Familygames The100best

THE TOP DESIGNERS AND PUBLISHERS ON THE MOST ENJOYABLE,
MOST CLEVERLY DESIGNED GAMES OF THE PAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS.
FAMILY
GAMES
THE 100 BEST
♚♜
♗ ♞
EDITED BY JAMES LOWDER
FOREWORD BY MIKE GRAY
AFTERWORD BY WIL WHEATON
Family Games
The 100 Best
More Great Gaming From
O Green Ronin Publishing O
Essay Collections:
Hobby Games: The 100 Best
Roleplaying Game Books:

Dragon Age RPG, Set 1
Dragon Age GM’s Kit
Dragon Age: Blood in Ferelden
Dragon Age RPG, Set 2
DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook
DC Adventures Heroes & Villains
Mutants & Masterminds Hero’s Handbook
Mutants & Masterminds GM’s Kit
Mutants & Masterminds Gamemaster’s Guide
A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying
A Song of Ice and Fire: Peril at King’s Landing
A Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide
Pirate’s Guide to Freeport
Cults of Freeport
Buccaneers of Freeport
Card Games:
Torches & Pitchforks
Walk the Plank
O O O
Family Games
The 100 Best
Edited by James Lowder
Foreword by Mike Gray

Afterword by Wil Wheaton
Family Games: The 100 Best is published by Green Ronin Publishing, LLC.
Family Games: The 100 Best © 2010 by James Lowder; all rights reserved.
Essays are © 2010 by their respective authors; all rights reserved.
“Twixt” translated from the Italian by Gina Baldoni-Rus; “Twixt” © 2010 by Leo
Colovini/studiogiochi; all rights reserved.
Cover design by Hal Mangold; © 2010 by Green Ronin Publishing, LLC; all rights
reserved.
Any discussion of trademarked, service marked, or copyrighted material or enti-

ties in this book should not be construed as a challenge to their legal owners. The
owners of these trademarks, service marks, and copyrights have not authorized or
endorsed this book.
Reproduction of material from within this book for any purposes, by photographic,
digital, or other methods of electronic storage and retrieval, is prohibited.
Please address questions and comments concerning this book, as well as requests for
notices of new publications, by mail to:
Green Ronin Publishing
3815 South Othello Street
Suite 100, #304
Seattle, WA 98118
Visit us online at greenronin.com.
Electronic Stock number GRR4002e, October 2012.
ISBN 10: 1-934547-21-2

ISBN 13: 978-1-934547-21-2
Contents
Foreword by Mike Gray�� ix
Introduction by James Lowder�� xiii
Carrie Bebris on 10 Days in the USA�� 1

Steven E. Schend on 1960: The Making of the President�� 5
Dominic Crapuchettes on Apples to Apples�� 9
Mike Breault on The Awful Green Things from Outer Space�� 12
Jeff Tidball on Balderdash�� 16
Keith Baker on Bang!�� 20
Bruce Harlick on Battleship�� 23
James Wallis on Bausack�� 26
Paul Jaquays on Black Box�� 29
Lewis Pulsipher on Blokus�� 33
Teeuwynn Woodruff on Boggle�� 37
Fred Hicks on Buffy the Vampire Slayer�� 40
James Ernest on Candy Land�� 45
Ian Livingstone on Can’t Stop�� 48
Bruce Whitehill on Careers�� 51
Jared Sorensen on Cat�� 55
Wolfgang Baur on Cathedral�� 59
John Scott Tynes on Clue�� 62
Alessio Cavatore on Condottiere�� 67
Elaine Cunningham on Connect Four�� 70
Will Hindmarch on Cranium�� 73
Erik Mona on Crossbows and Catapults�� 77
William W. Connors on Dark Tower�� 81
John D. Rateliff on Dogfight�� 85
Robert J. Schwalb on Dungeon!�� 89
jim pinto on Dvonn�� 93
Gav Thorpe on Easter Island�� 96
Jeff Grubb on Eurorails�� 99
Kenneth Hite on Faery’s Tale Deluxe�� 103
Richard Dansky on Family Business�� 106
Warren Spector on Focus�� 110
Corey Konieczka on For Sale�� 115
James M. Ward on Fortress America�� 118
Stan! on Frank’s Zoo�� 122
Bruce C. Shelley on The Game of Life�� 126
Phil Orbanes on A Gamut of Games�� 129
Monica Valentinelli on Gloom�� 133
Matt Leacock on Go Away Monster!�� 136
Steve Jackson on The Great Dalmuti�� 139
David “Zeb” Cook on Guillotine�� 143
Jason Matthews on Gulo Gulo�� 148
Joshua Howard on Halli Galli�� 152
Bruce Nesmith on Hare & Tortoise�� 155
Mike Pondsmith on HeroClix�� 159
Anthony J. Gallela on HeroQuest�� 163
Chris Pramas on HeroScape�� 167
Ed Greenwood on Hey! That’s My Fish!�� 171
Colin McComb on Hive�� 174
Alan R. Moon on Hoity Toity�� 178
Jon Leitheusser on Ingenious�� 182
Uli Blennemann on Java�� 185
Luke Crane on Jungle Speed�� 188
Monte Cook on Kill Doctor Lucky�� 191
Emiliano Sciarra on Knightmare Chess�� 195
Todd A. Breitenstein on Liar’s Dice�� 198
Marc Gascoigne on Loopin’ Louie �� 201
Andrew Parks on Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation�� 204
Seth Johnson on Lost Cities �� 208
John Yianni on Magi-Nation�� 211
Bill Bodden on Master Labyrinth�� 215
Andrew Greenberg on Mastermind�� 219
Ken Levine on Memoir ’44�� 223
Scott Haring on Mille Bornes�� 227
Steve Jackson on Monopoly�� 230
Sheri Graner Ray on Mouse Trap�� 235
Kevin G. Nunn on Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue�� 238
Dale Donovan on The Omega Virus�� 241
Darren Watts on Othello�� 245
Charles Ryan on Pandemic�� 248
Michelle Lyons on Pente�� 252
Thomas M. Reid on Pictionary�� 255
Nicole Lindroos on Pieces of Eight�� 258
John Wick on Pit�� 262
Matt Forbeck on Pokémon�� 267
Robin D. Laws on Prince Valiant�� 271
Stephen Glenn on Qwirkle�� 275
Sébastien Pauchon on Ricochet Robots�� 278
Peter Olotka on Risk�� 283
Richard Breese on Rummikub�� 286
Jesse Scoble on Scotland Yard�� 290
Richard Garfield on Scrabble�� 293
Mike Selinker on Set�� 296
Rob Heinsoo on Small World�� 299
Hal Mangold on Sorry!�� 304
Jess Lebow on Stratego�� 308
Eric Goldberg on Strat-O-Matic Baseball�� 312
Andrea Angiolino on Survive!�� 318
Karl Deckard on Thebes�� 322
Dan Tibbles on Time’s Up!�� 326
Tom Wham on Trade Winds�� 330
Susan McKinley Ross on TransAmerica�� 333
Ray Winninger on Trivial Pursuit�� 336
Leo Colovini on Twixt�� 339
Matthew Kirby on Uno�� 343
David Parlett on Upwords�� 346
Lester Smith on Werewolf�� 350
John Kovalic on Wits & Wagers�� 353
Philip Reed on Yahtzee�� 356
Kevin Wilson on Zendo�� 359
Jess Hartley on Zooloretto�� 362
Afterword by Wil Wheaton�� 367

