Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Analysis Paralysis, the only blog where you can read my thoughts about tabletop games and the culture surrounding them. “Wait a second!” you say. “Who are you and why do do I care about your thoughts on tabletop games and the culture surrounding them?” Well, the first question is silly, because you almost certainly got linked to this blog by me personally and therefore know who I am already. But in case you're some future person who's come to this blog after I've become Internet Famous, I'll clue you in: my name's Thomas Berton, I'm from Toronto and I think, play and work around games way too much. Want to know more? Read this blog! Want to know even more? That's creepy, get out.

Still here? Sweet, that means you're not creepy. So why do you care about my thoughts on games? Four reasons: one, you're related to me and you'll read this out of a sense of obligation; two, tabletop gaming has become super popular over the past few years and you want to know what the heck is up; three, my thoughts are hopefully fairly interesting because of how much time I spend around games; and four, there's not really much else like this on the internet. Let's go through those reasons in more detail, shall we?

Well, if you're here because of reason number one, thank you so much for your love and support. Please, don't feel obligated to continue reading, but know that if you can't recite by heart every article I write, you're dead to me. Once again, thanks for the support!

The second reason is an interesting one. It does seem that tabletop gaming has become more popular in the past few years, especially in Toronto. Game cafés are opening up all over the place. So many new games are released each month that it's impossible to keep up. The hobby's getting hot. I don't have the journalistic chops to explain why this is happening, so I'm not even going to bother trying. What I do know is that people are getting interested in these games and I'd like to provoke people to think about them in more detail.

That's where reason number three comes in. I feel that there's so much to talk about concerning tabletop games. First of all, what the heck is a tabletop game anyway? The definition I'll be working with is “any game played primarily with other people, physical components and around a table.” It's not a hard definition though – I'd consider charades a tabletop game, even though there's no table. But the definition generally works. See? Even in the simple categorization of these games, there's interesting stuff to talk about. It doesn't stop there though: what different kinds of games are there? How do they make you think? How are they designed? What makes some fun and others boring? I spend so much time around games that I think I've got insightful things to say about these questions. Furthermore, as a budding game designer myself, I'd like some place to work out the process of game design and hopefully some of you are interested in reading about that.

Finally, as far as I can tell, there isn't anything like this out there. Sure, there are podcasts and BoardGameGeek and review sites. But there's nobody doing long-form, contemplative, written work on tabletop game design. That seems sad to me. There's a ton of interesting work being done about the design and play of video games (check out telebunny.net, jonshaferondesign.com and idlethumbs.net to see some of it) But there isn't much of an analog in tabletop gaming. (If somebody knows of one, I'd love to hear about it.) I decided that I should fill the void myself. I'm sure other people have thought about the things I'll write about, but there doesn't seem to be much of an effort to start a conversation on the topic. I'd like to make that effort.

Now, it's tough to start a conversation with somebody you don't know. Even for those of you who know me from elsewhere (which is probably all of you), you may not know my taste in games. So over the next several weeks, I'll be posting articles about the ten games that best outline my taste. I won't say they're the greatest games ever made, but they are the games that stick in my brain, keep me playing and get me thinking about what this medium has to offer. Those articles will come every Tuesday and Thursday. Sunday's article will be a weekly palate cleanser.

That's the deal. Let's have a conversation about tabletop gaming and what makes it great.