The Board Games that Gen Z Loves to Play
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From KQED. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, a game of Mahjong or backgammon isn't just for your grandma. Gen Z and millennials are finding connection and competition at board game clubs that celebrate classic games, chess, ruby cube, and who can deny the joy of a heated round of the card game Uno.

So put down your wordle, get off your words with friends, join us to hear from game experts, and tell us, what's the game that gets you to gather around the table? That's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim.

Next time you walk into a bar, don't be surprised to see people slapping down Scrabble tiles instead of shots. That's because, according to New York Times reporter Callie Holterman, what's old is new again. And across the nation, Gen Z and millennials are finding joy and connection at board game clubs. Playing classic games like chess, backgammon, and rummycube, which for decades I thought was pronounced rummycub.

But according to the Surgeon General, a crushing epidemic of loneliness has overtaken our nation, and there are a lot of big ways to combat that. But for a pack of Uno cards or a heated round of Mahjong may be the answer to feeling a little less alone and more connected.

To tell us more, we're joined by Callie Holterman. Her New York Times piece is called The Extremely Offline Joy of the Board Game Club. Holterman covers style, pop culture, and Gen Z for The Times. Welcome to Forum, Callie. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. We're also joined by games maven, board game expert, and part cheesy player, Gwendolyn Reza. She's the co-owner of Games of Berkeley. Welcome back to Forum, Gwendolyn.

Hey, thanks for having me back. Yeah. Kelly, so you cover Gen Z and millennial trends for The New York Times. Was this classic board game club trend something you found in your real life before you started on reporting on it?

Yeah, it was. And I think the first thing sort of to say is that there's nothing majorly new here. Obviously, people have been meeting up to play board games for centuries. But I was really interested. I started hearing about some chess clubs that were really popular among people in their 20s. And I was interested in if there were other similar clubs popping up that were sort of bringing younger players to games with a typically older fan base. Yeah. What's your game of choice, Callie?

I'm a Scrabble player. I'm a big fan. I grew up playing with family members. Well, I think you said that you had a German Scrabble set growing up, which seems hard. My grandmother did. Yeah. And what's fun about Scrabble is that the sets are different from language to language. So my grandmother had a German Scrabble set that had like it had a lot more S's than an American set. And it had letters with umlauts that I remember very specifically being sort of unsure of how to place.

I mean, German Scrabble must have a lot of long words that invariably hit triple word score. That's what I'm thinking. And I don't know a lot of them.

So, Callie, you discovered a club for nearly every board game. And you mentioned, you know, for example, in L.A., there's a chess club that's both social and a place where people can maybe find future dates. I mean, chess does not seem conducive to a lot of chatter and small talk. But what's the vibe like at an L.A. chess club or some of the other chess clubs that you dropped in on?

What was funny was this chess club. I don't know. I heard the word chess club and I sort of pictured maybe an intimate group of 20-ish people sitting around really thinking over their moves. It's not that much like that. It was started by Michelle Kong last year and she started it and

It was just a few people playing in a jazz bar, but it grew really, really fast. She ended up having to move the meetings to a warehouse with an extended parking lot for more space. She said by the end of the summer, there were like 500 people showing up to each meeting. There was food, there were drinks, there were martinis, there were people trying to find people to date over the chessboard. It turned into really like a little bit of a party scene with a game at the heart of it.

What do you think was, I mean, at the heart of that, like what was the attraction when you talked to people about it?

You know, on every story I work on, I often hear basically the same thing from young people, which is that they want to be out in the world. They're tired of looking at their phones. A lot of these people spent time in college or in high school kind of stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic. And you see people trying to find ways outside of that that aren't always having to do with drinking or partying or clubbing. I heard from a lot of people saying, you know,

I love the idea of joining a running club. That's like another thing that's kind of a social thing that's blown up among people in this age group. But it is kind of tough for many of us to try to make new friends while we're like covered in sweat. The board game club seems like a slightly easier and more approachable alternative for some people, myself included.

I mean, I think small talk is a little harder when you're huffing and puffing up a hill for sure. I mean, Callie, nostalgia is something that seems to permeate through this desire for connection. I mean, folks reaching back to earlier times and when things seemed, quote unquote, simpler, at least on their face. Is nostalgia some of the appeal of like picking out your grandma's backgammon board?

Yeah, that was something I heard from people too. I think at home during the pandemic, which I mentioned before, a lot of people did pick up sort of board games. There wasn't that much to do. We saw board game sales surge during the pandemic. And I

And I think for some people, this has been an effort to take those sort of nostalgic experiences playing board games, maybe with family members the way that they did when they were children, and to try to bring that out into the world as a method of getting to know more people. Well, Gwendolyn, you're the co-owner of Games of Berkeley, which is in Berkeley, California. And did you find that sales of board games were kind of on the rise during the pandemic? And is that a trend that has stuck?