Appendix A: Games and Education by David Millians�� 371
Appendix B: Family Games in Hobby Games: The 100 Best�� 377
Foreword
by Mike Gray
“Togetherness in a box.” That’s my description of a board game. The

term board game might seem a bit old fashioned in this age of computers and
mobile phones. You can’t carry a board game in your pocket. You have to set it
up and put it away. For the price you pay, though, you can’t beat a board game
for face-to-face fun. If you take good care of it, it’ll last a lifetime.
Board games, card games, dice games, and roleplaying games bring us hours,
days, and years of replayable social enjoyment. From titles like Candy Land that
we played as kids to the latest addictive MMORPG, our lives have been filled with
games and gaming experiences. When I was young, I spent many hours playing
Uncle Wiggily. The game board’s numbered path is burned into my memory. It
starts at the home of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny rabbit gentleman, who
(I’ve never forgotten) lives with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady house-
keeper. There were two decks of cards in the game: a big yellow deck and a smaller
red deck. Each card was different, and each told a little story, often in rhyme. You
needed to get Uncle Wiggily from his house 151 numbered spaces down to #151
Green Moss Avenue, where you’d meet the kindly Dr. Possum. You never knew
whom you might meet on the way to Doc Possum’s place. I still wonder if that
numbered path gave me some cognitive advantage in math in school.
Games were always my favorite birthday or Christmas gift. My first Avalon
Hill game was D-Day. I sent my first game concept to Avalon Hill when I was 11.
My fondest childhood memories center on playing chess, Battleship, Stratego, and
Risk with the guys and playing Mille Bornes, Pit, Waterworks, and Careers with
the girls back in Toledo, Ohio. I went on to become the captain of the chess team
in high school, and I played bridge and go in college.
It was all about togetherness — being with friends and bonding. I learned
about history when playing the American Heritage series games (Broadside,
Dogfight, Hit the Beach, Battle-Cry, and Skirmish), imagining I was blasting
a ship with my cannons, doing a barrel roll and firing a burst, or taking out a
pillbox on a Pacific island. I’ll never forget playing bridge for 10 cents a point at
x O Family Games: The 100 Best
Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, or playing mahjong with the neighbors

