I was pretty big into roleplaying in the 90s, back when I was in High School. Throughout my 20s, I played video games more than just about anything else (maybe on par with time spent working).
Fast forward to 2010 or so when I started dating my, now, wife; her sister and brother-in-law were heavily interested in roleplaying and, to a lesser degree, boardgames. As the result of one of my brother-in-law’s friends being unable to attend GenCon back in 2008, they decided to hold their own roleplaying convention - it was a lot of fun and it eventually turned into a moderately successful local gaming convention (KantCon). So, shortly after we began dating, my partner invited me to sign up to play in some RPG sessions at KantCon; it was fun and I really missed the roleplaying that I did as a teenager. The following couple of years, due to a stressful job, I was reluctant to sign up for game sessions and decided to just show up and be a casual observer or fill-in when tables had empty spots.
By this time, my partner and I were living together and her sister had given us Takenoko as a gift (because she knew my partner would adore the panda). I was still mostly oblivious to boardgaming at this point; I had been conned into playing a boardgamification of Sid Meier’s Civilization a few years prior by a different group of friends - that did not go well and it really left a bad taste in my mouth as far as “modern boardgames”. That same group of people had also experimented with Settlers of Catan- it was fine but we had a serious groupthink problem and the games always turned out very samey. I had also played Apples to Apples (a lot) but A2A always seemed like a party activity and not actually game.
So, there I was, sitting and chatting with some familiar faces at KantCon 2012 when somebody pulled out a copy of Dixit. “Oh, hey, I saw this game played on Wil Wheaton’s TableTop show and thought it was a lot of fun… do you all want to play it with me?” I was really anxious about it at first but by the end of the game I was in love.
We played a few other games but none of them were as good as Dixit that weekend (I don’t even remember what they were; I know Ricochet Robots was involved and I really didn’t get on with that one). It got me excited enough that I started watching TableTop and searching for boardgames on Amazon to put on my wishlist.
It wasn’t until 2014 that I made a BGG account. For Christmas of 2013, my mother got a sizable bonus and wanted to spread the wealth; she found my boardgame wishlist on Amazon, printed it out and took it to a nearby gaming store (the one I used to go to for my RPG books back in middle/high school) and ended up buying me SO MANY GAMES† that I started googling how to keep track of boardgames… leading me to BGG (which I already knew about) as a way to keep track of what games I had.
†
Here’s my best guess based on the spotty records keeping I did back then and my spottier memory:
- Dixit
- Castles of Burgundy
- Small World Underground
- Suburbia
- Pandemic
- Stone Age
- Lords of Waterdeep
- Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords
- Gubs: A Game of Wits and Luck
- IOTA