This page meant to be a resource for all. You will find it full of words and phrases that you may encounter at some point when your around board games and board gamers.
General Terms
Board game
A game that has 1 or more boards that players play on, generally interchangeable with tabletop.
Tabletop game
The catchall term that refers to any game that is played on a table.
Card game
A game that its main or sole component is cards.
Dice game
A game that its main or sole component is dice.
Mechanic / Game mechanic
The most basic action or rule for a game to function.
Meeple
A game piece that represents a player.
Designer
The creator / author of the game
Publisher
Usually the manufacturer and sometimes distributor of the game.
Distributor
The distributor / shipper of the game.
Dungeon Master / Game Master
The person that leads players through a game. Often referred to as DM or GM.
Non-Player Character
A character that is either controlled by the game or game master. It is often abbreviated and referred to as the NPC.
Player Character
The character being controlled by a player that isn’t the game master.
Resource
Most generic term for in game currency, regardless of the game’s theme.
First Player
The starting player of the game or round / phase.
Homebrew
Player crafted rules alterations to a game that is unofficial.
House Rule
Are rule(s) that players use instead of following actual game rule(s).
Analysis Paralysis
When a player gets stuck analyzing the many different possibilities in actions and outcomes on their turn.
Active player
The current player that performs an action.
Miniatures
Small scale models used for game pieces.
Standee
A cardboard meeple made to stand up.
Polynomial
A cardboard tile component that isn’t your typical basic shape (rectangle, triangle, or circle).
Dice
An object that has different values / symbols on its faces that is tumbled to randomly reveal a value on the face up side. Dice type is typically represented with D and the number of faces it has, D6 is a 6 sided cube, D10 is a dice with 10 faces – d6, d4, d3,d8, d10,d12, d20 , d30, d100 etc.
Victory Points
The score of the game for players.
Boss / Villain
The final antagonist of a game.
Henchmen / Minion
The antagonists that come before or with the boss.
Health / Hit Point
The number of points that a player can lose before facing a negative consequence. Also referred to as HP.
Playtime
It is typically the total length of time to play the game. Althhough sometimes it is referring to the length of time for each player added to the game.
Player Count
The number of players the game was designed for.
Age Range
Minimum age suggested to be able to play the game.
Weight
A subjective scale which players use to refer to the complexity of a game. Sometimes it is a numeric value but more often players will use descriptors such as light, medium, or heavy.
Complexity
The combined rules and mechanics that determine how difficult the game is to learn and play.
Replayability
A subjective metric that indicates how much repeated play time a game has.
Game Types / Categories
1 vs Many
Games that 1 player competes against 2 or more players working together.
Abstract
Games that don’t have an overall theme and just rely on using symbols, shapes, numbers etc for making the game work.
Amerigame
A game that includes a theme, is centered on direct player conflict, with factions / characters that have unique abilities, and relies on a lot of luck.
Ameritrash
While a highly contested term, is a game that focuses mostly on luck and very little control in choice that the player has to determine final outcome.
Campaign
A larger game played across multiple games that usually increases difficulty with each game from the 1st game to the last.
Co-Operative Games
A game where the players work together to beat the game itself and not each other. They are often referred to as co-op.
Dexterity Game
Requires balancing components, delicate touch, or some form of hand precision / control / accuracy.
Dungeon Crawler
Players move their characters around the board fighting monsters/minions, collecting treasure / items, and try to complete an objective, then usually ends with defeating the boss.
Eurogame
A game that does center around managing resources, multiple ways to score, and not having direct player conflict.
Family Game
Games that are typically easy to learn and more kid friendly.
Hidden Traitor
Players work together but 1 player is the antagonist and the others try to figure out who it is before it is to late.
Legacy Game
A game that on 1st play through will craft a unique experience for that time which results in a game that can be replayed that is different from another of the same game.
Memory Game
Requires remembering where or what things are.