Yes. Board game sales have been on the rise overall for the last six to seven years. We're in what many consider a new renaissance, a new golden age of board games. It's a

People really want that face-to-face, on-a-table connection, and board games are great at that. Yeah, and are you finding that people are seeking out a classic game of backgammon versus maybe a more complicated strategy game? Yes. When it comes to games like backgammon, chess, checkers, Scrabble, internally we refer to those as traditional games.

And one of the main selling points of those traditional games, the reason they've been around for thousands of years at this point with some of them, is that they're easy to learn, hard to master. That's a specific terminology we use in board gaming, is easy to learn, hard to master. Because it means you can drop down, sit at the table,

figure out how to make a move and then just enjoy a game. But if you really get into it, like a lot of these people in these chess clubs can get, you can spend a lifetime learning new moves, figuring out what your strategy is. There's a lot of different game style plays. Yeah. I mean, I think that games that seem simple like checkers are

You know, easy to learn, but I don't think I'll ever be really good at that game. I don't know why. And what's your advice, Gwendolyn, for somebody who's getting into a traditional game who may kind of know it from childhood but might want to pick it up as an adult? It really depends on the game. There's several chess games.

like corner clubs in Oakland and Berkeley that we love. And they buy their chess sets from us because we sell the nice tournament style ones, which are a little bigger, easier to play with. Honestly, just dropping into any of those games, anywhere you see them, they'd be more than welcoming. There's lots of different meetups you can find here in the Bay area and

It really depends on what you played before and what you're interested in playing. I myself am a chess girl. I love it. I've played it since I was very, very little. Because chess is complicated, but not complicated. You can learn it as a child and then play it for the rest of your life. And I also think that games like chess and backgammon really inform...

the other person. You learn a lot about who you're playing against based on their strategy. It's really, it's fascinating. That is for sure. Well, we're talking about board game clubs and the joy and connection that millennials, Gen Z, and, you know, everybody else are finding in these board game clubs. We're joined by Callie Holterman. She's a reporter with the New York Times and covers style, pop culture, and Gen Z.

Her recent piece is titled The Extremely Offline Joy of the Board Game. We've also got Gwendolyn Reza. She's the co-owner of Games of Berkeley. And we definitely want to hear from you. What is your favorite board game or a game that got you back into playing board games? And have you found connection through playing at a board game club?

You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or give us a call now, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. I mean, tell us, is it Monopoly? Is it Life? Is it Backgammon? What's your favorite board game?

Callie, one of my favorite lines from your piece is from this guy who founded a RumiKube meetup, and he said his goal was to make that game hot and relevant. I mean, I'm not sure how one does that. Does that mean like getting a tattoo of the RumiKube smiley face? Yeah.

Yeah. No, I had, I was lucky enough to get to go visit that club and play some of the game and I got beat badly, I will confess, despite loving that game a lot and having picked it up during the pandemic myself.

But the vibe of that club was really fun. It's in New York. It's at the Williamsburg Parkhouse, which is free, McCarran Parkhouse, pardon. And, you know, it had a DJ booth that was playing really loud music. It had a cart with chipwitches and like little ice cream sandwiches. There were drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic. I think he wanted it to feel, to have some of the markers of nightlife, but for it also to be

possible to sit down and have a conversation. And yeah, you mentioned the tattoo. I was kind of shocked that two people had the little Joker-like face from Rummy Cube tattooed on their arms. So that shows you just the level of there were total newcomers there, but there were also people who had tattoos themed by the game. I mean, that is a creepy smiley face, though, to have as a tattoo. That was my opinion when I saw the picture. Yeah.

It's a very valuable tile. You might feel differently if you played. That's true. That is very true. Gwendolyn, for people who don't know. OK, so I asked you, is it Rummikub, Rummikub, whatever it's called? But how do you play that game? Just so people who may not know about it. It's a numbers game. It's a bit about it's a bit about counting and calculation and sort of making your tiles work like numbers.

Basically, you want them to be worth as much for you as possible. And then you can really do a lot of stealing. There's a lot of strategy in the game. You want to pay attention to what the other people are collecting and building. And

You can do a lot of stealing, which can make it very, very competitive. The first time I played Rumi Koob, I got absolutely trounced. And it made me want to play again. It's a really interesting strategy game. I mean, I love that game to the point where I actually got it on my phone so I could play, you know,

Anytime, anywhere. We're talking about board game clubs and the joy and connections that everyone, millennials, Gen Z, are finding in clubs where people just play board games. We're joined by Gwendolyn Reza, the co-owner of Games of Berkeley, and Callie Holterman, a reporter for The New York Times, whose recent piece is The Extremely Offline Joy of the Board Game. You can join our conversation. You can give us a call now at 866-733-6786.

