monopoly is dull, trivial pursuit is dreary, and scrabble is no fun when you have a friend with perfect memory who works as a dictionary editor. i prefer games like incan gold, apples to apples, awful green things from outer space or aquarius.
for deeper games, there is an ever-increasing selection of quality "euro-style" boardgames available these days. the game that got me in to this style of game was through the desert. current favourites are notre dame, hey! that's my fish! and blue moon.
when something altogether more mind-taxing is required I like tactical simulations such as tide of iron, commands and colors: ancients or the long out of print star warriors.
i have been collecting new plastic star wars miniatures from wizards of the coast. the initial idea was simply to use them as miniatures for the star wars roleplaying game, but we've ended up playing several games using the included miniatures rules. these aren't the most sophisticated skirmish wargame rules around, but they're fairly easy to understand and we've enjoyed our games.
i've also picked up a few axis and allies naval miniatures with the intention of using them with the victory at sea rules, but as yet this hasn't happened.
not the computer kind, but the kind you play with pen, paper, dice and other human beings (or indeed friendly visiting aliens). i have played loads of different roleplaying games over the years. my favourite is still atlas games over the edge. the game group I belong to mostly plays wizards of the coast d20 games or white wolf storyteller games.
recent games have included warhammer fantasy roleplay, spirit of the century, vampire: the dark ages, dread and a homebrewed firefly/serenity game. the old dragonlance campaign is still waiting to rise from the dead.
i'm currently reading the rules for reign, which looks like a very interesting game design. i've written a little javascipt dice roller program for it.
i still fancy running a lord of the rings roleplaying game at some point, maybe using the decipher rules. the the hall of fire webzine remains the place to go for ideas and information.
i ran a superheroes game using the marvel universe roleplaying game a few years back. this is quite an innovative game system, which was fun to play, even though it was a bit unclear in places. sadly marvel have stopped producing new supplements for it.