Someone at the clinic found out I write about board games and asked me, completely sincerely, “so what’s the best one, like, is there just one you’d say is the best game,” and I gave some non-answer about it depending on the group and the night and watched their eyes glaze over a little, like I’d dodged a simple question instead of answering the only honest way you actually can.

This happens more than I’d expect, someone treating “is it a good game” like it has the same shape as “is it a good movie,” a single fixed rating that applies regardless of who’s watching it or when. I’ve tried explaining that Root is a brilliant game with the right table and an actively bad experience with the wrong one, that the exact same box can be a five star night or a miserable one depending entirely on who’s sitting around it, and I can watch people decide I’m being difficult on purpose instead of actually answering. It’s not evasive. It’s the actual truth of the hobby, more than it is for books, where at least a single reader alone with the text is having something closer to one consistent experience.

I’ve started giving a slightly different answer lately, less philosophical, more useful: what’s the night like, how many people, how much time, is everyone experienced or is someone brand new, and building the answer from there instead of pretending a universal ranking exists. It takes longer than “the best one is X” would, and most people asking casually don’t actually want the longer conversation, they want a name they can go buy. But the short answer is a lie dressed up as a favor, and I’d rather be the slightly annoying person who asks three questions back than hand someone a game that’s wrong for their actual table.

Marcus gets asked this constantly at his own job, different field entirely, and he says the pattern’s the same everywhere, people want a single word where the honest answer is a paragraph of conditions. I brought Root to a family gathering once because someone had heard me talk about it and wanted to try the best game, their words, and it went about as badly as it could have, four people who’d never played anything heavier than Uno, one of them frustrated within twenty minutes and checked out for the rest of the night. It’s a genuinely great game. It was the wrong recommendation for that specific room, and I knew it walking in, and I brought it anyway because I wanted to give a straight answer to a question that doesn’t have one.

I’ve gotten better since about actually holding the line when someone pushes back on the questions, because people do push back, they’ll say just pick one, like the follow up questions are a stall tactic instead of the actual work of a real recommendation. The clinic version of this is a client asking what’s wrong with their dog before I’ve even looked at the animal, wanting a diagnosis handed over before the actual examination happens, and I don’t blame anyone for wanting the faster version of an answer. But a fast wrong answer costs more than a slower right one, in games and at the clinic both, and I’d rather spend the extra two minutes finding out what somebody’s actual table looks like than hand them a box that ends up shelved after one bad night, blamed on the game instead of the mismatch.