Saturday, April 20, 2013

Welcome To Tabletop Game Central



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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