in Westfield, Massachusetts.
Who would have guessed that I would get job at Milton Bradley at age 27, and
spend the rest of my career in the games business? I started as a designer, and over
the span of a dozen years I created such titles as Shogun and The Omega Virus.
For another 14 years I managed the Hasbro family and adult games development
team. I’m currently senior director of product acquisition for Hasbro. I meet with
inventors of toys and games around the world and bring back the very best.
So I guess I know about games as a business. But I also own several thousand
of them. The traditional definition of a “family” game is a game for kids aged eight
and up that parents will enjoy, too. Family games usually take longer to play and
involve more strategic choices than the typical children’s games. The most famous
family game brands are Monopoly, The Game of Life, and Clue. Card games such
as Pit, Flinch, Mille Bornes, and Rook have been around for a long time, too.
The most frequent question I get asked is: “What’s your favorite game?”
Over time the answer has progressed from chess to Acquire to bridge to Cosmic
Encounter to D&D to Ultima IV to Civilization to Magic: The Gathering to,
most recently, World of Warcraft. Even with that somewhat narrowed list in mind,
I can’t give an easy “one game” answer. It depends on whom I am playing with
and how many other people are going to gather at the table. Playing with kids
or neighbors, my answer would be different from the one I would give if I were
playing with fellow designers.
For card games, the choices are easy: for two players, Mike Fitzgerald’s Mystery
Rummy: Jack the Ripper, Reiner Knizia’s Battle Line, or Richard Garfield’s Magic:
The Gathering; for three, David Parlett’s brilliant Ninety-Nine; for four, Wolfgang
Kramer’s 6 Nimmt (aka Category 5), hearts, euchre, or spades. And I cannot forget
Pit. Two, two, TWO!
For board games, I find it very hard even to narrow the field. There are so
many good titles. And, as an industry professional, I know that there’s always
something new and fresh coming out, particularly from Europe. So, my best advice
would be to read about the favorites discussed in the pages beyond and then watch
the wonderful website BoardGameGeek.com for the latest and greatest.
Still, editor James Lowder asked me to include some of my personal favorite
board games, so here goes. . . .
Sid Sackson’s Acquire is a classic and still my favorite money-based board
Foreword O xi
game. It is so simple, yet every game is different. I also like Cartel, a financial game
by Phil Orbanes (best for three people, in my opinion), and Jean Vanaise’s Shark,
a clever stock market game. I enjoy the competitiveness of Wolfgang Kramer’s
Niki Lauda’s Formel 1 racing game and the variety and negotiation of Cosmic
Encounter. Reiner Knizia’s Ingenious is ingenious. You can play it with anyone. It’s
like a color dominoes game with a devious twist. I also play Klaus-Jürgen Wrede’s
Carcassonne and Franz-Benno Delonge’s TransAmerica frequently with my family.
People often ask me whether video games are hurting the traditional board
games business. Total game sales, which include console, digital, and Internet
games, have risen dramatically in recent years, while board games sales just show
slight increases. So I’d say board games are losing ground as game-based enter-
tainment has expanded. The world is changing. People expect a lot more from a
“game” these days. Movement, sound, and multiple levels of entertainment are
hard for a board or card game to offer, and even classic games are slowly adapting
to fit today’s faster pace. Monopoly now has an additional “speed die” to make
the game play faster. Risk has a new set of objectives, so you don’t have to play
the long “conquer the world” version. The new Stratego plays just as well with
30 pieces per side instead of 40. Even Trivial Pursuit is getting a major facelift to
make it shorter and full of new choices.
As I get older, I find that winning is less important to me than it used to be. (It
still happens a lot, though!) I used to remember every card in play in a game and
keep mental track of what other players were doing. Now, it is far more important
to me that everyone is having a good time. It’s that “togetherness” thing again. I
find that it is usually better to play two or three different games in an evening than
to play one long one. Someone is usually losing for the last hour of a long game
and that person is probably not thinking, “I can’t wait to play this game again!”
Lots of shorter games create more winners. That “feel-good aura” makes us want
to come together again.
You’ll find lots of great suggestions for games your own family can gather
around in the pages beyond. Read a bit, then head for the game closet!
O O O
Mike Gray has been designing games since he was 11 years old. He started
with Milton Bradley in 1978, spent two years at TSR, then returned to
xii O Family Games: The 100 Best
Hasbro. He worked his way up through the ranks from designer to man-
ager to director. He currently holds the position senior director of global
games product acquisition. Mike has designed dozens of board and card
games, most notably Fortress America and Shogun, both of which won
the Charles S. Roberts Award. Mike has created AD&D modules and
branching adventure books as well as such early electronic board games
as Mall Madness and The Omega Virus. He travels with his DSi, loves
Eurogames, and is an avid World of Warcraft player.
Introduction
by James Lowder
Figuring out what to title a book is a tricky business, even for something
as outwardly uncomplicated as a collection of essays about great games. The title
should capture the work’s essence or at least avoid presenting the book as some-
thing it’s not. An inspired title can draw in readers. A bad one — well, Raymond
Chandler surely considered himself fortunate that his classic Philip Marlowe crime
novel ended up being called Farewell, My Lovely and not Sweet Bells Jangle or
Zounds, He Dies, both of which had been floated as possibilities before publica-
tion. As a title, Trimalchio in West Egg offers an erudite nod to The Satyricon,
the sort of reference guaranteed to inspire countless term papers, but it lacks the
simple, direct power of The Great Gatsby.
So, how does Family Games: The 100 Best rate as a title?
I should note that we were constrained a bit in the naming process by the fact
that this is a companion volume to Hobby Games: The 100 Best. The title, like
the cover design, needs to indicate a clear connection to the earlier volume. After
all, we’re proud of Hobby Games. We hope the similarities in title and design will
inspire readers who enjoyed the first collection to add this one to their libraries.
For those of you starting here, perhaps you’ll seek out the first book, even though
either one can be read on its own.
Before I get too far into the title discussion, I should also mention Mike
Selinker. Mike inspired the focus on family games this time around. Shortly after
the publication of Hobby Games: The 100 Best, it became clear to me and to the
good folks at Green Ronin that another book might be in order. Mike’s timely
suggestion set us on the right track, prompting us to expand the project’s scope
so that we could include many of the classic games that had fallen outside the
purview of the first volume. Mike joined Dale Donovan in providing invaluable
support throughout the very long editing process, too.
Okay, I seem to be evading my own question here. Better, I suppose, just to
address it head on.
As a precise encapsulation of the book’s essence, the title Family Games: The
100 Best suffers from a few . . . issues.
xiv O Family Games: The 100 Best
First off, you may find our definition of the word family broad. The traditional
definition for a family game is one that can be played by anyone eight or older.
When we refer to a family game, we mean one that’s accessible to more than dedi-
cated hobbyists. It’s a game that doesn’t require you to pour over novel-length
rulebooks, like some of the most popular roleplaying games, or to invest weeks
or months to complete one scenario, like the most complex historical simulation
board games. We’re not just talking about games for kids, though. To be certain,
some of the titles we cover are kid-friendly. You’ll find essays here on such all-
ages classics as Candy Land, as well as more recent gems, such as Loopin’ Louie
and Go Away Monster! But not all the games we discuss are intended for all ages.
To help you decide, even at a glance, whether or not a particular game might be
appropriate for the younger people at your table, each essay header includes a sug-
gested age range. These should be considered rough guides. Many kids are capable
of playing Twixt well before the suggested minimum age of 12, while those same
kids might find 1960: The Making of the President, which has the same suggested
target age, too long or complex. Your mileage may vary, as the familiar caveat
goes, and parents should read reviews, talk to other gaming families, and perhaps
even road test a game for suitability before purchase. Conventions such as Gen
Con and Origins are great places to try out new titles, and many of the best hobby
shops host demo nights where you can play the latest big releases or older classics
about which you’re curious.
For purposes of tallying our title’s accuracy, then, the use of family is some-
thing of a push. It’s a fair cop to say we’ve strayed from the typical definition, at
least as far as game publishers and designers are concerned. But this should make
the book useful to all kinds of families, those with kids and those without. You’ll
find things covered here that will entertain many of the non-hobby gamers in your
life, whether that’s a pre-teen who has never seen a wargame, or an uncle who
wouldn’t know a Pokémon card from an Authors card.
You’d think the use of game in the title would be something of a given, but
even there we run into problems. We included a wide variety of game types: board
games, card games, miniatures games, and even roleplaying games. Several of our
100 best straddle those categories rather precariously, just as they run afoul of the
demarcations typically used to distinguish a game from a puzzle from a toy. Some
critics outside these pages argue, for example, that Ricochet Robots isn’t so much
a game as it is a puzzle people solve in tandem, since players don’t really interact
Introduction O xv
on the board. And while Mouse Trap is designed to be competitive and interactive,
it’s more often praised because you can build things with the bits, with no par-
ticular goal in mind. That makes it almost as much a toy as a game. In fact, you’ll
find the phrases toy value and play value mentioned frequently in these pages, ref-
erencing the way in which a game’s components make it fun, completely separate
from its rules. And if our title is supposed to mean that we’re talking strictly about
games, Sid Sackson’s A Gamut of Games — a book that contains rules for a lot
of different games — is all kinds of trouble.
As with family, though, we adopted a more open definition of game when
deciding what might be considered for inclusion. That approach was necessary, if
we were to cover the most innovative releases. The way in which some of these
designs combine elements of games and puzzles and toys is the very thing that
makes them so groundbreaking and influential.
Moving along in our assessment of the book’s title, we come to the.
Better skip that for a moment. Really. It’s a lot more complicated than you
would expect.
Then we have 100. I’d love to note that we have five score essays and quickly
move on, but I can’t even do that. Mike Gray’s foreword, Wil Wheaton’s after-
word, and the appendix David Millians wrote on gaming and education put us
at 103. This introduction makes 104. The table of contents does list 100 differ-
ent games, but if you look more carefully at the essays themselves, you’ll find
that some are more sweeping. There are five games in Mike Fitzgerald’s Mystery
Rummy series, more if you count Wyatt Earp and other related titles. 10 Days in
the USA is one of a quartet of potentially linked games. The aforementioned A
Gamut of Games includes rules for several dozen designs. And then there are the
various expansions for Zooloretto. I shudder to think of tallying just the myriad
editions of Monopoly.
Okay, we’re off by a bit with 100. That shouldn’t bother you too much,
though, since the error is in your favor. You’re actually getting more content than
advertised, and how often does that happen?
Our title promises more than just great games, though. It promises best games.
Even more than that, it promises THE best games.
Let me kick that troublesome definitive article down the page again and talk
first about best.
It’s always helpful when considering anyone’s picks for the tops in anything
xvi O Family Games: The 100 Best
to know just what criteria they’re using. As with Hobby Games: The 100 Best,
my editorial guidelines did not include a rigid definition of best, a list of qualities
the essayists had to consider when making their selections. Instead, I left it up to
each writer to define the word. If you compare all the essays, you’ll find several
traits that turn up again and again: innovation, elegance, accessibility, play value,
aesthetic appeal, and historical significance, to name a few of the more prominent.
Each writer weights those traits differently, though, so you’ll have to read the indi-
vidual entries to get a clear idea of why a game made the final cut.
Personal influence is often cited — how profoundly a game impacted the essay-
ist’s life or creative output — and nostalgia colors many of the pieces. The latter
shouldn’t be a surprise in a book about family pastimes. Designs such as Trivial
Pursuit and Uno have served as the centerpiece for countless holiday gatherings
and cheered myriad bleak, rainy afternoons. In researching their topics, many
of the writers found themselves breaking out games they hadn’t played in years,
sometimes with the same siblings with whom they’d last competed. But it was
always more than pleasant memories and fond regard that prompted someone’s
choice. The writers gathered here take their games very seriously indeed.
The table of contents reveals an all-star team of designers, publishers, and
authors. As you’ll see from the biographical notes at the end of each essay, these
talented folks are responsible for many of the games you play when you get together
with your family and friends, everything from Ticket to Ride to BioShock to
Magic: The Gathering. As editor I included the widest variety of voices possible,
and the book boasts an incredible wealth of talent, people whose games have
been released by the largest multinationals and others who work almost exclu-
sively with small independents. The games they consider worthy of discussion are
equally diverse, from old standards such as Scrabble to esoteric micropress titles
such as the wonderful RPG Cat.
To arrive at our roster of 100 superlative family games, I asked each essayist to
submit a list of two or three favorites. As you might expect, a few games attracted
several would-be champions. In those instances, I faced the challenge of deciding
which writer had the more interesting approach to the subject. Still, the majority
of the essayists got their first choice, and even those who didn’t ended up writing
about a game they considered well worthy of inclusion.
There were a few other limitations. We aren’t covering games featured in
Hobby Games: The 100 Best; an appendix suggests specific designs from the first
Introduction O xvii
book that make for outstanding family play. (Yes, you could say the appendix once
again raises the tally of games over the 100 promised by the title.) Essayists could
not select a game they themselves designed, or one in which they or their employer
have a primary financial stake. This helped us steer clear of obvious conflicts of
interest. So, too, the high bar we set for Green Ronin releases. As with the first
book, we actively discouraged the company’s regular freelancers from suggesting
any of its properties. I should note that Green Ronin publishes the current edition
of a creator-owned RPG that made the final cut, a game several designers recom-
mended, but no company-owned games were included.
These rules, while not terribly restrictive, do shape the content. So, too, the
roster of designers involved. Had 100 different essayists been recruited, the games
in our final line-up would have been at least slightly different.
Which brings us, once again, to the most troublesome word in the book’s title:
the.
That definitive article suggests an equally definitive inventory of best family
games, a canon created from a clear and concise set of guides, reflecting a specific
critical viewpoint. If this introduction has done its job, you should understand by
now that we’re really not offering that. The 100 games featured herein are not
my choices; I agree with a lot of the selections, but I would have found a place
for Voice of the Mummy and Wings of War and Mr. Jack and — well, you get the
idea. The essayists, each with his or her distinct definition of best, might argue
with several of the choices, or the reasons cited for a particular game’s inclusion.
In the end, the table of contents is not so much a monolithic register as a starting
point for discussion and debate.
What, then, would have been a more precise title for this anthology?
A Lot of Games and Almost-Games We Love, perhaps. Things We Think
About Games might have been an option, if it hadn’t already been taken by Will
Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball’s nifty Gameplaywright Press release. Or we could
have borrowed from the literary discards and gone with something intriguingly
obscure like Zounds, Trimalchio Plays.
On second thought, maybe we hit upon the most appropriate title after all.
“A good title has magic,” Raymond Chandler once noted, “and magic is to me
the most valuable ingredient in writing, and the rarest.”
Perhaps our title might not qualify as magical, but the essays themselves surely
do. By reminding you of games you loved long ago and introducing you to others
xviii O Family Games: The 100 Best
you will come to love, they conjure gateways to countless hours of enjoyment,
happy times to be shared with your own family, whatever shape that family takes.
And there’s little more magical than that.
O O O
James Lowder is the author of the bestselling dark fantasy novels Prince
of Lies and Knight of the Black Rose, as well as a considerable list of
short stories, comic book scripts, book and film reviews, and roleplaying
game materials. As an editor he’s directed book lines or series for a wide
variety of publishers, and has helmed more than a dozen anthologies, with
subjects ranging from Arthurian Britain to zombies. He’s been a finalist
for the Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and has
won an ENnie and five Origins Awards. None of that helps in the least
when his wife is trouncing him in Boggle or his son is crushing him in
Ricochet Robots.
Game Credits, Editions,
and Suggested Ages
Game design and publishing are sometimes solitary pursuits, but often
they are not, and that makes assigning credit difficult. For the essay headers, we
have chosen the phrase key designers to indicate the game’s creators and, in some
cases, other significant developers. Space limitations preclude identifying all the
editors, artists, graphic designers, playtesters, and the multitude of other people
who play crucial roles in making a game a success. Take the time to read the full
credits published in your favorite games or any of the games you seek out because
of this book.
If we have failed to assign credit where credit is due, please contact the editor,
in care of the publisher, at the address on the copyright page. We will strive to
make all necessary corrections in future printings and editions.
Many of the games discussed in these pages have been released in various edi-
tions, often by different publishers. With each new edition, the game may have
undergone revision, sometimes minor, sometimes quite radical. The 2008 edition
of Risk, for example, is very different from 1959 edition. So, where it matters
to the essay, the header indicates a specific edition. For games that originally
appeared in languages other than English, the first English-language edition is
listed. Otherwise, headers identify the game’s first or only edition.
For more information on how to locate the more obscure games and editions
covered in Family Games: The 100 Best, see the appendix “Finding Hobby Games”
in our companion volume, Hobby Games: The 100 Best.
The suggested age listed with each game is the one provided by the game’s pub-
lisher. These are broad guides only. A child may be ready for the theme and play
mechanics of a game well before the suggested age, or well after. As with all media,
parents are the best judges of a game’s appropriateness for their own children.
Carrie Bebris on
10 Days in the USA

