Spinners: 1HN Long-Lasting Randomizer

Currently, one of the oddly popular fads among children in the United States is the fidget spinner, which is a three-pronged plastic or metal item that spins on its central axis on ball bearings. Apparently, fidget spinners are simply mental distractions that seem to have been intended as a tool to help children focus their fidgety energies on something without shifting in their seats. However, it has had the opposite effect of distracting children by drawing their attention to whomever is using one. I can see the end of this, though: eventually, EVERY boy (and girl?) will have one, get bored of it, and then cast it into a drawer of other junk.

An ironic parallel I see to the predictable fate of the fidget spinner is the spinner in board games. Certain "classic" American games featured spinners, particularly Life and the decidedly non-board game, Twister. As other Americans do, I have both happy and angry memories of these games. As many of you know, spinners are simply decision randomizers that spin on a central axis until the pointing part of the spun arrow or wheel ends up aiming at a space that indicates a number or course of action. It's rudimentarily mechanical, requiring a deft turn of hand or finger to manipulate it, yet it is not necessarily a component of dexterity games. On the contrary, in the two games mentioned above, spinners are the mode of randomization. In this sense, spinners are similar to any randomizer, like dice. This difference is a simple one: there is a visceral element to both kinds of randomizers that are dissimilar enough to separate those experiences from each other, at least in my mind. By this, with a spinner, I could spin it as fast or as slowly as I wanted, affording me the illusion of agency. In any case, whether it's spinning and landing on the best space in the game, or spinning and having to contort my body into an impossible Escher pretzel, using a spinner evokes flashbacks of joy and rage that are markedly different from the joy and rage of rolling dice.

I noted that there is an ironic parallel between game spinners and fidget spinners; this irony is evident in the state of games today. Among the more widely-recognized connoisseur games, spinners are not found, as far as I can recall. Most of the time, decision randomization takes the form of cards, dice, or even the BINGO mechanic of drawing chits or pieces blindly, yet you do not see spinners. One reason might be because of the form factor of certain spinners, like the one in Life; it is a considerably-sized piece of molded plastic that fits fine in the large game box of Life, but may not fit well, say, in a Pandemic box. Another reason might be that shoddy spinners can lead to cheesy results; for example, if the spinner board in your set of Twister is warped, when you attempt to spin that chintzy arrow, you may barely spin it to the next wedge on the decision wheel, which is irritating and completely eliminates the visceral fun of watching an arrow careering around the wheel. The most likely reason, though, may be the most insidious one: spinners seem childish and out of place in a "serious" board game.

In yet another layer of irony, it is this "guardianship of all that is good in gaming" that has both protected current games from being infected with old, horrible ideas (e.g., the "roll-and-move" mindlessness of Chutes/Snakes and Ladders) and prevented game designers from exploring old, not-so-awful ideas, like a spinner. As I type this, I can imagine a game designer creating a game that involves a default spinner that can be customized as you purchase wedge pieces to fit in the outer rim, reconfiguring the options that are randomly available. Couple this customizable spinner with the youthful delight of spinning something with all your might and you may have a game that combines a deck/bag/hand-building mechanic with a bit of childish fun. (I'm patenting this idea, by the way.)

Sadly, though, we do not find spinners in a lot of games, and I think this is because board game enthusiasts seem to favor games that they can readily dissociate from those awful roll-and-move days of their childhoods. I certainly understand this because I used to have an aversion to dice (traumatic memories of Risk!), poppers (Trouble!), BINGO, and even the luck of the draw (I'm talking about you, War and Uno!). However, as I look at those older games from a perspective shaped by years of Euro gaming, I wonder if enthusiasts have forgotten about the primal joy of pressing a popper, rolling handfuls of dice against another dice-chucker, and even the sheer elation of drawing the high card. This leads me back to the comparison between the fidget spinner and the game spinner; one is an intriguing, somewhat distracting fad that will fade; the other is an often derided and disregarded game mechanic that has lasted a long time. Why not ride the wave of a fad and bring back the game spinner in an entirely different way? Rise of Augustus brought back BINGO in my mind, so I think a Euro game can incorporate a fidget... er, game spinner.

