As we all know, there are a good number of board games that haven't aged well, if I may put it like that. In the past, games happily made colonialism their central setting and gameplay, gave women little or no place in their worlds, or treated cultures through the eyes of the oppressor. Yet, these games remain in people's collections and come back to the table. In this article, rather than asking whether we should still play these problematic games, I explore why we don't just choose different games from the large swathe of new releases.

The post Political Correction – why we forgive problematic games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Waiting for your turn is very common in board games. One person has all the fun while everyone else just watches. Too much waiting is often described as a flaw in game design, particularly when players have nothing useful to do and gradually lose interest in what's happening. Modern board games tend to avoid downtime, yet waiting isn't necessarily wasted time. Sometimes it gives us something to think about, sometimes it leaves us with nothing to do, and sometimes it gives us something that a game cannot provide on its own: a chance to talk.

The post Downtime Chat – allowing for social interaction in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Art is often something we look at, listen to or watch, while board games are discussed in terms of entertainment, strategy and social interaction. Yet, board games are created through imagination, skill and deliberate choices. Board game designers can shape emotions, represent ideas and create systems that shape how players experience a perspective. Of course, the artwork in a board game is art in the traditional sense, but that is not what I want to explore in this article. Instead, I want to look at how board games themselves, their mechanisms and systems, function as a form of artistic expression in their own right.

The post Artistic Board Games – how board games are more than visually pleasing (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

When I play a board game with my friends, I know that they have the same intention: to win. Yet, they actually all want quite different things. One friend is happiest when they find a strategy that works and keeps working. Another wants to take a game apart until they understand the most efficient route to victory. I want to win too, but as a reviewer, I am usually more interested in understanding what a game is trying to do, how its mechanisms produce an experience and how the people around the table respond. Listening to episode 673 of the 99% Invisible podcast, I found that C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Utah and author of the book "The Score", has really well described these differing expectations of wanting to win a board game.

The post Striving for Achievements – the difference between achievement play and striving play (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Trick-taking games have been around for centuries, and they continue to inspire new designs. Everyone has their own idea of what makes for a great trick-taking game, but mine was shaped by growing up in Germany playing Skat and, especially, Doppelkopf. Those games use mechanisms that still appear in modern games, yet designers keep finding new ways to create new twists on them. So in this article, I want to look at the trick-taking mechanisms I find most interesting, why they work, and how modern trick-takers have changed them while keeping the characteristics that make the genre so long-lasting.

The post Magic Tricks – what makes trick-taking games great (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Like a lot of people, the board game hotness excites me because it potentially offers new mechanisms or clever twists on something familiar. Sometimes a new game draws me in because it has my favourite setting. When I finally hold the new game in my hands, the excitement continues when I read the rulebook, set up the game and pull levers or push buttons to see what happens. Yet, as amazing as new games often feel, the ones I return to most often are games that have become familiar friends. Somehow, knowing them so well has not made them any less interesting, but it has changed what I enjoy about them.

The post The New Old – classic games vs the cult of the new (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Imagine playing your very first indoor bowls game, but there is no jack. Everyone simply rolls a bowl towards an imaginary target. Somehow, your experienced opponent seems remarkably confident, while you try to copy what they do and hope for the best. At the end of the first end, someone reveals where the jack had been all along and awards the points accordingly. Then the second end goes in the same fashion, with a target that no one can see. Every end, you know how well you've done, but you never have any hope of getting better. Learning to bowl that way would feel practically impossible because every bowl would be complete guesswork. Surprisingly, some board games seem to want us to learn them in very much the same way.

The post Score! – in-game vs end-game scoring (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

I never enjoyed history at school. I understood why it mattered as a subject, but learning names, dates and events off by rote simply didn’t work for me, no matter how hard I tried. Events were never taught in their chronological or geopolitical context. Things just didn’t make sense to me. So it seems ironic that historical board games are now one of my favourite genres. Of course, they’ve not made me any better at remembering names and dates, but they replaced my fear of history with a new curiosity that I hadn’t felt before. Horrible History To be clear: I never dreaded having history lessons because of my teachers. No, my fear came from somewhere else. Every new era of history introduced yet another collection of rulers, battles, dates and important events that I was expected to memorise. Learning those facts off by heart was just impossible for me. They always simply felt like a random collection of pieces of information that had nothing to hang them onto. So revising for history tests was always not just a terribly frustrating exercise, but often ended up in tears, because I realised that the further I fell behind, the harder things got. I often felt physically sick and had a tight knot in my chest when another exam was approaching. Somehow, history never felt like one very long connected story thread. Instead, it was just a giant jumble of disconnected facts that were supposed to fit together, but never really formed any sort of pattern for me. Of course, history is a hugely important subject. You don’t need to tell that to a German. Every war, political decision and social movement affected real people, families, communities and often, entire generations. Forgetting historic events means forgetting the people who experienced them, something…

The post Back in Time – the draw of history in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

At a time when many people feel democratic culture is under strain, it is worth looking at our own everyday behaviours that allow democracy to function. Elections, laws and political institutions are all important, but democracy also depends on how people treat one another every day. Listening to different opinions, accepting compromise, respecting agreed-upon rules and recognising opponents as people rather than enemies are all part of a healthy democracy. Maybe unsurprisingly, board games are a place to look for those values. I mean, the simple act of sitting down together to play a game, following the same rules and taking on a role, is an opportunity to act out democratic values.

