Friday Night Shots – Friendship Killing Games

It’s another Friday and welcome to the bar!

Funny how nobody else seems to be in here, but it is raining out there pretty good.

Always happy to have just my friends in the bar with me, hanging out on a Friday night.

Who needs customers?

It’s getting a bit warmer, and maybe the sun will come out soon?

Not for almost a week, at least up here.

Let me pour you a drink and we can talk about destroying friendships…I mean board games.

What prompted this topic?

I was looking at Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”) the other day and saw a tweet from Renegade Game Studios about how their new edition of the classic game Diplomacy was showing up on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.

I thought to myself “self, you really should stop talking to yourself in the third person.”

But I also thought to myself “wow, aren’t those casual gamers in for a surprise!”

Diplomacy is well-known as a friendship-killing game, because of all the backstabbing and betrayal.

You are Germany and you convince your friend who is playing Austria to help you invade Russia. Then as they are moving into Russia, you slam your forces into Austria instead and take the victory!

(Totally made up scenario, I don’t even know how to play Diplomacy).

Your friend gets super-pissed off and then stops inviting you out for beers and ghosts your texts.

If it’s a work buddy, they start telling your boss that you’re actually watching Ardwulf videos when you’re supposed to be working.

Things deteriorate from there.

I love that Renegade is making their games more available to the general public, and at least it’s not Target, but still.

How many people who might kind of be interested in games will innocently pick this game up and then subject their family to it?

Think of the children!

Ok, it’s doubtful that somebody like that will actually understand the game well enough to reach that point, but still…

It did make me wonder if there are any other games that are potential friendship-killers, or games that could result in a feud that lasts for generations between the Hatfields and McCoys?

I know that some people can be irritated when you kill off the monster in Gloomhaven that they have been pecking away at for a while.

I guess cooperative games can be like that if your friend is an Alpha Gamer and doesn’t stop even when you’ve told them to numerous times.

Though I would think you just don’t play cooperative games with them anymore.

You don’t kick them to the curb.

Most games don’t really have that issue.

Nobody’s going to get more than a little bit irritated if you translate the scroll they were going to next turn in Scholars of the South Tigris.

Or maybe take that spot they were going to go to in Agricola.

What about heavy negotiation games?

I’m not talking about the lighter ones, like Zoo Vadis or anything. Those negotiations, you’re just making a deal.

There’s no going back on it once you’ve done it.

Well, I guess you could make a deal for future considerations and then those future considerations never get done.

For the most part, that doesn’t happen.

But what about heavy negotiation games where betrayal can actually happen?

I haven’t played them, so I don’t know, but what about something like Here I Stand?

Is betrayal a possibility there? And if so, could somebody get really annoyed at it, annoyed enough to end a friendship?

Honest question. I truly don’t know.

For the most part, though, games are just games.

Even Diplomacy is just a game. If you’re betraying Austria just to spite your friend, then you have bigger problems in your relationship than just the game.

If somebody betraying Austria is enough to kill your friendship, then how strong was it, really?

I guess a good gauge would be if making a move helps you or not, as well as how many times this kind of thing happens in the game?

Do you constantly pick on this person when you’re playing an attack or “take that” game?

Or is your action an attempt to better your own position and it’s just part of the game?

Attacking the leader to bring them down a bit and give others, including yourself, a chance, is definitely a thing in games.

Attacking the person who’s behind everybody else?

Maybe there’s something more going on than just competition.

If you’re getting pissed off at somebody doing something normal in a game, so much so that it affects the real world and your opinion of somebody, then maybe you just shouldn’t be playing games that have any kind of competition?

This post is actually giving me flashbacks to my last play of The Resistance, which was the most uncomfortable I have ever been when playing a game, so maybe I’ll stop there.

So what do you think of this topic?

Has it ever happened to you? Or have you done it?

Any thoughts?

Let me know in the comments.

Tonight’s post brought to you by Captain Morgan spiced rum, the number 388, and the letter R.