What kinds of games do you like, and why?

[Maxperson]

Other favorites include Horrified, Betrayal at the House on the Hill (also Betrayal Legacy), and Sentinels of the Multiverse. We recently found Mass Effect: The Boardgame, to be pretty fun for a short campaign-like play arc.

There's a Baldur's Gate version of that.

 

[Pedantic]

I play a lot of board games. My favorites are the heavier economic games, your 18xxs and Splotters, with the occasional dash of a tableau builder or some other kind of mid-heavy weight euro. I'd never turn down a round of Hansa Teutonica. Most weeks it's 1846 or 18MEX these days, but we hop around titles a lot.

When I'm not doing that, I tend to go in for small box card games. Tichu is unfortunately the best card ever made, but you have to buy a knock-off deck, because the original is too racist to be seen in public with. When we're not at the requisite 4 exactly for that Seer's Catalog, Rebel Princess, Jazz Blues and a variety of trick-takers are in contention.

I'm less able or interested in supporting a lifestyle game than I used to be, but I still play a fair amount of Netrunner and show up at the occasional tournament or local event.

I also design board games, and the stuff I make has surprisingly little relationship to what I like to play. The one that's garnered the most publisher interest is a cooperative deduction game, and I'm currently trying to make a word-based party game work, and then there's like 5 other things I'm pitching with my co-designer. Under that auspice, I'll play anything.

I play a lot of indie roguelikes, ranging from twin-stick shooters, to deckbuilders to weirder amalgamations. Run-based games with mechanics that want to be exploited is absolutely my niche. I have more hours in Slay the Spire than is reasonable for a person who isn't at least an amateur streamer to have, and I'm getting close to that in Vault of the Void (a criminally underrated deckbuilder with wildly diverse classes).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's kind of like, what games don't I like is maybe a shorter list than what kind do I like?

And in any given genre, there will be loads of exceptions for me - like, I mostly don't like Eurogames, except the dozens and dozens I do like (which don't even seem to follow a pattern that I can find).

I don't like most card games, I guess, more because I've played them with annoying people than because of the games. I don't like chess much because I have like, serious ADHD and for whatever reason it doesn't trigger hyperfocus and also I played it with the most annoying people on the planet - over-educated upper-middle-class male teenagers (I still will not play it with anyone identifying as male, sorry!). I do really like Gin Rummy, oddly enough! I feel like Gin Rummy is almost somehow a proto-deckbuilder.

I really like deckbuilders in general, though theme and art will have a huge influence.

I love skirmish wargames, except the ones I don't. Been playing a lot of Carnevale lately because a friend owns tons and tons of it (including like, enough models to play all the gangs, and tons of cool terrain).

I ban myself from playing the Game of Thrones boardgame, the only game in history, including RPGs, that ever managed to make me completely lose my mind IRL, standing up and yelling "I will break you!" (meaning "ensure you lose", not beat up, to be clear) at another player (who I love dearly) completely unironically and totally meaning it in the moment, even if I was like "What the hell man?!" to myself a few seconds later. Like, I've played with awful munchkins and horrible "It's what my character would do" people in all sort of RPGs and played against people were intentionally being twats in chess, against horrible abusive trolls in videogames and so on, never really got mad or yelled at anyone, nothing made me lose my mind like being totally and effectively betrayed in the GoT boardgame lol. Fascinating to learn that about oneself. Wine was involved doesn't explain that (I'm normally super-chill when drunk).

Talking of betrayal, I really like Betrayal at the House on the Hill and similar, I don't think I've ever not enjoyed playing that sort of game.

I guess one common trait is I don't like games that feel like cut-down versions of games I do like. So like, I don't like HeroQuest, but I do like Advanced HeroQuest or the modern Warhammer Quest. I played a ton of the latter lately with my nephews and one of my nieces, it was impressive how fast even the eight-year-old with ADHD as bad as mine (and no medication, and also he's eight) was able to pick up the rules and stick to them. Albeit the poor little guy nearly fell apart if anyone got to a treasure before him! I mean, that's being eight though.

I also don't like dungeon crawl stuff where it's more like you're having to solve a mechanical puzzle or worse, praying for RNG than, I dunno, dungeon crawling, particularly disliking games where whimsy or RP is basically a death sentence (possibly for the entire party), and I'd say both Descent and Frosthaven (and I assume Gloomhaven) fit into that. I really loathe Frosthaven because like, it has all the rules-learning of a complex RPG, without any of the fun of a complex RPG, and with 10x the setup and breakdown time. A friend bought them thinking we could play them when we didn't have enough time to play an RPG, but it's like, the opposite - it takes insanely longer to play than an RPG!

Videogame-wise I really like almost anything that has style, and has good gameplay design. I tend can stand tons of repetition/grind in gameplay, but can't stand bland gameplay or art. Games that are too easy also rapidly bore me, as does becoming really OP so the game becomes trivial (if that happens, the game better finish in the next couple of hours).

 

[Parmandur]

There's a Baldur's Gate version of that.

Also Scooby Doo.

 

[Parmandur]

I ban myself from playing the Game of Thrones boardgame, the only game in history, including RPGs, that ever managed to make me completely lose my mind IRL, standing up and yelling "I will break you!" (meaning "ensure you lose", not beat up, to be clear) at another player (who I love dearly) completely unironically and totally meaning it in the moment, even if I was like "What the hell man?!" to myself a few seconds later. Like, I've played with awful munchkins and horrible "It's what my character would do" people in all sort of RPGs and played against people were intentionally being twats in chess, against horrible abusive trolls in videogames and so on, never really got mad or yelled at anyone, nothing made me lose my mind like being totally and effectively betrayed in the GoT boardgame lol. Fascinating to learn that about oneself. Wine was involved doesn't explain that (I'm normally super-chill when drunk).

Oh, wow, there is a blast from the past: I didn't have quite so intense a situation, but definitely remember big emotional tension when my board game crew and I played that.

 

[Maxperson]

Also Scooby Doo.

That's awesome!