by tripecac
In terms of being a "completionist", I'm in a bit of a transitory state right now. Or am I? I'll explain:Normally, whenever additional content is released for a game I already have, I automatically buy it. It doesn't matter if I've never played the game. So I have a full Arkham Horror LCG collection (including a revised copy of the base game) despite never actually having played it. (Actually, I am missing one thing: Barkham Horror. Impossible to find at any thing but exorbitant prices! But since it was apparently an April Fool's joke, and possibly not "canon", I'm not too bothered by its absence. But I keep looking for it...) More examples: I have full collections of Mansions of Madness, Eldritch Horror, Elder Signs, Arkham Horror 3rd Edition, Marvel Champions, Everdell, Root, Tide of Iron, Battlelore, Combat Commander, Conflict of Heroes, Chronicles of Time, Empires of the North, Too Many Bones, Cloudspire, Aeon's End, Role Player, and a bunch of smaller series... all nicely organised, but none of which I've actually played. So yeah, that's what I've been doing the past few years. Accumulating collections of board games which look really cool but which I haven't gotten around to playing. I'm too busy struggling to get through my immense backlogs of games for Steam, Switch, PS4, and the Quest 2. I love games, but I collect them far faster than I consume them. My music collection is similarly excessive; most songs in it I've listened to either 0 or 1 times. All meticulously named and organised, though!
However, the current Gloomhaven kickstarter has [finally] made me actually pause. When I first saw the campaign I immediately went all-in, adding all the addons I didn't already have. Sheesh. But then I kept wondering looking at the price of the minis, and wondering if I actually wanted minis, which I don't intend to paint. Grey minis just don't seem as recognizable or inspiring as colorful cardboard standees. Plus they require more storage, and as you can guess, I'm struggling with storage space as it is. So I decided that, because the minis are just cosmetic, I could omit them from my pledge, so I did. But that process of thinking more critically about the pledge made me question the value of the RPG to me; my family prefers euros and party games, so I'd have to play the RPG by myself, which is impossible. Since the RPG would end up unplayed, just like my MERP collection (which has a better theme), I decided to remove the RPG from the pledge. This just left Gloomhaven 2nd Edition and some add-ons for Frosthaven. But I'm still not anywhere close with being done with Gloomhaven 1st Edition! And after that I have its expansion, and then Jaws of the Lion, and then Frosthaven... when would I actually get around to playing Gloomhaven 2nd Edition? It would probably take me so long to get around to it that there'd be a Gloomhaven 3rd or 4th Edition. So I ended up dropping my pledge to $1 so that I have the option of going either way: stay completionist (by adding stuff back to my pledge), or resist the completionist impulse (by skipping the pledge manager altogether). I still haven't made a decision either way; I feel torn. The "new stuff" added to Gloomhaven 2 seems really cool, but I know I'm just being a sucker for marketing, and there's that lingering issue: when would I actually play it???
So on the heels of that little Gloomhaven kickstarter drama/dilemma, I heard about Cthulhu Death May Die. And now I have a similar decision: go all-in, or hold back. And when would I actually play it? Part of me wants to brush away the "when would I play it question" as irrelevant, but it's not really irrelevant, is it? Because the sooner I can play and finish it, the sooner I can sell it, and free up some space on my shelves. Do I really want to buy something that will simply take up shelf space for several years, waiting for its turn in my (very slowly moving) board gaming play queue?
Oh, but it looks cool!
Is there a pill for this?