Best of Board Games

Bas Luyten has a great Geeklist about how the ‘Geek has developed over the years. Good for getting up to speed if you’re relatively new to the phenomenon…

Jay Little–aka ynnen, famed throughout geekdom for his Geeklists, has a powerful post on why he games, which struck home with me.

I spent most of my undergraduate career–basically, all but the last semester of my six years at UT–battling various serious mental illnesses, including depression. During this time, gaming was one of the few outlets that could get me out of the dorm and make me act social and happy–if only for a few hours at a time. I’m (much) better now–I’m as cured as one can ever be–but, strange as it may seem, I almost miss the sense of pure relief and release that games could bring me back then; now I’m just a guy who likes playing games, not a guy who needs games, if that makes any sense. (Obviously, I would never, in a million years, really want to go back to that period of my life, or wish most of those experiences on anybody, but gaming is just a little less shiny and special now–but obviously the tradeoff has been well worth it.)

Jay’s post–and this one of mine–aren’t the light, fun posts that most game writing consists of, or the analytical gems we sometimes hope for, but…they are what they are, and I’d like to salute Jay–a good man, and a good gamer–and stand up and “testify” a little myself.

We now return to our regular programming…

Mary, or you may know her as Sodaklady from Gone Gaming, has her own blog now: Meeple Monologues. Lots of stuff about games, she’s off to a good start.

Wow, this club is a lot more organized than any gaming group I have ever belonged to! Fees, trophies, stats, probationary periods. I guess we’ve been far too relaxed in the past…..

Something like this almost always happens to me when I play abstract games.

Over on BGG, there’s an interesting post–and subsequent discussion–on cooperative games. Interesting that he brings up paragraph-based games (like Ambush!, in wargame circles, or Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective); I don’t see those making a resurgence, since I think most “modern” gamers hate! looking stuff up, in charts or anything else.

(Many thanks to Yehuda for the pointer!)

In Session Report, Yehuda Berlinger displays literary talent and a healthy sense of humour as he writes a session report as written by different authors, from J.R.R. Tolkien to Raymond Chandler and from A.A. Milne to Monty Python.

Originally I was unconvinced by Naturelich’s GeekList Aggregator project, but now that tagging seems to have died, they seem to be the best way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. His Wargames for newbies list is a typically good example.

MaBiWeb is the latest play-by-web site, with Hansa and Richelieu.

[via Rick’s Boardgame Blog]

The Geek of the Week this week is geek Mike Doyle, and the discussion is–naturally–revolving around game graphics. If you have not, be sure to check out his great blog, Art Play.