To any and all who wind up here, read this first.

Once upon a time, I started up a blog (a different blog) with the intention of writing reviews for tabletop games. At the time, I felt it justified my compulsion to buy them. If I was planning on reviewing them, I had a reason to keep buying them. Even if it took me a year to get around to playing them, I’d still get to it, review it, and my purchase would be justified. Maybe the blog would take off and I’d end up being a well respected reviewer in the tabletop games community. These were all very bad reasons to start a blog about reviewing tabletop games.

This blog, A Table in Nastrond, is a fresh start for me. The number one reason that I’m starting over is, simply, that I love to write. It makes me happy to finish a particularly long post, if only for the sake of finishing it. Even if it’s not as good as I’d hoped it would be when I first sat down to write it, the fact that I completed it and saw it all the way through gives me a sense of pride and allows me to feel like I’ve accomplished something.

The second reason is that I love tabletop games. In the last few years, they have become one of my favorite hobbies. I have curbed the majority of my purchasing until I manage to get a handle on my backlog of unplayed games (I’m a pretty heinous impulse buyer when it comes to certain things), although I still remain very active and generous on Kickstarter (I think I back around 70 projects a year, though most of those only get a buck or two so I can show my support).

I am not, under any circumstances, going to go into this with the mindset that reviewing games and posting said reviews online justifies my compulsion to buy them. I’m also not going to harbor any hopes, even minute ones, that I will end up becoming a well known or well respected reviewer in the tabletop games community. And, most importantly, I’m not going to act like it’s my job to post content on this blog. The moment this starts to feel like a job (and I’m not getting paid for it) I’ll be stepping away and coming back when my head is back in the right place. This blog is, first and foremost, an outlet for me to write, to play games, and to be happy.

My fiancée is more of a movie watcher than a gamer, but, every now and then she gets in the mood for some games and we’ll play some. However, with both of us being rather introverted and most of our friends having moved out of state, my remaining options for playing tabletop games with others are rather limited. A lot of the content I’m planning on putting up on this blog will be about playing tabletop games solo or making tabletop games (passably) playable by oneself and still have them be fun.

My goal here is to have fun and learn more about tabletop gaming by writing reviews. If you agree with me on the things that I have to say, cool. If not, cool. That’s just, like, your opinion, man. I’m just here to write, but I hope anyone who reads this can enjoy it too.