International Tabletop Day (ITTD) was created by the folks at Geek & Sundry in 2013 to celebrate the wonders of tabletop gaming and encourage gamers to support their local gaming stores. In the years that followed, International Tabletop Day has given gamers all over the world an excuse to spend all day at the table playing board games with their friends every year. We love Tabletop Day here at InnRoads and want to do everything we can to help get more people to the table together. So we want to give some advice for how you can have fun, introduce more people to the gaming hobby, and promote game stores near you at the same time.
While the internet loves its ‘top 10’ lists (we’re guilty of it too), it would seem like the natural framework for a collection of advice for an event birthed from web-based media. Technically, however, this isn’t that kind of list. Playing in a store versus playing with your buddies at home are two drastically different experiences with equally different advice. So to allow for this, we’re going to do a ‘top 5 times 2.’ It might not roll off the tongue as smoothly, but we hope it’ll help you have the best ITTD you can no matter where you’re spending it.
Playing at the Store
If you are among the fortunate folks who live within a reasonable distance of a participating game store, there are a lot of good reasons to make sure you stop by on Tabletop Day. It’s a great time for you, and it helps support the store so it can keep the doors open and continue to promote the hobby in your neighborhood.
1. Buy Stuff
Placing this one first and foremost because not only will you have the joy of taking home a new piece of shiny gaming gear, it also helps the store stay afloat and encourages them to continue to participate in Tabletop Day in years to come. This may feel like a big ask. The downside to games becoming deeper, longer events and component quality improving by leaps and bounds from the old Milton Bradley days is that the cost of getting them is growing. It’s getting harder to find room in tight budgets for $80-$100 miniature-filled, “dudes on a map” style games. But no one is here to tell you to buy one of those. It could be as small as a set of dice or a pack of sleeves for a game you already own. You just need to walk out with something. Stores put out money to get promotions from Geek & Sundry, they probably pay money for their own promotions in the form of signage, food, or other activities that try to get people into the store and buying games. We’ve seen a number of stores who used to participate in Tabletop Day stop doing so because they actually lost money on it. Yes, you will probably be able to get it cheaper online – but the value of a good game store is that they have knowledge of what’s on the market, can help you find games you may not have heard of, and provide a space for folks to game. It’s good if that store stays open, so make sure you help them do that, even if it’s in a small way.
2. Promote the Store
Much like the first piece of advice, this one fits into helping the long-term life of the store. Let me tell you a story. My wife and I moved into this area almost three years ago. For the longest time, I thought the closest game store was over forty minutes drive from us. That made going there to game prohibitive because, once I got there, I’d have maybe an hour before I had to head back home. It was only through a combination of Facebook and the International Tabletop Day site that I found another store that was just over twenty minutes drive. Literally cutting the commute time in half means I can get out there to play. The responses I get when talking about game stores can often be split into three camps. People who aren’t into board games who are astonished that stores focused entirely on tabletop gaming exist, gamers who wish they had access to a store, and gamers who have a wonderful game store that they go to each week who can’t stop saying how great it is. If you find yourself in the third camp, I promise you that there are folks in the other two who would love you to bring them behind the curtain to see the wonders that a well-run, local game store has for them. Get on social media or even just talk to people around you before, during, and after the event. Let them know that the store exists and you might help get that store new customers that will build its gaming community and keep those doors open.
3. Get to Know the Staff
Online sales will always beat independent game stores in terms of price. I could go through all of the costs of starting and running a game store, talk about how low the profit margin is, etc – but many people more knowledgeable than myself have already done that for me. The short version is that you have to work hard to own and operate a successful brick-and-mortar game store these days, and the primary selling point that a store will almost always have over online sales is its staff. A good store will hire staff that knows what is going on in the gaming world. If they don’t know off the top of their head, they have the tools and ability to find that out. A truly great store will have their staff up to date on popular trends, games folks might be looking for, and even have them demo popular games themselves so that they have first-hand knowledge of what the game plays like. Knowing the staff will help you know who to talk to about particular styles of gaming, allow you to tap into what they know, and will be a way to encourage them to keep doing an awesome job. Working at a game store is still a retail job, after all, and anyone who has worked in retail can tell you that it is often a thankless, drag of a job. Knowing and appreciating the people that work there will help lift them up and literally make everyone’s experience better.
4. Play Something You’ve Never Played Before
A unique part of going to an event like this at a store is that you’ll be able to see games you don’t have at home. Whether they are games that the store owner cracked open for a store demo copy, or somebody brought in their game from home to play with folks there for the event, you’ll probably get to try your hand at titles you’ve never seen before. This is a great chance to explore different types of games at no cost to you. Games are expensive, so blindly purchasing a game because it looks interesting is a risky venture. If you try it at a store on ITTD, the only downside is that you have a little less time to play games you’d enjoy more. For the longest time I thought trick-taking style card games weren’t my thing – and then I went to an event where I played Nyet. I would never have picked that game up browsing online, but after getting it to the table I instantly picked it up afterward.
