Scott's Pet Peeve #1753

Scott Hardie | May 19, 2017
People counting out loud when they know other people are trying to count.

I play a lot of board games and card games. They frequently require players to add up their points at the end in order to determine the winner. When this moment comes, invariably multiple people at the table start counting out loud instead of counting quietly in their own head. Whether I do it aloud or silently, I cannot concentrate enough to make my own count when other people are counting audibly around me. I imagine that my problem would be the same if it wasn't a game and we were instead counting money or taking inventory or doing something similar.

Am I wrong to expect people to count in silence? Am I alone in being unable to count when other people are calling out numbers around me?

Aaron Shurtleff | May 20, 2017
I feel really bad now, because I know that I am one of those people. But, in my defense, I count out loud because that's how I have to do it. I find that I make mistakes more often if I try to do it silently. I don't know if it's hearing the numbers that keep my brain on track or what, but I'll lose count if I don't do it out loud. It's one of my quirks. I don't know the next time we'll be gaming together, but I'll try to keep it in mind.

My other big quirk is I can't tie my shoes as well if I watch myself do it. You might be laughing, but if I look at my laces when I tie my shoes up, they'll usually come untied within a few hours. If I stare straight ahead and don't look down, they'll usually stay tied until I untie them (or at least not for many days, in the case of slip on shoes that don't normally get untied regularly). I think my brain is broken...

Scott Hardie | May 22, 2017
Good point. I figure that's true for some people, and for other people it's about a desire to avoid any hint of cheating. It's the people who don't need to count out loud, but who do so anyway without consideration to their fellow players, that bug me. :-)

Through a combination of Velcro-strapped shoes and slip-ons, I never learned to tie shoelaces until I was maybe 10 or 12, which was an occasional source of embarrassment when the subject came up in situations like, say, a bowling alley. Perhaps due to learning the skill so late and practicing it so infrequently, I'm still lousy at it, tying lopsided bows that unravel easily. As an adult, I tend to keep my shoes tied for years at a time and just slip them on and off. You and I can't be the only people with shoe-tying issues like this.

Scott Hardie | September 23, 2017
As long as we're talking about pet peeves related to board games, here's another one of mine: People who don't provide any context when introducing a game to first-time players.

I sat down recently to play a game I knew well with some first-timers. The host had already set up the board. She asked everyone to choose a character. She then placed the tokens on the starting space and asked the player next to her if he wanted to move or play a card. He stared at her blankly. She told him he probably didn't want to move his token because this would trigger a certain event, without explaining what that event was. He kept staring at her blankly. This sort of thing continued around the table for a good fifteen minutes before I pointed out to her that she hadn't even told them the objective of the game. I intervened a few times to clarify things, but it wasn't my table to run. In the end, they all hated the game, and I had been trying to talk one of them into playing that game for years. :-(

Whether the game is simple or complicated, you can usually get across an effective introduction in about 30 seconds:
- Mention the general concept of the game.
- Mention the objective or the winning condition.
- Briefly cover the basic play mechanics; ie. what you do on your turn.
- For simple games, you might cover all of the rules up front. For complex games, you might wait to bring up minor rules until after players have gotten their feet wet with a few turns.
- Answer any questions.

For instance, if I were sitting down to play Monopoly with someone who had never played it, I'd say something like: "In this game, you're an Atlantic City developer trying to price out the rest of us with your rental properties and being the only player left. We take turns rolling dice to move around the board. If you land on an unowned property, you have the option of buying it; on an owned property, you pay the owner rent. Try to focus on acquiring all properties of one color, because that unlocks options for really driving up the rental cost. Trading properties and cash with other players is encouraged! I'll explain the other miscellaneous spaces and rules when they come up."

That's all you need to do. It is so simple. And yet so many game hosts rarely do that. They just drop people into the deep end, either providing no explanation at all (like the woman above), or providing hyper-specific information about certain rules and options without providing any big-picture context about the overall game (like a guy I know from Meetup). It drives me batty.