Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a

table Table may refer to: * Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs * Table (landform), a flat area of land * Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns * Table (database), how the table data ...

or other flat surface, such as

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a ...

card game A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card g ...

dice game Dice games are games that use or incorporate one or more dice as their sole or central component, usually as a random device In computing, a hardware random number generator (HRNG) or true random number generator (TRNG) is a device that gener ...

miniature wargame Miniature wargaming is a form of wargaming in which military units are represented by miniature physical models on a model battlefield. The use of physical models to represent military units is in contrast to other tabletop wargames that use ...

s, or tile-based games.

Classification according to equipment used

Tabletop games can be classified according to the general form, or equipment utilized: Games like chess and

draughts Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers ...

are examples of games belonging to the board game category. Other games, however, use various attributes and cannot be classified unambiguously (e.g. ''

Monopoly A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...

'' utilises a board as well as dice and cards). For several of these categories there are sub-categories and even sub-sub-categories or genres. For instance, German-style board games,

board wargame A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The modern, commercial wargaming hobby (as distinct from military exercises, o ...

s, and roll-and-move games are all types of board games that differ markedly in style and general interest.

Tabletop game components

The various specialized parts, pieces, and tools used for playing

tabletop game Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniature wargames, or tile-based games. Classification according to equipment used Tabletop game ...

s may include: *

Coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in orde ...

s *

Stopwatch A stopwatch is a timepiece designed to measure the amount of time that elapses between its activation and deactivation. A large digital version of a stopwatch designed for viewing at a distance, as in a sports stadium, is called a stop clock. ...

clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and t ...

hourglass An hourglass (or sandglass, sand timer, sand clock or egg timer) is a device used to measure the passage of time. It comprises two glass bulbs connected vertically by a narrow neck that allows a regulated flow of a substance (historically sand) ...

egg timer An egg timer or kitchen timer is a device whose primary function is to assist in timing during cooking; the name comes from the first timers initially being used for the timing of cooking eggs. Early designs simply counted down for a specific pe ...

* Counter, pawn, or playing piece *

Dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing ...

, which can include

polyhedral dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing ga ...

* Dice

cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, c ...

* Gambling

chips ''CHiPs'' is an American crime drama television series created by Rick Rosner and originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983. It follows the lives of two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). The seri ...

or ''play'' money * Game board * Game box or container *

Scoreboard A scoreboard is a large board for publicly displaying the score in a game. Most levels of sport from high school and above use at least one scoreboard for keeping score, measuring time, and displaying statistics. Scoreboards in the past used ...

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre e ...

pad * Marker or

peg PEG or peg may refer to: Devices * Clothes peg, a fastener used to hang up clothes for drying * Tent peg, a spike driven into the ground for holding a tent to the ground * Tuning peg, used to hold a string in the pegbox of a stringed instru ...

for keeping score/tally * Miniature figures *

Pencil A pencil () is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage, and keeps it from marking the user's hand. Pencils create marks by physical abrasion (mechanical), abra ...

Playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a ...

s, which can be collectible cards *

Rule Rule or ruling may refer to: Education * Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pert ...

manuals *

Ruler A ruler, sometimes called a rule, line gauge, or scale, is a device used in geometry and technical drawing, as well as the engineering and construction industries, to measure distances or draw straight lines. Variants Rulers have long ...

or measuring device *

Tile Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, Rock (geology), stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, wa ...

s * Modelling clay A

referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other tit ...

d game could also include various aids to play, including

scenario In the performing arts, a scenario (, ; ; ) is a synoptical collage of an event or series of actions and events. In the ''commedia dell'arte'', it was an outline of entrances, exits, and action describing the plot of a play, and was literally p ...

packs and computer game aids.

Role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...

s can include

campaign setting A campaign setting is usually a fictional world which serves as a setting for a role-playing game or wargame campaign. A ''campaign'' is a series of individual adventures, and a ''campaign setting'' is the world in which such adventures and c ...

s and various supplementary manuals and notes.

Classification according to elements of chance

As an alternative to classifying games by equipment, they can also be classified according to the elements of chance involved. In game theory, two fundamentally different elements of chance can play a role: * Chance due to outcome uncertainty, e.g. due to dice rolls or due to unknown cards being dealt during the game. Games in which outcome uncertainty plays a role are referred to as

stochastic games In game theory, a stochastic game (or Markov game), introduced by Lloyd Shapley in the early 1950s, is a repeated game with probabilistic transitions played by one or more players. The game is played in a sequence of stages. At the beginning of eac ...

as opposed to

deterministic game Abstract strategy games admit a number of definitions which distinguish these from strategy games in general, mostly involving no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice (with no randomness), and perfect information ...

s. * Chance due to state uncertainty, e.g. due to the opponent's position or cards not being visible, or due to the simultaneous move character of the game. Games in which state uncertainty plays a role are referred to as partial or imperfect information games as opposed to full or

perfect information In economics, perfect information (sometimes referred to as "no hidden information") is a feature of perfect competition. With perfect information in a market, all consumers and producers have complete and instantaneous knowledge of all market pr ...

games. Examples of the chance classification for some well-known tabletop games are given in the table below.

Organizations

List of organizations that sponsor events featuring tabletop games: *

Board Game Geek BoardGameGeek (BGG) is an online forum for board gaming hobbyists and a game database that holds reviews, images and videos for over 125,600 different tabletop games, including European-style board game A Eurogame, also called a German-sty ...

organizes BGG.CON * PAX hosts PAX Unplugged * Geek & Sundry promotes an annual International TableTop Day * The Organization of Gamers & Roleplaying Enthusiasts (O.G.R.E.s) organizes tabletop events for

OMGcon OMGcon (''sometimes stylized as OMG!con'') is a three-day anime convention held during June at the Owensboro Convention Center in Owensboro, Kentucky. The convention was previously held in Paducah, Kentucky. The name of the convention comes from ...

White Wolf Publishing White Wolf Publishing was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant (game publisher), Lion Rampant

's Camarilla *

Wizards of the Coast Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. It is currently a subsidi ...

own

RPGA The RPGA (also called the Role Playing Game Association and the RPGA Network at various times), was initially part of the organized play arm of TSR, Inc and later of Wizards of the Coast. From 1980 to 2014, it organized and sanctioned role-playing ...

* The

Historical Miniatures Gaming Society The Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (or HMGS) promotes the hobby of historical miniature wargaming in the United States, as a registered non-profit charitable and educational foundation. Chapters The organization consists of a loose-knit grou ...

promotes historical miniatures wargaming and organizes wargaming events such as Historicon * SaltCON LLC organizes

SaltCON SaltCON is the largest Board Game Convention in Utah held annually in Layton at the Davis Conference Center with the "aim of bringing people together with games." The event is family friendly, and focuses on hobby and designer board games. ...

and the Ion Award competition for unpublished tabletop games Numerous independent, local groups run by gamers exist to play tabletop games. Additionally, many colleges have student run organizations pertaining solely to table top gaming. The

Collegiate Association of Table Top Gamers The Collegiate Association of Table Top Gamers (CATTG), was an international college-student run organization for table top gaming clubs at universities whose interests span (but are not limited to) paper and pencil RPGs, collectible card games, ...

is one such organization that has a few chapters at different schools.

Digital tabletop games

Digital tabletops games are digital variations of tabletop games, which include straight reproductions of existing physical tabletop games, video games that use tabletop game principles as part of their gameplay mechanics, and tabletop simulators that provide a virtual tabletop for conducting tabletop games online.

References