Boxes full of air?
If you have bought a number of tabletop games, you will have noticed how some games fill out every inch of space in the box, while other games are basically a large box of air.
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If you have bought a number of tabletop games, you will have noticed how some games fill out every inch of space in the box, while other games are basically a large box of air.
With the advent of crowd funding sites like Kickstarter, it has become easier to fund a new project - and the tabletop games industry has been overrun by games designers launching their own games with the help of people willing to sponsor their ideas. These days literally anyone can design a new game and try and make it a reality.
All games are a mixture of chance and strategy - Yahtzee is virtually pure chance, while Chess is virtually pure strategy, and there is a whole range in between of course. Chance and strategy affect specific aspects of games.
Most of us will have played traditional tabletop games, such as Monopoly, Game of Life, Yahtzee or Risk. However, what if you want to move towards more modern tabletop games? What games are there that introduce you to new game mechanics? What games are you gateway to this new world? There are definitely a number of "classics" that you will return time and again, even when you are a more experienced tabletop game player.
In my view, themes very often make or break a game. Even a game with the most amazing gameplay will be broken by a badly chosen theme. Of course, different people will like different themes. However, irrespective of what people like, blending theme and gameplay is vital to a game's success - and here is why.
If you're of a certain age, you'll probably have had a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, where you read a description of a situation, and then choose between a number of different options that take you to different sections of the book. If you make the right choices you will eventually get to the end and win - and if you die along the way, you can simply start again.
Let's kick off this group with a conversation about games nights. I am part of a four player group that has a private weekly session where we play various modern tabletop games, including Rising Sun, Clans of Caledonia, Near and Far, Star Realms, Hardback and even Fluxx. We're looking forward to trying out the new 7th Continent soon. So do you have a games nights group yourself? What games do you play?