What to Do If... You Want to Start a Work Gaming Group

For many of us, we spend most of our waking weekday hours at work. Whether it is a massive corporate high-rise building, a sprawling business or collegiate campus, or a tiny Mom-and-Pop shop, we pass more hours at our desks or workspaces than we do at our own homes. We eat lunch at work (and maybe even breakfast and dinner), share semi-superficial feelings and thoughts with cubemates and co-workers, and we talk more to people we tolerate than to people whom we love as family members and friends (unless you are blessed with true friends at work).

With all of that said, you might as well make the best of your time at work, especially during your lunch break, by starting a board game meetup in your office. It is an excellent way to connect with fellow employees, especially employees in other groups to whom you might not talk otherwise. When I have scheduled and led board game meetups at my company, I have had participants from different groups converge to play. Then, whenever I was required to work on a project involving cross-team collaboration, those social connections were already in place, which made the collaboration less awkward and much friendlier.

Here are my steps for establishing a periodic board game meetup during your lunch break. These steps worked for me, and they may work for you, particularly if you are decidedly introverted and/or shy.

What to do if you want to start a work gaming group:

1) Choose a neutral venue away from work activities

A lunch room or non-windy outdoor area is convenient, but a nearby restaurant or fast-food diner is a bit better because potential clients would not see the event (some offices are sensitive to this).

2) Write an email or calendar invitation and target your work friends

Be sure to announce the venue and whether people should bring games and their lunch. Be discreet with your invitation; send it only to a few people, at first. Encourage your friends to forward the invitation to other interested parties.

In addition, something I have done is attach a PDF or Word document of game rules to the calendar invitation or email. Most of the time, people cannot be bothered to read them, but that is fine; even the attempt to share the rules conveys a desire to include each invitee and minimize meeting downtime.

3) As the organizer, supply the games

You may have to shoulder the burden of bringing and conducting the games. For me, this is a challenge because I am fastidious with caring for my games (note: I sleeve ALL of my cards), so I try my best to suppress my compulsive tendencies for the sake of engendering a love for games in others. 

Of course, if you have a work friend who is also a gamer, discuss with that friend which games to bring. Choose games that can be played in the time you can allot for the session, including time to set up and put away. It is a lightening of the soul to have a fellow gamer leading a second table of games.

4) On the day of the meetup, plan to be the first to arrive

Set up your game immediately because setup can take a while. I recommend a five- to ten-minute lead time before the official start of the meetup. As a professional courtesy, you should check with your immediate supervisor to ensure that he or she approves of your exceeding the allotted lunch time period.

5) Do not start the game explanation until all expected attendees arrive

It can be frustrating if you have to restart your game explanation three or more times, so stall early arrivals by engaging them in some light conversation. To stall, engage everyone in chit-chat, or ask focused questions about their gaming experience, such as, "So, what kinds of board games have you played before?"

This may seem like I am overstating the obvious, but many people often feel the pressure to start teaching a game as soon as possible, only to have to explain it again and again. My advice is to declare the time when you are starting the explanation. For example, if the meetup was scheduled for a noon start, declare to others by email or through conversation that the rules explanation will start at 12:05 pm. If you did manage to send a rules PDF ahead of time, you may have mitigated the inconvenience of repeated explanations, but do not count on that; most of the time, people are too busy to read game rules.

6) When all have arrived, keep your board game explanation as brief as possible

Try your best to spend three to five minutes explaining any game. I advise practicing your rules explanation once or twice to yourself; it may seem overenthusiastic, but practice saves you from sharing the wrong information or missing key rules. Also, play a game by yourself once or twice to understand the rules better.

If the explanation becomes bogged down, just tell the players that you will start the game and everyone will play a practice round or two. In addition, if, despite your practice, you take more than five minutes to explain a game, you may be teaching the wrong game. Remember that you only have a certain amount of time; choose games that not only can be played during a lunch break, but can be explained during a lunch break WITH enough time to play.

7) As you are playing, be mindful of everyone's schedules

Some people have "hard stops," so have a wrap-up approach in mind if your game goes long or if you choose an overly-long game. For example, you may score a game one or two rounds early. If the game is involved, you could take a picture of the board and then reassemble it during a subsequent session.

