July 12th, 2009 by Chris Eng
I managed to spend three consecutive days this week gaming. Tabletop gaming, by which I mean board games, card games and roleplaying games (or ‘RPGs’). You know—dice rolling, good times. What you may not have known is that by playing D&D and throwing those funny dice all those years (assuming you have been), you were contributing to the welfare of the planet. It’s true. There are several reasons why, but let’s start with the obvious one:
1) Tabletop games don’t use electricity. You don’t need to plug in your D&D books or your Monopoly board. You don’t need to hook them up to the TV (unless you’re playing Scene It or one of those other DVD games, but we’ll put those aside) and you don’t need to have anything in order to play them except for friends and enough light to see by. They are, in most regards, an environmentally sound choice. In comparison, computer video games suck power from the CPU and monitor, and console games need a TV and video game system. For that matter, consoles also often suck power even when they aren’t turned on (not a lot, but consider how many consoles are plugged in around the world right this minute). And what are you going to do if the power cuts out and you’re in the middle of an adventure? If you’re playing a console/PC game, probably curse loudly and start yelling about the fact that the last save point was over a half hour ago. If you’re playing tabletop, grab some candles and keep going.
2) Tabletop games are social. “But,” the Halo fans splutter, “video games are social!” Yes, some of them are. MMOs, in particular, lend themselves quite well to social events, like raids—but you’re still talking about voice chatting, not actual face-to-face interaction. And even when things get out of control in a D&D game (which I’ve seen happen), you generally don’t say things to people in front of you that you might to someone over your headset. For proof of this, please refer to John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Having a 13 year-old boy yell “faggot” over and over at you during literally any given Xbox Live game isn’t socializing, no matter what you say. In the latest episode of THAC0 (a entertaining gaming and geek culture podcast to which I listen on a regular basis), they discussed their reasons for tabletop gaming and the most quoted reason was their social aspect. Roleplaying is collaborative storytelling—it’s necessarily social—and since the limits on what your character can do are literally the limits of your imagination, you are automatically assured of more options than any MMO out there.
3) Tabletop games encourage literacy. Roleplaying games sure do. What, you’re telling me you’re gonna play D&D without being able to read? You can’t—the two go hand-in-hand. For this reason, RPGs are great for kids with learning disabilities. They might not want to read generally because of the amount of work involved, but if you’re simultaneously encouraging their imagination through gaming, it gives them added incentive to push through the rulebooks. This, in turn, is imparting necessary skills to kids who might otherwise gloss over them.
4) Tabletop gaming encourages cognitive thinking. Strategy is a huge part of board games. C’mon—chess? It’s nothing but strategy. People spend their entire lives focused on developing that one new chess strategy nobody else has ever thought of. I’m not sure doing that is particularly healthy, but strategic thought, problem solving and thinking outside the box are more skills that can’t necessarily be taught but can certainly be fostered via gaming. RPGs also teach those skills, but in a less-structured way. While chess has very rigidly defined rules about how any of the pieces might move in a given situation, RPGs don’t—you solve a problem with the equipment your character has on-hand and whatever plan seems most likely for them to follow. Group strategizing in RPGs can actually be pretty time-consuming overall, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun—taking time to plan and then watching how your plan simultaneously comes together and goes awry is one of the principal pleasures of the hobby.
5) Tabletop gaming encourages concentration. I learned how to paint lead miniatures this week. Somehow, over the years, this became one of those quintessentially geeky areas of expertise that I never managed to pick up. To be fair, when I was a kid, I tried it, but since I didn’t have anyone to teach me even the most basic steps, my minis ended up looking like glazed shite and I stopped shortly after I started. This time around, I had an awesome instructor in my friend Neil, who paints regularly. As you can see, the results were much more satisfactory:
Yeah, the picture is kind of washed out, but you get a sense of it. This particular mini took me five hours to paint. Most professional painters (or ones who seriously pursue it as a hobby, anyway) will spend much longer than that on a single figure. It’s a long time committment on a tiny scale and it forces you to both look at the details and to pull back to see how it looks from a distance. It definitely promotes concentration and (maybe surprisingly) is quite relaxing.
6) Dollar for dollar, tabletop games give better value. A copy of Arkham Horror may cost the same as one of Prototype (for any given system), but I pretty much guarantee you’ll get better value from Arkham. Assuming you enjoy the game and treat the pieces with respect, it will last you quite possibly the rest of your life. Your new video game will last you until one of a few things happens: maybe you’ll get bored of it, maybe you’ll plough through it in epic time and not look at it again, maybe your system will become obsolete. Yes, you can absolutely get bored of tabletop games, but the well-designed ones stand the test of time. If I asked you to play a hit video game from twenty years ago and tell me how it stacks up to a next gen console release, what do you think you’d say? Sure, I play old video games, but I’m ancient (in video gaming terms) so I have nostalgia for Wizard of Wor and Infocom. But when gaming nostalgia requires that you either save every single console system you’ve ever owned (which can take up a ludicrous amount of space) or, in the case of computer games, that you continue to download patches so that you can play older games on newer OSes, it becomes a chore and starts requiring an outlay or either time or storage space. Even downloading ROMs for your favourite games requires that you update your software on a semi-regular basis. Scrabble, on the other hand, takes up exactly the same amount of space it always has and is maintenance-free.
Yeah, tabletop games have their drawbacks. Board game boards are made from carboard and many of them contain an ASSLOAD of plastic pieces; roleplaying books are made from paper (and hence dead trees). But nothing is cost-free. I mean, if you want a gaming experience with no environmental drawbacks, you could sit around with your friends in the dark and play “What Number Am I Thinking Of?”, but the replay value is poor and the next time Gaming Night rolls around your friends will just conveniently forget to invite you. If you are genuinely concerned about the pieces and packaging, though, I recommend you check out Cheapass Games. Hell, listen to their production strategy:
“Cheapass Games come with the bare essentials: boards, cards, and rulebooks. If you need anything else, we’ll tell you. And it’s probably something you can scrounge from a game you already own, or buy at a hobby store for less than “they” are charging you for it. Heck, if you need to, you can even buy the parts from us. And once you’ve assembled your collection of generic small parts, you can use them for every new Cheapass Game. We’ve standardized our designs so your gaming toolbox will last.”
And their games are fun. ‘Kill Dr. Lucky’, their flagship game, has easily as much replay value as anything in the $30+ price range, yet comes to around $10. Like their name says: cheapass, and hence better value.
I’m not going to tell you which tabletop games are the best—everyone out there has different tastes and there are games to cater to all of them—but I will encourage you to go down to your local games shop (most of which keep playable demo copies of the most popular and fun games) and try out something new. Because if we all work together, tabletop gaming will be on its way to saving the world… one die roll at a time.
While I was out GMing my campaign of Call of Cthulhu last night, Carla took an hour and picked a big ol’ tub of fat blackberries, which were immediately frozen and told to wait for the day (soon, blackberries, soon) when they will be turned into delicious smoothies. Lest you think Carla’s evening was more productive than mine, however, it should be noted I nearly killed two of the party members and left the entire group wondering whether or not they’d started a race riot in 1920s Harlem. So, you know, we were both productive.
And following hot on the heels of my little rant on IKEA a couple of days back were two news stories about the box chain on 
I love IKEA. Love it. And putting aside any discussion of my relationship to big box shopping for another day (which I do intend to explore in-depth in the future), I have always appreciated IKEA’s general attitude, as well as their meatballs.
