Forty minutes in. Somebody finally picked a game.
We’re a small group of friends who kept losing the first forty minutes of every game night to the question in this site’s name. So we started writing down what actually worked: for four people on two phones, for twelve people around one table, for two people in two time zones.
Every page says what backs it. A verdict carries a play count from real nights at the table. If we only tested a game from its rules, the verdict says “tested from the rules”, and that doesn’t count as a play. Verdicts are signed by the person who’ll defend them. Nobody pays us for placement. The goldfish is a long story.
The four of us
- einar
Wrangles the big nights. Learned the Storyteller role so nobody else has to, and has run six games of Clocktower without once calling it hosting.
- rosa
Keeps the two-time-zone game nights alive. Has watched every Gartic Phone prompt turn into a crime scene, and keeps the screenshots as evidence.
- sam
Owns the phones-on-the-table games. Seventeen Spaceteam runs in, and the reason the downstairs neighbor once texted to ask if everything was ok.
- maya
Reads the room, then escalates it. Forty-one games of Fishbowl and still puts things like the economy in the bowl to see what happens.
How a game earns a page
- We show the evidence. Real sessions get play counts and table notes. A game we only tested from the rules is labeled that way, and the label can’t back up claims about how a table behaves.
- One person signs the verdict. Their name, play count and last-updated date stay attached to it.
- We write down the awkward parts. Downtime, confusing rules, the wrong group size and house rules that failed are useful, so they stay in.
Nobody pays for placement. If that ever changes, the relationship will be labeled on the page where it matters.