Tabletop Gaming Review
Haynes manuals are classic texts helping generations of dads make faltering DIY repairs to the family car. New and of slightly greater interest to readers of this blog, we have Tabletop Gaming! Featuring guides on protecting the paintwork of your convertible Khorne battle chariot, keeping your latest DnD campaign running smoothly, and changing the headlights on your copy of Catan. No, wait, this is part of their novelty line… right?
Players: 1 (although feel free to read aloud to your friends)
Time: 4+ hours
Ages: 8+ (I don’t actually know this)
Designer Author: Matt Thrower
Publisher: Haynes
Well, there’s certainly nothing ‘novelty’ about the content at least. Author Matt Thrower, whose name you might recognise from numerous, excellent pieces of board game criticism over the years, or after blocking him on Twitter due to his appalling taste in puns, takes on the monumental task of condensing our hobby into a single hardback book. Where does one even start when faced with covering as broad a topic as Tabletop Gaming? At the beginning I suppose…
The book launches into the history of games, from knucklebones and 8,000 year old dice all the way up to Kingdom Death Monster two chapters later. It’s a whirlwind tour full of surprising stories that puts the modern hobby we know so well into context. There’s something new in those chapters for all but the most ardent board game history nerds.
Chapter 2 ends knee deep in the modern hobby and Matt swiftly pulls us under for a full baptism in Chapter 3. Here we get an answer to that question, of how on Earth one is supposed to coalesce the 10s of thousands of ‘modern’ games released since Catan was first settled in 1995. That answer is, of course, you can’t, and why would you want to? As hobbyists we can spend our lives submerged in this pool and never find the bottom. Matt sensibly ducks the reader under long enough to highlight some of the wonders on show but doesn’t stick around so long as to put anyone at risk of drowning.
Even the enthusiasts can find something interesting here, reminders of games that had slipped from your shelves into memory, new fields of gaming you’ve never really thought to explore. I’m almost entirely a board gamer nowadays, with a history in miniatures games, so sections on war gaming and RPGs were interesting glances into shadowy realms I’ve yet to explore for myself. At the very least, a hardened gamer will find much pleasure in arguing with how the game’s are organised!
As we emerge, still dripping, from Chapter 3, it is clear we have finished our tour of games themselves and are now into the practicalities – or should that be eccentricities? – of the hobby as a larger whole. In some ways it feels odd, then, to move from a chapter of exciting inspiration into a chapter that immediately leads you to wonder at how difficult it is going to be to get these games played. Of course, solo games and online play are important elements of the hobby, and for people outside of big cities these are very valuable things to find out about. But the presentation feels like these approaches to games are the rule rather than the exception that I would say they are. I feel the chapter needed a gentler introduction with advice on where one might expect to play physical games, rather than leaping into the alternatives just as new readers are excited to try the real thing.
At the risk of descending further into nitty gritty criticism, this chapter features a structural element that caught me out in a few places throughout the book: technical guides embedded in the main flow of the text. It contains guides to setting up and interpreting the interface of Brettspielwelt and Vassal, the online game engines. Similarly, Chapter 7 features a fairly thorough guide to painting. These detailed sections are certainly valuable, but really belonged outside of the main text as they really break the flow that is otherwise maintained wonderfully throughout.
As I say though, these are niggling criticisms of otherwise entertaining and informative prose. Once through the somewhat out of place 4th chapter, Tabletop Gaming gets back into its stride with a series of chapters bound to raise a smile to anyone’s lips. From the eccentricities of storage solutions, containing the exceptional phrase “in fact, it’s worth talking about ziplock bags and elastic bands in more detail,” to the incredible sights of upgraded game components and painting miniatures. If there’s one thing that tells a reader they are destined for a deep dive into this hobby it’s the thrill felt at the sight of a beautifully painted miniature or an awe-inspiring Lego Arkham Horror card organiser.
Pushing credibility to the limit, Chapter 8 is titled “Maths is fun”. It even features graphs. Yet it really is fun (I fear my own mathematical background is going to bias me here). Board games don’t function without some basic mathematics and this chapter takes you on a tour of interesting mathematical tricks to help you strategise, the unusual design decisions that have arisen from consideration of the mathematics, and how mathematical considerations affect the balance or the perceived balance and experience of players trying to enjoy a particular game. Far from a tedious maths lecture, this chapter really shows off the cool things happening in the background of games and makes for a really neat read.
Finally, we come to the real magic of tabletop games, that sets them apart from so much other media. That with only a pen and some paper, you can make your own. Matt never holds back from the challenge that this is, the effort it takes to go from those scribbled ideas to a published game. But the numerous pictures of prototypes in development and the weight of the previous 170 pages of games that all started out like this conspire to create a very inspiring chapter. Tabletop Gaming isn’t just a hobby that you consume, it’s one you can create too.
The question that remains then, is who is Tabletop Gaming for? What is the purpose of a Haynes manual on the subject? In line with many Haynes products, this would not unreasonably be targeted at the niche audience of passionate tabletop gamers, i.e. us. In an amusing review copy snafu, I was initially sent a copy of their Douglas A-1 Skyraider book, which I can’t quite imagine featuring prominently on Waterstones’ shelves, and it is easy to picture a book for gamers belonging in the same enthusiasts role. But whereas Aunt Marge is unlikely to find the bombing capabilities of the Douglas appealing, Tabletop Games (if not necessarily in their modern form) hold a personal association for almost everyone. An association that might well get passers by to pick up a book with such an exciting a panoply of gaming components adorning it’s cover as Tabletop Gaming, even if only with a wry smile. But that there is half the battle and makes Tabletop Gaming a book with a much broader audience than, I suspect, you and I.
Matt directly identifies this in the introduction. Tabletop Gaming is a book intended to inspire. To show the reader the wider world of tabletop gaming, to perhaps counter their assumptions, or make a gamer excited to try something outside of their particular niche. In that it absolutely succeeds. Tabletop Gaming is a real showcase of this hobby. But the breadth of the subject matter on hand means that only limited depth can be explored and that leaves passionate and knowledgeable members of the community with little new to find here. In my case, my deeper knowledge doesn’t extend to RPGs and war games, and so there was still plenty of stuff in here for me to discover. That might not be so true for gamers with a broader base of experience.
Tabletop Gaming fills a unique space on bookshelves. It is very well written, impressively comprehensive and really rises to the immense challenge it set itself with that title. The number of pun-based subtitles is really something to behold too. I don’t think any book of this form could ever keep the varied tastes and enthusiasms of all hardened gamers satisfied, and so wisely aimed itself at a broader slice of the population. I hope that it finds its way into the hands of the gaming curious and inspires them to explore further. We’ve got a big pool here after all, there’s space for everyone.
Rating: Booked In
Our copy of Tabletop Gaming was provided for review by Haynes Publishing.
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