very concise way to nail the root cause of this problem. I dont think it is intentional. I am developing my own board game right now with my brother, currently playtesting with close friends with solid results, and due to growing up with video games I cannot tell you how often we have had to confront the urge to add a state tracker here or a system there or maybe if we use cards with stats on them then .. etc. because a lot of our love for games has been influenced by video games. We managed to overcome that and keep things fun and simple, but we also have the luxury of working on this over the past couple years in our spare time and not pressed to meet a deadline or other corporate constraints. By that I mean when we hit a wall that could be solved quickly by increasing the games complexity, we are able to step away for a while until a good idea hits us.
there is certainly some room to bridge the gap between video games and board games, to have systems the players dont need to learn but operate in the background while still enabling tabletop interaction - but i dont see how to do it on a budget, so maybe a future project. we need projector enabled coffee tables to get popular in general or something maybe
While most people are repulsed by the complexity of extremely heavy games, others will luxriate in them. There is a whole 40-year-old community built around Advanced Squad Leader, a game with rules so complicated that there's a 135-page tutorial to teach the Starter Kit version of the game [0]!
The board game industry creates many very mainstream games with wide popularity, and many games across a large number of niches that each have their own narrow appeal.
I think this is great!
[0]: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/40482/jay-richardsons-asl...
> They provide interesting puzzles to solve, and you work in a technical role - some part of your brain must find that appealing
is something I do not relate to at all. Almost every time I am in a situation where I play board games, my intuition is to think about how you solve the game so that one side always wins or break the rules so that everyone loses, but almost never am I actually interested in investing the energy to get invested in the game itself, let alone the rules.
Indeed, but neither does the article try say you should play games with "20 different piles of crap to set up at the start, and then a dozen different pieces of state to track in your little corner of the table during what will inevitably be a complicated five-phased turn", which is the comment I was responding to. It doesn't actually recommend any specific games at all, but those types of games are really a small subset of modern board games (of the games mentioned in the article, I think only Twilight Imperium and maybe Labyrinth would qualify).
> is something I do not relate to at all. Almost every time I am in a situation where I play board games, my intuition is to think about how you solve the game so that one side always wins or break the rules so that everyone loses, but almost never am I actually interested in investing the energy to get invested in the game itself, let alone the rules.
Okay, great, you have learned that board games aren't for you. This article is aimed at people who haven't tried modern board games: "I chose to introduce them to the world of modern board games in an attempt to encourage some of them to give them a go."
- The trend towards videogame-ifying board games
- The trend towards "cozy" games, i.e. games that are not interactive, have no potential to produce negative emotions, and focus on a solitary optimization puzzle.
- The kickstarter-ification of games that focus on early release exclusives, excessive plastic, aesthetics over game design, etc.
I really urge players today to look at some of the games from the 90s to early 2000s if they're interested in getting into the hobby. Seek out some of the "classic" hobby games. Even some games predating that are fantastic, but you will also run into a lot of over-the-top simulationist war games during the 80s period.
I gravitate towards games that have simpler rulesets with deep gameplay. I’m a big fan of Reiner Knizia but also Phil Walker-Harding and David Thompson.
Humor aside, you're not wrong - spending an hour setting up and then 10 minutes per player to actually play was a lot more fun when I had a lot more free time
The reason why is: everybody there has board game ADD! I've been coming for 2 years, but we never play the same game twice; someone always brings the Hot New Game of the moment.
But I find that the first playthough is the least-fun one. That's the one where you're trying to remember what the grey cubes do, and whether they're worth victory points or not. And the game takes twice as long as it says on the box, because everyone needs to reason out their strategy from scratch.
I wish that I could convince my group to pick some set of N games to focus on!
[Source: I've been designing games as a hobby for the last 10 years)
How do people do it?
We were shocked by how early our kids could pick up board games, including many of the ones mentioned in this article. Our 2 oldest kids were playing Ticket to Ride and Carcassone well enough to beat us form time to time at 3 and 4 years old. Now that they're a little older, slightly more complicated games like Catan and Flamecraft are on the table!
Dinosaur Escape [0] if you can find it, it's basically a cooperative memory game but introduces them to some very gentle strategy. (Incidentally, there's a similarly themed game[1] on BGA that is also good.)
King of Tokyo is very fun, and it's easy to slim down the rules for someone who cannot read. It still allows them to understand the mechanics and make decisions about which dice to pick and which to re-roll.
Similarly, we started Kingdomino with simplified rules (no multiplication, just a tile matching game) and it was easy to graduate into full game play later.
Outfoxed is a logic / deduction board game that doesn't involve too much advanced strategy. Since it's cooperative it's easy to work with them so they can begin reasoning out the clues.
[0] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175497/dinosaur-escape [1] https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=babydinosaurrescue
There are lot of solo only games and most cooperative games allow for solo play. During the pandemic it became pretty popular.
