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Free game guide · TABLE Method™

CATAN

Negotiation, refusal, and fairness under scarcity · Stage 4

Buy the guide, $7 See the TABLE plan

CATAN TABLE Method™ Game Guide cover

What the game is

Players settle an island, gathering resources from the land and trading with each other to build roads, settlements, and cities. Resources are scarce and unevenly spread, so trading, asking, and refusing are at the center of play.

Why it works at a table

CATAN offers repeated opportunities to ask, negotiate, refuse, and respond to perceived fairness. This guide helps facilitators use those moments as optional starting points for discussion, without assuming that game behavior reveals a participant's personality or real-world relationships. The book uses it as its anchor game for open negotiation.

Try one variation

Trade window (BGT house rule, not an official rule). During your trade step, make one genuine offer to another player or say “pass.” You may pass without explanation. Anyone who receives an offer may freely decline.

  • Targets: Assertiveness and advocating for a need
  • Suits: Groups with quiet players who rarely ask
  • Watch for: Offers made just to satisfy the structure. A pass is a full turn.
  • Debrief prompt: “What was it like to have a set moment to ask?”

The TABLE Method™, applied

A short excerpt from the full guide's TABLE plan. Anyone can pass, pause, or stop at any time.

  1. Target

    Notice how players ask for what they need, refuse, and respond to refusal, and how the table judges fairness.

  2. Assess

    Check the player count, the time, and whether the game serves today's goal.

    • Is the group ready for open negotiation and some competitive tension? The book places Catan at Stage 4.

  3. Build

    • Use the beginner setup in the rulebook for first games.
    • Agree that “no” is a complete answer to a trade.

  4. Lead

    • Play, and model clear asks and clean refusals (“No thanks, I need my wool”).
    • Do not protect or coach an accommodating player mid-game.

  5. Extract and Extend

    Debrief in order: Board, Self, Us, Life or Work, Extension. Ask what participants make of the game. Do not tell them.

Game not included; play by the rulebook in your box. In the BGT book: Prologue (Table for Two), Chapter 5, Chapter 7 (The Negotiation Table) anchor game, Appendix B (Stage 4 example), and Appendix C (Stage 4; host with care, coach and therapist with a clear target). Independent companion. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by CATAN GmbH. CATAN is a trademark of its owner and is named only to identify the game. Board Game Therapy is not inherently psychotherapy. Copyright 2026 Solid State Strategies, LLC.

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