On Lawns and Lustrous Prismnecks

Doesn't it always seem like definitions become useless as soon as you write them down? That's the thought running through my head right now. Yesterday I was thinking about what tonight's article should be about. I knew I wanted it to be something discussing the games I played this week. I like the idea of having that as a running column. But as I went over the list, I couldn't find anything I really wanted to write about: Monday I played Risk Legacy, but I've already got an article about that in the pipeline; Tuesday I participated in an Android: Netrunner tournament (placed fifth) but my relationship with that game is too complex to write about in so little time; Friday I played Bluff and We Didn't Playtest This: Legacies, but neither struck me as article-worthy and I lost at both and I'm a sore loser.

Then I remembered two games that really did make an impression on me. First was Kubb, a lawn game about throwing sticks to knock over other sticks. The second was Spaceteam, a multiplayer Android and iOS game about shouting technobabble like the bridge crew on Star Trek. Both were really interesting and I felt that I could write something worthwhile about each of them.

 However, writing about the games presented a problem: neither fit the definition of tabletop games that I had set out for myself on Tuesday. Remember, I stated that “A tabletop game is any game with primarily physical components and an emphasis on mental skill.” Uh oh. Only four days had passed and I was already drifting away from the stated goal of this blog. But I decided that rather than ignore the effect these games had on me, I should look at how they fly in the face of my assumptions about tabletop gaming.

Define Your Terms

I know I said that today's post would be the first article in my Top Ten series, but I realized that while I wrote a lot about tabletop games in my first post, I didn't do a great job of explaining what I meant by the term. I did give a brief, loose definition, but I'd like our foundation to be a bit more solid before we get too deep into this thing. After all, I'm an academic at heart and the first rule of making an argument in academia is “define your terms.”