I have a confession to make: I’m a bit of a nerd.
If you’ve been reading along with my music columns for a while, that’s probably not too much of a revelation, but my obsession with music isn’t quite the whole picture.
I’ve been a fan of gaming of all sorts for as long as I can remember, including both video games and tabletop games. My interest has waxed and waned over the years, with these things sometimes becoming just something I do occasionally, and sometimes becoming an all-consuming obsession — I think I completed the main story of “Super Mario Odyssey” in one sitting when it came out. I don’t think I’m kidding.
Gaming didn’t become a part of my identity, as it were, until about a year ago, when a random post I saw on Reddit reignited my love of the first ever trading card game, “Magic: The Gathering.”
Originally, this game became a minor hobby of mine for about six months while I was in high school. A friend of mine and I would frequent one of the local game shops, and waste all of our money at the Friday Night Magic events that they had. But then, we both ended up with girlfriends, and our limited disposable income had to go towards dates instead of cardboard trading cards.
You know how it is.
But now I work in the highly lucrative field of print journalism, and I’ve gotten back into the game that ignited my imagination, and I got into it harder than I ever have. While at my desk working on stories, I’m often listening to “Magic: The Gathering” podcasts. My phone background is my favorite card. I have spent an absolutely ludicrous amount of money on this game.
Like, ludicrous.
There are a lot of things I love about the game. I love the way it blends strategy with luck. I love the way building a deck is almost like a type of self-expression; you find an idea that you think will win you the game, and you construct around it, hoping against all hope that you somehow come out on top. If you ask my friend group, I almost never actually do come out on top, but that doesn’t matter, because winning isn’t what I love most.
What I love most is the stories we tell with each other sitting around the table. Each game is unique, and each leads to its own memories, its own stories.
And stories like those are what I want to tell in this column.
In Xtra XP, I plan on doing the normal “gamer column” stuff, sure; reviews, features on new games, and maybe even some deck-tech stuff on “Magic,” if I can get away with it, but that won’t be my focus.
What I really want to do is tell your stories, the story of all the people in the Wyoming Valley who might be developing new games, or restoring arcade cabinets, or features on local game stores themselves.
We’ll start telling those stories next week. I hope you enjoy it, because I think I’ll enjoy telling them.
