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A Gaming Life
Friday Night Shots – Lifestyle Games
Lifestyle games
What does that mean and are you into them?
At Bottoscon (not just last weekend, but every time, along with Terminal City Tabletop Convention as well!), a dedicated group of gamers play nothing but 18XX games.
(18XX games are train games where you are building train routes around the area the game is about and with years in the 1800s, like 1830, 1846, 1862, 18MEX, 18HOWMANYGAMESARETHERE, etc, and you are also investing in companies and stuff like that)
I look at these guys who show up bright and early on Friday morning (or Thursday morning for November’s convention), all set to go, with four or five different games ready to go, all in the same series, and they are doing that all weekend.
It made me stop and wonder, not just about conventions, but also about games in general.
This is the very definition of a lifestyle game, where that is basically all that you play.
Sure, you can play a few other games here and there for spice.
My friend Tony is one of these 18XX players and he’ll occasionally join us for a game of something else.
I really can’t imagine spending a whole weekend playing one series of games.
Yet people do!
Maybe my lack of imagination is because of the subject matter.
These games just seem so dry and boring to me, though I know people who love them to death.
But what about game systems like Advanced Squad Leader?
I loved Squad Leader back in the day, and as I mentioned in my “How I Became A Gamer” post, I started investing in Advanced Squad Leader superseded it.
Yes, that is the link to just the rulebook, which can cost upwards of $90 by itself!
It’s a 3-ring binder with a ton of pages of all the rules for the basic game.
Each big module that adds nationalities adds its own pages to this rulebook, so it has to be a binder so you can seamlessly add them.
Beyond Valor (the 3rd edition) is the first module with the Germans and Russians, and it’s currently on the MMP web site for $145.
Yikes!
I had both of those, as well as the Paratrooper module that was smaller and had US Paratroopers (the rest of the American forces were introduced in Yanks).
I had to sell them when I moved to the west coast, which made me sad.
Now, the system is so huge, with a large number of modules adding different nationalities, plus scenario packs and everything else, that I don’t know how you keep it all straight.
The system is complicated enough that many players have this game as their lifestyle game.
Thus, a “lifestyle” game can either be multiple games in a series (like 18XX) or a gaming system where there are tons of scenarios to play.
Combat Commander hasn’t reached that point yet, but it’s also a lot simpler so maybe doesn’t require that lifestyle label?
Because another thing about lifestyle games is that if you don’t continue to play them, it’s very easy to get too rusty at them and forget a lot of what you know about how to play.
Sure, that can happen with other games too, but I think it’s even more of an issue when things are super-complex already.
For ASL, they do have the ASL Starter Pack options, which can give you a taste of the game, though it is just a taste.
There are a lot of rules apparently left out of the Starter Packs, but they’re a good way to get an idea if you want to take the plunge.
Because it is a plunge!
For me, I think I would have trouble limiting myself to so few games.
As I’ve mentioned before (most recently when talking about long versus short games at conventions ADDLINK TO THAT POST WHEN IT’S LIVE), I really enjoy playing a wide variety of games.
Could I submerge myself into just one game (or game system) and not play too many other games?
Could I go to a convention and just play one game (in its different varieties) instead of playing a whole bunch of different ones with different people?
I’d love to learn Advanced Squad Leader (18XX, not so much), but I don’t know if I have the time to invest in it (and the money, if I did it myself!).
Do I have the mental energy to expend learning complex systems like that?
When I think of “lifestyle games,” these two systems come most readily to mind.
Is there a system or a game that you can think of that would fall into this category?
What do you think?
Are you one to immerse yourself into a lifestyle game?
Let me know in the comments.
I never thought of 18XX as lifestyle games… Or at least, I never thought of using the term for them though obviously they are for a lot of people, even if not really for me. I would absolutely — and have — spent entire long weekends playing nothing but. I’ve even written one (go buy my game! …Long story about how that happened). And they are absolutely my favorite genre for one simple reason: no dice and almost infinitely deep decision trees, which immediately makes them superior to almost every other game in my book. But I still do play a lot of other things, and not just because sometimes it’s hard to get enough players together to play a proper 18XX, I don’t consider any of them worth playing at two players.
But even though ASL is the only game (system) I’ve ever used the term for, I can think of plenty of other games/systems that probably count for some people: Warhammer (or other miniature systems, I’ve known people who play nothing but Napoleonics miniature games), Magic: the Gathering, bridge… Even chess.
yeah, there are definitely others I could have mentioned. Warhammer and Magic are great ones.
And miniatures gamers! That’s certainly true.
I can see the appeal of 18xx games, just not for me.
I think I mention that in this coming week’s BGG Century post (or I did already, it all runs together when I write ahead like I’ve been doing LOL).
And ASL, I would love to play, but I’m worried about getting immersed in it too much at the expense of everything else, and I also have nobody to play it with so it doesn’t matter anyway.
I don’t imagine it would be hard to find people to play online if you really wanted to, there are Discord servers and after all Vassal (VASL — virtual ASL) was literally originally written to play ASL.
If I played it, though (I’m interested enough to try it again, though to me it’s almost more fascinating as an artifact that exists), it would be with an online buddy, and we’d probably house rule up a lot of the fiddlier bits. And I kinda wrote a whole game server to avoid it in a way.
Very interesting take Dave; never through that boardgames can be lifestyle 🙂 I definitely agree about ASL and 18XX; some of the MMP systems (OCS, BCS,) might also be treated like this.
I’m not as familiar with the other MMP game systems out there, but while I know they have multiple different games in those systems, I’m not sure they’ve reached the level yet of “lifestyle?”
of course, that’s a very subjective term and so I could be totally off-base.
Lifestyle games, in my book, are defined by how demanding they are. The demand can come in various ways: ASL requires you to read and memorize the massive rulebook. 18XX games are most exciting (or so I’m told) when everybody playing knows exactly what they are doing through long practice. Miniatures games demand that the player shell out massive sums and then spend the rest of their life painting.
I’ve always preferred to spread my attention a bit wider… but it does sound comforting to have this one system which you’ve played since forever and expect to continue until your last move! One of the last certainties in an ever-changing world 🙂
I knew we were a lot alike, Clio!
I sometimes want to try and get into ASL, but the cost and time expenditure is just so big that I don’t bother.
Maybe a retirement thing 🙂