8) After the event is done, send a follow-up email to get feedback from the players 

Involving them in improving future meetups ensures that there WILL be future meetups. Be careful of people who do not approach this seriously and joke about it; just ignore their half-baked advice. Likewise, do not take to heart overly critical feedback; though there may be truth in their feedback, try to weed out the somewhat inflammatory remarks.

9) Be sensitive and inclusive towards interested gamers; be tactfully respectful towards uninterested non-gamers

One thing I should mention is the danger of work-based gaming groups: you cannot actively exclude ANYONE without severely affecting workplace relations. Be prepared not only to invite many people, but also to invite people with whom you do not necessarily get along. This may be a personal sacrifice on your part because you have to relate well with your co-workers to ensure optimal teamwork. Conversely, if one or more people do not want to play games, make every effort to remove them from your correspondences so that their inboxes are not clogged with invitations. These non-gamers may be extremely nice people who are too busy or are just not interested in board games. Respect them by assuring them that you would like for them to join, but you fully understand that they cannot or do not want to join.

A lot of these steps are simply practical advice, but I find that it does help to read advice in text. The key thing is to keep the event light and fun, which may mean that the games you choose may not be your personal favorites. I keep several games in mind for lunchtime sessions -- games that are fast, pretty, and/or easy to teach. As your group is solidified, you can start introducing more difficult games. You may have to devise a way to preserve each player's hands and items (maybe in paper envelopes) and take pictures of the board, but multi-lunch sessions are doable. You may also convert non-gamers if you are patient and respectful. If anything, a work gaming group is NOT primarily about the games; it is about building work relationships, even friendships. If you have that mindset, your gaming sessions may turn out to be rewarding and more enjoyable than if you focused on the games first and foremost.

What to Do If... Your Game Group Disbands

Game groups are easy to form, but difficult to maintain. Sure, you can put out an ad or Facebook post to attract gaming enthusiasts; or you can round up people from your local church, Boy Scout trip, or neighborhood. You can invite casual players, experienced warriors, and even semi-interested neophytes. You can even harass family members to join the group. Indeed, assembling people is not an insurmountable challenge, but keeping a group together is wrought with obstacles, some of which are impossible to overcome. 

As I face the departure of a good friend and gaming comrade, I pondered not the obstacles, but the tactics for handling the sadness, fear, or even the unfounded, mournful anger of the disbanding of a gaming group. These tactics might be effective for you, even if the group had dissolved in a less than favorable manner. I do not necessarily have the guaranteed best tactics, so treat my article partly as a thought exercise and partly as a reflection. 

What to do if your gaming group disbands:

1) Address, but do not ignore, the feelings

Like any negative circumstance, acknowledge your emotions. Do not minimize or dismiss them, but confront them. This could mean simply to state to yourself that you are angry, sad, disappointed, or all three at the same time. I must state, though, that this does not mean to express every feeling, especially to those who are leaving or causing the group to disband. 

2) Think of the good times

As the group dissolves, remind yourself of the positive experiences you had. I recommend writing them down in a list. If it helps, think about every game you played with the group and actively conjure up memories you shared. You could even write one noteworthy experience on sticky notes and affix it to the game box. 

3a) (If relations are still friendly) Have a goodbye meeting

Prioritize one more meeting with the group as a whole. Choose a date, time, and venue for the meeting. I do not think it has to be a game meetup, but it should be a fun event. A bowling outing or a day hike would be fine; of course, a final game day with a favorite game would be wonderful. 

To preserve the moment, you may decide to create identical thick card stock plaques that list the best shared memories as a group that everyone can sign. A less pre-planned option could be for everyone to sign identical copies of an inexpensive game to keep as individual mementos. 

3b) (If the group breaks up acrimoniously) Write a final correspondence or post to encourage reconciliation and/or forgiveness

Often, the most arduous thing to do is to set things right. It can also be the most unpopular decision, but strive to close the group without sore feelings among the former members. This will most likely not salvage the group, so do not aim for that because that goal may be selfishly driven, and that is the worst reason to reconcile. Reconcile because it brings others up; that would be your last gift to the group.

4) Take your time forming a new group

For those who belong to multiple groups, this does not apply. However, for those who counted on that one group for your gaming fix, I recommend patience in forming a new group. This does depend on how long your group existed; the longer the group lasted, the longer you may need to take. Also, some people are more nostalgic than others; if you are nostalgic, take all the time you need. If you are not a nostalgic person, then do what you feel is best. 

