We all know someone who probably fits into each of these categories, sometimes it’s the same person for multiple ones of them, but some people have bad habits when it comes to gaming. Now, I don’t have perfect habits when it comes to gaming, but I try and work on them and I try not to let my hangups hurt other peoples’ fun, and I think that’s the important thing. When I talk about the types, it isn’t because having some of these tendencies are bad, it’s just that sometimes they can hurt other people’s at the tables fun, and if we’re all willing to give a little bit on our foibles, we’ll have more overall fun at the table.

AP (Analysis Paralysis) Player
So I’ve talked about AP players in the past and I’ll get them out of the way fairly quickly here, but these are the players, when it’s really bad, who will take 5-10 times longer on their turn than any other player. They overthink everything, sometimes trying to optimize points, sometimes just because they happen to see another possibility, so they need to think about that one a little bit, and they weren’t planning ahead of their turn. It’s fine to take of extra time on some key turns, but when you, yourself, call out that your turns are taking long, that needs to be a mental trigger to just do something, even if you don’t know if it’s ideal.

Game Recommendation – Sagrada
There are a few reasons why I think that this one would work well. First, there are no major decisions in it, yes, you have to decide what die to take and where to place it, but you have specific restrictions on it and the die pool is small enough. Everything leads you in a direction versus being able to pick what direction you want to go, and with that, you cut down on the AP.

Alpha Gamer
So, Alpha Gaming is mainly brought up in the context of cooperative games, but it can happen in any game. It’s when some player at the table thinks that they know better than everyone else, so they tell people what to do on their turn. This can come from two things, feeling like they know better in the game, or in cooperative games, desperately needing to win. The downside is that the Alpha Gamer is basically playing a solo game with other people moving pieces, and sometimes not even that, the Alpha Gamer will move another person’s pieces as well. If you notice yourself doing that, it hurts, but shut your mouth. Or, if that ends up being too hard, do what I do when running a game of D&D, if someone seems to be struggling with what they can or should do, give them two or three options, including the ideal option, just don’t tell them what’s the best option, but give them some help in in things to pick from.

Game Recommendation – The Lost Expedition
This game really tries to solve a personal issue, alpha gaming, in the game itself. The Mind is also another example of this. Anything that limits communication, I just think that The Lost Expedition is the best I’ve run across. You can’t discuss what cards you’re playing down when you’re hiking in both the morning and evening, so it’s the person who is laying down their cards decision. After that, the Alpha Gamer can have some fun as you discuss what’s the most ideal course of action, but the game is already giving you half of it that the Alpha Gamer can’t run.

Must Get It Right Gamer
So this one was harder to come up with a name for them, but they’re the gamer who needs to know the rules perfectly at the start of the game. If there’s something that comes up and is ambiguous in the middle of the game, they have to stop it and look up the rules. Now, sometimes it’s very important to get that rule right if it’s a major scoring rule or something like that, and I’m fine pausing a game to look that up, but when that person is flipping through the rule book between every turn and sometimes a couple of times on their turn, it’s dragging the game out considerably. If you find yourself doing that, keep track of what you’re wondering about and look it up either not on your turn or after the game. Don’t slow down the game by looking stuff up on your own turn, and if it gets to your turn and you don’t know the answer and that would affect what you do, do something else, and then continue looking it up.

Game Recommendation – Quoridor
Now, this is a placeholder for a number of games, and a lot of abstract games are going to work very well, because they can have simpler rulesets. But in Quoridor you either are moving a space left, right, up or down, or you’re placing a wall. That’s it, so it’s a fast game to teach and there aren’t rules to look up. Finding a game with good and simple rules that still offers a choice is going to be the best bet.

