Tabletop: Gaming Unplugged

Goal

With the growing popularity of tabletop gaming, people outside of its usual circles are growing interested in the hobby. However, the growing popularity has also led to a heavily saturated market, some great for beginners, and others, a terrifying scare with the complexity of their rules. Even when sticking to simple games, different games appeal to different people.

So how do people know where to start? That's why I decided to make this introduction to modern tabletop games that includes an explanation of some different types of games, a handful of suggestions that are great gateway games, and a some tips and tricks for both old and new players.

Highlights

Organization

I was able to quickly come up with a way to arrange all the information in the "Games" section so that it is visually grouped by relation. The format also flexible enough to work well with all twenty games. I was also able to distill what information the reader would be most interested in at a first glance.

Photos

Though I had to go back and retake all my photos, it was well worth it. The new compositions differentiated each spread of the "Games" section, making an otherwise monotonous section into something far more interesting. I was also able to take what I learned from my first round of portraits and apply it to my second round, so even the composition of the photos improved, not just the lighting.

Challenges

Games

There are a lot of great games out there. Even after figuring out ways to limit what games to include, it was still a struggle to constrain my selection to a manageable twenty games. Not only was did I have to limit how many games to include, I also had to try to cover a wide range of genres with the limited pool. My wall ended up covered in post-its trying to figure out that coverage.

Genres

There is no official categorization for games. Even after speaking with a game design major, the president of the Mason Board Game Club, and consulting multiple websites, it was still difficult to come up with a comprehensive list to categorize the games into.

Photos

Though tabletop games are often played sitting down, people can get very animated while playing. Combine this with the fact that the games are played indoors, lighting was a huge concern.
As for the games themselves, I ended up having to retake all the photos with a different composition, which was a huge problem with the two and a half month time limit for this project, especially since the first round of photos was taken in locations two hours away.

Writing

Even after three rounds of proof-reading, I was still finding typos. Not only that, I had to put myself in the mind of someone who knew very little about tabletop. I couldn't use common jargon or assume the reader knew certain facts. I also had to make the topic sound like it wasn't just for the "nerds" and "geeks" that are the stereotypical target audience for a book like this.

The title alone was a long struggle. Many good names were already used by tabletop-related channels. On top of that, I had to come up with a title that was both explanatory and interesting. While People, Meet Meeple was interesting and relative, it was also confusing to those outside of the community (and possibly many in the community as well).

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