Post by: Grant Rodiek

In honor of the release of the latest Pokemon, I thought it would be useful to write a handy guide on how to identify the different breeds of gamer. Feel free to use this to oust undesirable stock from your gaming group, better identify a tester to understand his or her feedback, and to know when you’ve caught them all. Here is the Gamerdex.

A wild Competizard appeared! This beastly nerd must win at all costs. Nothing else is important. Often considered by science to be the killer robots of the community, these discerning bruisers will often redo moves, over-optimize, and calculate an optimal path towards victory. They are known to evolve into a grumpier form if losing or, if in a co-operative game, feel doom is at hand. They may even shut off entirely. It’s best to let them win if you want them to remain focused and happy, otherwise, best to put them back in your pack.

Recommended Feeding: Android: Netrunner

A wild Exploitoise appeared! By day, these (often) engineering professionals solve problems of code and logic. By night, they seek game breaking strategies and gross imbalances in games. Whether they win or lose is purely secondary. They merely want you to know the game is flawed, and therefore, they are right. Good to have around for late-beta prototypes for balance testing. Avoid early alpha tests at all costs. They will be distracted by the tuning, rendering their observations useless.

Recommended Feeding: Summoner Wars. Note: They won’t like it, but they’ll delight in telling you about its imbalances. 

A wild Rollachu appeared! Some nerdly beasts merely want to roll the dice, draw the token, or play a card to see what happens next. Logic has no bearing on their instinctual pursuits, nor does a competitor’s spirit. They just want to see what’ll happen. Just…just one more roll. Like an addict, they palm their pile of d6 and heave them with abandon. Luck is their muse and mistress when fortune favors them. Luck be damned when it doesn’t. The Rollachu will be the first to refer to your game as an exercise in pre-determined bean counting. Don’t bother to explain the actual variance, just pass them the dice.

Recommended Feeding: Fleet Captains

A wild Perfectasect appeared! This beast’s evolutionary path forces them to make no decision that is anything less than optimal. They are patient, slow, observant, and forward thinking. They can count every ripple the stone will make when skipped across the otherwise still pond. Alas, they are not reactive, nor nimble, and if poked off their comfortable perch they will merely reset and begin counting the ripples anew. Games with unpredictable elements will leave them feeling queasy.

Recommended Feeding: Caylus

A wild Exposiduck appeared! This strange and overly verbal creature has three sets of lungs to allow it to explain every single thing that it, and you, and everyone else is doing in the game. It will analyze, explain, bloviate, and verbosely point out every possible nuance of the decisions being made. Much like a sports announcer in its content, though less so (often) in its actual understanding. It spends so much time talking that it spends very little time observing.

Recommended Feeding: The Resistance: Avalon

A wild Nongamanine appeared! This confused, normally cool, non-nerdy beast is often captured, removed from its natural habitat, and placed into the ecosystem of its nerdier beast friends. Generally familiar only with primitive games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Risk, it is nonetheless a good friend and a good sport and is willing to tolerate your insistence for a time. Lab tests have shown the Nongamanine will not understand terms like discard, resource, or d6, and will require careful nursing through the larval stages. Can be very powerful when leveled up and is to be treated with care.

Recommended Feeding: Ticket to Ride: Europe

A wild Dooster appeared! This fun loving, boisterous, and belch-worthy beast is the jovial member of the pack. Its spirit is invigorated by doing and it spends little time to think. Its enormous gut dwarfs its brain, and as a result, it relies purely on instinct. At most two options are considered before it chooses a path and pushes forth. A good friend to the Rollachu and the despised nemesis to the Perfectasect’s well laid plans, the Dooster is the spicy beast of the gamer world.

Recommended Feeding: King of Tokyo

What are some beasts you’ve identified for your Gamerdex? Share them below!