Between Turn Scroller
This is the person who gets distracted by something, anything, between turns. They have trouble sitting there and waiting for their turn, so they pull out a phone and start scrolling through Facebook, and then all of a sudden, it’s their turn, they don’t know what they want to do, because they were scrolling through Facebook or something like that. It can also be the person who gets up and walks away from the table to do something between turns, or starts a conversation with someone the second their turn is done. This one is harder to suggest things for because attention spans are short and sometimes between turns is quite long. My recommendation for someone who notices that they’re doing this is take up knitting or something else that keeps your fingers moving and brain somewhat engaged but isn’t as fully distracting. Once it’s more muscle memory as you know what you’re doing and you’ve done it a lot, you’ll be able to pay more attention between turns but still be doing something so it doesn’t feel like dead time.

Game Recommendation – Welcome To…
Now, there are a number of games that can fit here, and really any real time game could or simultaneous turns. In Welcome To, there’s just no downtime, same with Second Chance or Criss Cross, so if you know you have someone who can start scrolling at the table, just don’t give them enough time to do that by keeping them always invovled.

This Games The Best/Worst
This is the person who after having played the game for 10 minutes will declare the game the greatest game of all time or the worst game of all time. Now, sometimes this isn’t horrible because if the game is the best of all time the person is probably going to be happy and in a good mood, though that might also just mean that person is winning handily, which is why it’s the best, so it can come off as bragging. The this game is the worst side of things is tougher because if they make that proclamation 10 minutes into a two hour game, they’re going to spend a lot of the rest of the time complaining and that’ll kill other people’s fun. And it might turn out that what was thought in the first 10 minutes isn’t accurate to how good or bad the game really is. So if you’re one of these gamers, how do you combat it? First, try and free yourself from all preconceived notions. That’s way easier said than done, but often times when a game is the best ever it lived up to hype or if it’s worst ever, it didn’t live up to hype. So I guess another thing to say would be to avoid the hype market, now that means you probably can’t checkout Board Game Geek or something as much as you’d like, but it’ll keep the bias for or against a game lower. And the biggest thing is just bite your tongue at times. Now, if you don’t like a game after 10 minutes, you can make a comment, same if you like a game, but try not to use best/worst language and keep it to a comment. That way you have a release for some of your opinion in the moment but that doesn’t become the focus of the game.

Game Recommendation – Draftosaurus
Why, the game is 15 minutes long, so that’s really a placeholder again for this type of player. They might hate Draftosaurus, but it’s only 15 minutes long, so they aren’t going to be able to complain through a long game. And the game has enough going on in it that it should keep them somewhat entertained at a least and it looks good on the table. But basically, with this type of player, try and avoid the 90 minute long games.

The Sore Loser/Bad Winner
This can tie into the this is the best/worst game ever person, but this is going to be the person who can’t believe that they lost, that their strategy was clearly worse than everyone else, that the dice hate them, etc. When you’re done playing a game with them, you kind of wish you’d let them win because you’re done with their complaining. This can stem from several things, but probably the most obvious is going to be taking the game too seriously. And on the winning side, there are couple of types of bad winner, there’s the person who gloats, which is just annoying but can be dealt with, and there’s the person who makes it seem like they lucked into the win. For fixing some of this issue, first, remember that it’s only a game, if you win or lose, it’s still only a game, the point of playing games is to have fun first and foremost. Secondly, and this is stealing from little league, hockey, etc, train yourself to tell people good game afterwards. You don’t need to line up and give each other high fives, but try and compliment people on what they’ve done, and this really can go for everyone at the table to do.

Game Recommendation – Pandemic
More placeholding for games, this one is simply anything cooperative. Pandemic is just a good gateway cooperative game to get to the table, but if you can win or lose as a group, that’s going to make the poor winner/sore loser feel better about the game because they are in the same boat as everyone else. It also gives them a chance to see people model a healthier style of winning and losing at the same time they’re going through the emotion of winning or losing.

Now, I’m sure there are more types of gamers out there that can cause issues at the gaming table. And I didn’t touch on things like hygiene or anything like that, more on the mental and emotional side of board gaming. Hopefully this will give you some ideas of how you can improve your gaming habits if you fall into one of these categories, or what you can bring to the table if you play with someone who falls into one of the gamer tropes.

Which gamer tropes have I missed? And what games would you recommend to some of the groups that I’ve mentioned above?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.