That's 866-733-6786. You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. Find us on Blue Sky, X, Facebook, and Instagram or Threads. We're at KQED Forum. We want to know what game gets you to the table. We want to know what games make you crazy, what games that you love. I'm Grace Wan, in for Mina Kim. More on board games after this break. ♪

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Featuring Tony-winning choreography and an electrifying score, Some Like It Hot plays the Orpheum Theatre for three weeks only, January 7th through 26th. Tickets on sale now at broadwaysf.com. Support for Forum comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for me to Kim. We're talking about

We're talking about people who are finding connection over board games. There are lots of board game clubs in cities across the country, and we have some experts to share what that situation is about. We've got Gwendolyn Reza. She's the co-owner of Games of Berkeley. Callie Holterman, who wrote a piece in The New York Times called The Extremely Offline Joy of the Board Game. And we're hearing from you about your favorite board game, games that got you back into playing board games.

and connections you may have found at a board game club. You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. Find us on Blue Sky, X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or give us a call now, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. I wanted to go to the phones. And Rodney from Milpitas, welcome to Forum.

Hi, I love this subject. I've been waiting. I love it. I'm glad you guys brought this thing up. I'm trying to... I know chess. Chess is one of my favorite games. I'm not good at it, but I'm trying to teach my granddaughter, my 10-year-old granddaughter. Okay, but I like to get into a club and then see what resources are available online and in person to...

to do that. But yeah, chess is my favorite game. Obviously, growing up, you know, I'm old, so we've played a lot of games coming up, you know, so I'm used to them. The kids aren't, so I'm trying to get my grandkids into this, back into games to kind of stay off the social media on the cell phone and then start, say it politely, to use their brain to do that. But yeah, I think it's a great subject guys are talking about. Well, I love that

question, Rodney, and good for you for trying to get your granddaughter into something like chess. Gwendolyn, you're a chess person. What's your advice? Yes. So I

Kids pick up chess very easily. The way I learned was my mother sat me down and she just explained each piece and we played around. All it took was the pawn does this. Now, what should your pawn do after that? It was very much a learning exercise. There's websites that will walk your grandchild through that.

There's also products that will do that. There's a really fantastic one that we carry most of the year called No Stress Chess. That is a chessboard and pieces and little cards that detail what each chess piece does. And so you have a visual guideline of how each one should move, which is fantastic.

fantastic for beginners and children. But personally, if I were you, I would sit her down and walk her through a game. It's the best way to learn. Sounds like some good advice. We're getting a lot of comments here, too. Scouter writes on Blue Sky, when I was a kid, my mom would drag me along to her monthly bridge club with seven other ladies. It was

Is bridge getting a foothold again? And Annalise writes, I'm 28 and recently started playing bridge with some friends of mine who live in Boston. I'd love to play more when they are not in town, but I don't know anybody in San Francisco my age who plays bridge. Have you heard of any bridge clubs for young people? I mean, Callie, bridge isn't in your, I don't think it's in your article, but did you come across any bridge clubs?

No, but now I feel like I have a great idea for the next story. I'd love to look more into bridge clubs. I will say that I heard about multiple bunco clubs popping up among young people, some explicitly because they had played the dice game with their moms. It was sort of like considered a Midwestern kitchen table game that groups of women would play together. And there's definitely a new generation kind of trying out that game. So I would love to see bridge get a similar treatment. I bet it already is happening and I just haven't run into it yet.

I am fascinated by this. What is Bunko? I don't think I know that game. Okay, it's a dice game. You have three dice, and it's almost entirely luck-based. So you roll the dice and see what happens, and you're...

What you roll sort of determines whether you win or lose. What's really interesting about the game though, because like that some of the people I talked to told me is it's a game where rotating tables is sort of built into the structure of the game. So it's a really good game to meet new people because you might roll something, you might win, you might lose, but no matter what the tables keep shifting, you're not going to be trapped in some conversation with someone awful all night. You'll have lots of opportunities to meet brand new people.

Well, another classic game that is enjoying more popularity among the young is Mahjong. And I wanted to bring in Angie Lin. She's the founder of East Never Loses. It's a company that hosts Mahjong events and tutorials in the LA area. Welcome to Forum, Angie. Hi, thanks for having me. Well, Angie, you and three friends started something called Mahjong Mistress, which ended up having a huge 300-person party. Tell me how did that happen? And what do you count for that event's success? Well, I think it's a great idea.

