How my “51 in 15” turned out

A year ago Epidiah Ravachol came up with a game-related New Year’s resolution: play 51 different tabletop games in 2015 (he used the hashtag #51in15). He included all sorts of games: role-playing, card games, board games, miniatures games, etc., counting each title only once, no matter how many times he played it over the course of the year. A few days later Epidiah expanded on his resolution and posted cool badges for various challenges. I liked the idea and I started keeping track of my games in a spreadsheet.  By December 31, I exceeded the target, ending up with 62 different games in my list.  Let’s start with some summary numbers:

My game types were divided about equally between tactical and strategic play (5 miniatures games, 12 board games, 13 card games for a total of 30) and narrative play (25 role-playing games, 6 storytelling games, and one live-action role-playing game or LARP, for a total of 32).

• For clarification of the latter, games I labelled “storytelling” rather than “role-playing” included The Quiet Year, Fiasco, Monster Draft, Durance, Hobbit Tales from the Green Dragon Inn, and Bluebeard’s Bride. But honestly, the difference is subjective — I was only trying to explore the data for patterns.
• Similarly, the distinctions between board games and miniatures games or board games and card games can be blurry, such as in games like Robo Rally, Galactic Strike Force, or The Grizzled.

Regarding some categories Epidiah created badges for:

• I played 16 different games that play under 30 minutes (such as the Mint Tin games, Coup, or Hanabi.)  Five were board games and 11 were card games.
• I played (or ran as game-master) 16 different games with more than five players. Of these, one was a card game, one was a board game, two were storytelling games and 12 were RPGs.
• Seven were designed by a woman: two of these were storytelling games and five were RPGs.  I wish that count was higher and I will keep working at it.
• I had a horse in the race!  I ran several games of War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus at conventions.

But here is the thing that I’m really proud of:

• No less than 44 of these 62 different games (71%) were new to me: I had never played them before 2015.
• And of these new games, 9 were playtests (20.5% of the new games or 14.5% of the year’s total.)

Here is what my list looked like (after the cut):

I borrow Epidiah’s “51 in 15” resolution

Update: Epidiah expanded on his resolution and posted cool badges for various challenges! (Jan. 12, 2015)

Epidiah Ravachol came up with a game-related New Year’s resolution: play 51 different tabletop games in 2015 (he uses the hashtag #51in15). He includes all sort of games: role-playing, card games, board games, miniatures games, etc., counting each title only once, no matter how many times he plays it over the course of the year. I don’t know if I can get to that many, but I like the idea and I started keeping track of my games. The holidays gave me a head start, getting together with friends from out-of-town to play games. I started a spreadsheet to keep track and I will report at the end of the year.