Does your Gaming Ego Allow Simple Games???

You often hear,

"Simple is Better"

But does this apply to games? Does a simple game offer you enough challenge and fun?

Have you ever refused to play a game because it is too simple?

To me the most sacred branch of Ameritrash is the Hall of "Beer and Pretzels Games"

While I certainly enjoy the more complex games and the occasional wargame, the beer and pretzels games get the bulk of play in my groups. The inherent social nature of these games seem to provide the greatest fun.

"Family Business", "Last Night on Earth", "The Really Nasty Horseracing Game", and "Tumblin' Dice" are like Greek Columns in my gaming temple.

How simple can you go before you fall off the gamer scale? The guy that only plays "Sorry" and Candyland is not a gamer is he?

How complex do you have to go to earn the rank of Private Gamer?

I'll play anything as long as it's fun and I try not to be snobby about any game. Sometimes simple equates to boring and it's those games I try to avoid, e.g. Battleship. We still play Yahtzee and Uno a lot in my family and they are both pretty simple. I do like to spice Uno up with some house rules however. I'm also quite happy to play Candyland with my 3-year-old but I don't really consider myself to be "gaming" at this point. It's more about her development and fostering a love of playing boardgames with her father.

Edit: in answer to your last question, I think a gamer is defined by how often he/she thinks about and plays boardgames rather than which ones he/she is playing. If you play Candyland every day of your life with excitement and passion, you are a gamer.

I would much rather play a simple game than a supposed "heavy" Euro.

Interesting question, Steve. I play and enjoy simple games, like a Lost Cities or something, but my experience is that I don't enjoy them as much as more complex games. But I think you hit upon it--simple games are more of a social exercise and it's telling that I don't have a game group I'm that into. If I had a bunch of buddies I could have beers and play simple stuff with I bet my opinion of simple games would go way up.

I generally prefer heavier longer games (regardless of genre) but I can appreciate a good simple game too.

Ivanhoe and Wings of War get a lot of play at my table, so that'll be a yes.

This is a good discussion to have. There is this thing I've noticed among some gamers that it's somehow not "cool" or something to be into simple games.

I love simple games with straightforward rules, short playtimes, and basic gameplay. These are the kinds of games that you can shoot the shit around, drink a beer or two, and just have a good time without a lot of administration and overhead required. It's why I like games like WORLD CUP GAME, REALLY NASTY, MAGICAL ATHELETE, and so on. But still, those games are thematic and competitive, they're not braindead stupid and they don't break down into boring mathematical bullshit like LOST CITIES or garbage like that.

As much I rag on stuff like LOOPIN LOUIE and strictly-for-the-kids games like that, just like with any other game if you're with the right people they can be fun. Frank Branham regularly drags out some weird-ass kids game and we have a couple of laughs for about 15 minutes and move on to something else. I've had more fun playing some of that stuff (like QUACK SHOT or JOCHEN DER ROCHEN) than I have playing most heavy Euros.

A few months ago I picked up Sorry Sliders and Stratego - Fire & Ice. Sorry Sliders was one of my best purchases last year. Stratego is on for next weekend. So yeah...

If the object of games is to have fun, simple games can be fun as much as anything.

Comrade Koba, Ruse & Bruise, Give me the Brain, Before I kill you mr Bond, Sumo

Just don't play with this guy:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/375825

(I waffled over whether to put that here, the Wanker thread, or the Burden of Forums one).

You throw plastic shit at other plastic shit! My six-year-old plays it. He can probably read the rulebook. And yet this clown wants extra rules and clarifications over movement penalties or some nonsense.

This is going to be what I remember next week when there's another thread over there reminding everyone that board gamers are smarter than the average bear.

If drunk people in dive bars and drunk old people on cruises can master the idea, so can you.

And have fun with it even. I know I do.

Not Sure wrote:

Just don't play with this guy:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/375825

Wow...

My favorite games are simple in rules and have some depth of strategy. I become more and more firm in the opinion that you don't need more that 10 pages of rules to make a great game, and anything over 20 I really don't even consider as a purchase. (not including Title page, index, illustrations, etc). At some later point in life I might get more into complex games again, but right now easy to learn rules is definitely a huge plus for me.

Really depends. Something like Settlers is interesting because of the interaction with the other players, making it extremely dependent on others for the fun. Something like Dominion has no interaction, but is still simple, so simple to the point where there's nothing fun for me in it.

I've had a great time playing "Give Me the Brain" as well as "Three Days of Gettysburg". It all depends on the game and the people.

The general equation is, the simpler the game, the more it relies on the people to be fun.

The general equation is, the simpler the game, the more it relies on the people to be fun.

Interesting, I think you are right. I will send the equation to ClearClaw for lab analysis and confirmation

I'd love to play TUMBLIN' DICE with Clearclaw and a group of "Negroes". He'd probably break down and cry-yie (sorry, listening to "Young Americans").

TUMBLIN' DICE was one of the most interesting social experiments I ever conducted at Atlanta Game Factory. Frank Branham left his copy there (on purpose?) so one night during Friday Night Magic I broke it out. By the end of the night, we literally had a line of 10-15 people waiting to make a toss. People were taking polyhedral dice out of the Jar of Misfit Dice to throw. The game has practically no rules whatsoever but here it was drawing in these kids who live and breath MAGIC. The 40K guys even got into it. People were cheering and laughing. Unlike they do playing any given Eurogame.

The thing is, the whole bias against dice is one of the ways the Eurosnoot/elitist set excludes people in the name of "sophistication". Most dice games are a lot of fun- YAHTZEE can be a blast with cool people, BACKGAMMON is awesome, and even that new THROUGH THE AGES dice game (which is much closer to YAHTZEE than KINGSBURG) is good. The drama of a die roll is something _everybody_ relates to, unlike fucking slavery or feudalism.

But here come the Eurogame designers...look at shit like KINGSBURG or TO COURT THE KING...simple dice mechanics fucked up with a bunch of bullshit Euro bonus building crap and efficiency planning. What could have been a simple, cool game is ruined.

CARABANDE/PITCHCAR is another one that anybody can get into...flick a disc and it's a race. The end. Contrast that to FORMULA DE or something mathy like BOLIDE. Which one reaches people more?