When I was in high school and started seriously gaming, my friends and I played different games in different locations. One guy's mom was a Crazy Christian, who was absolutely convinced that D&D was created by Satan with the explicit goal of damning our eternal souls . . . so we played Diplomacy and GURPS at his house, and took the D&D gaming to James' house, where his parents didn't care. (Strangely, we could get away with playing GURPS at Crazy Christian Mom's house, even when we played fantasy with magic users and everything. My guess is that it was off Jack Chick's radar, and therefor off of her radar as well.) My friend Darin had a huge house with a huge downstairs room, and we used the enormity of his floor to pull off epic 40K battles while several Nagel prints kept post-modern watch over us. I was (okay, am) unnaturally in love with Illuminati and Car Wars, so that's what we played at my house.

When I look at any of these games in my closet, my Big Trunk of Games, or that one shelf in the garage, I recall those days and the fun times we had playing them, and I always miss them a little bit. I'm not certain, but I think that some of my friends feel the same way when we gather at Cal's house every few months for a day of gaming and grilling. I, for one, am grateful that we still have these games to connect us to a simpler, more carefree time in our lives.

I love that we live in a digital age, where the magical series of tubes lets us connect and play various games with friends and strangers from all over the globe, but there is still nothing like gathering in someone's house, or dorm, or the back room of your Friendly Local Game Shop and spending ten or more hours giving each other shit, fighting over the last piece of pizza, and wondering where that d10 went when it rolled off the table. (Shane? What are you chewing on?)

So this week, I thought it would be fun to compile a list of analog (most people call them 'tabletop,' but doesn't 'analog' feel more geeky?) games that are important to me. For a lot of us gaming geeks, as we grow older and take on more responsibilities and start families, getting together with our friends to goof off for a night of throwing dice and insults becomes a real luxury. If you're lucky enough to have the time, the friends, and a place to play, here are some games that I think every gamer's secret den of happy funtimes should have:

Classics.
We all have our absolute favorites, and these are the games that I'll have stacked atop my pyre just before I'm sent off for my Viking funeral.

Illuminati Deluxe Edition
You don't have to be familiar with the Illuminatus! Trilogy to have a good time with this game, but a good sense of humor, and an unflinching willingness to screw your friends at every opportunity is a must. Hail Eris! Hail Discordia! Fnord.

Car Wars Deluxe Edition
Car Wars and the entire Autoduel universe totally ate my brain when I was a teenager. If you were born after 1975, you probably don't remember Uncle Albert's and the AADA, and though the updated release didn't catch on as much as the original, there are a bunch of us who really miss competing in the AADA world championship. Despite its age, I think this game really holds up, and the world they created around it is as much fun to read about (if you can get your hands on the old GURPS sourcebooks and AADA Road Atlas and Survival Guides.)

Talisman Second Edtion
This was the first Games Workshop title I owned, and though I eventually became a really nerdy 40K Chaos Marines guy, it remains my favorite. The original is out of print, but they re-released a grossly overpriced big box version recently. If you stay away from the Timescape expansion, which I think totally breaks the game, this is a really fun way to spend three hours (or five, if you add in the Dungeon and the City.) It's got the exploring and adventuring of a dungeon crawl with the simplicity and spiffy graphics of a boardgame. And hey, you can be turned into a toad!

Abalone
I was introduced to this game by its designer at a con in Los Angeles in 1988. It's a thoughtful, chess-like game that is sort of from the Othello school of "minutes to learn, lifetime to master" gaming. I'll always play this, and put it on any list like this, because moments before I played it for the first time, I'd passed a vendor at the con with a picture of me with the caption "Put Wesley in the airlock!" beneath it. I was ready to leave the con and cry into my raisin brain, but the kindness of the designer and his enthusiasm in sharing his game with me and my friend Darin wiped the pain away. Ah, memories.

Future Classics.
Too recent to be mentioned in the same category as games that are over 20 years old, but these will certainly be around for a long, long time.

Settlers of Catan
Some of my friends hate this game, because the dice can really, really screw with an otherwise solid strategy. I like it because the dice make it playable by a mix of geeks and mundanes, and no two games are ever alike. It's also the very first truly geeky game that I convinced my non-geek wife to play with me, and now she asks when we're going to play it again.

Munchkin
It's all the fun of a dungeon crawl without any of that annoying role playing. If you like screwing your friends in Illuminati, and you're geeky enough to know why "bribe the DM with food" should make you gain a level, well, you've probably played this game several times. I play Munchkin with my kids all the time. They grok the spirit of the game.

Party Games.
These are the games that don't require a whole lot of strategery and thoughtery and time-to-playery, making them perfect for sharing with non-hardcore gamers, or your regular group after a few drinks.

Nuclear War
Though the real threat of nuclear war isn't hanging over our heads like it was in the 80s, this is still a really fast game that's silly and easy to learn . . . and who doesn't like launching nukes while you pound beers? Add Nuclear Escalation and Nuclear Proliferation for maximum Cold War-osity.

Apples to Apples
The game that arguably made Out of the Box Games is one of the best party games to come out since Twister. If you've never played it before, you can learn in less than 90 seconds, and be playing in under three minutes. It's another game that gets progressively entertaining as the beer bottles pile up. Er, I heard. From this other guy. This one time.

Cineplexity
Cineplexity takes the foundation of Apples to Apples and thrusts it into the world of movies. A judge draws two cards, reads them, and then the players try to come up with a movie that the two cards describe. So if you draw "New York" and "Romance" you could say "When Harry Met Sally" and win if my wife was judging. If I'm judging, though, you probably want to go with "Basketball Diaries," which is a love story about heroin.

Cheapass Games (Heh. I said Ass.)
Cheapass doesn't give you all the counters and dice and money and bullshit that you need to play games. Instead, they figure that you already have all that stuff in other games around the house, so rather than give you additional bullshit and drive up costs, they give you simple game boards and instructions for really fun games that are really . . . well . . . cheap. The greatest thing about this is that, even though they're inexpensive, they're still very satisfying and well-developed games. If you want to add some variety to your library without spending a small fortune, you can really stock up with Cheapass. Here are a few to get you started:

Give Me the Brain! and Kill Dr. Lucky Give Me the Brain and Kill Dr. Lucky are both games I've written about here before, and they are two of their more popular releases. There's also Brawl, which is a near-real time fighting game where players play cards at each other to represent moves in a fight, and Devil Bunny Needs A Ham, which can be modified with some magnets and played on your refrigerator. Cheapass also puts out "hip pocket" games, which are designed to be simple enough and small enough to carry in your hip pocket. My personal favorite is Light Speed.

Okay, it's your turn.
It's always risky to make lists like this, because someone is bound to freak out that I included Settlers of Catan, but didn't include Puerto Rico (that's just because I haven't played Puerto Rico enough to know if I love it or not, so back off, man) and I invariably overlook something because I haven't played it in a long time, or I got so excited writing about Car Wars, I forgot to talk about Bohnanza, and I haven't even touched on any of the newer big box games. What's on your ultimate list of geeky games?

Wil Wheaton is a man who likes his taffy.