On of my gaming buddies, who we’ll just call Tanktop to protect his identity, constantly insists on foisting these third tier, bargain basement games on us and sometimes the only way I can step up and save our group from squandering its limited gaming time on junk like RACER KNIGHTS OF FALCONUS or the almost unplayable CIRCUS IMPERIUM is to simply crack jokes through the whole affair until Tanktop decides that he’s had enough of my big mouth and we move on to something better.

What’s even worse than this situation, where at least the safety of mob mentality is on your side, is when you’re the only one who’s in abject misery when you should be having fun. The first time I played THE SCEPTER OF ZAVANDOR I was in this situation and despite my best efforts to enjoy it and be a good sport about playing a game I was not enjoying in the least, the mind-numbingly lame and endless series of gem auctions wound up nearly killing all enthusiasm I have for the hobby.

And this was a five hour long game that by all accounts should have been a two and half hour long one. And it was being played by five human calculators and me- and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to amortize the value of magic dust over four turns to determine the relative auction value of a ruby and how that would affect my opportunity to claim the frog statue. Or whatever it was. I suppose that’s what I get for randomly joining a group at a game event. I would have gladly packed it up and joined my friends over at the FURY OF DRACULA table, but the majority had spoken and I was trapped.

So what do you do when a game is tanking? Sometimes, you just have to cut it loose. It’s a terrible thing, but you can almost always see a game start the death spiral in the first turn or two- it’s actually pretty rare for a game to completely crash, burn, and roll over into the swamp once you get past the halfway mark. By then, at least opinions are more fully formed and that feeling of total abortion isn’t quite so prevalent and if everybody does hate it, at least it’s a rational kind of hatred that at least makes sense.

But sometimes a game just doesn’t click, the players aren’t really on board with it from the beginning, it’s the wrong type of game for the crowd you’re playing with, or the game really, honestly, and truly sucks and the thought of another turn makes you consider selling off all your games and never speaking of the hobby again. My general policy is that if nobody’s having fun, then it’s time to pack it up and move on to something else. Even if I’m really digging a game at least on a mechanical level or in a kind of trainwreck fascination way- it’s about the consensual group having a good time, not just one person. And some games just aren’t worth finishing- even if you’re trying to justify paying a ridiculous out-of-print aftermarket price for it on Ebay.

I’d like to say that I give all games a fair chance and I’ll almost always play them through to the end if The Mob is willing to go for it, but that’s just not the case. I’ve personally pulled the plug on a number of games that I’d just as soon never fully experience to the fullest flowering of their miserable existences- TYRANNO EX, THE WILLOW GAME, MONSTER MAYHEM, CHILDREN OF FIRE, FORTUNE 500, BEOWULF, WARRIORS, HIDDEN CONFLICT, and many others over the years that I don’t care to remember. A veritable litany of damned games, relegated to a limbo in which their winners were never decided and even the dignity of a tie result is a remote impossibility for all eternity.

So this week, at one of my regular game groups, we’ll likely see a new game or two among the selections and with every new game comes the lingering possibility that we’re going to get a couple of turns in before the pitchforks and torches are brought to bear on it. And this group in particular is particularly ruthless (it includes dice-throwing Frank, Tanktop, and a Blackberry addict)- I would have played BLACKBEARD all the way through but between the beers and jeers it could never have survived in that hypercritical environment.

I’m hoping that we can make it through whatever new game or games we play because the shame, embarrassment, and heartbreak that follows when a game tanks is almost too much to bear- if it’s your game, you feel like you’ve wasted your money and if it’s somebody else’s, you feel like they’ve wasted your time. It almost makes you want to give up on the hobby and take the easy way out- to hell with the board games, let’s play some ROCK BAND!

Questions or comments for Michael? Send them along to gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com .

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