40. Games I Haven't Played - Lessons From A Geek Fu Master

games I haven't played. Several bibliophiles are well aware of Mount TBR. That's to be read,

the mountain of books on the bookcase, stacked by the bookcase, or in my case,

beside my bedside table at the perfect angle to trip over in the middle of the night.

I'm always buying books faster than I can read them. There will come a day, probably in your

life, I'm guessing in your thirties, because that's when my realization hit me, when you

realize that you will die before reading all the books you want to read. It's a very depressing

realization. Along with that, gamers have TBP, Mount To Be Played. In my house, the mountain

is massive, including computer, console, role-playing, and board games. It's a crime,

but what are you going to do? Last Christmas, our gaming group pulled together their cash and

shopped for my husband and I on our FunAgainGames.com wish list. We got a frighteningly large box full

of huge books. I don't know if you've read it, but it's a very depressing realization.

board games like Heroes Incorporated and Pirate's Cove, smaller card games like James

Earnest's totally renamed Spy Game, and expansions for games we already had, like Big Idea. Regardless,

it was massive, and we still haven't played all the games in the box. See, there's a pattern in

our house, where we'll settle on a favorite game and play it for lots of weeks in a row.

That Wild West shoot-em-up card game called Bang was like that. It was one of my favorites,

but when one guest made an embarrassed admission that she really didn't like it,

we took it out of the rotation. I think the problem, for me anyway, is that it's not only

getting me to learn a new game, but when it's new to everyone, we all have to learn it with

one copy of the rules, which means a new game that's supposed to take 45 minutes will lead up

to two hours. And since game night is Wednesday, most people have to get up and go to work in the

following day, so games lasting into the night is not what people are looking for. But we have to

learn how to play them sometime, right? There might be gold in that there box of games. But old games

are so much fun, too. It's time like this that we have to remember the paraphrase of that old Girl

Scout song. Buy new games, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other's gold. Yes, I was a Girl

Scout. Really? No, I wasn't a very good one. It just doesn't stop with board games. Some call me

an addictive personality. I just prefer to think of myself as being a creature of habit. I can't

play The Sims 2, or Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, or Zoo Tycoon, uh, whatever sequel. I just want to

have fun. I've never been good with playing more than one game at a time. The same goes for console

titles. I haven't really planted my butt on the couch for a couple of hours at the PS2 since Final

Fantasy X-2. A toddler who likes to pull on cords and push controller buttons might have something

to do with that. There's also a huge stack of PS2 games, mainly more time-intensive RPGs,

collecting dust and looking very forlorn. Lastly, and perhaps most tragically, there are the piles

and piles of RPGs that I haven't played in a long time. I haven't played a lot of RPGs in a long

time. I haven't played many books in my office. Many are for research on writing projects. Some

are from games I've written for, and others are games I've always wanted to play but can't get a

group together to commit to playing any game beyond what we're already playing. Guiding my

friends through war-torn Azeroth, yes, I play Warcraft the RPG too, can't be put on hold for

a brief foray into the zombie world of All Flesh Must Be Eaten or the god-driven world of Nobilis.

If we do try to get them into one of these worlds, it will again take considerable time to learn new

gaming systems, and I'm not sure I'll be able to do that. I'm not sure I'll be able to do that.

New world info, and we're back at square one as if we're fledgling roleplayers.

It's hard to get gamers out of a rut. Okay, I'll be honest, it's hard to get me out of a rut.

And I still obsessively want to buy and play new games, but I can't imagine giving up the old games

I so dearly love. And since, as Neil Gaiman put it, no one has sent me a big box of time,

it's going to take some hard decisions. Hopefully not as hard as the one where I had to choose

between World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. Putting games on rotation seems to be the best

way to go, even if it's not the best way to go. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't

know. I don't know. I don't know. Even though it grates against everything that makes me

comfortable. We're planning a beach trip soon, where I will be suffering from severe World of

Warcraft withdrawal, but I should be able to catch up on all my board games. My husband has

reserved cargo space in our RAV4 to haul War of the Ring down to the Outer Banks. This is a massive

game with many little tiny parts. That makes my husband and my daughter very happy. And he's been

lusting over this for some time. I think I might try to slip a couple more in there that we haven't

played yet. I mean, who really needs food when you're at the beach?

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