Key Designers: Alan R. Moon, Aaron Weissblum
Out of the Box Publishing (2003)
2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up
What a morning. I started in Wisconsin, took a plane to Alaska, flew

to Massachusetts, hiked through New Hampshire to Vermont, then drove to
Pennsylvania . . .
And I didn’t even win.
But the trip was worth it.
10 Days in the USA challenges players to be the first to complete a 10-day
journey that takes them across the United States via different forms of travel.
Capturing the spirit of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days but with
modern transportation methods, it is a game so well designed, popular, and just
plain fun that it has grown into a series. Other versions include 10 Days in Europe,
10 Days in Africa, and 10 Days in Asia.
I could list the numerous awards this game has won, or praise its high-quality
production values. But you know as I do that the best family games are distin-
guished by how they play at your own kitchen table. I grew up in a household
where everyone helped clear the dishes after dinner because the faster they were
gone, the sooner a game board could be laid down. Now that my siblings and I
are grown, with families of our own, we get together for multigenerational family
game weekends where everyone brings their favorites and introduces new discov-
eries. The first time I brought one of the 10 Days games published by Out of the
Box, it hardly ever went back into the box. It not only remains a favorite, but we
have since acquired the entire series and find all four entertaining and addictive.
What are my criteria for a great family game? Probably the same as yours. And
10 Days in the USA excels in them all.
First, 10 Days is easy to learn. The rules are so straightforward that you are
playing within five minutes of breaking the shrink wrap. The game is also quick to
play. Let’s face it: the realities of modern family schedules don’t often allow time
for a weeknight session of Monopoly or Risk. A typical game of 10 Days lasts 20
2 O Family Games: The 100 Best
to 30 minutes — short enough to squeeze in before bedtime on a light homework

night.
Each player starts with 10 random tiles representing different states and modes
of transportation. As each tile is drawn, you place it in your tile holder, assigning
it to whichever specific day of your own 10-day itinerary you wish. Once a tile
is in place, it cannot be moved until play begins; if a later-drawn tile fits more
strategically into a slot you’ve already filled, figuring out how to get it where you
want it to end up in the sequence becomes part of the challenge.
You may begin and conclude your journey in any state. Travel is permitted by
foot between adjacent states, by car between states separated by only one other,
and by airplane between states of the same color on the game board map. Driving
or flying uses up a day of the itinerary; travel by foot takes you straight to the
next state. Therefore, a completed journey conducted entirely on foot would have
10 state tiles in a row; one that incorporates other modes of travel would have
fewer states, with car or plane tiles interspersed. On each turn, you draw the top
tile from either the main draw pile or one of three face-up discard piles, and use
it to replace an existing tile, if desired. When you’ve connected all 10 days of your
journey, you’ve won.
The Africa, Europe, and Asia versions use the same mechanics, but travel is
from country to country, and additional forms of transportation — railroads and
ships — are incorporated.
Despite its mechanical simplicity, 10 Days is challenging for a range of ages.
We have all endured games marketed for kids that bore adults to tears. Often, they
rely too heavily on chance in order to win, or facile strategy that needs never alter
from session to session. Conversely, games requiring highly complex strategies can
prove frustrating for younger family members. 10 Days combines the best of both
chance and strategy. The randomness of the initial tile draw means it’s never the
same game twice. No one state or area of the country offers an advantage; you
can begin your journey anywhere and win. Yet the randomness of your starting
tiles requires you to devise a fresh strategy each time, and to adjust that strategy
throughout the course of play as new tiles offer alternative paths or other players
pick up tiles you were counting on to make your journey work.
In a recent game, I won with a final itinerary that had only one of my original
tiles. 10 Days often requires you to abandon part or all your starting plan for a
different route — which creates tension as you wonder whether you still have time
10 Days in the USA O 3
to complete the revised journey before the opponent who just excitedly snatched
your most recent discard announces victory. Or you might risk discarding a critical
tile that was in the wrong day of your itinerary, hoping that it will still be available
for you to retrieve on your next turn, so you can put it in the right slot. I’ll warn
you now, the chances of succeeding at such a gambit go down with the number
of players.
Though the suggested minimum age for all four versions is 10 years, children
old enough to read can play independently. The Out of the Box Publishing website
(otb-games.com) offers variant rules for beginners, such as shorter itineraries or
the ability to rearrange one’s tiles, but we did not discover these until the whole
family was already playing successfully with the standard rules.
10 Days is not, however, merely a kids’ game. It is equally engaging for adults,
and can be made even more so. Try combining two or more sets — USA and
Africa, for example — to create a cross-continent “10 Days Around the World”
scenario. The Out of the Box website offers guidelines for this, or you can create
your own rules. If you’re really up for a challenge, all four games can be integrated
into a global supergame, though you probably want to allow more than 10 days
for such an epic journey.
Beyond their entertainment value, the 10 Days titles are educational. While
all games have some educational potential — at a minimum, they can teach good
sportsmanship — 10 Days encourages the development of skills in logic, visualiza-
tion, and geography. After the winner presents his or her successful itinerary, the
other players can’t help but also trace their unrealized journeys across the game
board map. The tiles also offer useful facts, listing the capital cities, populations,
and square mileage of each state or country. Long after the box has been put away,
it’s wonderful to hear a six-year-old confidently mention places like Kazakhstan
and Moldova in conversations having nothing to do with the game.
As I write this, snow flies furiously outside our window. Schools are closed for
the second day in a row. Ice has grounded flights, the roads look like ski slopes,
and even foot travel is treacherous. Yet within our house, we’re plotting where to
go this afternoon. Europe? Africa? Asia?
The snow is falling harder.
I think it’s time for 40 Days Around the World.
O O O
Although Carrie Bebris (carriebebris.com) grew up playing games, she

