A wise man named Roger H. Lincoln once said that

There are two rules for success…

1. Never reveal everything you know

I’ve happily been following this line of thought for the past year, slowly but surely revealing my ideas and goals for this blog. Most of which have been met with positive reception so far. I say most because I haven’t received any negative comments or messages, so I have no way of knowing if my content is creating negative waves in the local community or the great online one.

But what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

Dear readers, I want to share with you a theory I have about board games. I haven’t made any waves about board games since my last post about them, so this seemed as good a time as any to share with you some ideas I’ve come across with regards to the inherent value of playing them.

Board games have rules and a particular outcome. This much is obvious.

But did it ever occur to you that board games also provide a conceptual framework for us to temper our talent and untapped abilities into organized, thoughtful, and decisive results? If we can navigate the challenges of life, then we can more easily succeed.

Board games are great for spending dedicated and fun time with your loved ones. They can also build self-esteem for those seeking positive attention from people they care about, because let’s face it, most board games require you to physically interact with the person in front of you.

They are analog games, after all.

Now, and this is especially true for children, these types of games are also fantastic devices for mastering new skills in visual perception and mental reasoning, as well as fostering a sense of healthy competition.

Maybe you knew this already but these games are great vehicles for strengthening your attention span in an ever tech dependant world where instant gratification on our mobile devices is always within reach. I am especially sensitive to this issue because I believe we should never put all of our eggs in one basket.

Yeah another cliche. Let’s keep moving forward though.

And on the side of social skills, you can learn how to communicate better verbally because you have to share and/or use resources, take turns, and have shared experiences.

Philosophically, the most important message in board games can be taken from my favourite line of Galaxy Quest.

Never give up. Never surrender. Just like in life, there is a certain amount of chance to events, and if you stick it out for a few more turns, you just might roll double sixes or a D20… But you have to stay in the game.

And here we arrive dear readers, at the apex of the post, the reason I started off with that initial quote, and of which I will not reveal my entire game plan, pun intended, but which will give you creative types some ideas too, hopefully.

timotheories is about to embark on a weekly adventure, which will be held every Thursday night, just in time for the Timely Thursdays posts to drop into your inbox.

That’s right! I’ve been casually hosting a board game night with one of my brothers and friend for the past year, but the time has arrived for RTG (Real Time Games) to make it’s face known to the community. We are going to play games every week, and we are also going to occasionally share our experiences playing them, providing some theories on the games themselves, and hopefully about the pastime in its current state and our part in it.

The current plan is to post an event each week on my FB group account, with what game(s) we will be playing, and get some footage of the experience, then I will be sharing the games we play on my instagram account @timotheories and the video reviews will be available on my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/timotheories/videos)

I promise there will be lots of laughs, some informative bits, and potentially something for anyone hoping to see something slightly different than a typical review channel.

If we stick through this, I think we will all find that we can learn something from playing these types of games and maybe some new theories will crop up. But what do you think? What kinds of board games do you play? Do you have any favourite memories with board games growing up? Do you dislike them and why? Leave some comments!

Tim!