We are currently in what I would call a renaissance of tabletop gaming. Tabletop gaming has hit a huge surge of popularity, bringing people together in an age that has been defined by online interaction. This demand has been met by a seemingly endless supply of games to choose from and that can be intimidating to walk into. “What game should I play?” can be a daunting question when you approach the game shelf at your local game shop or bookstore. Even veterans of tabletop looking for something new to try out can struggle at this. Publisher Adams Media and Bebo of Be Bold Games aims to assist in this venture with “The Everything Tabletop Games Book: From Settlers of Catan to Pandemic, Find Out Which Games to Choose, How to Play, and the Best Ways to Win!” Inside is a reference guide from party card games to the hours-long war Games and everything in between. As a long-time tabletop fan, I found this book to be valuable in finding more games to try out based on games that I knew I already liked.
To start off, “The Everything Tabletop Games Book” does its best to include games that are extremely popular alongside games that many may not have heard of. This makes it easy to say “Oh hey, I’ve played that and it was fun. This other game is similar? Let’s give it a shot!” To make this process even easier the book separates games into respective genres, and honestly, until I read this book I didn’t know there were so many! It is a thorough breakdown that also explains what each genre means.
Before you get to the games, the authors kindly added in a brief chapter about tabletop games, the culture surrounding them, great times to play games, and even how to choose a game appropriately for any given situation. It also encourages you to visit and support your local game store where the staff are more likely to have knowledge about the games and have a better selection of games than what you would find at Target or Walmart. This chapter is definitely more for those new to the scene but it can be a handy reminder for everyone else too.
After that chapter is games, so many games! From contemporary classics to deck builders to tabletop RPGs, they are all here! Each type of game is introduced with a page detailing what makes these games unique from other games and then also lists each game and the page number you can find them.
The individual games themselves are offered with quite a bit of information. They may have been serious when including “Everything” in the title. Each game has a difficulty rating, number of players, age recommendation, and how long they take to play. A quick summary of the goal of each game is displayed just underneath. That is followed by a much more in-depth summary of how to play. These summaries are comprehensive and in many cases go deep enough to warrant multiple pages. Rather than trying to squish every game onto a single page, bigger games require more explanation and they didn’t shy from giving those games the space they needed. Side margins offer “When to Play” guides along with the release date, publisher, and designer of each game. It is in the margins where you’ll also find if the game has expansions, fun facts, and other tidbits.
What is missing, though, is more visual references for each game. Even just the box art would have been nice. Especially if you decide to go out and buy a game, knowing what the game looks like makes finding it quite a bit easier rather than just a name. This is also unfortunate as the art of a game is such a big part of the experience. When pictures are present, they are well composed and printed in full color, a nice contrast to the white and black with color borders of the rest of the book.
“The Everything Tabletop Games Book” is more than a fun coffee table book for guests to peruse, it’s a very useful guide that has a lot to offer. There is certainly something for everyone in the world of tabletop gaming. The lack of more visual references to the games is unfortunate but don’t let that stop you from picking up this book, especially if you want to expand your tabletop horizons and knowledge.
Love Tabletop RPGs and wanna up your game in creating fun and interesting character backstories? Check out my review for The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide and The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide!
A copy of the book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of review. Find out more on the official listing.
