We see here two tweets that got me thinking about this topic. And it’s not a topic that I’ve been ignorant of, in fact, it’s one that I think about fairly often. And the first tweet is much more general than just board games, but Rodney Smith talks about how it matters with board games as well in his video.

The Golden Rule of Being a Fan

We start today in an interesting place. I won’t directly touch on the topic, because I think we as fans of things need to consider what I hope is what we all want.

We want more people to find joy in our fandoms.

Basically, the rule, as is said simply up there, we want more people to join into our fandom. We want more people to love and find joy in the things we love and find joy in. The more people who find joy in the things we find joy in, the more we have in common with people, and the more we can share the joys of our life. That is the ideal that I hold for being a fan and one that I hope that fandoms as a whole can agree upon.

Where It Goes Wrong

However, it often goes wrong. And Rodney talks about it with board games, and I’m going to talk about it in that light as well generally, but this covers a lot of things. It tends to go wrong when current fans expect other people to be fans in the same way they are fans.

A board game example, a person who loves euro games might look down upon a new gamer who likes lighter games like Munchkin. A television example, a Doctor Who fan might look down on someone who prefers Peter Capaldi to David Tennant as the Doctor. A movie example, a Star Wars fan might look down on a new Star Wars fan who enjoys the prequel trilogy.

You can see how it works, because someone doesn’t enjoy the fandom in the exact way that someone else does, it isn’t as good. Their enjoyment of the fandom is less valid than the person who has been the fan longer or is the fan in the “right way”.

How We Tackle This

I could have spent more time on the negative, because it gets me annoyed. Rodney Smith is one of the nicest people out there and you see how passionate he is about the issue. But I see too many other posts who will just talk about the negative aspect and not about how we can help change things. And honestly, we need to change things. We look at big aggressions or slip ups and they are bad, like the gamers who scoff at female gamers, or similar to that, and we point fingers and call those people horrible. But it’s extremely insidious and easy to step on someone’s excitement out of a place that looks like it’s better. It is equally as harmful though to getting new people into the fandom or hobby.

The most common example of this is, and again going to board games, a conversation on Facebook or Twitter that goes something like this.

Newbie: “I’m so excited I just picked up Munchkin, I’m so excited to play it.”

Person in Hobby: “Munchkin sucks.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “Have fun with that game.”

Person 3 in Hobby: “Munchkin isn’t a good game, you should play Scythe instead.”

Written out like this, you can easily see what the issue is. The newbie is excited for their new game, they are probably just getting into games and like lighter fare that is closer to what they have played before. The first response is just bad. If you don’t like the game, great, don’t step on someone else’s fun and excitement. The second response is probably fine, I through that one in there to make it look more realistic in responses. The third one is also bad because again it’s negative and ruining someone’s fun. It hedges itself in being positive by giving unsolicited and not useful advice. If this person posting their excitement is truly new to the hobby, Scythe is not a jumping in point, or whatever the person’s favorite game might be.

It might seem weird, but I’ve seen all of these responses and more negative ones. Why doe we like to be negative about things and ruin other people’s joy? As Rodney says in his video: “It’s not special not to like something.” Maybe it’s a power play, but honestly, I think most of the time it’s because people are excited or excited and disappointed might be better. They see someone say, “I got a new game” and they think it’ll be something maybe they’ve been interested in and then when it isn’t get they get disappointed. I think that this is where especially comments like “X isn’t good, try Y instead” come from. The person is trying to get their excitement back by getting someone to agree with them or to like their thing. But to the person who posted, it’s just negative.

So what’s better? To quote Thumper from Bambi: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Honestly, it’s that simple, there is nothing that requires you to respond to a tweet or Facebook post on something you don’t like. In fact, it’s 99% of the time better to ignore them and show support to things you do like. A newbie to a hobby or fandom will generally gravitate towards the parts that are positive and away from the parts that are negative, as most people will. But if there is too much negative, a newbie might just leave a hobby or fandom. If you do feel compelled to respond, let’s see a better response.

Newbie: “I’m so excited I just picked up Munchkin, I’m so excited to play it.”

Person in Hobby: “That’s awesome, I hope you enjoy it.”

Doesn’t say that you like the game, but you are wishing joy upon the person and eventually, maybe that person will agree with you that Munchkin isn’t great and they want to play Scythe, but let them get there and let them grow into the hobby instead of pushing away.

But let’s look at another situation:

Newbie: “I’m thinking about getting Munchkin, is it a good game?”

Person in Hobby: “Munchkin sucks.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “I used to like Munchkin.”

