By Way Of Introduction...

Defenders of the Dicetower, I hereby present to you:

A General Timeline Leading Up To The Creation Of "Yet Another Friggin' Gaming Blog":

1975-1982:  I develop an embryonic awareness of board games and soon became decidedly intrigued by them.  And yes, that includes Clue.

1983-1997: In succession I invariably fall head-over-heels in lurve with war games, and RPG's.  After a tragically futile period of time in which I tried to avoid self-imposed celibacy, collectible card and eurogames quickly pulled me back in Al Pacino-style, turning my intrigue into obsession.

1998-July 12, 2010: Board Game Geek educated me on the endless variety of available games out there and was also kind enough to tell me which ones suck.  My ability to quantify games and purchase the ones which scratch a certain itch caused my personal collection to balloon well past one-hundred.

Yeah, I know what yer thinkin':

"Noob."

June 2001 - present  Caught up in Lord of the Rings-mania I managed to rope my wife Cheryl and five of my "gamier" peeps (Dean, his wife Claudia, Sabina, Thomas, and later Angela) into playing Dungeons & Dragons.  I was immediately reminded of how much I love the game when the following spontaneous exchange occurred:

ME: Okay, Dean, you completely missed the thing.  Claudia...the creature tries to grab you by the throat.  It rolls..."16".  OooOooo, a hit!  You start to black out with a ghoul on top of you...

CHERYL: (without missing a beat) Yeah, but how's that different from any other night?

Bah-DUM...*tsssh*.

We've probably only played about ten sessions in total, with the last one happening in July of 2010, but every once in awhile I feel the hankering to write up a new adventure.  Of course, this is just a flimsy excuse to get everyone back together let them murder a bunch of poor, defenseless orcs.

Oh, I'm also supposed to be playing in a Ravenloft campaign, but it's pretty much dead in the water until our illustrious DM comes up for air after playing Star Wars: The Old Republic for a month straight. 

Goddamned MMORPG's.  Fuckin' up my Christmas...

Feb 27'th 2004-present:  After purchasing about fourteen-thousand dollars worth of Star Wars Miniatures, I record my very first board game session report on loose-leaf paper as well as every one that followed.  When my wife catches me indulging in this pathetic behavior she offers to play with me occasionally.  Bless her boundless heart.

January 6, 2010  After a decade's worth of careful consideration, yours truly and two other equally oblivious friends (Andrew and Dean) finally decide to set aside one night a week just to play boardgames.  I tell ya, we're nothing if not spontaneous.

Chad joins us a week later (nice profile, buddy!) and Mike is inducted as a permanent member in June of 2011 while I'm away in Toronto.  Privately, Mike has since told me that he still has a hard time sitting down for any real length of time.  I don't have the heart to tell him that there wasn't supposed to be an initiation.

April 2010 to present  I start writing this lame-ass blog.  Since it's all about me and my oddball interests, I end up writing no less then nine separate posts about gaming.  Wanting to preserve my blog's original mission statement (I.E. as a place for me to bitch about my shitty work experiences, failed creative ventures and cock-eyed views on life)  I decided to spin off any future game-related posts right here.

Please note that my decision had absolutely nothing to do with being inspired by such dedicated game bloggers as Zak Smith, Jeff Rients and  Mike Moscrip.  Nope.  No, sirree.

As such, YAFGB will include my latest session reports (sometimes with reviews), older accounts from the archives (which should amuse the original participants at the very least), and anything game-related that I wanna just sound off on.

In doing so, I'm sure it'll be vastly different from the one-hojillion other gaming blogs out there.

July 13, 2010-Dec 7'th 2011  I managed to play well over fifty new board games in just over a year.  Yeah, I can hear you guys now:

"Noob."