Things We Think About Games

This is a book about games by people who design and play them. The bulk of the book consists of 101 short observations on games by the authors, along with 26 more observations contributed by others. These observations are either about playing games or designing them. As the foreward by Robin Laws points out, some of them will seem obvious and some of them will seem wrong. I'd add that some of them would make for good entries in a "Miss Manners Guide to Gaming."

This book is worth reading, and it won't take you very long to do so. Unfortunately, that's because in many cases a page consists of only a single sentence, and averages about a paragraph per page for a book that's only around 150 pages long. That's unfortunate because the book costs $20. The fact that it costs $20 is unfortunate because it really is worth reading.

I'd suggest buying it as a gaming group and passing it around. Perhaps adding your own comments into the large amount of white space available on most pages.

I'll leave you with two of my favorite entries, and also two of the shortest:

44: If you want to play again, you should probably not act like a fuckwit.
45: If you don't want to play again, still do not act like a fuckwit.