Person 3 in Hobby: “Munchkin isn’t good, you should get Scythe.”

Now, I went with all wrong answers here. Now, the person who started asked for an opinion on Munchkin, saying Munchkin sucks is an opinion, but doesn’t give any information nor is it said in a constructive or useful way. It’s aggressively negative for no good reason. The second one is saying the same as the first, just in a much nicer way. And the third one, the person asked for advice, but it was about Munchkin, not about Scythe or whatever the person’s favorite game again.

It falls into the same lines as the other example above and reasoning as to why those are not good responses. Let’s say that you really don’t like Munchkin, what is a better response?

Newbie: “I’m thinking about getting Munchkin, is it a good game?”

Person in Hobby: “I’m not a big fan of Munchkin, I don’t like how much take that there is in it. If your group likes that sort of thing though, it’d probably work for you.”

The big difference, it’s a nicely stated that the person doesn’t like the game. They only talk about the game the person asked about. And they gave a reason why they don’t like it. I even wrapped it up with an encouraging thing clarifying that for some people the game will work.

One final example that I see often as well:

Newbie: “I’m just getting into the hobby. I have Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, and Exploding Kittens, what game do you think I’d like?”

Person in Hobby: “Those games suck.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “I remember when I liked those games.”

Person 3 in Hobby: “Scythe”

Again, it’s fairly easy to see what is wrong with these. They are very negative, two don’t answer the question and they tell the person they are doing it wrong. At least the first two do, the third one is just Scythe again. And it might seem like I’m picking Scythe, but honestly it’s one I see a lot of people use, I could also say my favorite game as well, Gloomhaven. But it’s also not useful to suggest massive games that the person would struggle with. It’s possibly less hurtful than the other two, but can push people away because it’ll make them feel inferior if they try a big game like Scythe or Gloomhaven and are overwhelmed by it because of what they have played before.

Then answering a question like this, think of it as stepping stones. You might want them to play Scythe, but that means you need to help get them there, taking the same steps that basically every gamer did from Classic Games to Modern Classics to Hobby Games to Scythe. If you need help with that, here’s a bit of a cheat sheet.

So what’s a better response?

Newbie: “I’m just getting into the hobby. I have Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, and Exploding Kittens, what game do you think I’d like?”

Person in Hobby: “Hmmm… I think that Five Tribes or Small World could be interesting for you.”

Person 2 in Hobby: “Good question, what do you like about those games? Something like Potion Explosion could be interesting, maybe if you like the set collecting and completing stuff parts of Catan and Ticket to Ride.”

Pretty easy to see how these are better. They give suggestions in line with or a bit more complex with that the person has played before. I think it’s always good to ask clarifying questions as well. The second person asks the general question of what is liked, but then gives a specific element of both Catan and Ticket to Ride, set collection in their reasoning. That sort of engagement makes the new person feel more involved in the hobby and in the group.

Go Forth and Grow the Fandom

Now, we are all going to slip up on this. I know that I do it from time to time as well. For me, it is something I intentionally don’t want to propagate throughout a hobby or a fandom that I love, this negative response. And I truly believe that most gamers, most fans, they want their hobby to grow. With that, I do believe there is a bit of letting go of your fandom or hobby just like you hold it. That can be hard, but when you can do that, your hobby and fandoms will grow. You will learn new things and see things in a new way, and it’ll strengthen your own joy in a fandom or hobby. I hope in the upcoming years we see more fans of board games grow and more fans of every fandom come into light and that we can all enjoy those similar things in our own way remembering that just because someone likes something a bit different than you, it doesn’t have a negative impact on your own joy.

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What is a Board Game?

A board game is any game that uses cards, or a board, or dice that you play. There are sub genres of games out there such as dice games, or card games, but they are all board games, just like we have roll and write games, dungeon crawl games, deck building, and more. Something like Uno is just as much of a board game as Monopoly, even though only Monopoly has a board. Farkle or Yahtzee is just as much of a board game as Monoploy as well and they are dice primarily.

How Do People Gatekeep Themselves?

So the most common way, and I touch on it above, is thinking that board games need to have a board. I would say that this isn’t quite how it works, it’s more comes down to three main statements.

It just has cards, it’s going to be a simple game or lucky.

That game is just a bunch of minis, I’m sure the they didn’t put effort into the game play itself.

It has an app, that’s not a real board game.

These three mindsets are really bad to have. They cut out so many games that you can play. Let me tackle each of them here.

