I’m a gamer. I like games — all kinds of games: board games, war games, role playing games, card games, and more. Table games are those usually played while physically sitting at a table with living, present opponents or allies (versus how computer games are usually played). Table games can be as much social event as a gaming event, but, when I come to game, I come to game. If I wanted just to socialize, I wouldn’t bring a game into the room.

My favorite kind of game is the role playing game (RPG) — those played with a group of friends, around a table, with books, paper, pencils, and dice. My favorite role playing game is Dungeons & Dragons; I played it in high school, I played it in college, I’ve been playing it as an adult, and I hope to continue playing it right into my twilight years. Other than during a few “off years” here and there, I’ve played D&D and other role playing games for 28 years — since 1980.

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Thursday nights are game nights for my current group of friends. It used to be Friday nights, but it seemed that those nights often got caught up in weekend plans. It’s rough on an RPG campaign to have players miss game sessions, or to cancel game sessions due to missing players.

My current group is just four guys, but we’ve had as many as seven (including two women). If someone can’t make the game, we either continue the current campaign without that player’s character, or we play something else. We only rarely don’t play anything on game nights. When we don’t play an RPG, we play board games, card games, or something.

This group has been playing together since 2003, and we’ve played several Dungeons & Dragons campaigns (usually DMed by me), one Star Wars campaign (1990s version, d6), one Vampire the Masquerade campaign, and one Marvel Super Heroes (1980s version) campaign. Our non-RPG games have included Risk, Talisman, Settlers of Catan, Runebound, World of Warcraft (board game), Robo Rally, Iron Dragon, Magic the Gathering, Monopoly, and even Life once.

In previous years, with other groups of friends, I’ve played all of the above games plus Star Frontiers, Shadowrun, Nightlife, Judge Dredd, Battletech, and one or two instances of a few other games.

So, you see, I’m a gamer. Games are a part of my life and identity as much as being a man, a Southerner, a writer and editor, and a husband and father.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com