I've been dabbling in the boardgame culture over the last few years.  Well, I've been playing them for years.  I remember whiling away time playing boardgames as a kid, mostly with myself, as is appropriate for an introvert.  Monopoly, Payday, Sorry, Stock Ticker (where I was mostly just fascinated by watching the commodities go up and down)...Clue, alas, was too hard to play alone, but I did once in a while talk other people into playing with me.  Then there was the more role-playing like ones, Divine Right and Dungeon and the ones we clipped out of Dragon Magazine (of which File 13 was always my favourite, although I found King of The Tabletop tantalizing).  Talisman, a few years later.  Or the minigames, Demonlord and Illuminati (and a few real solitaire games, Barbarian Prince and Star Smuggler).  Wow, that was more than I thought.  I also remember reading a number of reviews in Games Magazine, and some of them sounded interesting, but I never sought them out.  But it was still mostly role-playing games and computer games that dominated my attention.

Then there was a lot of family card games, Hand & Foot Canasta being the most common, with a side of Cribbage or Gin, or maybe Uno.  The party games, Balderdash and Taboo and Scattergories.  Maybe a little bit of Yahtzee.

But one day there was that copy of Settlers of Catan.  What was that?  It looked kind of intriguing.  We picked it up, tried it out...it was interesting, but we didn't take it out that often.  We had young kids, after all, and they'd probably swallow the pieces; they were certainly too young to play it.  Let's drag out the Sorry instead, or the Monopoly.

When they were older, though, I thought we'd try out some of these other games I kept seeing around.  Runebound was interesting, though full of little pieces that did mostly end up getting lost.  Cosmic Encounter...was a little disappointing.  Carcassonne, well, that was interesting, building maps with little tiles.  (Except when people were mean and didn't give you the last tile you needed to fill in that one hole that was driving you nuts...)

At some point, not sure when it was, I ended up invited to a party with some friends where there were going to be boardgames.  I got to watch the end of Ticket To Ride, and then...I don't even remember what was next.  Cards Against Humanity, perhaps.  Or Dominion and Pandemic.  But I was beginning to realize that maybe there were other people out there who might like to play games to.  I didn't always feel like going out, but once in a while I did.

And then this web-series came out, I don't know if you heard of it?  Okay, fine, I'd been following Wil Wheaton online off and on since he was first blogging back in the early 2000s, and this Tabletop thing sounded like fun.  So I watched it, often with my kids, and I began to realize how much was out there.  I can't buy everything, of course, but it's great to see this stuff and get more of an idea what the game's like than just peering at the bottom of the box.

So now we've got some Munchkin and 7 Wonders (my current favourite) and Killer Bunnies and Apple To Apples, and the Order of the Stick boardgame (another favourite, but one that requires more of a time investment), and it's not unknown to have a family game weekend where we go through almost everything in the cupboard.  And a few more regular game evenings with friends, with Elder Sign and Shadow Hunters and Star Trek Catan.  Even tried a few of the advanced-level ones, like Tzol'kin and Power Grid; supported a Kickstarter for Machine of Death.  There can still be weeks that go by where the games don't come out; there's still computer games, and books, and other things to do, and sometimes the negotiations get a little wearying.  My youngest is getting close to being able to play without help; she plays Ticket To Ride on her own, though we quietly overlook the fact that she doesn't know how to complete her routes.  It's not an obsession.  But it's still a lot of fun, from time to time.