Starting Player

 This blog was created to help catalog and document the creation of my first tabletop game, Adrago. Funny thing though is at this point I'm probably past the halfway mark on the road to finish that first game. Better late than never though.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of my game and it's creation a little gaming background info on me. I've been a fan of video games since I was a kid, board games not so much. It actually took video games to help me realize there is more to table top games than Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley.

not that I'd turn down a game of body language

I think the first real taste of a good board game was on my Xbox 360. I downloaded a demo for the game Carcassone and and instantly was drawn to the game. It's mix of strategy, chance and easy to understand rules made a perfect recipe to play with my slightly less video game savvy roommate. After Carcassone XBLA released a downloadable version of another common gateway euro game called Settlers of Catan. Settlers of Catan, or just Settlers if you are a nerd, or just Catan if your my wife, is probably one of the most well known euro games out there, you can probably walk into your favorite supermarket and find a copy next to monopoly and operation (although I'd recommend a supermarket with enough variety to at least put Settlers next to Risk and Scrabble) Even though I wasn't tuned into the board game world I still had heard of the game. So I must have downloaded it and fallen in love right? Nope, in this version there was no way for multiple people to play the game on one TV, only online with other people. If I'm playing a game online I'd much rather shoot space dinosaurs with lasers.

Time went on and eventually another board game happened to stroll onto my video game console. Ticket to Ride allowed several players to lay railways across North America. After that the board game market seemed to dry up on the video game front and my interest started to wane. I still balked at the steep cost for most board games. I just bought Ticket to Ride for a couple bucks so couldn't fathom buying the real thing for the same price that I could get me a new video game.

Eventually life stepped in and the circle of friends I'd most often play video games with started to dwindle, people have babies, move away, break their thumbs in karate tournaments. So what was I gonna do, play games by myself? Well yeah, but I was left seeking direct competition and interaction with other gamers. This lead me to delve deeper into geekhood and started to dabble in D&D (3.5).

After several successful campaigns with Dungeons & Dragon it seemed like yet again people were a little too busy for the often involved nature of table top role playing games. It was then that I seriously started thinking about board games. They provided a lot of the same things I like about video games but in a much more accessible format. I had suckered my wife into playing D&D so surely I could get her into a simple board game. I did some research and headed out to the local board game shop with my friend.

Despite the suggestion to try out Dominion I made up my mind and grabbed a copy of Agricola. Despite being a more complex game than previous boardgames (but not as complex as D&D) I was hooked. Since then I've built my board game collection to a pretty respectable level.

I've always been a creative type as well as somebody who really can understand gameplay and rules. I had always wanted to help create a video game but as I got more and more into board games I realized how viable of an idea it would be that I could actually create my own board game from scratch.

next time, talking about main inspirations for my game