never expected to earn a living doing so until she joined the staff of TSR,
Inc. As an editor there, she playtested games and developed supplements
for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Carrie is currently a freelancer and
the author of seven novels. She published two fantasy books before turn-
ing to mystery writing, which she considers really just an extended game
with one’s readers to see who can solve the puzzle first. She is best known
for her award-winning Mr. & Mrs. Darcy historical mystery series, begin-
ning with Pride and Prescience, which embroils some of Jane Austen’s
most beloved characters in intrigue. In other words, she spends her days
playing Clue in Regency England.
Steven E. Schend on
1960:
The Making of the President
Key Designers: Christian Leonhard, Jason Matthews
Z-Man Games (second edition, 2007)
2 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up
Burned out by the modern 24-hour news cycle? Believe that electoral politics is
one of the least fun things on earth? Think you’d find a board game enmeshed in
decades-old “current” events totally uninteresting? Too bad. You’re likely to miss
out on one of the best games I’ve ever played.
1960: The Making of the President is as close as most of us will ever get to run-
ning for president of the United States. This game makes you feel it — the highs of
campaign momentum, the lows of debate gaffes, the pressure of limited time, the
tension of sudden shifts in popularity, and the uncertainty of election day.
As its title promises, the game portrays the 1960 presidential campaign
between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy. These two
figures were (and still are, to many) polarizing figures who evoke strong emotional
and philosophical responses — definitely a plus for energizing a game. 1960
approaches both candidates honestly and evenhandedly. You can play either and
have an equal chance of winning; there’s no innate bias in the design toward either
political party or candidate.
One player directs Nixon’s red-colored GOP campaign while the other player
is Kennedy’s blue-colored Democratic campaign. Many of the game’s components
use those easy color codes to denote political affiliation of a card, a state, or an
event. Your objective is to collect the 269 electoral votes you need to win the U.S.
presidency.
Most 1960 games last between 90 minutes and two hours, depending on how
familiar the players are with the rules and how quickly they strategize during their
turns. The game always lasts nine turns — five turns for the campaign, turn #6 for
the debates, two more turns for the late campaign, and turn #9 for Election Day.
You build up your votes during the game through many mechanics, though most
are tied to cards.
The game’s primary mechanic is in its point-valued cards. The cards can be
used for campaign points to build support for your candidate in a state, on an
issue, or simply to sway the electorate through advertising. You can also use the
cards’ historical events to affect candidates. For example, the Nixon’s Knee card
moves the injured candidate to Maryland for hospital help and makes it harder for
the Nixon player to campaign. You can even spend your own political momentum
points to activate beneficial events on cards your opponent has used for campaign
points. The Nixon player gains four campaign points from the Harvard Brain
Trust card, but the Kennedy player can spend one momentum in conjunction with
the card to gain a campaign point to all issues during the debate in turn #6. The
trick, then, becomes playing cards that help you, even as you deplete your oppo-
nent’s momentum points so he or she can’t trigger such helpful events. The cards
also have uses that apply to the special turns for the debates and the election, so a
wide array of possible strategies need to be considered. Any one card can impact
the campaign in wildly different ways at different times.
Another interesting mechanic is the Political Capital bag. As you play cards,
you earn points of rest in an inverse relation to the card’s potential actions. The
more powerful your card’s effect, the busier the candidate is and the less rest you
get. These point cubes go into the bag and help you out later in the game when
you’re drawing to find more votes in battleground states on Election Day. The
more rest you get, the more cubes you have in the bag. Play too few powerful
cards during the campaign, though, and you risk letting your opponent build an
insurmountable lead.
There are many different options for every turn. Should you work on getting
media support in the Midwest or change the focus of the campaign to civil rights
issues instead of your opponent’s strong suit: defense? Do you concentrate on
locking in your control of battleground states or increase efforts to gain endorse-
ments and sway undecided votes? Planning is important, but you can’t control
what you randomly draw from the deck or the Political Capital bag. A seemingly
foolproof strategy can be undone by an endorsement card in the last turn before
the election.
I know folks who insist that a game based on history must follow the actual
events closely. The peril in that is predictability. We already know who won the
1960 O 7
actual 1960 presidential contest. So while 1960 is rooted in the actual events, it
manages to maintain tension by allowing for randomization through the card
draw. Nixon might get egged in Michigan or he might benefit from the discov-
ery of KGB bugs in American embassies. Kennedy might gain from President
Eisenhower’s silence during the campaign or he could commit a gaffe during a
press conference. Kudos to designers Leonhard and Matthews for enlivening the
historical episodes with very well-balanced mechanics.
I was neither alive during the 1960 campaign nor, I must admit, all that inter-
ested in it until I played this game. That a board game made me want to read more
about political history says a lot about its potential educational value. As a former
teacher, I see 1960 as a great tool for showing teenagers how fascinating history
can be, especially if you play out the campaign as part of a civics class. And if you
want to dig deeper, one of the best books about the election shares the game’s title.
From its board to its cards and counters, the game benefits from great pro-
duction values and graphics. Joshua Cappel’s evocative board and card designs
enhance the game on many levels, from the cards’ faux-newspaper layout to the
full 50-state map board. There’s no wasted space on the board or on the cards.
Everything’s carefully coordinated, right down to the colors of regions or even the
candidates’ coffee mugs.
The Campaign Manual is a brilliant example of both consummate graphic
design and solid game design. The graphics-heavy booklet is 24 pages long and
organized for easy use. Though the actual rules fill only half its pages, there are
detailed examples of every step up to the final turn of Election Day. These helpful
examples reinforce the core rules and turn sequences and illustrate specific tactics
or cards in actual play. The booklet’s back cover provides a much-appreciated
player aid that summarizes the rules. In fact, after the first game or two, I found
the player aid was clear enough to cover most questions without having to flip
through the rules at all.
I can hear you asking me the question already: “Why talk about a two-player
game in a book about family games?” Simple — families come in all shapes and
sizes, and there are not always three or more people ready for a game. And 1960:
The Making of the President is one of the best two-player games I’ve ever encoun-
tered. Its mechanics puts players in direct competition and keeps them engaged,
no matter whose turn it is.
Regardless of your feelings about Richard Milhous Nixon, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, or the parties they represented, Christian Leonhard and Jason Matthews
have created a game that allows you to see how personal foibles, political
machines, and the whims of history can all make or break a candidate, even as it
encourages you to develop your own play style and strategies to forge a winning
campaign. At its best, 1960: The Making of the President helps you shake off the
barnacles of political cynicism and appreciate the historical relevance of the events
and figures upon which it’s based. That it can do so while also managing to be a
fun and exciting game amazes me still.
O O O
Steven E. Schend has been a street sweeper, a fast-food worker, a candy

