Games I Like (Matt)

As I mentioned in the introduction, my taste in gaming these days mostly comes in three flavors: board games, roleplaying games, and video games.

Board gaming is the sort I find myself doing most often.  I tend to play a lot of so-called "Euro" style games--we'll call Pandemic, Dominion, La Citta, and 7 Wonders a representative (but certainly not exhaustive!) list.  I prefer games that reward adapting a strategy to changing game states rather than ones that insist you develop a strategy at the beginning and ride it as far as it will take you, so I'll probably always prefer Race for the Galaxy over Agricola.  (I also tend to prefer games that play in 1 hour rather than 3.)  Outside of Euro-land, I'm a fan of trivia and word games of all sorts.  Wits and Wagers, Scrabble, and Scattergories are a few favorites, and I will beat you at Taboo.

I've been playing roleplaying games since about 2000, when I started Dungeons and Dragons right when its 3rd Edition was released.  Since then, I've played about a dozen incarnations of and variations on D&D as well as a few other RPGs.  Right now, I'm a regular at a local game shop's D&D Encounters (4th Edition) game, and I play in a couple of Burning Wheel games as well.  I'm also interested in the next version of D&D, and I'll be blogging some of the beta test process over the next few months.

Finally, I don't play nearly as many video games as I did ten or fifteen years ago, but I'm still a somewhat frequent video gamer.  The video games I do play tend to be huge console or computer RPGs (think the Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect games), or quick, multiplayer-friendly games along the lines of Mario Kart.  I'm not a huge shooter fan, which might explain my recent ambivalence toward the video gaming scene, but I still follow the gaming news at least a little.

One big gap in my gaming preferences is card games.  I've played Magic: the Gathering a total of four times in my life (and generally enjoyed it, but never really got into it), and I know exactly zero about poker.  That sort of thing will be the province of my co-authors, but look for a healthy amount of board game and roleplaying game coverage from me.