Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

-Ayn Rand

I used to play chess by myself.

I was young. Fat. Weird. Off-putting to most of the other children. You know, prototypical young boy. And while I had a lot I was interested in, board games have always held a lovely little wing in the nostalgia section of my memories.

It’s hard, like, having an obsession, or a strong, recurrent desire to do something all the time when no one else does. that can make one feel even more lonely than simply being alone. As a young boy, I loved board games. Chess, especially. I was never any good (still aren’t) when I could find someone to play with. So, in a pinch, and I was in a lot of those, I’d play by myself. Both white and black.

It wasn’t just chess I played by myself. Sure, I had brothers and parents and the occasional friend I could rope into playing games with. Clue was a particularly popular one in my house (although, and I say this without bragging, I was Sherlock Fucking Holmes when it came to Clue). Was quite obsessed with Monopoly, although I’ve never finished a game, nor have met anyone who has. Stratego was another big one. Mostly with my older brother. And boy, what a motherfucker he was. He would put his flag on the front line just to toy with my younger brother and I, just because he’s the older brother, meaning he was superior in all walks of life (a favorite memory was the day we beat him in wiffle ball, and he tried bitching out on us winning by claiming a technicality) and knew he could flaunt the unspoiled flag at the end of the game by proudly holding it aloft from the front line and either me or my younger brother wanting to shove that piece down his smug throat.

There are two games that still fritter about in my mind, all these years later. HeroQuest and Omega Virus. The former was a D&D-style board game, replete with dwarves and elves and zombie skeletons and wizards and all that other fun stuff I never told anyone I liked so much because I wanted girls to like me.

Anyhoo, Omega Virus was a sci-fi game whereby you had to find and destroy a computer virus that has taken over a space station orbiting Earth. If you didn’t destroy the virus, the station’s orbital lasers and bombs would target and destroy the Earth. I’ll spare you the particulars of the gameplay, with the exception of one thing.

You could play Omega Virus by yourself. I think this was a big reason this was a Christmas gift for me.

HeroQuest could also, conceivably, be played by yourself. You weren’t playing against others; the game came with a quest book, in which you would set up the dungeon board accordingly. The idea was that players would join together to clear out the dungeon of a host of monsters, and complete whatever quests the quest book tasked you with. You weren’t necessarily competing against another (if I could find another, which I didn’t).

Now, some might find it creepy that I spent a lot of time hunched over a decorated piece of elaborate cardboard, rolling dice, moving molded plastic across said cardboard, flipping over cards, all by my lonesome. Sure, it looked to others I was hunched over the board and whatnot. I was leading a dwarf and a wizard through Ellerton’s Dungeon, searching for the Ring of Carosion, opening a door into what the dwarf, a hobbled old thing named Brix, said would lead myself (I was the barbarian, because as a fat twelve-year-old, you’re damn right I imagined myself a ripped mound of badassery and broadsword-swinging motherfuckery) and the lady wizard Malena to the ring, and as I opened the door, a hoard of skeletons wielding daggers in both hands poured forth.

This to an outsider was me rolling two dice and finding myself flinging the wizard piece across the living room, to be lost in the African bush-thick rug because I rolled a seven and so the fucking wizard had to die because she had no more hit points and I SHALL AVENGE, THEE, MALENA. (My barbarian was a cultured barbarian, which wouldn’t make him so barbarous, but that’s for another article.)

What those two games taught me, and what I found out many years later (as in, like, up to a month ago) was that the competition of a game wasn’t what was ultimately important. While with Omega Virus, you could play with up to four, you still were competing to be the first to destroy the virus. But in HeroQuest, you played against the game itself. I don’t remember if I ever finished a quest, but the mere thought of the game led to a search for said game over Christmastime (sadly, not only is HeroQuest out of print, but a used set can run you up to about $200; my nostalgia wasn’t feeling frivolous).

My girlfriend, the love of my life, is incredibly smart, and so, so damn hot. And she loves that I read and am obsessed with all things science fiction and fantasy. In fact, I think it’s why she loves me so much. And she likes playing board games with me. We’ve played Stratego and Scrabble often into the drunken night. She also is supportive of me, and goes along with my obsessions and loves. She watched Matt Smith’s last Dr. Who episode with me, didn’t talk once through it, snuggled me when I cried at his last monologue. She watched this without knowing a lick of the show’s mythology, having watched the smallest of samples. She did this because she loved me and wanted me to be happy. She didn’t blink an eye when one day I came home with Arkham Horror and Pandemic (for brevity’s sake, won’t describe the intricate workings of the game, since the rules are so intricate that it’s taken me weeks to figure out how to play the damn thing right). She’s been so busy with schoolwork and work that we haven’t been able to play them together.

You’re damn right I’ve been playing them by myself.

Like HeroQuest, both of my new purchases (we will not go into the car-payment amount of money these two games cost) can be played with one player. And while I haven’t gotten her to (yet), she finds it not strange that I play Arkham Horror by myself. She understands I’m not hunched on my bedroom floor, rolling dice, quietly muttering curses at how bloody difficult the game is to win (and Lord, is it; just Google it, or Bing it, whatever you use). No, my girlfriend understands I am Dexter Drake, a magician recently come to Arkham and finding himself fighting off Shoggoths and Dark Spawns in order to prevent the Ancient One, Cthulhu, from returning (and failing every damn time). She’s looking forward to being Kate Winthrop, scientist, and kicking the Ancient-One-loving shit out of vampires and the Hound of Tindalos and closing enough gates to the other world so that Hastur, the King in Yellow (make any True Detective jokes now) stays in his other dimension.

She might not be as into them as I am. And that’s fine. But what is beyond fine is how I don’t have to feel weird about what I like. And I don’t have to feel so alone. I hadn’t played a non-Scrabble board game in a good long damn while. It took this perfect girl who has no earthly business being with me to awaken that passion for something I once buried simply because I grew tired of finding someone to play with. Of feeling weird that I liked something so analog as board games in the ever-widening field of video games, computer games, and the Internet (I’m nearly thirty, do the math).

It’s nice, feeling ever so free like this, knowing that I can hunch over a board by myself, figuring out a game, learning it, and that I’ll have someone to play it with. Or, having someone who won’t think twice that I’m doing it myself.

—

Daniel Brophy is an unprofessional writer who dreams of being one. He has published one short story many years ago in some forgotten magazine, and has written a multitude of unfinished novels. He also has a rather unhealthy obsession with the Alien film franchise.