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Listen, @colewehrle tricked us all into playing a COIN game by setting it in a cute-ass forest inhabited by cute-ass animals. I cannot tell you how many people who have never touched a COIN game before were like "OOOOOH THIS GAME LOOKS FUN" when they saw it, including me. https://twitter.com/425suzanne/status/1352044667664125953
I play it online roughly twice a month with friends. Have a game scheduled for this Saturday which I am STOKED AS HELL to play, but if you approached me with any other COIN game I'd be a no, because I don't like historical themes because frequently the history is fucking wrong.
I don't find re-enacting battles to be at all interesting, nor am I interested in exploring potential alternative outcomes to wars, etc. if troops and resources had been utilized differently or whatever. I am confident that most people hold similar opinions to mine.
There's a reason why gateway games (Splendor, Azul) and games themed with familiar IP (BSG, zombies) are so popular, and it's because a) their themes are highly approachable and/or b) they don't make people feel stupid when they open a rulebook.
I ran game nights at work in the Before Times, and the games that people enjoyed best were Ice Cool and Codenames, because the rules were simple. Multiple coworkers had expressed that they didn't think they were good at board games because "board games are so complicated!"
I live with my sister and BIL and neither of them play board games regularly but I got them really into Kingdom Builder last month, and now I'M the one who's like "nah I don't feel like gaming tonight, I have knitting to do."
If I tried to start them on Terraforming Mars I would still be staring at my collection upset at all the games I don't get to play, but instead I'm staring at it like "how can I best scaffold their familiarity with game mechanics so we can play Terraforming Mars by June?"
But my ultimate point here is this: Root is proof that you can design a complex, asymmetrical game and people will buy it because the theme is SO GOOD they will overlook the dense rules to play it. I have friends who have not played many heavy games who really want to play Root.
Also while you're all here I'd like to point out that Alexandre Dumas' works are in the public domain so can we PLEASE stop crawling up HP Lovecraft's creepy, racist ass already.
