4 Tips to get people to play your damn game

Getting people to play the game you want is a bit of an awkward topic, in that it implies that you’re an insensitive bully who doesn’t care about anyone else at the table and just wants to fulfill their own selfish desires.

Let’s start there: it really is okay to have strong opinions about what game you want to play and do your best to get others to play it. At the same time, what’s almost too obvious to say (but I’ll say it anyway) is that manipulating or pressuring people to play games they don’t want to play is obnoxious and counterproductive – unless you’re a sociopath, you probably won’t enjoy playing a game that no one else is enjoying.

So when I say that it’s okay to do your best to get others to play your game, I don’t mean not taking no for an answer, or trying to get someone who only likes filler games to play Twilight Imperium. Once you get a no from someone you should (of course) shut the hell up. In fact, getting a flat no is useful – you don’t have to waste your time asking that person any more.

Assuming that we all get the notion that we’re only asking people who might reasonably be interested in playing our game, and that we don’t bug anyone who’s made it clear that they’re not interested, here’s what’s been most successful for me in getting games to the table:

Arrange it in advance

This is again obvious, but I’m amazed by people who complain they can’t get others to play their games who wait until the moment someone shows up to game night to ask them. Now, sometimes a game group doesn’t have a Facebook/Meetup group or text thread to talk about these things (in which case see below), but if it does, doing this probably triples the chance of getting a game to the table.

For one thing, if you don’t do this, somebody else usually will, in which case your input goes down to zero. If your group arranges games in advance but other games are always chosen over your idea, honest feedback is called for – “We’ve played dudes on a map games four weeks in a row – is it possible we can play a heavy euro like Underwater Cities this time?”

Asking without beating around the bush is more likely to get you an honest answer – in the above example people will usually either say yes, or that they don’t like heavy euros, in which case your issue is your group isn’t a match for your tastes.

In that case, go find another group. Don’t try to cajole or guilt them into playing the heavy euro unless they genuinely would enjoy it. Trying to repeatedly jam a square peg into a round hole regarding board game tastes will make you and your group miserable, and yet people do this all the time. If everyone always gives a flat no to you, then find people who like your style of games. You’ll be happier driving an hour to some faraway group than suffering through games you don’t like.

Get there early and have it set up when people arrive

This is a classic technique of a game bully, one that I heard ridiculed extensively on the Dice Tower, but I’m here to tell you it works, especially when your group doesn’t arrange games in advance. Again, it doesn’t work to try to get people to do something they don’t want to do. But if you know the group enjoys conflict games, having Blood Rage set up when people arrive and ask if people would like to play is very likely to get the job done.

I’ve learned this one the hard way. I have no compunctions about asking people to play my game, but I never want to be ‘that guy’ who’s pressuring people, so I’ll show up with five different euros and say, “Well I brought Underwater Cities, and the Voyages of Marco Polo, and A Feast for Odin, and Carpe Diem – do any of those sound interesting to you?”

This causes people to go into a think and give a sort of wishy washy answer as they sort out their mood, their opinion on each of those games, and rack their brains about which one they like best. You rarely get an answer you’re looking for, like “I like Marco Polo best – let’s play that one!” And even if you do, someone else will say, “I like Carpe Diem a little bit more than Marco Polo, to be honest,” and now you don’t know what the hell to do without bossing people around.

The lesson is that if you invite a sea of opinions, you’ll get a sea of opinions, which won’t help you get a game played. It will get you that half hour of wishy washy waffling from those too polite to give strong opinions or contradictory notions from those more forthcoming. Instead of playing a game, you’ll stand there awkwardly for the first part of the evening.

After watching me do this a couple of times, a wise old man whose name I can’t recall took me aside at the beginning of the night and said “Tony, look. You’ve got some good games. Choose one, set it up, and ask people to play it.”

I followed his advice and from then on I played the game I was most interested in playing almost every night, without a long discussion. Those that weren’t interested in playing that game said so. Those that were jumped in.

To repeat the obvious, again, if you don’t get enough players for the game you want, be prepared to toss aside the game you brought without compunction and jump into something else.

Come prepared to give a great teach

It’s not enough to get people to play your game – if you want people to play your games in the future, you want to ensure they have a good time. The best way to do this is be masterful in teaching the game.
If it’s a game you’ve played before, if you haven’t played it in a while, this means re-rereading the rules or watching a playthrough.

If you haven’t played the game yet yourself, then the bar is even higher – you not only need to have read the rules, you need to have read them multiple times, watched videos, put it on the table and played a couple of sample turns by yourself etc., until you could pass a test on the thing. The point is to think through the game enough to see what ambiguities show up and get them answered and down cold for yourself for when people ask those questions on game night.

I’m not kidding. Watching people flounder through teaching a game because they don’t really know it yet is painful, and it’s the best way to ensure people stay away from the game you bring next week. The implied contract is this: you play the game I brought, and I’ll do my very best to ensure you have a good time.

And if you’re arranging the game in advance, you have a teaching opportunity there as well – I always put a link on a Facebook group or whatever to the best tutorial video available for that game.

Go to conventions

This is the most reliable way to play something you want to play bar none. If six people show up to your game night, you might not get to play what you want. If a thousand people are in the game room of a convention, it will be hard not to find people playing a game you love.

For those who don’t attend game conventions, it’s usually about time, and to a lesser extent, money. I can’t say much about this, other than to say it’s a matter of misplaced priorities. My co-host on Two Wood for a Wheat, Pat Flannery, complains about not getting to play the games he loves, and yet he’s never made the time to go to a game convention.

Sure, he has a faraway girlfriend he loves to spend his vacations with, and a demanding public service job that saves lives that’s hard to get away from, but hey, board games. Ditching that job would allow him to read rulebooks and get to conventions a thousand times easier, and if he was an unemployed loser, the girlfriend thing would also sort itself out. Everything would fall into place – he just hasn’t seen it yet.