Boardgame Bollocks Vlog Ep2 - How We Started Gaming

0:09 Board games 4K. Hello. Welcome back to episode two of the board game bollocks vlog. And this is a a portion of our channel where we just talk bollocks about board games for kind of minutes. In this episode we're going to we're going to tell you a couple of little stories about how I personally got involved in board games and and why why we do what we do here at this channel. So when I was a kid we um we used to play with them usual board games, you know. Parents used to get they used to get there's there was all Hasbro games that they you know Monopoly and Game of Life and all that sort of thing. We we used to play them as kids. I remember playing them with my sister.

0:59 She's only She's only a year older than me. We used to play Operation and all that sort of stuff. And um yeah we we were quite happy with those for for a number of years and I know a lot of people don't like Monopoly and all those sort of games that you play as as a kid but to me they sort of opened up these doors. To me they were sort of a sort of a ground breaking thing for me cuz I opened up these it showed me that what games could be. And I know they're just like roll and move games and that but what we used to do we used to take the core rules and and core mechanisms and add things. And I I remember doing it with chess like so we used to have these toy soldiers and that and these sort of medieval sort of knights and things like that. And we used to sort the pieces out make our own little rules for chess and stuff. So you know that that sort of allowed us to sort of give us the tools to to sort of branch out and do what we wanted and I can remember when I was about 10 my mom took me to this little toy shop just down the road called Christopher's. And she said to me that you can go and get whatever you wanted within reason, all right? So, you know, I was looking around the toy shop and that, and I found these Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. They stood out because they had these green spines, all right?

2:12 And I remember looking at them thinking, "Bloody hell, what are these?" I said, "It's a game, but a book as well, you know?" So, you needed two dice, a pencil, and an eraser and all that sort of stuff and that. I was looking for them and picked out House of Hell. And I I think the reason I've done that is because my parents were they were quite religious, all right? So, I think I did that subconsciously as a sort of a reactionary thing, you know? So, we I picked that out. And that blew me away. That That was a complete game changer for me, the House of Hell and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks in general. And after that, I just completely devoured the lot. I picked up all of them, saved all my pocket money, and whatever I could do to get my hands on the full set. I mean, this is going back to 1984. And um yeah, so I remember picking up the Fighting Fantasy introductory role-playing game. And in the back of that book, there was an advert for a book called What is Dungeons and Dragons? And I remember thinking like, reading that, thinking, "Well, that's so it's not just Fighting Fantasy. You could There's a There's multiplayer games that are more complicated." So, on Christmas, I got a the D&D basic set.

3:18 You know, the old Holmes Is it the Holmes red box set? And that again, opened up everything for me, you know, D&D. We used to play at lunchtimes. And um we used to have as a We had a teacher called Mr. Lodge, and he he used to let us stay in and play Dungeons and Dragons in our lunch hour rather than go out and play. I know it's probably a bit unhealthy, a bit irresponsible of old Mr. Lodge back then, but but that that's that was the strength of D&D. We were about 12 years old in the '80s. And uh yeah, we'd We'd much rather played out than go outside and play football or that something. And uh you know, we sort of started playing looking at Games Workshop games cuz uh back in the '80s Games Workshop it was like the English equivalent or British equivalent of uh TSR. So, we started to playing all the Games Workshop games like Talisman, Judge Dredd, Cosmic Encounter, Kings and Things, uh Chainsaw Warrior, Rogue Trooper, you know, all that sort of stuff.

4:13 And um as as as as time wore on and we left school and we went into we got a bit older, things TSR and D&D sort of started getting less popular. And um video games seemed to take over then in the early '90s. You had the rise of Nintendo and you know, PCs became more prevalent in people's homes and we sort of lost contact with that with games, you know, sit-down games cuz we were at the time we were this was way before Xbox Live and all that sort of stuff and you know, when games went on the internet. And um we we we traded in the cardboard for a digital format and we but we still sat on the sofa, didn't we? And we played FIFA and played Bomberman and all that sort of stuff. We it was still a social experience. I left sort of games and moved onto video games in the in the '90s. You know, we had the 3DO and then PlayStation, the Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast and all that sort of stuff and we moved away from tabletop gaming for quite a while and um it wasn't until the advent of Xbox Live that I started to think that this this social thing had disappeared somewhat, you know, everything was being moved into a sort of digital realm and you didn't no longer needed to be in the same space as people in order to play these sort of games and whilst it was fun for a while, it was a novel thing. It didn't really sit well with me. I I used to think you know, there's something not right about this, you know, sitting there on your own with a headset on, you know, chatting to people, strangers and that and as time wore on, a friend of mine said, um "Oh, do you remember you ever play uh Warhammer?" And I'm

5:43 like, "No, no, no, I've played D&D but I've played D&D cuz I I haven't never played D&D but fancy playing it." And I'm thinking it's a bit weird now. It was a bit out of date, but I tried to organize a game of D&D. But we couldn't get enough people around to play it, and obviously when you you know you can't you can get one shots, but we didn't have that at that time, so we decided that rather than play D&D we play a game that we both were familiar with in the '80s, which is Blood Bowl. And I picked up a copy of Blood Bowl 3rd edition with the Astrogranite pitch. And we played that, and then we thought well, we'll go and play another game. Right, so we picked up I don't I can't remember what it was. Picked up something else, we played that. And gradually my wife got involved, my mom got involved, other people got involved.

6:29 And we found on YouTube that there was other people that were playing Warhammer tabletop games, you know. Which I found a bit weird. And yeah, so we started watching videos and stuff. But that one game has now become I don't know, it's like 600 games, I think, something like that. I don't know. I don't I don't know how many games I've got in my collection. I don't want to know. Gaming games in general have always been an important part of what's happening in my life, you know. And it I've come to realize that it's not so much the games that are important, it's the it's the social interaction between people, and tabletop gaming brings people together, right? And that's why I was never really enamored with internet gaming, because that whilst it didn't remove social interaction, it sterilized it somewhat, you know.

7:23 And tabletop gaming gives you a face-to-face social interaction. It gives you something physical to use to play with, right? And that's what it's all about. Is that it's real. Tabletop gaming at its core, at its essence, is real. And it's not digital, it's not it's not this fake inauthentic experience. It's a real thing. It's tangible. You can feel it. You can you can laugh together. You can listen to people, you know, and it's real. So, I don't know. Maybe I'll just waffle on about crap. So, you know, I don't know. Anyway, tell me, dear subscriber, you tell me how you got in a board game. What was the first games you played as a kid? How did you How did you keep playing games? What if you left games sort of behind in it when you were as you as you got went through your life. How did you What brought you back into tabletop gaming?

8:15 Cuz I'm always interested to know how things how other people found tabletop gaming. So, um yeah, so if you're a subscriber, take a couple seconds and subscribe to this channel for more board game bollocks. And we'll see you next time.