I like gaming... it's FUN.

Well duh. With a Blog heading like "Crit or Cruddy" it's hard to imagine that I'd say otherwise eh?

What I'm trying to say though is that I grew up a pretty well-rounded individual. Not to belabour a point, but I was raised in a small cow-town playing sports my entire life. I even played on into the university setting... Not that I was anything special. I wasn't.

But that kind of idea stuck with me. Sports as a hobby has always been a very very integral part of who I am. It's less about the "team" thing now and much more about individual competition / activity. Bikes and skis.... that's my dealio now.

It helps that I live in the Rocky Mountains. I LOVE gravity sports. I mean I REALLY love gravity sports. Alpine skiing and mountain biking are quite likely the epitome of nirvana for me. They offer nearly everything a person might want in a sport: Adrenaline, scenery, a need for endurance, skill and much much more. Granted...they're not team sports. And that's where gaming comes in.

I grew up playing team sports. My entire life, from about the time that I was in 2nd grade, was consumed with football, basketball and baseball. Your typical old-skool, small town, big three sports. I have to admit. While I like the solo type sports, I miss the teamwork required. So to fill this void I think that I've been gaming more than is usual lately.

Well, I've at least been thinking about gaming more than usual. And that's something else that's really cool about gaming. You can think about it all the time.

Granted, you could think about nearly anything all the time... But with gaming you are actually doing something constructive towards it right? You're thinking about your latest character and how cool it would be that his / her family is a rogue merchant aristocracy that's running from the King. Or how you want to somehow upgrade that mundane short sword for a cool magical short sword.

No one ever talks about what they think about when they're NOT gaming. I remember during the early part of the MtG (Magic the Gathering: CCG) phase, I used to while away my time (I was a landscaper at the time...) thinking about neat card combinations or cool decks that I could build. It was immersive. (is that really a word?) And role playing games can be thought about in that respect as well, heck even more so.

Who doesn't sit at their desk thinking about last night's cool session when their thief back-stabbed the demon lord? Or their paladin survived the vampire's onslaught to win the day for the party? Too cool... It's like an ongoing, constantly running book. It's so...well, FUN.