Yeah, Mahjong Mistress was such an amazing event because it brought together me and three of my friends in a way that was both cultural and also social. And I think that's a big part of the success is that mahjong is something that we all grew up sort of watching our grandparents play or have seen in the movie Crazy Rich Asians and other old Hong Kong style movies. And so it's

Mahjong Mistress really came about when I moved to Taiwan and really started searching out friends. And the best way that I knew how to make friends was through this game Mahjong, just because I realized, hey, this is something that if we meet up every week, I'm going to get to know you better. I'm going to play this game. And also different than some of the board games you've been talking about, Mahjong is essentially a gambling game. Yeah.

So it is based on money, which kind of adds a little bit of a spicy factor to it. But I will say that Mahjong Mistress and all of our games, we're really trying to recontextualize Mahjong from gambling into more of a social kind of game that it is. And so we got together when I came back from the pandemic and we're like,

Hey, like actually nobody else knows how to play this game. And I think that's kind of the key to the success of the event was that everybody knows Mahjong, but nobody knows how to play Mahjong. And so our first event we posted about it. I think the name is also just like really, you know, fun and cheeky with the four of us girls. And I kind of marketed it as sort of like,

a girl band, if you will. We did really fun marketing with the four of us, just taking photo shoots with Mahjong and making it look sexy and hot and fun. And so the first event we did was free and just, you know, word of mouth traveled. And we had 300 people for that first event. And from there, it's kind of become consistent Lunar New Year events, private events, tutoring events.

So much to the point that I started East Never Loses and quit my tech job to focus on the revitalization of Mahjong full time. Well, I mean, Mahjong is a very old game and there are lots of styles. And I mean, I'm going to be honest that my 2025 goal is to learn how to play this game. What kind of style of Mahjong are you playing and promoting? Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm Taiwanese, so I'm definitely promoting the Taiwanese style of mahjong, which is 16 tiles. It's very similar to the Hong Kong style, which focuses on 12 tiles. But I would say Taiwan style has maybe in some ways the lowest barrier of entry because you're allowed to have quote unquote chicken hands, which are hands that aren't...

I just I love all these games because there are all these funny little quirks about them and, you know, things that are like so internal to the game, like the Remy Coop face and, you know, I guess chicken hands. Angie, you met your girlfriend at a Mahjong night. And I'm curious, how did playing Mahjong bring you together? Like, what did you learn about this person because you were playing this game?

Yeah, I definitely feel the Mahjong table has brought me all of my closest friends and people in my life now. But she just saw me teaching and playing the game and was like, oh, I, you know, just like what I was saying, she said that she saw me and was like, oh, this person's teaching Mahjong. I've always wanted to play and she's kind of cute. And this is the perfect way to just like approach somebody in a non, you know, like,

intense manner. It's sort of just very natural. She just came up to the table and was like, hey, can you teach me a game? And she sat down and we just hit it off. And that was really like, I mean, she's the most important person in my life now. And so that game, I feel like, has brought me so much luck and fortune. But I think there's something about the game that is just calling to people, specifically of Asian-American descent, where they're really wanting to connect to their roots in authentic and

emotional ways, but also just like look cool and have fun as well. And kind of what Gwendolyn was saying, it's a very traditional game in the sense that it's easy to master hard to, I know it's easy to get into hard, difficult to master. And so yeah, exactly. It's really great social aspect of the game that I feel like has,

you know, help prop up the continued popularity. Kelly, this idea of making a connection, I'm curious, what do you think people can learn about other people, meaning a lot of sense of strangers from playing games that you might not find out in other contexts?

I mean, it's nice. I feel like I've even learned things about all of you being on this show as we talk about our relationships with games. There's something about games, especially the ones that we learn as children, that provides a sort of natural bridge to talk about maybe our culture or where we grew up or who we learned to play games from.

I talked to the organizer of one game club who said that the way somebody plays dominoes can usually reveal whether they're from the East Coast or the West Coast. It feels like this really natural bridge into getting to know someone in their background that feels like a little bit less

kind of awkward or less of a cold start than just approaching someone in a bar and saying like, hey, who are you? Tell me about yourself, you know? Well, and a lot of times, Gwendolyn, these games have a bit of downtime, like somebody plays their tiles in Scrabble or Mahjong, and then there's time to chat. So there is this ability to just sort of connect in a different way. Do you agree? Absolutely. One of my very formative memories is playing Scrabble with my mom, who is

She's a walking thesaurus, but she would spend a very long time staring at her tiles in order to, you know, make the perfect word. And it would make my father so impatient that he'd start singing the Jeopardy theme song. That feels like a marital spat waiting to happen. Doesn't it? But yeah, there's a lot of connection and a lot of

interpersonal personal communication both verbal and non-verbal with playing board games or card games or traditional games really just we as a species like to play games and because games are basically puzzle solving and we love to solve puzzles and

It's it's very much a it's a communal activity and it can be a personal activity. And it's also just good for the brain. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's go to the phones. Luke from Alameda. Welcome to Forum. Hi there. Hi. Hi. What's your game of choice, Luke?

