Table Creep and the Leaf Rule

In another thread, Nate mentioned he would like to get all the Talisman expansions, and it reminded me of my rule on games' physical size: If I have to put the leaf in my table, the game is just too bloated. I believe we came up with this house rule when we played Firefly just prior to its departure. We realized that it was cumbersome to play because the board and cards took up so much room we had to work around the bits just to play, which sucked and began to kill the mood,

My table is 5' x 3.5' without the leaf, 5' square with it. If I need 25 square feet to play a game, I'm just not doing it.

Thoights?

Seems kind of arbitrary to me. But then again, a big spread out game doesn't bother me. If it actively degrades your experience, then it's probably a decent rule.

Disgustipater wrote: Seems kind of arbitrary to me. But then again, a big spread out game doesn't bother me. If it actively degrades your experience, then it's probably a decent rule.

The size creep needs to be commensurate with the amount of enjoyment and the span of time between setup and tear-down.

I think all of the games I own that require our big table with the leaf are epic enough to justify the trouble of playing in a different room. I'm thinking stuff like Mare Nostrum, expanded Talisman, or Duel of Ages II.

A fully expanded Talisman would take up a LOT of room though. I have the first three corner boards, and they barely fit.

I think this is a good rule of thumb. Sure, some games will justify breaking it, but in general I think it's a good indication of a need for editing. I also felt that Firefly, just the base game, no expansions, wanted far more space than it deserved.

My table is huge (intentionally), so this generally isn't a problem. The bigger problem for me is large (and small) games that are difficult to play from different sides---so games that make being on the back side of the board almost impossible because of a) critical one directional cards or b) information on the board itself that reads poorly from the reverse side.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Thoights?

An odd choice of measurement from a minis gamer. I think number of boxes my be a better choice.

We have one table in the house, the kitchen table. We recently bought this really slick high-top table with a self-transforming leaf, but the problem is that our house is very smallish, so we don't have the room to expand it comfortably while leaving room to navigate the dining room. It's do-able, but not remotely optimal. This is beside the point, though, because for me, games like Firefly with way too many decks and way too much extraneous shit going on are just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with. We like to put card decks at the corners of the board so people can get to them but they're not obstructing access; when you have to reach over cards and stuff all the time, it sucks when you knock them over the fifth time.

Really, it comes down to my belief that at some point, you should just not produce it as a board game and go straight-to-digital. Firefly would've been a FANTASTIC asynchronous game, for example. Now that I have Talisman Digital (Thanks, Humble Bundle!) I'll play the base game from the box, but if I want to play with all the expansions, I'll use the app. It just takes up way too much room!

It depends on the game, but it seems like the games that need a lot of table space usually offer a compelling reason for that space, like needing a big space to move around in (Firefly) or an epic scale of play (Twilight Imperium). When I finally bought a house, I immediately bought a new table for my basement gaming area, and I made sure that it was big enough for Arkham Horror with all the expansions and eight players. So far, that has been more than big enough for any other games that I have played on that table, except that my D&D campaign sometimes involved massive dungeon levels with each 1" square representing a 5' x 5' space.

I can fill up an entire 3x6 folding table with Dwarven Forge terrain, so I know of your plight LOL

Yes I love me some Talisman. I'm not gonna let table space kill my fun.

We always have one leaf in our table, but it's a cheap one from Ikea, and not even a full 3' wide I think. Firefly is the game that's always been testing our limit with it, and with both Blue Sun and Kalidasa, I kind of feel that we may have jumped the shark on table space. We put as many decks as possible on the useless spaces on the boards, but it already felt like a full table with just one expansion.

If I had to rearrange the table (like adding the second leaf) just to play a board game, I think I'd get rid of the game, life's too short.

When we went looking for a new (used) dinner table I had very specific dimensions in mind. So specific, in fact, that my wife asked why that exact size, to which I said something about making sure we could seat the entire family and the odd guest or two—

"It's for a game, isn't it."

Yep.

I abide by the table size rule, for games we play at home. At a convention or FLGS, bigger tables are available so we just save games like Twilight Imperium for those times. My table is almost completely covered by the GEV maps in Ogre DE, which is just perfect.

Similar to JEM, I have an ikea table with two leaves. Except I put the leaves in when I first got it and never take them out. Some of my favorite games are table fillers.