These steps are simply my thoughts verbalized for you upon which to reflect. I realize that, for some, a gaming group is just for games -- it may not a group of people considered to be friends. I have seen these groups before; everyone is playing to satisfy a personal desire to play. I do not judge that negatively. For me, though, my game group is a group of good friends and soon-to-be good friends; I attach many strong feelings to that group. This is why I am trying to cope with the loss, and I hope my thoughts help you as you process what is happening. 

Rules Discussion: Using One Token to Track Multiple Game Elements

There is an intriguing little (for lack of a better word) mechanic I have observed in Eclipse and Glass Road. Honestly, it's neither a mechanic nor a rule, per se, but a nifty way of accounting for gained resources, and this design element is becoming more popular, as far as I can tell. In those two games, removing chits or tokens reveals new abilities or income. In Eclipse, as far as I have observed, if you deploy one of your cubes onto another part of the board, a higher income level is revealed, as if by deploying a worker you make more money. Something similar happens in Glass Road; by removing or "spending" certain resources, a glass piece or a brick piece is revealed, enabling you to building something or accumulate items. In both cases, what is happening is simple to understand: you are tracking income or accumulation in a clever way.

Let me explicitly state my point: as time has passed and modern games have been created on the backs of games before them, newer and more elegant ways of tracking your stuff have been introduced. In the past, tracking accumulation was fiddly: you had to maintain piles of tokens or you slid a dedicated counter down a scoring track of some kind. If you look back 10 or 15 years ago, you may notice that these "older" board games were like accounting spreadsheets in which had to balance every column by retaining piles of chits. This is apparent in Uwe Rosenberg's earlier games, such as Le Havre and Agricola; in both games, you tracked your stuff by keeping piles of... well, stuff.

However, a few years ago, Rosenberg created Glass Road, which is, in many ways, a huge refinement of those past games in one regard: instead of maintaining piles of junk, you simply turn a dial and slide one token representing each resource along the dial to indicate how much you had of each resource. This was a genius move and worthy of distinction because Rosenberg succeeded in instilling that beloved complexity into a game, yet streamlining the bookkeeping to a few deft moves of tokens and a dial. Brilliant!

There are numerous reasons why fiddly bookkeeping has given way to elegant tracking through subtraction. One reason is because, by moving a piece or a dial, you track two trends -- resource accumulation and revelation of a new level of play -- which is expeditious for gameplay. Another reason is because with game designers interweaving more systems, tracking those systems must also be more streamlined lest a game night devolve into so much cube-pushing and chit-moving that turns take twice as long as it takes to make decisions. Yet another reason to consider is that, frankly, including more material in a game makes it more expensive to manufacture and buy; by limiting the tokens and the chits, game costs stay relatively low without sacrificing complexity.

The odd irony is that even elegant tracking mechanisms can feel fiddly, which is why Eclipse indeed seems like an old game. Interestingly, Eclipse is not an "old" game, per se, though it did come out in 2011, which is kind of long in the tooth for board games. Eclipse was ahead of its time, though Eclipse represents that awkward period of transition when popular trends shift, early adopters struggle with those new trends, and then those trends become publicized to the extent that people understand them better. On the shoulders of such games as Eclipse, game designers may have discovered those novel ways of tracking resources, improving on the old designs.

Nowadays, I see more games using a method of tracking two or more items by simply moving one piece or one dial. Great Western Trail and Mombasa, which are both Alexander Pfister games, employ this approach to accumulation. In Mombasa, for example, when you explore a region of the board, you deploy a house piece representing a company's interest in that region; at the same time, if a coin space is revealed, then an end-game scoring bonus is definitely forthcoming. All it took to account for this was the game designer using the removal of that house piece as the bookkeeper for that end-game bonus instead of using a dedicated tracking dial or slider.

This is the bright future of board gaming with more complex games mitigating all that fiddliness with more elegant ways of keeping your books balanced by tracking two or more items with one element. In that way, even the bookkeeping itself is a game mechanic because you are moving pieces from one space to another whilst revealing a higher level of income, a new resource, or even a bonus to end-game scoring (see Mombasa). Any thoughts on that?