maker, a concrete curb layer, a roleplaying game editor and designer, an
intellectual property manager, a short story writer, a high school teacher, a
college instructor, an educational textbook writer and editor, a bookseller,
a blogger, and a novelist. In all, he prefers the wordsmithing jobs. Since
2006, Steven has published two novels and three short stories for Wizards
of the Coast and a trio of short stories, all set in his Vanguard universe,
with DAW Books. Living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he is a proud
member of the Alliterates writers’ group and the International Association
of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW). For more, visit steveneschend.com.
Steven and his wife are fans of many board games, from classics such as
Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit to more modern games such as Munchkin
Quest and Apples to Apples.
Dominic Crapuchettes on
Apples to Apples
Key Designers: Matthew Kirby, Mark Alan Osterhaus
Out of the Box Publishing (1999)
Apples to Apples is undoubtedly one of the best party games of all time.
It can be taught in less than two minutes to a gaggle of eight-year-olds or to a
mob of drunken college kids at a frat party. The surprising thing is that both of
these groups will have fun with the game, though the former might find Apples to
Apples Junior, which was released in 2002, a bit easier to play.
Apples to Apples rivals Taboo, Trivial Pursuit, and Guesstures for simplicity,
but it’s different from these earlier blockbusters. Those earlier party games are
built around a skill that people can get good at. For this reason, there is a certain
competitiveness that comes out during play. So while these games are fun, they
can make some players feel inadequate if they’re not good at the required skill.
That’s not the case with Apples to Apples and the new genre of party games that
has increasingly come to the market over the past decade.
This new type of party games focuses on getting to know the other players
and fun interaction, instead of competition. It includes Loaded Questions (1997),
Imaginiff (1998), What Were You Thinking? (1998), Things. . . (2002), Attribute
(2002), Faces (2005), and my own Say Anything (co-designed with Satish
Pillalamarri, 2008). Although Apples to Apples was not the first of this new style
to be released, it is the simplest and least intimidating of the bunch. This means
it accomplishes the goal of getting people laughing and having a good time more
quickly than any of the other titles mentioned.
Let me briefly explain how to play Apples to Apples. The game comes with
hundreds of cards and nothing else. No pawns, no dice, and no board! 25 percent
of these cards have an adjective written on them and 75 percent have a noun writ-
ten on them. When it is your turn, you are the judge. You flip over the next adjec-
tive card and place it face up on the table. This card will say something descriptive
like saintly, phony, dangerous, or idiotic. Everyone else reviews their hand of seven
noun cards, which will have things on them like Americans, rock concert, snow,
or Beethoven. The goal is to select the noun that best fits the adjective and place
it face down on the table. The judge shuffles the noun cards so that he or she
doesn’t know who played each one, then reads the cards one by one. While the
judge is deciding, the other players are encouraged to lobby for or against any of
the submitted cards, and it’s often here where the game’s most enjoyable interac-
tion occurs. The judge is the final arbiter, though. Whoever submitted the winning
card gets one point. The person to the left of the judge becomes the new judge,
and another round is played.
As far as I know, Apples to Apples was the first game to use the judge
mechanic. While I dislike innovation for novelty’s sake, I am extra impressed when
innovation accompanies a design that works this well. It inspires a childlike won-
der in me when I encounter something unique for the first time. Since the release
of Apples to Apples, the judge mechanic has been used in hundreds of other games
internationally, including, I should note, Say Anything.
Of all the party games in this new genre, it could be argued that Apples to
Apples demands the least amount of skill, but this doesn’t mean it’s the least fun to
play. On the contrary, this helps keep the atmosphere light. Instead of concentrat-
ing on winning points, players are relaxed enough to interact and joke around. I
once played a game of Apples to Apples with a group of friends and a dog named
Sassafras. This was done by submitting a random noun card each turn for the dog.
Not only was Sassafras a very competitive player, he ended up winning! It makes
me laugh every time I think about this story. Not many board games exist that
can create a story good enough to tell your friends, not to mention write about 10
years later. That Apples to Apples can accomplish this with so few rules is where
its greatness lies.
There’s an interesting story behind the design of Apples to Apples.
At a luncheon with his in-laws in 1996, Matt Kirby was trying to draw people
into the conversation by asking some comparative questions, like which writer was
better, Hemingway or Fitzgerald? He then switched out better for more profound,
and soon found himself shifting the things being compared. Before long, he was
asking more unusual questions. What was more profound, James Joyce or a
Corvette? Which was more useful, a toaster or Picasso? The comparison questions
led to some interesting discussions and Matt realized it might make the foundation
for a good game.
He called that design Apples to Oranges, and it consisted of a board with
Apples to Apples O 11
squares that prompted players to compare certain subjects to an adjective, using

cards similar to the ones in the game’s final version. Each square also introduced
variations for how subject cards were selected, who would be doing the comparing,
and methods for tallying the score. The movement mechanism was a patented die
with arrows on it, which Matt called the Arrowdie.
Anxiously he shipped off the prototype to Hasbro, Mattel, and every other
game company that would consider it. No one was interested. Finally, at the 1998
Origins Game Fair, he pitched his creation to the recently formed Out of the Box.
Sales manager Al Waller arranged for Matt to play the game with several Out
of the Box staffers at the Hyatt’s Big Bar on Two, once the show floor closed.
Reaction to the design’s core concept was good, but the variations introduced by
the different squares were not as well received.
Mark Osterhaus, the founder of Out of the Box, recognized the problem. He
picked up the board and the Arrowdie and the other components, everything
except the cards, and moved them aside. “Let’s just play with these,” he said,
pointing to the only remaining components. And the rest is history.
O O O
Dominic Crapuchettes played countless games with his European par-

ents. He learned chess at the age of four and soon after started entering
local tournaments, so it is not surprising that Dominic enjoyed designing
games during his free time. By eighth grade, his third significant design,
called Kabloogi, became so popular with friends that it was banned from
school. During college, Dominic won over $25,000 playing on the Magic:
The Gathering pro tour. In 2001, Dominic helped found Protospiel, an
annual convention of game designers, and in 2003, he founded North Star
Games. Their release Wits & Wagers has won over 20 awards, making it
one of the most acclaimed party games in history. It is currently available
in six languages and as an Xbox game, and plans are in the works to turn
it into a television game show. Dominic’s latest design, Say Anything, won
the 2008 Origins Award for Party Game of the Year as well as the Party
Game of the Year award from BoardGameGeek.com.
Mike Breault on
The Awful Green Things

From Outer Space
Key Designer: Tom Wham
TSR, Inc. (third edition, 1980)
These are the voyages of the starship Znutar. . . .

