Tabletop winter: A glass of wine, a mug of hot chocolate and a fascinating new world of board games to discover. It's the 1930s. Walter Lynch has disappeared mysteriously and it is your job to find him. You and fellow investigators head to his unkempt mansion outside town to find clues to his whereabouts. An eerie silence lingers in the foyer.This is how the board game Mansions of Madness begins. The name is already galaxies removed from my trusty, stained and creased copy of Monopoly. The unfolding horror story of which I am a part is something I never expected from a game that relies on a cardboard playing field, a few cards and a pair of dice.I am playing Kate Winthrop, a scientist probing around the dilapidated mansion. The grounds keeper slams doors and trips the lights and, since my character card states I'm not very high on sanity, I get spooked quite easily. But a roll of the dice decides whether I will run or not.The dice decides many things. You might fall, slam your eye against a table and play the rest of the game half-blind. Other rolls of the dice lead to the discovery of a blood-splattered lab in the basement. You have to play to your character's strengths as you do your best to solve the mystery and make it out alive.Mansions of Madness is only one of nearly 200 board games stacked on the shelves of Fanaticus Board Games, a shop specialising in modern games.Owner Zach Groenewald explains: "The back-to-cardboard movement is a move away from television movies and computer games where you are fixed on a screen and lose the human element. Families and groups of friends started going back to gathering around a table to play a board game instead."Some liken it to an allergic reaction against the overwhelming role of technology in our day-to-day lives.Board games have evolved too. In one night, you can travel across Europe by train, fight zombies with a shotgun or race F1.Groenewald wants people to be actively involved in their own entertainment rather than allow the television to do it for us."Sometimes the point isn't to get there first but to experience a story. You remember the narrative and find yourself discussing it just like you would a good book. Only this time you were a character in the book, not just an observer of the story."So when the power goes off or you're tired of watching reruns of Game of Thrones, head to one of these stores around Cape Town to test out their demo games or buy your own. Get your hands on the Game of Thrones board game for the best of both.Stores include Fanaticus Board Games (Plattekloof Centre), Battle Bunker (Tyger Valley Shopping Centre and Cavendish Square), Wizard's Warehouse (Stadium on Main) and Quantum Gaming (Plumstead)...