Returning to Traditional Board Games

A package from Lulu.com recently arrived containing a few books of interest, two titles I knew I wanted – Bob Cordery’s Developing the Portable Wargame and Dyson Logos’ 2016 Dodecahedron Cartographic Review – and one I discovered on a periodic search of the Lulu site (which still doesn’t have a wishlist function or any means of more specifically searching categories)...Damian Gareth Walker’s A Book of Historic Board Games. Frequent readers know I keep a shelf of books about games across the adventure gaming spectrum, including those about more traditional board games like R.C. Bell’s Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, David Partlett’s The Oxford History of Board Games, and Jeffrey A. DeLuca’s comprehensive Medieval Games. Walker’s contribution proves a worthy edition to my reference shelf and opens the door to other resources to aid one’s exploration of more traditional board games from throughout history. It invites readers to discover board games from across history and cultures, a pursuit that can vary our diet of adventure games.

Games Influencing Real Life

Recently I’ve noticed a number of game-related items demonstrating how powerfully games can affect real life when they move beyond the comfortable confines where we safely enjoy them: the kitchen table, family game night, the game club shed, teen gaming day at the library, the Friendly Local Game Store, game conventions. Certainly games occur in reality – read Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and one learns games and game-like activities occupy particular spaces in which specific rules of play operate – but when games move beyond their usual boundaries they can exert a positive influence in the real world, sometimes just for fun, sometimes for serious issues.

A Wealth of Printables

The recent release of S. John Ross’ HexPaper Pro reminded me how much the technological advances of the Internet Age have enhanced our collective gaming experiences. It wasn’t too long ago – in what I like to call the “Golden Age of Roleplaying” (the early 1980s) – that some of us purchased pre-printed character record sheets and hoarded graph paper given our limited resources and lack of home publishing technology. Today computers, printers, and the internet give us seemingly unlimited access to printable game accessories (paper minis, graph/hex paper, maps, adventures), PDF and print products available through online e-storefronts, and to a worldwide community of fellow gamers.

Gamer’s Gambit Demonstrates Store Ideals

Everyone has their ideas about what makes a good Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS). I particularly value a friendly staff, comprehensive inventory, and plenty of play space, all of which goes a long way to cultivating a sustained and diverse play community. I’ve visited many games stores in my 35+ years in the adventure gaming hobby as a player and writer. Even where I live now, on the medieval frontier of Northern Virginia (the medieval side) I’ve discovered several game stores, some closer than others, that hit the marks quite well (though some, always the closest, seem to have a habit of closing after just more than a year in business). My family recently had an excellent experience at an FLGS, this time while on our annual pilgrimage to visit family in New England, and it reminded me what makes for a successful FLGS.

Solitaire Board Games on my Radar

I’ve talked about solitaire roleplaying game adventures and solo wargaming before, but not a whole lot about solitaire board games. Although the common perception places “games” in the realm of activities engaged with groups of people, I feel solitaire gaming across the broad spectrum of the adventure gaming hobby has value, whether to satisfy the urge for an interesting interactive story (“Curling Up with Solitaire Gamebooks”), teaching rules and introducing a setting (“Solitaire RPG Tutorial Adventures”), or any number of other beneficial applications. I’ve often lumped solo board games in with my occasional broad overviews of the state of solitaire gaming: “Celebrating Solitaire Play” and “Solitaire Play Addendum” come to mind. For whatever reason – my introversion, a lack of a stable gaming community, my slowly-increasing misanthropic tendencies – I’m exploring more solo board games these days. It certainly helps that I’m seeing more solitaire offerings in this field on my gaming radar.

Adapting Games for A Play Community

“It’s not winning the game that makes the game fun. It’s playing that makes the game fun.”

– Bernie De Koven

I’m reading Bernie De Koven’s The Well-Played Game in which he focuses on the “play community,” a group of people willing to play games together, striving not for the triumph of the win but for a positive, satisfying play experience. “The nature of a play community is such that it embraces the players more than it directs us toward any particular game,” he writes. “Thus, it matters less to us what game we are playing, and more to us that we are willing to play together.” I’d recommend the book to anyone willing to more deeply examine their relationship, dynamics, and shared goals with those who join them at the gaming table no matter what the game. Although it discusses “play” as a more free-form concept, its many insights can apply equally well to adventure games (as opposed to more rigidly organized games like sports, with more strictures in terms of rules, requirements, and referees). In that pursuit he encourages play communities to embrace the freedom to change a given game so we can play well together. Members of the adventure gaming hobby have a long history of adjusting their games to best suit their own tastes and sharing them with others, but we might consider becoming more sensitive to individual players and groups depending on the participants and venue of particular games.

Random Encounter Motivations

Monsters serve as the default antagonists in Dungeons & Dragons and its derivatives (primarily many games developed in the spirit of the Old School Renaissance or OSR). They’re the focal point of the entire hack-and-slash mentality: kill the monsters and take their stuff. The character advancement structure of these games encourages this kind of play. Fighting and killing monsters not only earns experience points for the deed but points based on the value of treasure plundered from dead monsters (an aspect of the game’s design I’ve examined before). Certainly elements like the “Monster Reactions Table” can mitigate these presumptions. Yet a creature’s own motivations might affect how they react when encountering adventurers just as much as the adventurers’ openly displayed intent. This becomes particularly important for randomly determined creatures – as “wandering monsters” or in randomly generated dungeons – who don’t always have motivational cues based on a particular location. For instance, in a published scenario, four orcs in an evil wizard’s guard room have an assumed role to keep adventurers out, sound the alarm, and try to kill or capture intruders; but four orcs encountered as wandering monsters don’t have such clear cues regarding their motivation and hence their reaction to meeting adventurers. What if – before rolling on the “Monster Reactions Table” – we consulted a “Creature Motivation Table” to determine their intent when they stumble upon adventurers?