What do you think of when you think of a game that is hard to play. Is it that the game has a lot of complex rules? Or maybe it’s that the game takes a long time. Both of those make a lot of sense why a game is hard to table. But I think there are a few other, interesting, reasons why some games might be harder to table in a given group.

What Makes a Game Hard to Table?

Time

Let’s start with the obvious one. I actually think for a lot of people this is less of an issue than it’s perceived. If you have a game night or time on a weekend to play a game, you can play a two hour game, or a three hour game. If you go beyond that, sure, but also if you own a game like that, you probably set up times to play it. Twilight Imperium I’m looking at you.

But there is an element that it might be your time not the games time that is making it harder. At which case, I don’t think it’s the games fault it’s harder to hit the table. If I know I can only play an hour and a half or two with set-up and teardown, why would I load up my collection with two hour or more long games? For the day it might happen, okay, I understand that reasoning.

Complexity

This is another one that I think is overblown. A lot of games do have a lot of complexity. And I get that they are harder to initially get to the table. And then if you skip on getting them back to the table, it is a full rules learning experience again. But if you stack a few plays most of the rules will stick and it’ll simplify getting it back to the table.

I know when I started playing Tainted Grail or Gloomhaven, first few times, stop, look up a rule, repeat the process. But I’m 15 scenarios or so into Frosthaven now and it flies, rarely if ever do we look up anything anymore. Town phase, maybe, but even that, we know the order pretty well. And Tainted Grail almost zero rules being looked up by the end as well. So you get faster the more repeated plays of a game you have.

Player Count

Another less obvious one is the player count. I think this falls into two categories. There is the ideal player count which does matter and the listed player count that does matter as well. If you normally play games with two players, three or more player game, way less useful.

But I think the bigger hurdle at times can be that some games are better at certain player counts. So it might be that a game can play 2 to 5 players. But the sweet spot is three or four, so it sits on the shelf and I don’t play it. Why, I either have two or five people most of the time. So now I own a game that probably will start running into the issue of me remembering the rules to get to the table.

Expansions

This last one isn’t because an expansion isn’t good. I think when an expansion isn’t fun, that doesn’t affect the game that much. You remove the expansion and keep playing the base game that you like. The issue is when the expansions add so much that it just makes it hard to get to the table. Though, that’s the whole point of writing this.

But sometimes expansions add too much of a good thing. Now that might be that they add in just more cards or another location to rotate with existing locations. That’s not a big deal. It’s when they start to add rules. When there are elements that you need to pick through, or they start to create a barrier to entry in some way.

Sometimes it is worth it. I’ll always play with the Expedition Leaders in Lost Ruins of Arnak. That does add some complexity to the game, but it’s fairly minor. And I think the benefit of being slightly different outweighs the extra bit of complexity. But others, like everything for Roll Player, makes it harder to table because you need to know what is what to at least some extent.

What Other Ways?

Let me know if you have any other ways that games are hard to get to the table. There are probably some more that I’m not thinking of. Space could be one for some games. If you don’t have a large table or you play on a coffee table, some games might not fit. But what are some things that might trip you up?

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