“Aw, c’mon, Sarge, it’s just a rock.”
“No telling what sorts of germs it’s got. Put it down!”
“But, Saaaaarge, Captain Yid’ll love this rock!”
“Well. . . .”
You know the rest of the story. Or maybe you don’t, if you’re one of those
unfortunates who has never played Tom Wham’s wonderfully bizarre The Awful
Green Things from Outer Space (TAGTFOS for short). In it, hordes of deadly
aliens develop from that little green rock and engage the brave yet dysfunctional
crew of the good ship Znutar in an epic struggle for survival.
Tom claims not to have seen Alien before creating this game, but for my money
John Carpenter’s movie Dark Star is a more likely source of inspiration. With
its beachball alien, wacky crew members, dead-but-still-in-charge captain, and a
talking bomb that thinks it’s God, Dark Star feels like a Tom Wham game come
to the big screen.
Whatever its inspiration, TAGTFOS is a delightful, fast-moving game that
truly can be played, and played well, by kids as young as eight (despite its sug-
gested age). One of the great things about TAGTFOS is that adults can easily scale
their level of play down to that of a child without the younger ones catching on.
It’s an added bonus that the colorful, simplistic-yet-appealing Tom Wham artwork
on the board and counters makes for amusing eye candy for young and old alike.
Toss in a playing time of under an hour and you’ve got a wonderful game to play
with your kids.
The game first saw print in Dragon magazine #28 (August 1979), but TSR
The Awful Green Things O 13
published it as a stand-alone product the following year, in both a slipcased edition

and then, scant months later, in a third edition, now housed in a longbox. The
playing surface for the longbox edition is made of sturdy, non-folding cardboard
stock and depicts a top-down view of the besieged Znutar. The ship is divided into
30-plus rooms — engine room, sick bay, bridge, #3 sensor, and so on — with doors
and corridors connecting them. This is the arena within which will be waged the
battle for glory and all the Zgwortz the winning side can drink.
The defenders of the Znutar are a motley crew from several different planets.
Images of Smbalites, Frathms, Snudalians, and Redundans adorn the glossy crew
counters, all drawn in Tom’s inimitable style. The mascot (who I call Ook, from
the one word he can say) and the mighty robot Leadfoot round out that side.
Each crew member has a unique combination of stats for movement, attack, and
defense.
The other team consists of the eponymous Awful Green Things (AGTs). These
fearsome creatures come in four varieties: eggs, fragments, babies, and adults, in
order of increasing danger to the crew. Eggs can’t move or attack, fragments can’t
move but can attack, babies move slowly and attack weakly, and adults move fast
and bite hard.
Play begins with the crew player placing his pieces. The crew members each
have a couple of locations where they can start, according to their particular occu-
pations (medic, engineer, pilot, etc.). There’s enough leeway in initial placement
that the crew player can gather his team together into small groups or spread them
out across the ship, as needed. The former allows for better defense but the latter
enables quicker detection of AGTs.
Once the crew is all set, a random roll of the die determines where the AGTs
start out. Another roll determines how many there are and of what types. Then
the fun begins.
Each round of gameplay consists of the AGT player’s turn and then the crew
player’s. They both move and attack, but each side gets a unique activity, as well.
For the AGTs, it’s the grow phase. At the start of his turn, the AGT player can
grow all his critters of a certain type into the next higher level. Eggs or fragments
can grow into babies, babies can grow into adults, or adults can choose to lay eggs.
Then all those AGTs move and attack.
The crew gets to use weapons. Since the AGTs are an unknown species, there’s
no telling what items will work against them and what will backfire. The crew
grabs whatever is at hand — pool cues, cans of Zgwortz or rocket fuel, knives,
welding torches, and so on — and sallies forth into battle, hoping for the best.
The weapons ratchet up the fun, for both players. When a weapon is used
against an AGT for the first time, a weapon effect chit is drawn blindly from a cup.
Whatever the chit says is what that weapon does against the Green Things for the
rest of the game. This can vary from 5 dice to kill (rolling 5 dice and comparing
the total to the AGT’s health) to no effect to the dreaded (for the crew player) 1
die fragments, which creates more of the little beasties to battle. Within each game,
there’s no telling what’s going to work on those pesky AGTs. The crew player
frantically tries out weapons on the invaders while the AGTs gleefully pull down
and eat the Znutar’s defenders.
For me, the essence of what makes TAGTFOS the best family game ever is
summed up in two words: Tom Wham. That means fun, fast-moving, addictive
gameplay that can be enjoyed by anyone. Those are common features in all of
Tom’s games. But what makes TAGTFOS special is the random element of the
weapon effects. It makes each game a different experience, requiring different
tactics and strategies for both players.
Randomizing the weapon effects makes perfect sense when you’re fighting
an unknown species of critter. It also makes for many hilarious and memorable
moments. The suspense of discovering what each weapon does this time around
is an integral part of the fun. I can still recall my dismay, and my opponent’s glee,
when I had a crew member set up an electric fence only to find its effect was to
create one die’s worth of fragments. My brave warriors struggled to dismantle the
fence while adult and baby Green Things threw themselves against it. The resulting
horde of fragments quickly grew into a mass of babies and then a tidal wave of
adults. No crew members survived that debacle.
Not only is the weapon randomization great fun for both players, it also gives
an adult a sly equalizer when playing against a much younger opponent. Kids
usually want to play the monsters, which conveniently leaves the more tactical side
for the adult. Level the playing field by spreading crew members out too thinly,
trying area-effects weapons a little too freely, or “forgetting” that certain weapons
have bad consequences. Even if they lose, most kids will have a ball chasing crew
members around, catching them, eating them, and then pooping out little eggs. It’s
a game designed to delight the young and the young-at-heart equally.
Tom Wham is the most whimsical, inventive designer I’ve ever encountered.
The Awful Green Things O 15
And for my money, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space is his best game
yet. If you don’t have a copy, go on eBay to pick one up. The TSR third edition
is rather rare, but Steve Jackson Games more recently released editions in various
box sizes. If you have the chance, pick up two copies, for when you and your kids
wear out the first one.
O O O
Mike Breault has worked in the games industry since 1984. He began
with TSR, writing, editing, and developing over 100 games, modules,
and hardback books in five years. In 1988, he co-designed the original
Pool of Radiance computer game, which started him on a different path.
Since then, he’s designed and written for numerous computer and video
titles for the PC, NES, Sega Genesis, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360, and PS3. He
currently works for Raven Software, a computer/video game developer
in Middleton, Wisconsin. Mike lives there with his wife Mary, son Chris
(now at Washington University in St. Louis), daughter Amelia (now at
Haverford College in Philadelphia), and dog Rags (homeschooled).
Jeff Tidball on
Balderdash
Key Designers: Laura Robinson, Paul Toyne
Western Publishing Company (1984)
Which of the following is true?
(a) Balderdash is a German word for expressing disbelief about the

kids these days.
(b) Balderdash is a competitive sport played in the winter, in which

competitors run (or “dash”) around poles and large stones.
(c) Balderdash is a board game whose participants propose plausible

definitions for obscure words and score points for fooling the other
players.
(d) Balderdash, collectively, are invented and/or Latin words used on

playing pieces to save money when printing the international edi-
tions of a board game.
The correct answer, of course, is (c).