Miniature Game
Games that use scale models, rulers to determine movement, and dice to determine outcomes not typically played with a board. These games don’t necessarily require a whole team or squad sometimes it is just 1 character.
Party Game
Games that are easy to learn, teach, and designed with large player counts in mind usually 8 + players.
Pathing Games
Players move pieces along a path created themselves or by others.
Role Playing Game
Players take on a specific roles and can craft a character personality and work together over the course of 1 or multiple games to tell a story and accomplish goals and guided by a game master. They are often referred to as RPGs.
Semi-Cooperative
Players can work co-operatively to complete tasks while competing at the same time to see who is the most successful.
Story Based Game
A shared experience that focuses specifically on the story and narrative that results from actions of the players.
Transportation Games
The main theme is delivering or transporting something from 1 place to another.
War Game
Games that require players to assemble an army / team and compete to eliminate the opposition. These typically involve models / miniatures but can be cards or tokens representing armies.
Mechanics / Game Types
Area Control
Involves acquiring board space through a variety of means and having to defend or maintain control of said area.
Bidding / Blind Bid
Involves players taking turns and making a claim of what they will reach, pay, or do for a reward. When the bid is achieved or won the player will get the reward. Sometimes the bid publicly done or done in secret. Secret bidding is called blind bidding.
Bluffing / Deception
Players are trying to outwit players based on limited knowledge for 1 reason or another while also determining who is correct or not.
Card Drafting
Is in simple terms card acquistion. Acquiring said card can simply be through drawing from the deck, could be through a purchase or some other variation.
Deck Building
Involves players acquiring cards to form their own deck that is different from other players.
Engine Building
Players start with limited abilities, gradually through actions acquire things to improve their ability to do more things at a time or in a sequence.
Hand Management
Players usually have a number of cards that form their “hand” that they must play from thus limiting their actions and need to determine when to play or discard various cards.
Hidden Information
Any game information that is hidden from all but 1 or 2 players. This usually is in the form of deduction, hidden objectives, end game scoring or more.
Movement Templates
Used in games that do not have spaces on a board, a template is a game piece of a fixed size that determines how far a player’s character can move on the board.
Programming
Is a mechanic that players plan actions to take or perform in a particular order, then those plans are executed all at once typically in the desired order.
Public Information
Any game information that is able to be seen by all players so they can make educated decisions on their actions to be competitive.
Push Your Luck
A gambling mechanic that gives the player a risk / reward situation that they choose when to stop or keep going.
Real Time
Games that do not have individual player turns. Instead all players play at the same time and typically includes a timer.
Resource Management
This involves games where players collect / acquire game currency to spend in various ways, resources are often limited either by what a player can have or the pool that is available.
Rondel
A game that is composed of a loop of spaces that contain actions. That loop is then traversed by players and usually 1 player per space.
Tile Placement
This involves placing a geometric game token next to other tokens to score points or perform certain actions.
Trick-taking
Is found in card games and refers to the collection of cards played by each player in a single round that is won by the highest card played.
Turn Based
Each player has their moment to perform their actions (instead of all at once) determined by a player sequence order, usually clockwise but not always.
Worker Placement
Is used to determine what action the player can take and can only be taking by placing a marker on an action space. The marker is typically referred to as a worker.
Trump
Typically found in trick-taking games, trump is what is considered the highest value suit or type of card in the game that will always win a trick unless a higher value trump is played.
Strategy Terms
Min/Maxing
Is making the best or least impactful turn a player can depending on their situation.
Off Suit / Throwing Off
In card games when a player cannot play the same suit as the previous player then a different suit can be played.
Leading
Typically referred to as “the lead” in trick taking games, leading is when the player who won the trick plays the first card of the new round.
Resource Hoarding
Collecting and holding as much as one can of a particular resource to deny others the ability to use said resource.
Defensive
This is when a player is performing a reaction to counter the effects of another player’s action or to reduce the impact that it will have on themselves.
Aggressive
This is when a player performs an action that will hinder other players.