House Rules

Whether it’s Poker, Euro Games, or even chess, most gaming family have gaming house rules. 

Some of the rules are about the games themselves.  In my family we had assigned colors. My dad would always play red. No matter what game we played (unless the game happened to not have red.) Sometimes it would be the youngest player goes first no matter what.  I have even heard of people doing “do over” rules.

In my family we had a lot of rules around food and gaming. You have an eating hand and a playing hand, and you don’t mix the two. This was very important for pizza.  And don’t even think about spilling your drink. Yes we were that hardcore.

What are your gaming house rules? Do you have special foods that are required at your gaming sessions?

More Gaming Memories

Another childhood gaming memory I have is of playing Aggravation with my mom’s family.  They weren’t big into gaming. Well not in the same way my dad’s side is. My grandma does play Bridge though.

Aggravation was… well so aggravating. But it was fun. And the game could accommodate a lot of people, which meant more fun. When I was little we would play it all the time with Grandma, sometimes Grandpa. Sometimes we would even get to drink tea from one of Grandma’s special tea cups. It was great. Sure we played Yahtzee too, but Aggravation always stuck in my mind.  Over the years the Aggravation board became well loved.

A few years ago I had taken a trip to NYC. I happened upon a flee market, where I found an unused 1954 (?- it was 50 something) copy of Aggravation!!! OMG!! I gave it to them as a present for the 50^th Wedding Anniversary! Sure I only paid $5 for it (now that I think about it should have haggled him down to $3), but the price did not matter. It was what the game represented. It was all those family memories.    

Can you date a non-gamer?

Fortunately I have converted BF to be a gamer, so this is a non-issue. It is still an interesting thing to consider though. Could I date a non-gamer?

I always try to introduce games slowly, as to not scare off the potential BFs. Sometimes they like it, or even fall in love with gaming. Other times they find it too much.  I think the latter cases it would be hard to date them. Gaming is a big part of my life, and a big part of what my family enjoys doing. I don’t think that means non-gamers are automatically screwed in their efforts to date me, but it does put them at a real disadvantage.

I think the bigger factor is if they could date a gamer. Could they handle me going to a game convention for a week? Could they handle me spending lots of money on new games? (Some ladies buy shoes; I buy games!) Or wanting to hang out with other gamers to game? If they can, then it probably has a chance of working out.

I am grateful that my BF is a gamer. Then again I’m into nerds, so I really did not have to try that hard.