Tabletop: Analog Game Design
In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds — tabletop game designers, digital game designers, and game studies academics — talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms.
Even as the digital revolution has progressed apace, tabletop games — board and card, roleplaying and miniatures — have grown and attracted many new fans. Indeed, in tabletop gaming there is far more diversity and design innovation than in digital games, and tabletop games have become of increasing interest to videogame designers, game design instructors, and people who study games of all forms. In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds — tabletop game designers, digital game designers, and game studies academics — talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17613/ptka7-a3825
The Greatest Gift, by Ray Mazza
The Greatest Gift (as written about in Tabletop), is a card game about figuring out what the other players would most like out of real life, and offering these things as gifts. Players score when their offered gifts are chosen above the others. The Greatest Gift is interesting and fun because:
- In order to advance, players must give the best gifts to each other.
- Learn that some players genuinely would rather have a pair of roller skates than their very own island.
- “Promise” cards prompt players to interact in entertaining or emotional ways that extend beyond the borders of normal games.
- Players get to learn the values of their friends in difficult or moral decisions.
- Many cards tailored towards sarcastic and humor-driven players.