How To Get Started With Board Game Journaling

While browsing Reddit this week, I was reminded of how creative and wonderful the people within the board gaming community are. All thanks to this thread by u/holymadness who shared their board game journal.

It’s a beautiful book and what’s written looks great, even though I can’t read a single word. Yet the thought of capturing special board gaming moments and memories deeply resonated with me.

Something we do in our group is capture inside jokes said at the table. However, these rarely relate to the board game we’re playing and are not appropriate for anyone but those within the group.

The one time we did capture the gameplay was in Oath: Chronicles of Empires & Exile.

It’s the one game that included a journal as a component. So we put it to work.

After every game, whoever won got to recount their tale of victory to a scribe. It added an extra dimension to the game by giving it some permanence (even more so than what’s already in Oath). It also contributed to my group’s willingness to talk about the game between sessions.

Therefore, I thought it would make a great topic to discuss. Covering the different kinds of journaling you can do with board games and some apps that make it easier to pick up the habit.

If you have more techniques or programs to help fellow board gamers then leave them in the comments below.

Tracking your plays

Now, I talked about the romantic side of journaling above. The storytelling side, where you lean into your creative instincts to recount the game’s narrative. However, it doesn’t have to be a Pulitzer-winning autobiography, you can get analytical with it too.

Figure out the important questions at your table like:

• Who wins the most? (Or who should you gang up on in the next game)
• Who picks the blue player colour the most?
• What types of games are hitting the table?
• …and what games need to hit the sales pile?

From my research, most ‘serious’ board gamers use Board Game Stats to keep track of all that information and more. However, it does come with a price tag and being the cheapskate I am, I haven’t bought it myself. But from the pictures, it looks like a great all-in-one solution for tracking your statistics.

It also integrates with Board Game Geek so if your collection is already inputted there, you won’t have to re-enter it on the app. From all of the reviews I’ve read, it looks promising – so it might become the target of an article soon!

For those of us looking for a free option, you can also try Board Game Geek. It’s a little more cumbersome to navigate around thanks to its web design from the 1980s. But it’s free to log your plays. All you need to do is create an account, search for the game and click the log play button.

Now, if you want to go more old school than that. Don’t let anyone tell you there’s something wrong with tracking your plays in Excel or Google Sheets. Sure, it’s not as fancy. But it will get the job done.

Plus who doesn’t like a good old-fashioned V-LOOKUP.

Alright, alright, I hear you, people don’t play games to sit on their phones or look at their screens for the whole night. You want a physical solution instead.

In that case, my favourite approach is to write the winner’s name inside the box lid, along with the date. That way you get a nice reminder every time you open a board game box of how many times you played it, and who won the last time you played.

Saving your narrative

Statistics are all well and good for painting the larger picture. But they fail to capture the story of what happened. What were the defining moments of the game?

Was Jeffry a superior mastermind? Or did they roll a crit at exactly the right time?

These are the moments that excite me as a board game player. The feelings you have within a game, and the big plays and decisions players make to turn the tide… or not. Journaling these effectively requires you to put pen to paper, or start a board game blog.

A great example of this is The Board Games Chronicle. They do detailed breakdowns, otherwise known as session reports, of the games they’ve played. Using words and images they let you follow along how the game went, who was who, and the major turning points.

This is a wonderful way to tell your story of the game, where you can inject your love and excitement into the board game and get people excited about it. Not only that, you also get to relive all the awesome moments from the game you played. Essentially you get the feeling of playing it twice.

For those who want to get more creative visually, you could use something like Excalidraw. This tool lets you scribble down thoughts and feelings quickly. As well as copy in pictures, and whatever else you can imagine.

While I haven’t used it for board game journaling as such, I use it a lot for work. It’s great for when you need to scribble down complex problems or diagrams. One thing I like about Excalidraw is it deliberately creates “messy” looking images. So you’re never spending extra time lining up objects or making things look right.

All of this said nothing beats putting pen to paper.

Getting a good leatherbound journal and keeping all your notes there is the best way to journal your board gaming experiences. Not only does it keep it all in one place, but if you leave it by your collection, the easy access means you’ll browse it anytime you have downtime.

One tip with these types of journals though, is to get creative. Not everything has to be a Lord of the Rings-style grandiose narrative. Sometimes all you need is a crudely drawn diagram or picture of an important character.

A big thing about these journals is that they should be an extension of you. So make sure to personalise it as you see fit!

Splitting the difference

My favourite articles on Dude! Take Your Turn is Dave’s monthly New to Me’s. Here Dave half-reviews and half-recounts the games he played. Providing statistics like how many times he played the game, the designer, and the publisher, along with recounting how the game played out.

This is a wonderful way of splitting the difference between being overly analytical and digging into the story of how the game unfolded.

The other benefit of this approach is it allows you to cover more board games!

Although, you don’t have to go as crazy as Dave. Because he’s such a prolific writer. But after another night of great gaming, when you have three or four games to write about. You may not want to go in-depth on every game you played.

Again, board game journaling is about you expressing your love of board games beyond the table. So make sure you’re doing it for yourself, and in a way that suits your lifestyle.

What’s next for you?

I hope this post inspires you to start your own board game journaling. Whatever form that takes. Whether that’s tracking your stats, or recounting your playthroughs in dramatic narrative fashion.

If you do, or have, a great story you want to share I’d love to hear about it. Either in the comments below or via our Contact Page.