Welcome to Tabletop Game Central.
My name is Jeff and I am a tabletop gamer.
I have been playing tabletop games of all kinds for over 30 years. I started with role playing games when
Dungeons and Dragons was pretty much the only one out there and graduated to
other TSR games such as Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret as they
came out. Then I came across the game
that became my favorite RPG, Champions.
I still have fond memories of that game in all of its incarnations and
would play it again is the opportunity presented itself.
During this time period I also dabbled in miniatures games such as Dawn
Patrol, Ogre, and Battletech. I would
have a lot of fun playing these games.
They would be especially enjoyable for me when I would play against an
opponent that I was evenly matched with.
The two things that prevented me from more than dabbling in miniatures
were that completely competitive nature of miniatures and my own vanity.
Coming from a role playing game background, I was used to and in fact
enjoyed more cooperative games that miniatures could provide. Even back in the days where the games were
99% dungeon crawl 1% role play, the players were mostly working together
achieve an overall goal versus trying to beat each other into submission.
The vanity part came from my complete inability to paint a miniature
decently. I did not have the patience or
aptitude to do the fine detail work to make a miniature look great. Since I could not field a good looking unit
of miniatures compared to those I was playing against, I became less
enthusiastic about it.
Then there were collectible card games, which came and went for me
quickly. I discovered very early on that
winning games like Magic it was not about who the most skilled player was, but
who could spend the most money on getting cards. I preferred to be able to pay my rent and eat
rather than spend all my money on Magic cards so I never go too far into this
type of game.
My current tabletop game interest is board games. I have been playing them for the last 10
years, but started to play them occasionally more than 15 years ago. It started when I decided to pick up a copy
of Settlers of Catan at Game Castle, one of the local games stores, when looking
for something new to try out. It turned
out that my friends and I enjoyed playing it that it would get out to the table
occasionally when we had a down week in our role playing game campaigns.
I enjoy board games because they are easy to learn and you can complete
one in two to three hours which worked out well for my busy schedule. No preparation time or fixed schedule to
commit to was what I needed to be able to scratch my gaming itch.
During all of this time I have started two game clubs to be able to
find more people who shared my enthusiasm for games. The first was the Orange County Adventurer’s
League in the 1990’s. OCAL meet once a
month and was predominantly focused around role playing games, but we would
occasionally have theme month focused around other genres of games. OCAL lasted a few years, but after we lost a
third meeting spot and had low turnout at the events, I ended it.
The second is the group that I am currently running which is called
Strategic and Adventure Game Association meets the 2nd and 4th
Saturdays of each month. It started out
of a store called Comic Quest in 2001 as a role playing game club to get
together a 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign. In 2005 we moved over to the El Toro Library
and started to transition into a tabletop game club. Today SAGA is predominantly focused on board
games and as near as I can tell it is the longest currently active tabletop
game club in Orange County.
My goal with this blog is to explore the tabletop game community
through after action reports of my gaming experience at the events I go to,
reviews of games I play at these events, and reviews games stores that I go
to. I also will keep a calendar of
upcoming events that I am made aware of.
What I hope to get from you is information on what is going on out
there in your local game community.
Please send me all the information you can on what is going including
dates of upcoming events in your area, after action reports, and anything else
that is important to you. The only
requirements that I have are that you do not provide information regarding
events that happen in private homes. I
do not want to unintentionally invade the privacy of others by publishing
information about them on the internet.
I hope that this entry entertained you.
The next entry will contain my first after action report.
Jeff
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