My son had
some friends over for a couple of hours the other week. There were three of them, and they struggled
for something to do. They ended up
playing video games, but I got the sense from the conversation that it really
didn’t work very well. I asked him why
they hadn’t tried board games, and he expressed reservations about his ability
to teach the games he loves. He does
tend to like games that are fairly complicated, and hard to teach.
I took a few
minutes over the weekend and looked at my collection database. I keep my inventory on BoardGameGeek, and the
data can be downloaded into an Excel file.
Someone had published an Excel tool for sorting and filtering a collection,
which I have personalized. Dumping my
collection download into this tool lets me find games for the right
setting. In this case, I used the
filtering to flag my collection for games that are good with at least two players (He
normally has only one friend over at a time), play in an hour or less and are
of low complexity. I sprinkled in a few
of his favorite games, flagging those I know he could teach, even if they don’t
quite fit the criteria. I then filtered
on the flag I had set, and viola! We
have a set of game that might work. I
gave him the list, and suggested he go to the “game room” (the portion of the
basement where my hobby lives) and look them over. He could then mark the games he wants to
learn.
[Okay, I
realize that some of you can’t concentrate on reading this now due to that
incredibly loud Nerd Alert that is going off in your head. Yes, I have an Excel filtering tool for my
collection. Those of you that know me
are either saying, “That’s awesome!” (Laundress Sue) or “Oh no – now I’ll have
to explain why I let this guy near my kids!” Those of you who don’t know me are
trying to see if I have another blog games and OCD. (What did you think this
is?) Breathe deeply. Ready?]
My son was actually
glad to have it. Or he was buttering me up. Not really sure, but I
digress. Another version of the list can be found here. My question
to you is, “How many of these games have you played? Heard of?”
There is another world out there waiting to entertain you, and it doesn’t
exist in Vegas or on riverboats. It can
be in your house, at your calling, ready to build friends, families and memories.
It’s
Your Turn