5. Teach Something You Play All the Time
For the gaming hobby to thrive, it needs more gamers. Likewise, for your favorite game to get reprints and keep the attention of a world where hundreds of games are getting released each year, it needs people who are excited to play it. Teaching games is a skill, and you might be nervous about trying your hand at teaching strangers, but it gives you a chance to get that many more people playing a game you truly love. There was a point you didn’t know how to play your favorite game. Whether you researched it yourself or had someone teach it to you, you were introduced to something that gets you truly excited every time it hits the table. You have the chance at events like this to be the person that introduces someone else to their new favorite game by playing your favorite with them. The very definition of the win/win scenario.
Playing at Home
Whether there isn’t a game store near you, or you just really aren’t excited about the idea of big crowds and loud noises – there’s plenty of ways to celebrate ITTD at home. You can get your friends together to have a blast around some cardboard, while still supporting and even growing the gaming community near you.
1. Take Care of Your People
This should go without saying – but these folks are coming to your house to have a good time. It’s important to make sure that they’re taken care of, that there isn’t a lot of stress, and that they walk away with a positive feeling about how they just spent their day. You want to make sure you either have food and drinks on hand, or have a plan to get them later. Make room for breaks where people don’t feel like they’re just bouncing from game to game all day. Ensure that you have enough games so that there’s never a time where somebody that wants to be playing is off to the side waiting for a group to get done so they can actually be part of the fun. All of these may sound like simple things, but it’s the simple things that often get overlooked. It’s especially important if this is the one time of year you go all out for your gaming.
2. Think Through Game Selection
I’ve been a big proponent of making sure any game night, no matter how small, has the appropriate game selection for the people involved. This has gained even more importance to me as more people in the gaming community are having the discussion about accessibility in games. Gaming together should be about just that – gaming together. That means more than simply making sure you have your player counts covered and a variety of themes that people would find fun or interesting. Those are important – but there are also other things to consider. If you have someone coming to play that struggles with shaky hands, playing Jenga might make them feel awkward. People who are color blind, folks who can’t move around easily, all these things will keep people away from playing games they aren’t considered. Simple considerations for player count, theme, ability, and making sure players can see themselves represented in the game can go far in making your table welcoming to everyone.
3. Be Social With Your Media
Here’s a bit of overlap between home games and store games. The biggest cause of shock that I’ve seen when I start talking about board games with people unfamiliar with modern titles is when I describe what they’re like. When I tell people there are games where players are a couple whose relationship is falling apart as they try to make amends (…And Then We Held Hands), or when I set my fully painted copy of Blood Rage on the table, their minds are blown. Posting some pictures of you and your friends playing games that people have never even seen before will draw people in. At the very least, they’ll be asking what you were up to all day. We’re in the business of dismantling expectations of what gaming is like for people who only remember rage-inducing games of Monopoly with the family, and putting pictures, or even video, of what games can be will speak volumes. Plus – it’s a good way to remember the fun you’re having for a long time to come.
4. Understand Your Limits
It’s tempting to make this a big event. Tons of people. A big pile of games. Go all out for your once-a-year gaming marathon. However, if you want your guests to have fun and save your own peace of mind, you need to understand your limits and abide by them. If you’re living in a small apartment, playing games on a folding table, you probably shouldn’t have an open invitation for twenty or thirty people to bring their friends over to game at your place. If you go to bed early, declaring a twenty-four-hour marathon for the day is probably not a good idea, and I’d recommend avoiding Twilight Imperium unless you’re getting an early start. It’s better to have an amazing time with a few people playing a light game or two than to have a lavish event for everyone in the neighborhood that will drive you insane.
5. Get Help!
No matter what the size of your event – you’ll want somebody helping you put it all together. Even if you take the last tip to heart and have a just a small get-together in mind, it’s always better to have at least one extra pair of hands around to make everything run. Someone who can take care of the food, somebody who won’t mind running out for something that you need. Even just having someone there who can play host for a bit so that you can actually sit down and play without worrying about it yourself will do wonders to help you and everyone at your event have a great time. The more people involved that are comfortable sharing “host” responsibilities means the less that each one needs to devote their attention to. At the end of the day, everybody wants to dedicate as much of their time as possible to being at the table to play – and getting helpers makes it happen.
Whether you’re playing at home or heading out into the gaming world this International Tabletop Day, we hope this has given you some guidance on how to get the most out of your experience by having a ton of fun while also being an ambassador for this hobby we love.