Tales of Gaming RSS

Discovering a new hobby is an exciting and empowering experience but it can also make you feel clueless. "Where do I start?" is usually my personal reaction. Taking your first steps into a new world can be intimidating, especially when it comes to tabletop games.  Playing with your family is one thing but finding a group outside that circle of trust has its challenges. Ultimately it takes a bit of courage, a leap of faith so to speak. I always say: "The water doesn’t stay cold for long once you start swimming!". You will quickly realize that all tabletop players have...

Summer is over and with it our first family adventure in the Forgotten Realms. As I introduced my kids to tabletop role playing games, I rediscovered the joys and intricacies of DM’ing, or GM’ing, call it what you want. My 9 and 12 year olds have lived through their first exploits as characters that live only on paper and in our small gaming group’s collective imagination.Was it a resounding success? A flawless exercise in make believe? Did we capture lightning in a bottle? At times, it certainly felt that way while on other instances the magic was missing and we...

We’ve almost reached the end of what seems to have been a very, very hot summer for everyone. At times, it seemed the heat was keeping us inside in the same way a week of downpour would. In our home, the basement is the only place that seems to stay cool, so the holidays turned into a bigger opportunity to play board games, role playing games and video games than expected. Of course, there were plenty of trips to the beach and parks, playing catch, badminton, frisbee, and typical lawn games including one of my favourites:   Washer Toss Some...

Summer is here and for many it means a long or even very long holiday. That is the case for our kids and since we obviously cannot go away for nine weeks, we have been looking for activities to keep them busy with. Some are things they can do by themselves and others we do with them. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I had planned to introduce them to tabletop roleplaying and I am happy to report that, indeed, I am running a game as Dungeon Master (DM) for the first time in a great number of...

It sounds like an oxymoron, something that shouldn’t even be a thing. Yet, digital versions of physical board games are around in numbers and you can find them on various flavours of smart phones, tablets or computers. Combining digital and analog forms of play to create something new or out of the ordinary is not an easy feat, yet it has been attempted, long before the dawn of tactile screen technology.  Hybrid board games The Quest for the ring (1981) for the Magnavox Odyssey2 - known as the Philips Videopac in Europe - is probably the best game I can...