Skills Used in Games

(Inspired by the discussion about games that are hard to get on the table.)

Are there types of games that you prefer or avoid because of applicable skills?

What do I mean by skills? Here are some:

strategy and tactics
risk management
negotiation
hand-eye coordination
knowledge of trivia
knowledge of history
persuasion
the ability to read tells, body language, etc.
bluffing
logistics

For example, some people don't like to play negotiation games, possibly because they are introverted, while other players might excel at the negotiations due to a background in sales or marketing. Although I am reasonably coordinated, I dislike dexterity games because the game owner tends to have a significant advantage due to familiarity with the game. A lot of folks at BGG avoid games that feature risk management, because they have a mental blindspot for that skill and dismiss related games as luck-based.

There are two particular skills that I don't really avoid, but that I am bad at.

The first is deduction. This is especially pronounced in games like Clue or Mystery of the Abbey. My mind does not naturally think in ways like that, and I tend to forget or overlook details that are actually important. I do better at social deduction games, but those are more gut feeling than logic.

I'm also not great at tactical gameplay, at least not as it relates to maps and armies. This extends to a lot of DoaM games and games that use that sort of gameplay to promote a diplomatic element. I have a really hard time seeing a few moves ahead for what I'm doing, to say nothing of what my opponents will do. Any kind of negotiation incorporated into this makes it much more difficult. The only game like this I can think of that I really LOVE is Dune, but that's actually a pretty limited game in terms of what happens on the board.

I avoid trivia, because its not very fun. Im very good at them in general, but its hard to find a group on the same level. There are games that do it right though, like you don't know jack or the popular title from north star game whose names escapes me.

Everything else is welcome and fair game though.

I think the issue most players have with negotiation is not the mechanic itself but that they do not know how to put it to use. That is, they know the rules and have a semblance of how things are supposed to work but don't know how to make those rules work for them. That is, they do not know how to ask for something or what to ask for or why ask for something.

In a sense, it's like the difference between knowing how a shovel works and actually digging with it.

san il defanso wrote: The only game like this I can think of that I really LOVE is Dune, but that's actually a pretty limited game in terms of what happens on the board.

Dune also has binding negotiation, which is very different from negotiation in other games. I think there are like 4 or 5 types of negotiation games, actually.

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I don't know which skills I'm missing but I've found that I don't really understand hex-and-counter wargames. I do fine at the rest, they make sense to me. But if you give me a big board with my troops on one side and the enemies at the other I don't know how to move or why and end up marching aimlessly towards the enemy.

Yeah, that's how I am with negotiation. I need at least a little structure in the deal-making, or else I just don't know what to do. Consider something like Catan, where the range of what needs to be done in negotiation is a lot more specific. (You need to get specific resources, etc.) Both Dune and Cosmic Encounter put some restrictions on deal-making. Dune forces you to honor the deals, and also provides specific powers for use with alliances. Cosmic Encounter has a specific phase of the game where most deals are made, and also forces you to attack certain people. Those really help me in those games to understand the scope of what can be done in negotiation, without putting a cap on what's possible.

I don't mind something more freeform in smaller doses. Bemused has this in spades, and it might be my favorite game of 2017 so far. Both Intrigue and Dragon's Gold have some of that too. But in longer games, or games where the negotiation is kind of unspoken, I really feel lost. I'm a really outgoing person, but I'm not a very devious person, so just straight negotiation has me at a disadvantage.

I don't enjoy games that rely on visual pattern recognition. So it's why I don't like something like Set. It's a perfectly legitimate game, but I do not enjoy exercising that skill---I'm not even god awful at it either.

edit: Deduction is not a favorite either