done. For example, I might be at work and an idea for a new song may come to me. Until I can get into my studio and start work on that idea I'll be on edge and tetchy the whole time making it very hard to set my mind to anything else. These days however, modern technology does help with instances such as this. Having my Macbook or iPad means I don't have to wait to get home to start programming drum beats and synth lines, only until my break or dinner hour.
It also brings about quite severe OCD tendencies.
I do believe most people of the geek/nerd leaning also, to some extent, have aspergers. The obsessive tendencies that come with the lifestyle are all characteristic of the syndrome. More and more case of aspergers are being diagnosed and it's not because of the MMR vaccine for one thing. The whole MMR causes autism outcry is all bullshit, the "Doctor" who came out with the whole thing has been thoroughly discredited and his work proven to be a sham, yet people still buy into it. Like being shown a white sheet of paper and trying to argue that it's green, lies and disbelief in the face of evidence. No the reason more and more cases of aspergers and autism are being diagnosed is because the ability to recognise the symptoms is getting better. The number of cases is probably identical to what it was, it's just a case that it can be spotted much more easily now. It probably would have been spotted in me earlier if doctors and, especially teachers had the knowledge then that they do now, but as it is I was in my mid twenties before anyone could see it.
So the point I'm inevitably leading to with this second tangent that ties into the game theme?
For me personally it all ties into the social anxiety thing. To say gaming forces me to socialise would be the wrong way to put it, it makes me want to socialise and meet new people. It's fine having friends of many years over to play as I'm comfortable with that but I've actually found myself inviting people I've just met to the game nights, something that would have been unthinkable before. The game itself acts as a centre piece or common ground that helps break down that barrier of anxiety that I get when meeting new people.
I have to be honest because, I realise that the way I'm putting things makes it sound like there's something seriously wrong with me. The social thing I always deal with eventually regardless of the situation, it's always a case of just forcing myself through the initial encounter and after a while I ease into it after the initial awkwardness and unease. What I'm saying is the structure given by gaming cuts out the part with the discomfort, the nervous sweating and the general feeling of an oncoming panic attack being ever present. There are people who's cases of aspergers are much more severe than mine and are genuinely crippling but it seems that I'm not alone, and that gaming helps even in the most severe cases of aspergers and autism. Helping with social anxiety, problem solving elements and mental exercises being something that an autistic mind craves and a structure which sates the obsessive nature of the condition.
It's for this reason I also think table top games are superior to video games. Don't get me wrong, I love video games and have a reasonable collection of consoles as well as a gaming PC which I built, but this kind of gaming lacks the social element. Yes, I know there are those of you who would say, what about multiplayer games, MMOs etc. But multiplayer now is no longer about sitting next to each other on the sofa trying to cope with the constraints of a split screen. It's all networked and online so you don't even have to be in the same country as each other, the person or people your playing with/against may as well just be another AI NPC for all it matters. None of it is real, it's pseudo-socialising.
So I say to you, buy a game or two, get some beers and nibbles in and get your friends round for a good old night of rolling dice, trading cards and trying your damnedest to do better than I seem to do.
My next plan is to get some role playing going with some classic Dungeons and Dragons action.
Okay, so there were only two tangents, could have been worse. I'm now going to end this blog with a list of my top 5 games in no particular order.
Ticket to Ride
Small World
Star Trek Catan
Munchkin
Gloom
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