Tabletop Gaming Manual: A guide to the diverse world of modern tabletop games (Haynes Manuals)

Wow! I bought this book a little bit on a whim as I was in the market for board gaming books, and this popped up as very recently published and with almost no reviews online. To put it simply I was blown away by this book.Firstly, the production quality of this hardback is not to be sniffed at, it is chocked full of extremely vibrant full colour photos and diagrams on every page. At the sticker price on that basis it is I think a steal.Secondly, the content, in terms of the writing, structure, layout, and flow of the book is all excellent. As an avid board gamer who is currently developing a game I still found this book fascinating, and packed with things I didn't know about, and put together in a way that made reading it an absolute pleasure. For newcomers to the hobby I genuinely couldn't think of a better organised information source.In particular, I enjoyed reading about the history of D&D, the origin of so-called Eurogames as the antithesis to Wargames as post-WW2 Germany shunned that subject matter, and the statistics and design sections towards the end of the book. The book also helped be add many games to my Board Game Geek 'Wishlist'.Highly recommended and would purchase again in an instant. Excellent gift material also.

Interesting book on all aspects of gaming. I wasn't sure that I would get a great out of this as I've been gaming for a long time & I thought it would be a bit basic, but I found it pretty in depth.A good read for novices or experienced gamers alike.

A lot here about Dungeons and Dragons type gaming, painting models, and some fairly obvious commentary. Relatively little about board gaming; title a little misleading.

A good introduction to the pastime. Good value. Arrived before expected.

Part of chapter 3 reprinted instead the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7. Not very happy.

Really recommend this book to board game lovers everywhere! Very interesting read and visually great too.

I brought this for my husband for our anniversary , his comments were that it was a well thought out and constructed book it included many of roleplay systems he expected to see

Matt Thrower has been writing about games for a long time. I first encountered his work over at Shut Up and Sit Down, and since then he’s been everywhere from IGN, to the Guardian, to Paste magazine and more. And now, here he is on my bookshelf with the Haynes Tabletop Gaming Manual.Let’s get the easy bit out of the way first – it’s genuinely good, verging on genuinely great in parts. Matt Thrower writes with a warmth and enthusiasm that is very endearing. The presentation is top notch. The production qualities are excellent. This is a lovely physical thing to own. Pleasingly for a book about board games, there’s an enjoyable tactility to reading it, and holding it. Inside you’ll find full colour pages of beautiful illustrations, useful cut-outs that take you to other resources, and a set of chapters that are wide-ranging and curiously whimsical in their focus.The book is relatively short given the ambition of its brief and as such the pace is brisk. Brisk enough to bring you out in a sweat. There’s an urgency to the writing that is both somewhat unsettling and very encouraging. ‘There’s just so much I have to tell you! This is all JUST SO COOL!’, is the strongest impression you get from reading. Matt is a talented writer and I would have enjoyed seeing his thoughts having more time to grow and mature within each section. I think this book could have been double the length and it wouldn’t have needed to add in any new chapters – the ones here already are more than ample.As I hinted at this is also a book I’d recommend just to have because it is Properly Lovely. If you’re a tabletop gamer, regardless of your level of experience or interest… come on, just look at it. I have literally thousands of books on my shelves and this is easily on the short-list for the prettiest. There’s no other comparable book really for tabletop gamers. Even if all anyone does is flip through and read the bits that matter to them they’ll get an awful lot out of it. Matt Thrower has written a great book. Haynes has put it into a beautiful package. For those reasons alone, I’m going to recommend it.