F@$ Life's Lessons in Gaming

1) People have different motivations, and sometimes several competing all at once.

Why do you play games?  Mike touched on it Jesus, 4 years ago?

Why do you play games the way you do?  Do you play some nights differently than others?

People are complex, and often have contradictory motivations.  In all aspects of life.  Gaming helps me understand that.


2) Losing is not failure.

Maybe it feels that way sometimes given a healthy supply of emotional investment.  But in a 4 player game, that's 4 players that want to win.  Which means 3 players are going to be at least a little disappointed.

Now apply that to life.  Not getting everything you want will happen, it's not failure.

3) Play for the long run.

If you're an asshole in the short term, that has long term repercussions.

I'm not talking about a backstabbing betraying move per se,  In plenty of games that's just to be expected.  I'm talking about the hypothetical instance of maybe clarifying a rules point to your benefit and everyone else's detriment and then insisting that the game be finished that way.

That's a dick move, and your table is going to remember that.

Again, apply that to life.  Life is long and people can carry grudges a long long time.

4) The best transactions are win/win.

This mostly comes from my 25+ years of card hockey.

No one wants your shitty players.  It doesn't matter if you list them alphabetically, by uniform number, in bold face font, or italicized.

No one wants your shitty players.

When making a deal, put some thought into how it helps the guy you're dealing with.  You'll get more deals done that way.

5) People have different tastes and that is ok.

Maybe a year ago, I played Twilight Struggle and didn't like it at all.  It was ranked #1 on BGG for years, and only has been recently displaced to #2.

So who's stupid, the thousands of voters who liked it or me?

Well the answer is neither.

Ok, I did some soul searching after I played this because 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong.  And it has two game mechanics that I don't like at all.  Simplistic area control and ambush scoring.

There's a lot of area control games, and some I even like a little bit.  But when area control is a disproportionate amount of the game, and the method for placing them is simple (...like counting) I'm probably going to dislike that game.

When scoring is an unpleasant surprise for some players, I'm probably going to dislike that game.

But TS is well crafted, well balanced and has hard decisions throughout the game.  So I actually get why it's ranked so high and am glad I tried it.  It's just something I never have to play again.