Realized my game group was just playing the same three games because nobody wanted to learn new rules

I was at my buddy's place in Arlington last Saturday and we pulled out Settlers of Catan for the 20th time in a row. Halfway through the game, our friend Sarah just put her cards down and said 'I can't do this again.' It hit me that we were all bored but nobody wanted to be the one to suggest something different. So I brought out a random game from my closet, Sushi Go Party, and we played three rounds of it before anyone even checked their phone. Anyone else had a group stuck in a rut like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

fionaa351mo ago

Well I actually see it a little differently from most people here. I think there's something really nice about having a few games you know really well, where you don't have to think about rules and can just talk and catch up with friends. Learning a new game takes energy and sometimes you just want to relax. Sushi Go Party is a good game but I've seen groups where one person pushes something new every single time and it actually makes people not want to come to game night anymore. Maybe the real problem in your group wasn't the games themselves but that nobody was saying what they actually wanted to do. I've been in groups where we rotate through the same five games for months and everyone is perfectly happy because we're mostly there for the company, not the novelty.

milap351mo ago

fionaa35 you make a good point about people wanting to relax instead of learning new rules all the time. For my group, the trick was finding games that are as simple as the old ones but feel different enough. Something like Codenames or The Crew worked well because the rules fit on one page but the games feel fresh each time. We also started letting whoever brought the game teach it in under two minutes, and that kept people from getting annoyed. Sushi Go Party was actually our gateway game too, now we have a rotating set of about ten simple games that everyone likes.