Well, personally, my game choice is a little bit more complicated one. It's this board game called Oak, which I actually, me and my friend actually got from Games of Earthly. Oh, great. Oh, yeah. I have a copy as well. But I think you're Gen Z, and I think you were saying that you remember when people were obsessed with chess? Yes.

Yeah, back in high school, there was this huge moment where just everyone was playing chess. People were getting in trouble playing chess in person, but also just like they had to ban the chess.com website. It was this huge thing in high school, and it was just a really fond memory of mine just watching people do that.

I mean, having to ban chess seems like every Tiger parent's dream school. That's amazing. And was this before Queen's Gambit, the Netflix series, Luke? It was right around then. Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't be into chess after watching that series? When that series came out, Gwendolyn, did chess boards fly out of your store?

Oh, my God. That was the biggest rush on chess that I've ever experienced in eight years in this industry. We couldn't keep anything in stock. Everything was sold out. The makers of chess pieces in India were also experiencing a wood shortage. Oh, wow.

It was truly, truly insane. We sell chess normally decently throughout the year. And when Queen's Gamut blew up, we were sourcing from everywhere to try to get things for people. It was a wild time. Wow. I mean, I'm sure you could not keep no-stress chess on your shelves. Well, we're talking about board game clubs and the joy and connection that people are finding in playing classic board games and newer board games.

We're joined by Angela Lin. She's the founder of East Never Loses, a company that hosts Mahjong events and tutorials. With three friends, Lin also founded Mahjong Mistress, a party for Mahjong players in the L.A. area. We also have Callie Holterman, a reporter for The New York Times who covers style, pop culture, and Gen Z. And Gwendolyn Reza. She's the co-owner of Games of Berkeley. And we're taking your calls and your questions. What is a game that you think people should be playing more of?

And have you ever been to a board game meetup? Definitely share the details. You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky X, Facebook or Instagram and threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call now, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786.

We have some comments coming in. Paul writes, I mean, that could be challenging, Paul, as Callie can tell you.

Another listener writes,

and one that I made sure to put on my wedding registry in a really attractive, substantial, and durable form with carved pieces and solid board. The strategy, luck, and duration were always the best for connecting to each other.

Gwendolyn, I wanted to ask you about the duration of games. I mean, there are some games out there that can take forever to play that might be like, I don't want to play seven hours of Monopoly, but I'd love to play a quick round of backgammon. How does the length of a game deter or attract people? It's really interesting. I tend to use this concept.

conversation tree when I'm talking to customers. And one of the questions I ask is, how long do you want to be sitting at a table? And it's really important because we have games, we carry something called Twilight Imperium, which is a big space battle opera complicated game that takes roughly eight hours to play a session. And then we also have party games and bite-sized games that take 15 minutes. There's also one that's only three cards called Are You a Robot?

And it is literally a it can be a two minute game. It's super, super fun. It there's so much variety in board games that there is genuinely something for everyone. Well, that is good to know. I mean, I personally find games that involve a lot of strategy. It's like people have been playing Settlers of Catan around me for years, and I don't think I'll ever master or understand that game.

And you know what? That's okay. There are a thousand other board games. There are, frankly, 5,000 coming out per year still. You don't have to play Settlers of Catan. You can play anything you want. That's the point of board games. But if I wanted to, I mean, would you suggest that's a game that I could go online to learn how to play it so I can catch up with my friends? Sure.

Frankly, I've looked at the online versions that have tutorials and

Most of them are not spectacular. The best one, I would say, is on Board Game Arena, but it's still not as good as physically having someone walk you through a turn. That's really how I learn board games. If someone tries to read the rulebook to me, I just glaze over. If I'm physically walked through how to do a turn, that is much more my learning style.

And that's different for everyone with board games is you have to figure out how you learn the strategy of the game.

Well, we're talking about board games, backgammon, chess, Uno, Parcheesi, and the joy and connection that people are finding by playing in real life games. We're joined by Gwendolyn Reza. She's the co-owner of Games of Berkeley. Angela Lin, founder of East Never Loses, a company that hosts Mahjong events and tournaments around the LA area. And also Callie Holterman, a reporter for The New York Times who covers Gen Z and pop culture.

And we're listening to your, we're getting your comments and your calls about your favorite board games or a game that got you back into playing board games with friends and family. You can email your comments and your questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call now at 866-733-6786.

That's 866-733-6786. I'm Grace Wan, in for Mina Kim. More on board games and the power of Uno after this break.

