Geekology: The War Gamer, Board Gamer, Role Player, and More

When you take a moment to unbury your nose from the newest rules release for Warmachine, the most recent Pathfinder supplement, or from unboxing the latest hotness from Z-Man games, you’ll find that we gamers are a pretty diverse group of people with some almost humorous similarities.  As with any culture, any good geek will draw other gamers to them or be drawn to a gathering of said geeks.  Birds of a feather and all…

That being said it would seem that the gaming geeks have some very loyal members to one faction or another.  At the heart most of us are gamers through and through, so it rarely matters what game we’re playing as long as we are.  But then again, there are certain types of gamers that refuse to cross gaming genres or simply don’t have the patience to invest in another gaming form, much less the disposable income.

For our consideration today I’m going to offer a few divisions of our gamer-kind.  We all started somewhere.  Whether it was as a young child playing mouse trap and falling in love with board games, a backyard-over-night D&D session, the first time we entered Hell on our PC’s to chew through hordes of demons with chainsaws and chain guns, or walking into our FLGS and seeing those amazingly painted little figures lined up on terrain filled tabletops, something sparked our inner gamer to be born.

And as is often the case with we geek types, we are staunchly loyal to a given genre or game\company, even when we get screwed by them (**cough GW cough**).  So this mentality of loyalty when combined with natural inclination and skill sets often leads to a preference of one type of gaming over others, or even to the exclusion of others.  Thus is born the War Gamer, Board Gamer, Video Gamer, Role Player, Card Gamer, and so on.  This is where we begin our observations of geek gamer culture.

So while there are numerous possibilities for secondary categories of gamers, we’ll just stick with the primary groups because it’s a holiday today as I’m writing this and that’s what you do on holidays.  My Chai will have to stand in for a beer and burgers off the grill, but I digress.

First up, the War Gamer (miniature war gamer).  They play games on three-dimensional tabletops with as few as five and upwards into the hundreds of miniatures.  These guys think their tactical acumen and modeling skills raise them above the average gamer.  And rightly so in that they often sink a tremendous amount of time and money in the hobby side of the game.  And that’s what defines this bracket most; it’s not just a game but also a hobby, like model trains or cars but on steroids with double espresso and a side of heroine.  They’re often drawn to the strategic elements of the game, competitive, and are artistic\creative.  They also tend to have the highest amount of disposable income and are most likely to play other types of games because of it.  Often War Gamers are divided pretty definitively into Fantasy, Sci-fi, and Historical categories with the historical guys being most resistant to any other kind of war gaming.

Suggestion: Dystopian Wars – Spartan Games

Second up we have the Board Gamers.  These guys tend to stick to games played on tabletops but those involving some kind of board or mat.  There can be miniatures, little wooden “meeples,” counters, cards involved, or none of the above.  They are often very condescending of Collectible Card Games (CCG) like Magic: The Gathering despite most of them having played it for years.  Hey we all have our dirty little secrets.  Board Gamers are also divided into two primary types, those that like American style games and the die-hard Euro game players.  While this can be a slippery slope to explain there is often a combat element and miniatures in American games, while Euro games tend to be more abstract and involve more resource management and often no combat system.  Board gamers are often one of the groups most likely to bring others into their fold.

Suggestion: Last Night on Earth – Flying Frog Productions

Photo: Game.co.uk

Next we have the ever-present Video Gamer.  Now lets get one thing straight, I’m not talking about the average couch potato gamer that plays the heck out of CoD but the hard-core-custom-power-PC-online-nightmare-to-noobs-Starcraft\WoW\MLG-I-will-destroy-all-you-hold-dear type of gamer.  These guys land on your head while chanting “I’m going to kill you” as you run around spinning frantically to find them and then they drop off your head and pistol whip you for the kill.  No lie that actually happened to me.  Anyway.  Video Gamers usually are the tech guys you want to go to their house and watch movies.  They usually aren’t interested in many other genre’s of gaming and will pre-order the game and have beaten, prestiged, or whatever after the first weekend with the game.  They’re serious.  If asked about role-playing, they’d probably assume you meant WoW or Dragon Age.  They’re divided into the japanese\rpg types, the RTS types, and the FPS types and you can forget about a dinner party with all of them.  Little cross genre tolerance here.  They also epic fail when trying to make friends with the casual video game player.

Suggestion: Call of Duty: Black Ops – Treyarch and Activision

Then there’s the Card Gamer.  The red headed stepchild of the gamer geeks.  These guys are all into the Collectible Card Games and are the most hated on.  CCGers are the thirty something’s playing Pokemon in the back room of your FLGS with twelve year olds or debating the better edition of Magic.  They trade, build, trade, buy, rebuild and compete with their decks non-stop.  Every other gaming clique also dumps on them mercilessly and frequently.  The sad reality is that almost every other gamer was at one time one of these guys.  Familiarity breed’s contempt I suppose.  As an adult CCGer, you may have the hardest time converting other non-gamer adults.

Suggestion: Magic the Gathering – Wizards of the Coast

Next up we have the Role-Player.  These types love to act and creativity.  Whether it’s in the form of a Savage Elf barbarian crushing the skulls of undead, a 1920’s investigator in an alien\demon invested rural town, a rouge trader on the reaches of the Imperium smuggling weapons, or any other number of other genres, Role Players like to act.  Some times these guys are considered the weirdest of the bunch as a few extremists have given all the others a bad name.  Role playing games are based around things as simple as a pen, paper, and some dice, to a complex tome of rules involving maps, miniatures, 5 page character sheets, and costumes.  Role-playing has a decidedly geeky or sexy appeal depending on the context, so it can be difficult to bring non-gamers into this genre.  Thankfully the development of more group storytelling games and lighter rule set systems allow for a more welcoming experience for first time role players.  This is perhaps one of the most diverse gamer groups in terms of they variety of role-playing genres you can find.

Suggestion: Fiasco – Bully Pulpit

While I could go on to talk about the Powergamer family, with the Rulez-lawyer father, his ugly twin sister and spouse the Roll Player, and their whiny little brat the Douche-gamer, I’ll save that for another post.

So where do you find you fall among the genres?  What game types do you enjoy most?