I do a mix of solo, in person and online with boardgamearena.
We all met, and picked a day that was likely to work for us regularly, going forward - for us, it's a Tuesday. That way we know, and can plan ahead for the foreseeable future, that Tuesdays will be D&D nights. People with kids can get babysitters, or get spouses/grandparents to take care of them. People with other obligations can keep that night clear. Etc., etc.
I used to prefer the whole "let's schedule the next session at the end of the night", but that has 100% led to campaigns falling apart. Consistency is key.
(Also, it helps to have a big enough group - either for D&D or boardgames - that the absence of any one or even two people doesn't tank the night.)
Doing things virtually is also a good suggestion, but I'm pretty burnt out of staring at people's faces on a screen, so I hate playing D&D or other games over a screen - but your mileage may vary.
I have been playing multiple games daily non-stop for 6 years now with a consistent but sometimes shifting group of local friends.
We still play live either virtually or in-person at times, but the async games never end. Playing live on BGA still reduces the game time by as much as 50% for more complex games since it handles setup, teardown, and scoring.
I'd love to try to host something like a poker night, but without the sour taste of gambling. Poker has lots of great qualities: people can drop in and drop out of, pick up quickly, not require so much focus that it precludes whitty bantz or idle side conversation. Are there some modern games that fit this shape?
* Skull: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/92415/skull
* Cockroach Poker: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11971/cockroach-poker
This has become one of my favorite low-key games. It has a great poker "feel" without being as complicated.
Power Grid: An ancient one. You compete to connect cities to your power network by buying resources on a market with a fixed replenishment cycle (so the book depletes as each player goes) and buying plants in auction.
Forbidden Stars: WH40k game. The interesting device in this game is that you commit to your actions ahead of time and others stack their actions on top of yours so yours will happen last but you can activate each map section available at your convenience. Combat with card draws and figurines.
Twilight Struggle: The US and the USSR struggle for control of the world. You play cards that represent various pivotal moments in history to give you influence in various parts of the world. You're allowed to coup and realign countries. Dice rolls are significant. An amusing self-confession is that I can't bring myself to play the USSRs. Nuclear Subs as a headline just makes me flush with pride https://twilightstrategy.com/2012/09/10/nuclear-subs/
I haven't played the latter two in recent times but ones I have played recently are:
Mahjong: An old classic. Trick taking with tiles. We most enjoy playing with the Chinese Official scoring rules https://web.archive.org/web/20250219225547/http://mahjong.wi...
But the Taiwanese style are easier to start with
Terraforming Mars: Tableau-building game (you have points based on the cards you've played) with an economy and map placement. I like the Venus and Colonies expansions. Best played with 3d printed parts to keep your nezos in place.
These are all great fun!
Amazing line.
although have to mention Diplomacy for its capacity to end relationships and practice war time negotiations and cheating is part of the game (IIRC it was a favorite of Kissinger and JFK)
My main problem with this is that if the other players are not in on this and just minimax, any such game becomes really boring.
Online isn't as nice as in-person, but it sufficed.
D&D is mentioned as a board game, but you don't really need a board.
Maybe we should call them "tabletop games" instead, in which case I think card games should make it (bridge, for example, means reading both your partner and your opponent).
Tabletop games is already used as the broader category (covering board games, role playing games, miniatures games, and whatever I'm forgetting).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phutball
There are a fre more great 'realistic' pen and paper games like Tennis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_(paper-and-pencil_game)
Curious what kind of games appeal to the HN mindset
One memorable board gaming experience I had was playing Splendor (I believe) with my cousin, and it ended up being almost completely silent, just passing tokens around and the occasional "oh..." when another player did something undesirable.
Pit is also popular in my family when there's a gathering of us, with rounds often lasting only a minute or so, and getting quite frantic, and it is a very simple game
If you're looking specifically for games in that style, Twilight Struggle has been studied extensively and there's significant competitive play and a well-developed theory. 7 Wonders Duel and Dominion also have significant depth.
Dominion requires to monitor cards that while helpful initially,can burden your hand in the end.
For much more depth I recommend Dominant Species by GMT.
- Games by the publisher Splotter Spellen (i.e. Indonesia, Food Chain Magnate, etc.)
- Carl Chudyk designed games (Innovation, Glory To Rome, etc.)
- Older euros, predating the trend toward solitary play: El Grande, Tigris and Euphrates, Bridges of Shangri-La, Medina, etc.
- Pax Games: Pax Pamir, Pax Porfiriana, etc.
- Some abstracts (such a time investment to get deep into these, but they're obviously fantastic games): The Gipf Series, TwiXt, Hive, Paco Ŝako
I tend to like strategic, competitive games with higher interactivity, but with lower amounts of "take that"-type interactivity.
And Netrunner of course!