Set in Chicago during Prohibition, Some Like It Hot tells the story of two musicians forced to flee the Windy City after witnessing a mob hit. Featuring Tony-winning choreography and an electrifying score, Some Like It Hot plays the Orpheum Theatre for three weeks only, January 7th through 26th.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. We're talking about board games and the games that we love to play with Gwendolyn Reza, co-owner of the Games of Berkeley, Angela Lin, founder of East Never Loses, a Mahjong company, and Callie Holterman, a reporter from The New York Times. We're also hearing from you. You've emailed your comments in to forum at kqed.org, and you're calling us at 866-733-6786.

I wanted to address this comment from Tito on Blue Sky. He writes, I've been playing chess since I was very young, and over time with practice, I can perceive a player's personality, even when playing online and without speaking to them. Is that the same with other games? And I'm curious about that, Angie. I mean, when you're playing Mahjong, do you get a feel or an understanding of the people that you're playing with and their quirky personalities?

Definitely, definitely. There's this saying that the more you play Mahjong, the more your true self is revealed. In a lot of ways, I think it's so true based on your strategy and your character. Especially when you're playing Mahjong, you can be a very stingy player in some ways of like, I'd rather lose than have you win. There's that kind of strategy that happens.

in Mahjong. And so people who go with that are always very interesting. It also speaks a lot to how you win and how you lose. Do you rub your win in somebody's face or are you very subtle about it? I think it speaks a lot to somebody's character and their competitive spirit. I definitely think that Mahjong specifically...

Within the Chinatown communities was like such a tool to bond people together. And there is like a history of playing with the same people, the same four people every time. And it's because you get to really know that. And also there's a lot of sometimes people

especially in the elder generation, like arguments that can come to play with Mahjong because your characters don't match with your group. And so there can be like, oh, like, I don't think you play fast enough or you're too slow or I don't like how you are a stingy player or I hate that you sort of are

okay with letting the person next to you win. So because of that, there's actually a lot of like harmony that needs to be involved for the same people to play the same four people each time. And so there's sometimes like my Mahjong uncle will be like, oh, I got kicked out of that group. They said I was, I got kicked out of this one because they said that I was a sore loser, but I really wasn't. It was auntie this who was the actually the sore loser. And so it's

I do think character really comes out. And I love that mahjong because you want to build that social bond between the same four people. Sometimes it takes a few rounds and a few different types of people in and out before you find your core mahjong group that you go and play with every week. These are your people. They're not going to kick you out. Well, let's talk to Bonnie from Santa Rosa. Bonnie, welcome to Forum. Hi.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I wanted to introduce a game created recently by a friend, and it's called GRIOT, G-R-I-O-T. And to just explain a little bit about it, it's a great way to get to know yourself and other people. And its setup is there are some cards with prompts.

You have a little timer so nobody takes too long, and then you move little pieces around a board so everyone gets a turn. And the way it works, you pick – you have to take three of the prompts, and there's different kinds of prompt cards. They might be something on the order of the time my family moved to dot, dot, dot, or my favorite pet used to blah, blah, blah. And then a person weaves a story, and it's a story from their own life, right?

or it's a story from the life of an ancestor or a relative. It's a great game to play with people that you don't know. It's a great game to play with your family because you'll learn a lot about your family history. And it's a very portable little game, and it was created by an African-American friend that used the word griot, I guess, used to be the storyteller for the community.

And I think you can buy this if you look online, but it's a great game. I highly recommend it. Oh, it sounds so fun. And actually, you would really learn about, like literally learn about the people around you. What a great recommendation. Thanks for calling, Bonnie. You know, I have a question. We have one from Ron who writes, what is a good game for sore losers? And this brings me to a question which I think I've kind of posed to all of you before we chatted on this show, which is like,

I'm a little afraid of being in a group of strangers playing a new game who don't and people who don't know me because I'm afraid like my deep competitive side might come out and it might be really ugly. I don't want to be kicked out of the Mahjong circle like Angie's uncle. So can you really bring your whole self in, Callie, to these game nights or should you try to hold back a little bit?

I don't know. It's a good question. Like, I think, yeah, you don't want to be, like, deeply unkind to these people you're meeting for the first time if you lose to them in a board game. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that.

real competition was totally encouraged and that was fun. Like you'd be sitting at one table and you'd hear another table start screaming because somebody just pulled off a really big upset and then people wander over and say, oh, what happened? Talk me through it. I think the idea is that

It's kind of fun to compete hard in this sort of low stakes arena where if you win or lose your game of Uno or Backgammon or Mahjong, nobody's going to die. Nothing's going to go deeply wrong in the world. The world can feel like a sort of big and scary and tough place a lot of the time for good reason. And it's nice to kind of put all of your eggs into the board game basket where

you can really, really want an outcome. But if it doesn't go your way, like you you walk away relatively unscathed. Well, good to know. And Gwendolyn, to to go to Ron's question, is there a good game for sore losers? There's a lot of good games for sore losers. There's a lot of strategy games where the point is to take care of just yourself and ruin everybody else's day.

