by Greyfax

I again received no questions this past week, so I'm summarizing a question left on the /r/boardgames subreddit on Reddit. The following is not the exact text, and gender will be mentioned because she mentioned it in her post.

A woman posted that she was playing board games with men, and they were playing her games — that is, literally handling the bits. Some of the men fidgeted with the cards and the pieces, damaging them in the process. She wanted to know a nice way to ask them to stop without upsetting or angering them. What should she say?

Folks, this time you're going to get both the Ms. Meeple response and the Jennifer Schlickbernd response:

Ms. Meeple: You could say, "Please don't damage my pieces and cards, thanks." Perhaps next time you could bring some dice along for them to fidget with instead.

Jennifer Schlickbernd: You would say, "What the f*** are you doing with my cards and pieces? These games cost me money, damn!" and never play with those people again.

For me, deliberately damaging pieces or cards of a game is a core violation that I would not tolerate. However, this woman wants to keep playing with this group, so being polite is certainly important — and dice are a good alternative. I've played with folks who bring their own dice to fidget with.

I'm interested in your thoughts. I almost feel like the fidgeting and resulting damage is a dominance issue, as if they are so important that they feel they can damage a woman's games without consequence. Now I could be wrong, but from my perspective, leaving a game in the same condition as you found it is critical to social board game play, and I expect players to know that.

Best,
Ms. Meeple (Jennifer Schlickbernd)

P.S. If there's a situation in your board game group or at a meetup that you would like advice on, please send me a Geekmail with "Ms. Meeple" in the title.