"It's not about how well you play. It's about how you feel about what you play." -- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Howdy, I'm Martin Ralya. I live in Utah with my amazing wife, Alysia, our beautiful daughter, Lark, and our neurotic beagle, Charlie, in a house full of books, movies, and not nearly enough games. I’m a proposal writer for a Fortune 100 company by day, and a freelance writer for the RPG industry and GMing blogger by night.

I love games. From playing Monopoly with my parents as a little kid to making up playground games, creating wargame rules for my G.I. Joes, and scavenging dice from my family's boardgames when I started playing RPGs, I've always loved games. I've been playing board and card games for as long as I can remember, and RPGs since I was 10 (back in 1987).

Here on BGG, one of the things I enjoy most is submitting game images. I've uploaded over 150 photos, and learned a lot about close-up photography in the process. If you're so inclined, take a peek at my gallery (and feel free to thumb liberally!).

Elsewhere, I write about game mastering tabletop RPGs on Gnome Stew, and used to do the same on Treasure Tables. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

Watershed Moments in Board Gaming

Over the years, I've had a number of board gaming watershed moments that I think are fun to look back on:

1. Being introduced to Settlers of Catan in college (1996). It was my first Eurogame, and it turned out to be a real eye-opener for me -- an entirely new board gaming experience.

2. Playing Ticket to Ride for the first time (2005). I was in a bit of a board gaming slump at the time, with a decent-sized collection of stuff that I just wasn't as jazzed about as I used to be. TTR was just plain fun, and it was partly responsible for getting me much more heavily into board games.

3. Signing up on BGG (2008). Being active here has made me think more critically about what I do and don't enjoy about different kinds of games, and led me to try new things -- and it's one of the best communities I've ever found online.

4. My first time playing Puerto Rico (2008). My group (myself included) tended towards lighter Euros, and I didn't think a 90-minute game with a higher complexity level would go over well -- but it did, and in spades. It was a total shift in my perspective.

Random Notes on BGG-Related Stuff

Top 10: A quick way to see my 10 highest-rated games, sans expansions.

Hot 10: The games on my group's radar at the moment (where "at the moment" could be the past several months), roughly in order of how likely we are to play them on any given night. Usually pretty up to date.

Ratings: I rate games purely based on personal preference (and in whole numbers only), and I try to stick as closely to the rating guidelines as possible. I've rated every game that I remember playing at least once since high school (1991 onwards).

Games Played: I didn't start keeping track of games played until I joined BGG in early 2008, so my list doesn't go back very far. For simplicity, I track expansions used as full plays.

Happy gaming!