There's one called Root, which is probably the most asymmetrical game that I've ever played. It's by Leader Games. It's this adorable, beautiful pastoral woodland setting, but it's very much an army against army faction game.

So there's the Eerie, which are the eagles that used to be in power, and the Marquita Cat, which is a bunch of cute little yellow-orange kitty cats that have taken over the forest. And then there's the Rebel Alliance, which are little mice that pop up and cause chaos. And then there's the Rogue, which is just one raccoon who's just there to sow chaos. And each of these factions plays completely different games, and they have different win conditions.

And it's really fascinating because you're all four of you playing four completely different games with each other. And it is very strategic and very competitive. Yeah.

Oh, I love it. I love all these recommendations. Another listener writes, no one has mentioned Mexican Train yet, which is the Domino's game. And another listener writes, our friends have been playing Mexican Train, a Domino's game, which is addictive and easily learned and it's adopted across families. Now a group of us are starting Dungeons and Dragons. The thought here is to open up our imagination and grow. Thank you.

I need to put a plug into KQED Live later this month. They're going to be having a live Dungeons & Dragons show. And I think, Gwendolyn, you're going to be involved in that, which is amazing. Here's a really funny comment. Linda writes, Dad sat myself and three brothers down when we were all under 12 and attempted to teach us his favorite game, Bridge. What a hot mess. Mom in the background telling him, Fred, give it up.

I can see that happening. Let's go to the phones with Emily from Oakland. Hi, Emily. Welcome to Forum. Hi. I was calling because my husband and I are both, we love games. And in 2020, we discovered a game called Hive, which is a two-person game, which was exactly what we were looking for at the time. And some people call it

chess light. You basically have a bunch of bug tiles and you need to use your bugs to surround your opponent's queen bee. And each of the bugs has different ways that they move. The spider can move three spaces. The beetle can go on top of other bugs. And it's really fast to learn, but hard to develop strategy. And we still love it and take it everywhere we go.

I love that. Emily, have you learned anything about your husband having played multiple rounds of Hive with him that you didn't know before?

I wouldn't say I've learned anything new, but it's definitely been a fun game to play. We're both trying really hard to win, but also joking around. My husband always shouts Beatlemania whenever I put a beetle on top of another piece. But after being together for 20 years, we know most of the things about each other already.

Hive is just strengthening your relationship, not creating new problems for you. Exactly. It sounds wonderful. Well, what a great recommendation. Is Hive popular in your store, Gwendolyn? Yes, it is. It's one of the really solid two-player games we point people at.

I'm obsessed with those pieces. They're heavy and very tactically satisfying, but the game itself can fold up into a zipper pouch and be thrown into your purse. It's one of those games that we have heard from multiple people over multiple years that they keep in their purse so they can play it at restaurants when they're waiting for their appetizers.

Wow. And a listener here writes, growing up, it was Monopoly and Risk. In my Navy days, the games were Spades, Hearts, and Cribbage. Now I love Wingspan, and when traveling, Hive is a great game. People out there need to put that on their list. Let's go to Debra in San Francisco. Hi, Debra. Welcome to Forum. Hi. I haven't heard anybody talk about Legretto, which is a card game that I picked up visiting my family in Norway. It's

Super easy. Little, little kids can pick it up. Each deck has four different color backs, and each of those four different color backs, each person is their own color. Within each of those colors, there's ten cards numbered one through ten that are red, yellow, green, and blue. And the whole point, it's kind of like super fast-paced, almost like war. Everybody is trying to build piles from one to ten in the blitz,

the blue, yellow, red, and green tiles, your cards. And then when you get to 10, the person who has the 10 slaps it face down. Each of those cards, one through nine is one point. The 10s are worth five. And then you just add them up by the color of the back of the cards. And that's how you score the game. It's super fast. It's super easy. But it's fun for adults as much as it is for little kids. Oh, it sounds really fun. And I mean, the satisfaction of slapping your cards down is...

Oh, yeah. It gets violent. Well, thanks for that recommendation, Debra. I mean, there is something. We were talking about how tactile the hive tiles are and this idea of slapping down the cards. Angie, when you play Mahjong, is there just something really satisfying of those tiles? I mean, that's part of my attraction to that game.