The post Tabletop Democracy – what board games can teach us about democracy (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Colour is one of the first things I notice when opening a new board game. Bright player pieces, colourful resources and beautiful illustrations immediately grab my attention. Colours tell me where to look and how the game is organised. Yet, like around 1% of men, I have protanomaly, a mild form of red-green colour vision deficiency. I often see pink or purple flowers as blue, and when driving in fog, I see a car's rear red lights much later than other people. So I appreciate it when I can rely on something other than colour to tell me what I am looking at. In this article, I want to explore a century's worth of board game history and look at how colour-vision considerations have changed over time.

The post Kaleidoscopic Games – the history of colours in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Designing a board game that works well for exactly two players is a very different challenge from designing one that supports a range of player counts. Many games include a two-player mode, but board games such as 7 Wonders Duel, Patchwork, and Jaipur show that a dedicated head-to-head experience can be unique and not simply an adapted and reduced version of a game that is really aimed at larger player counts. In this article, I want to look at the design challenge these dedicated two-player-only games present.

The post The Two Body Problem – design challenges of two-player only games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Over the previous four articles in this series, I have explored the history of Spiel des Jahres, the purpose behind its awards, the way its jury works, and the wider activities funded through its income. Together, those articles painted a picture of an organisation that sees its annual awards as a means rather than an end. Promoting games as a cultural asset, encouraging people to play board games together and providing guidance to newcomers to the hobby have all remained at the core of its mission for almost fifty years. In this article, I want to look at the 2026 nominations and see whether the association's values can also be found in the games the jury has selected.

The post Spiel des Jahres – the 2026 nominations and the mission behind them (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Awards often attract attention because of the games they recognise. Far less attention is usually paid to how the organisations behind those awards operate. In the case of Spiel des Jahres, the financial side of the story is particularly interesting because it helps explain how the association funds its activities while maintaining the independence that it considers central to its mission. The famous Red Pawn appears on millions of game boxes, yet many players know little about the licensing system behind it or the way that income supports projects far beyond the annual awards ceremony. In this fourth article in the series, I look at the finances that reveal how the organisation has transformed the commercial success of its award into support for a much broader cultural mission.

The post Spiel des Jahres – following the money (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Every year, the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres nominations leads to a lot of discussion across our hobby. Some people agree with the choices, others question why certain games were not included, and many try to predict the eventual winners. What most people don't realise when they discuss the nominations is that the jury does not gather for a single weekend to decide the best game of the year. No, jurors spend many months playing hundreds of new releases several times with different groups of people. It is a lot of work that often goes unnoticed, but that explains why the award continues to carry such influence nearly fifty years after it began. In the second article of the series, I look at this in more detail.

The post Spiel des Jahres – how the jury chooses games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

For many board gamers, Spiel des Jahres is simply the little red pawn on a game box. Spotting it on a shelf often suggests that a game is worth paying attention to. That's not only true in the German-speaking board game world, but also in many other countries, including the UK. Over the years, winners such as The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride have helped establish the award as one of the most influential honours in tabletop gaming. Yet, there is a lot more to this story. According to its own history and mission statements, the annual prize was never intended to be the end goal. Instead, it was created as a tool to encourage people to play games, to promote games as a cultural asset, and to help the wider public discover the value of gathering around a table. In the first in a series of articles, I want to look at this further.

The post Spiel des Jahres – the award that was never really about awards (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Hi, it’s Joe Slack here. Oliver was kind enough to allow me to write another guest blog. In this article, I thought it would be interesting to discuss board games for two and the gaming experience for two people (especially couples).

The post Tabletop Games for 2 Players (Especially Couples) (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Designers don't like it when players criticise their board game, and the response often is that the game was intentionally designed that way. Players complain that a strategy feels unfair, a mechanism is frustrating, or a game simply isn't very clear. Designers reply that that just misses the point. Similar disagreements exist in films, novels, and art, yet board games seem to have them more often, and they are often more personal. Part of the reason may be that board games are not passive experiences. Players are not simply watching events unfold, but instead are interpreting rules and shaping the experience themselves every time the game hits the table.

The post Intentional Experience – designer intent and player experience (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Many of us play board games because they offer us some certainty. There are rules, objectives, specific actions, and so on that define how a game is played. These things provide a clear, well-defined framework. We know what is possible, what is not allowed and what we are trying to achieve. At the same time, board games also contain uncertainty. It is uncertainty that creates tension, excitement and a range of other emotions. In many cases, this uncertainty is exactly why we look forward to playing them. Inspired by Bez from Stuff by Bez, in this article, I want to explore why uncertainty in board games matters.

The post Clearly Uncertain – the role of uncertainty in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Throughout human history, stories have been a way for people to share the concerns and ideas of their time. I think we can all agree that books and films are often shaped by the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they were created, whether deliberately or not. Readers and viewers will usually be able to see reflections of real-world anxieties, hopes, and tensions within them. Board games, while also being a form of entertainment, alongside books and films, work differently. In this article, I want to look at whether they still reflect the times in which they were designed.

The post Expressive Entertainment – board games and social commentary (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.