The Card Game Argument

I can get where people are coming from with this one, a little bit. A lot of people are coming from the mindset that card games are like Exploding Kittens and Uno. There’s not much depth there, and if there is more going on than just playing cards, it’s a party game like Cards Against Humanity which is also extremely simple. And I do think for a while, 90’s and before, card games often were made to be simpler. Now, that excludes games that were played with a deck of cards which a lot of them have great depth and strategy to them. But people can often have the mindset that less stuff in a game means a worse game.

I recently came across this where someone was saying that they wanted the best superhero board game. They dismissed Marvel Champions and Sentinels of the Multiverse immediately because they are just cards. In terms of superhero themed board games where you are playing the good superheroes, they are two of the top ones. Marvel Legendary is up there as well, which has a board, but is primarily cards as it’s a deck building game. So the person who asked that question limited away the best superhero games because they thought card games would be too simple or too lucky. But those games have a lot more strategy than board games with an actual board a lot of the time.

The Minis Problem

This one I get more than the card game aspect. There are a lot of games out there that show up on Kickstarter, they show 200 cool looking minis and when you finally get down to the part where they talk about the game, you find that the game is a simple roll and move game and most of the minis never do anything, they just sit on a space. Now, that example is a bit absurd but I’ve seen things to around those levels.

But just rejecting a game because it has a lot of minis out of hand is also a problem and causes people to miss out on a lot of good games. Lords of Hellas has a lot of minis and even some pretty giant minis with the god statues that are built up throughout the game, but it is an extremely interesting game with a ton of choices. It can be considered to be rough around the edges, but it a way that enhances the experience, not detracts from it. Mansions of Madness is another game that has a lot of minis with the monsters, but again offers some of the best gaming experiences with an app to generate the story for you. Are minis needed in every game, certainly not, and minis can push games to a point where the price becomes a barrier to entry, but the argument about game play cannot be a blanket statement and will keep people from playing a lot of fun and very deep games.

The App Argument

This one is one that crops up somewhat often now. And when someone says that they don’t want a game with an app because they don’t want screens at the table. I can kind of get that. They might be looking for a way to keep their kids away from screens for a time, they might be someone who will default to just watching TV so they push for no screens and it’s a way to stretch themselves. But then others say no screens because that makes it a video game or why isn’t it just a video game at that point.

However, that mindset limits you and keeps you away from a lot of great games. Mansions of Madness, 2nd Edition, is a great game. The app makes it so no one needs to keep track of every piece of the game. There is no one who runs the whole game. The first edition had someone running everything and that kept it from being cooperative. One side played the game while there was one person who just administered it. Being the person who administered the game isn’t that fun. The app takes that away from anyone needing to do it.

And other games, like Chronicles of Crime benefits greatly with an app, it’d be impossible to do without one. Now, could it be just a video game, maybe, but Chronicles of Crimes uses the tactile aspect and moving pieces around to create a map of the crime that’d be harder to do in a video game.

How to Break Free

Now, that’s been fairly negative, I won’t lie. I don’t love being negative, and when people gatekeep themselves from a game because of preconceived notions, it can have a negative affect on the whole community of board gaming. Too often people feel the need to share their opinion or create a blocker for people playing those games. How can we as a community help our hobby grow and try and break free.

– Be willing to try

Every game will not be for everyone. If you are a hard core Amerthrash gamer, give a card game a try if someone says they think you’ll like it. Be open to trying new things, for a lot of gamers, we can find more that we love.

– Don’t Belittle or Discourage

Even if you don’t want to play a game, if someone is excited about a game, don’t thumb your nose at it. Just because a game isn’t your cup of tea doesn’t mean that it won’t be good for someone else. And just because maybe it is legitimately too light a game for you to enjoy, don’t pretend like your games are better. The first step of a gamer to playing heavier games is often through lighter games.

– Politely decline

And honestly, all games aren’t for everyone. This goes along with the previous point, be polite when you decline. It’s fine to be not interested in something. It’s fine to know that you like a certain type of game, but we want everyone in our hobby to play games. Decline and encourage the gamer in finding people to play with.

What Hang-ups Do You Have or I Have?

I wrote all of this and I reference a lot of games that I love. However, every player, every person, is going to have a blind spot. We don’t want to keep ourselves from playing fun games. I know that I don’t love Euro games generally, so I need to keep myself from being negative about them. Playing a Euro game won’t kill me, and I might find some that I like. Or declining a game is also what I can do, but I need to not look down on people who do like them.

What are your favorite games that are only card games, have a ton of minis, or use an app?

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