Yes, I think that the tactile nature of the tiles is a huge draw. People often tell me they want to eat the tiles. Like gummy, you know, there's just something so satisfying about it. And the materials that they're using, like Mahjong is using sometimes the traditionally luxurious materials.

materials such as like ivory back in the day or bamboo and now it's usually made of like melamine and acrylic but there's like a weight to these tiles so that when you say pong or tsu to try to complete your hand there's this certain like dramatic flair when you put the tiles down that I think people really enjoy having you know express themselves with. I mean it sounds so fun. Well you're listening to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. Let's take another call.

Carol in Foster City, welcome to Forum.

Hi, I love your show. Listen, I've been playing backgammon for 84 years. Wow! When I was three, my father decided he wanted me to understand numbers. And he was a survivor of the Armenian massacres. So with my Irish-English mother in background, he started teaching me backgammon. And I play it to this day. I play it almost every day.

every day online with strangers, but I love it. And my other game is Bridge, which I didn't learn until I was 50. And

And I love that, too. And both of them, I think, help me keep it together. I'm 87, almost 88. And I think things like that help me keep it together and keeping my thinking straight. Yeah, I can imagine that's the case. What is it about Backgammon that keeps bringing you back after 84 years of playing it? You know, it's different. Every person you play against, their personality comes out within four plays. Right.

You know right away what kind of person you're playing against, what kind of a jerk. And the numbers, it's like bridge. Bridge and bad gammon are how you think about combinations of numbers. This morning, some very experienced player online, of course, my partner is from New

London, but somebody, I don't know where they're from, and I played two hands with them, or one hand with them, and then about two-thirds of the way through, they said, you don't know how to play. I'm leaving. And we won the hand by 9.35 points. Sounds like a sore loser. It's

It's a matter of understanding how numbers work together, both of them. And I love them. And I think they're a good thing for older people because they keep you thinking in terms of combinations and how to make things work. And I think it helps you keep your thinking together. Although I admit, since 80, everything's kind of gone to hell. Pardon the word. Oh, wow.

It doesn't sound like it, I have to say, Carol. It sounds like you're pretty together. And I hope someday we cross paths in real life so I can play Backgammon with you online or in person because that sounds like a lot of fun. I love it. Okay. Well, I mean, Gwendolyn, there is this – I mean, we started talking about Gen Z and millennials, but there is this lifelong passion and pursuit of various games that keep people coming back for more, isn't there? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Games of Berkeley has been around since 1980, so we have multiple generations of customers coming in. It's one of my favorite things for a dad or a mom to bring in a kid and be like, yeah, I used to play here when I was your age. Let's pick something out. It's board games and games in general. We love them. The human brain loves a puzzle. We love games. It's a communal activity. It's a puzzle-solving thing. It's

All of the old games like chess and checkers and backgammon and bridge that have been around for hundreds of years. There's a reason they've been around for hundreds of years is because people are teaching them generationally and they're

You get that emotional connection to your past as well as a strategy game that has stood the test of time. Well, I wanted to give some other recommendations from our listeners. Millie writes, my favorite board games are Nova Luna and Azul. I also like the new version of Catan. My favorite card game is Cribbage. And we have a really great meetup in Santa Rosa called Santa Rosa Game Night. So fun. A great place to learn new games. And another listener, Steve writes on Discord, there's Spirit Island.

where all the players are allied against the playing board itself. That sounds pretty fun. And another listener writes, Telestrations is an excellent game full of fun without winners or losers. Sounds like a perfect game for our friend Ron who wrote in. And finally, a listener writes, Quirkle is the perfect multi-generational game. The youngest player is just as likely to win as the oldest. I can vouch for that. I played that a lot with my kids.

In the 30 seconds we have left, Callie, where's a great meetup for a fun game?

Oh, it's such a good question. I think in New York, the Pond Chess Club, which meets at sort of rotating bars and apartments in downtown New York, is really fun. They also have, selfishly, if you're not into chess, they had really good margarita pizzas at the last meetup that I went to. So some people were truly just there for the pizza. Well, we've been talking about board game clubs and the joint connection they've been providing to millennials, Gen Z, and anybody

anybody else at any age. We've been joined by Gwendolyn Reza. She's the co-owner of Games of Berkeley. Thanks for joining us, Gwendolyn.

Thank you so much for having me. And Callie Holterman, a reporter for The New York Times. She covers style, pop culture, and Gen Z. And her recent piece, which was really great, is titled The Extremely Offline Joy of the Board Game Club. Callie, thanks for joining us. Thanks. I learned so many good new games I have to try. Yeah. And Angela Lin, founder of East Never Loses, a company that hosts Mahjong events and tutorials in the L.A. area. Angie, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. Well, thanks to all our callers and listeners for their comments. And you've been listening to Forum. I'm Grace Wan in for Mina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Support for Forum comes from Broadway SF and Some Like It Hot, a new musical direct from Broadway from Tony Award-winning director Casey Nicholaw.

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