3235: Types of Board Game
| Types of Board Game |
 Title text: I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion. |
Explanation[edit]
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This is one of 66 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a member of the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
There are a lot of different types of board games in the world. Some are very simple, some are very complicated. This comic illustrates various types, with rather extreme examples.
| Boring | This is a very simplistic and boring board game style, where the players simply move around the board at the dictates of chance. While a number of family games (like Pachisi variants and Monopoly) fall into this structure and still have something resembling skill and gameplay, the simplest examples (such as Snakes and Ladders, Mouse Trap, and Candy Land) involve no player choices at all, and are thus viewed as boring, at least for adults. While Monopoly strategy exists, it can also be described this way and is widely hated (as well as popular), so it's possible Randall is referring to it here. It is unclear whether the described game has no end condition at all or whether it is so dull that the group involved are unable to complete it without getting bored and giving up. |
| Abstract | This board game has more abstract tones, involving the arrangement of geometric shapes for reasons that may not be immediately clear. Some people may find this kind of game, without a relatable framing they can use as a starting point for understanding it, hard to get to grips with. |
| Hyperspecific Theme | This board game has a weirdly specific back-story, being centred around a very specific historical event, and a specific task within that. Lengthy back-stories that have to be explained before you get to the actual gameplay can feel contrived and be off-putting to some players. The Congress of Vienna was a gathering of diplomats from many different countries at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There exists an actual board game about the Congress of Vienna, but it has nothing to do with lighting candles. |
| Overcomplicated | Twilight Imperium is widely regarded as being an extremely complex board game (despite "only" having a weight rating of 3.75 on Board Game Geek). Cones of Dunshire is a joke board game (first shown on the TV show Parks & Recreation), but was eventually turned into a real game where its extreme complexity is key to the joke. Combining them would likely be far more complex than either. Category theory is a branch of mathematics famous for its layers of abstractions, and is notoriously difficult to understand. Monads is one concept from category theory, with the famous definition of "A monad is simply a monoid in the category of endofunctors". |
| Cooperative | Cooperative board games center around players attempting to reach a common goal, winning or losing together. Many feature impediments to communication that make this more difficult; for instance, players may be restricted from saying certain words, or have secret cards they are unable to reveal before playing. The game in this panel appears to forbid all communication between players except for hand gestures. The punchline likens it to a very mundane activity, sorting a junk drawer, made artificially more difficult due to silence, and suggests the game is just as boring. It also raises suspicions that Megan has organised or hijacked this games night to trick her friends into doing chores she can't be bothered with. |
| Branded | Some board games are published and marketed as tie-ins to other forms of media, using settings, characters, or events from the source to appeal to its fans. The theming often has little to nothing to do with the gameplay, as the many branded variants on Monopoly can attest. The game in this panel is themed after the sitcom Friends, with the unlikely addition of Son Goku from Dragon Ball Z. |
| Party | It can be hard to determine what makes a party game, other than it generally doesn't have the kinds of gameplay and strategy in other kinds of board games. Such games (like Pictionary or 30 seconds) are usually aimed at creating humorous or mildly embarrassing situations). However, party games marketed as "for adults" (such as the well known Cards Against Humanity) do tend to have one thing in common โ swearing or references to sex. |
| Social Deduction | Social deduction games revolve around the players attempting to deduce the roles or allegiances of other players, based on both special abilities provided by the game and the players' native abilities to tell which of their fellow players are being dishonest. Commonly, they involve an 'uninformed majority,' who do not know the allegiances of other players, attempting to discover the 'informed minority,' who know the members of their team. The minority is often framed as 'evil,' with the ability to 'kill' other players and remove them from the game; their victory condition often revolves around killing most or all of the 'good' players. The game in this panel revolves around finding a 'secret murderer,' but evidently has required clarification that discovering a real murderer does not count, implying that one or more of the participants has actually killed someone in real life (this would particularly make sense if Black Hat was at the table). This might be a reference to the case of Tiernan Darnton who admitted killing his step-grandmother during a game of Truth or Dare. |
| Title text | "Candles of Vienna" is presumably the game described under "Hyperspecific Theme". An expansion pack is an additional set of playing equipment that can be combined with an existing game to add new gameplay possibilities. It appears that the rights holders for Goku have decided on a strategy of getting the character included in multiple board games. The character would arguably be even more out of place in Napoleonic Vienna than lounging on the sofas at Central Perk. |
Transcript[edit]
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This is one of 44 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
[There are 8 cells, each with a different type of board game.]
Boring
Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.
Abstract
Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...
Hyperspecific Theme
Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...
Overcomplicated
Whitehat: It's a cross between Twilight Imperium and Cones of Dunshire, but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...
Cooperative
Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.
Branded
Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.
Party
Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...
Social Deduction
Megan: Remember, per our Find the Secret Murderer house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does not count.
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I created a starter explanation, but I have no idea how to create tables. 47.146.30.92 04:08, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
It is rare that xkcd makes me laugh out loud, but this comic's title text really got me! XD 2601:241:8002:3E0:C95E:1939:2ED0:CD78 04:22, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
I wonder if blackhat is the one who committed the murder in the last game, and was expunged from the current round with the social deduction game RG (talk) 04:35, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
- Also, I "fixed" panel 6: https://www.pasteboard.co/hxBFDL497SLH.png RG (talk) 04:54, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
- Whoever it was didn't necessarily commit the murder in the game - all we know is that it was discovered during the game. 82.13.184.33 09:39, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
The reference to Monopoly seems ultra-specific given the plethora of games that have this structure, including Candyland, Snakes and Ladders, Sorry, and if one allows for multiple tokens, Parchisi and even Backgammon. Despite the amount of hate for Monopoly, it seems more likely that the editor has something against Monopoly than Randal. Mneme (talk) 05:14, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
- Also, Monopoly, played by the correct rules, is not that boring. It's just, that too many people skip the bidding rule. With 4 Players, after one turn around the table for all four game pieces (which required 10-12 dice rolls per player), statistically 75% of all properties should be snatched up. 195.65.24.115
Monopoli? Is that the Italian version?--2A00:23CC:D248:8901:8046:B94B:F152:34FA 07:51, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
It's possible that 2A02:8071:5C20:40:84FB:9239:8AB8:1729 (who made both this edit and the Pachisi edit), coming from Germany, doesn't realize that in America, Parcheesi and Monopoly are the more accepted spellings (Pachesi is probably more appropriate for the historical game Parcheesi is based on, but this is about table games not historical games). Mneme (talk) 08:02, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
I misread the tie-in as being Grogu, which would have made it even weirder. 82.13.184.33 08:52, 21 April 2026 (UTC) Add comment