Like most family games, the components of Balderdash are simple — in this
case, a box of cards, a board that amounts to an 18-point scoring track, a handful
of pawns, a die, and a pad of paper. Frankly, the die isn’t necessary.
The cards are the central thing: Each one presents five unfamiliar words and
a short, plain-English definition for each. One player, who becomes the “dasher,”
draws a card and uses the die to choose one of the words. On a roll of six, he
chooses freely among the five. The dasher reads the word aloud but keeps its defi-
nition secret. The other players invent what they hope are plausible definitions for
the word, write them down, and pass them to the dasher.
Once he or she has all players’ invented definitions in hand, the dasher reads
each, as well as the actual definition, in a random order. He takes care to conceal
both who submitted which definition and which definition is correct.
Finally, each player chooses a definition as correct. A player advances his or
Balderdash O 17
her pawn two spaces for guessing correctly, and one space for each other player
who chooses his or her fake definition. The dasher advances three spaces if none
of the others choose the correct definition. Any player whose “invented” definition
matches the real definition also moves three spaces.
The role of dasher rotates, and, as one says of playing the venerable but point-
less card game war in a casino, “That’s it.”
Words on their own merits having become a bit unsexy in these modern times,
versions of Balderdash published since the canonical 1984 purple-box edition
gussy up the premise with additional categories of things to be defined. Beyond
Balderdash has people, movie titles, dates, and acronyms in addition to plain old
words, and the current edition — back to just Balderdash again — substitutes
“laws you’ve never heard of” for Beyond Balderdash’s dates. On one hand, one
supposes all that’s fine; on the other hand, one bemoans the death of popular
interest in just plain words.
As with many games that have iron roots in the popular culture, the gameplay
concept behind Balderdash was hardly invented with its publication. Its ancestor,
a parlor game most frequently called Dictionary or The Dictionary Game, is prob-
ably more than a century old. In that version, a regular dictionary is used rather
than prepared cards. Players take turns in the leader’s role and simply select the
word they prefer, either at their discretion or from a random page. Score is kept,
in prehistoric fashion, on paper.
But let’s be clear: Balderdash — unlike, say, Monopoly — isn’t popular simply
because the premise is as old as rust. Balderdash’s popularity stems from being a
good game, and fun.
Good means that the game’s rules work well, and reward the correct behavior
in the right proportion, so that the struggle to win makes sense from wherever one
happens to be standing at any given time. The players are rewarded appropriately
for both submitting plausible definitions and making good guesses. The dasher
is rewarded for contributing the critical element of impartiality in presenting the
other players’ definitions.
Fun means what you think: That playing the thing’s enjoyable. In the case of
Balderdash, much of the fun arises because playing the game is funny. If comedy
arises from discrepancy — and, as John Hodgman might say, “IT IS SO” —
Balderdash has high discrepancy in spades. It comes from the chasm between the
absolute literary authority of the dictionary and the absolute non-authority of
families playing board games on Thanksgiving. It comes from the gap between the
inherent meaninglessness of arbitrary syllables and the meaning that we ascribe to
them as the human constructs known as “words.” There’s also the fact that a game
about the definitions of words has the deliberate point of obscuring their mean-
ings. And last but not least there’s the way that Balderdash exposes the serious
business of communicating with language as being fraught with an inexhaustible
supply of words that actually inhibit communication by their very obtuseness.
Good and fun are fine and dandy, but for my money, the reason Balderdash
belongs in a book enumerating the very best family games ever designed boils
down to a single word: creativity.
Creativity, I say, is the most powerful human force, barring nothing except
perhaps free will. (And what’s at the bottom of creativity itself, if not free will?)
The problem with creativity is that too many people assume they don’t have
it and can’t do it. When families talk seriously, mom the administrator and dad
the accountant too often remove “creativity” to the strange and foreign landscape
inhabited by the unfathomable individuals of legend — your Bob Dylans, your
Maya Angelous, your William Shakespeares — which is certainly not the land-
scape populated by their kids, if they know what’s good for them and want to
make a decent living when they grow up.
But that’s crap. As a growing mountain of literature and expanding popular
knowledge tell us, creativity is a discipline, a habit, and a skill like most others.
Creativity is something anyone can do. It’s not easy, but neither is it alien or remote.
The magic of Balderdash is that it provides a framework that makes it easier
to be creative. Rather than having to invent something from the entire universe
of things that one could create, the task is more modest: Invent a definition for
a word. And here’s the word. But don’t just invent any old definition; even that
sub-universe might be daunting. Just invent a definition that a reasonable person
might believe is correct.
With those constraints, it hardly even seems like creativity, which is why it’s
so clever. Balderdash’s training wheels are so well concealed that its players don’t
even realize they’re riding a bike.
At the end of the day, Balderdash is a gateway to creativity, the most precious
human gift. What could be better?
O O O
Balderdash O 19
Jeff Tidball is an award-winning game designer whose credits include

Pieces of Eight, Cthulhu 500, and Cults Across America. He’s the co-
author, with Will Hindmarch, of Things We Think About Games, a non-
fiction work about games and gaming whose title accurately describes
its contents. He’s the co-founder — also with Hindmarch — of both
Gameplaywright Press and Gameplaywright.net. In what seems now like
the distant past, he once — though not at the same time! — served as the
line developer for Ars Magica, Feng Shui, and Decipher’s The Lord of
the Rings Roleplaying Game. He has worked as vice president of prod-
uct development at Fantasy Flight Games, but now writes and designs
both for himself and a variety of clients whose names you’d recognize.
Jeff holds an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern
California, and lives with his wife, sons, and dog in Minnesota’s Twin
Cities. His website is predictably located at jefftidball.com.
Keith Baker on
Bang!
Key Designer: Emiliano Sciarra
daVinci Games (fourth edition, 2008)
It’s high noon in an old mining town. The sun is beating down. Tumble
weeds roll down the street between the saloon and the general store. A woman
stands in the middle of the street, waiting for the Wells Fargo coach to arrive. Rose
Doolan wears a tin star on her vest, and there’s a six-gun at her side.
A man in a dark duster steps out of the saloon, tossing his empty shot glass to
the ground. “Reckon you should draw, Sheriff Doolan.”
“Black Jack?” Rose says. “But you helped during the injun attack. You brought
down Vulture Sam.”
“Ain’t no such thing as honor among thieves, Sheriff. Ol’ Sam got in my way.
Now it’s you what’s in my way. Me and my friends got big plans for this place,
once you’re restin’ beneath Boot Hill.”
“Sorry. I’m not taking that nap anytime soon, Jack. There’s a deputy with a
Winchester drawing a bead on you right now. You want to die with some dignity,
you better fill your hand now . . . if you can.”
Willy the Kid watches the action from behind a barrel, his rifle trained on
Black Jack. He has plans of his own, and once the outlaws are done, he’s got a
bullet with the sheriff’s name on it. He cocks his rifle. Jack and Rose face each
other, each poised to draw.
BANG!
It’s a simple plot. One man wears a tin star. It’s his job to maintain order on the
dirty frontier, to protect the innocent from bandits and injuns. He’s got a six-gun,
his courage, and a pack of so-called deputies. That’s where the trouble begins.
Some members of his posse are true deputies, willing to lay down their lives in the
pursuit of justice. Others are vicious outlaws, scum planning to kill the sheriff and
take the town for themselves. One among them is a renegade, a man who hates
Bang! O 21
the outlaws as much as the sheriff — a cold-hearted loner who plans to be the
last one standing.
This mystery is at the heart of Bang! The action of the game is simple enough,
not unlike Family Business or Lunch Money. Players draw from a central deck of
cards, which includes attacks, defenses, and special cards such as revitalizing Beer
or the chance to throw a player in Jail. On your turn you draw two cards, then
play as many cards as you can. The most common card is, not surprisingly, the
BANG! card — a basic attack that knocks one wound off of your target. When
someone takes enough damage, he dies.
But who do you shoot, when your turn comes up? At the start of the game,
each player gets a role card, and with the exception of the sheriff, that goal is kept
hidden. If you’re a deputy, you want to protect the sheriff and kill the outlaws. If
you’re an outlaw, you win if the sheriff is killed, even if you die before it happens!
If you’re the renegade, you need to play both sides against each other, drawing the
conflict out until it’s just you and the sheriff, then finishing the job. While the rules
of the game are simple, the hidden role card gives it unexpected depth. If you’re
an outlaw, can you trick the sheriff into killing the deputies before you reveal your
true motives? If you’re a deputy, can you correctly guess which of the others are
the villains and convince the sheriff of your own loyalty? You can’t actually show
anyone your role card, so your actions are the only real clues others have to your
true goal. If someone shoots the sheriff, he’s branding himself as an outlaw and
painting a target on his chest, but until the bandits are ready to strike, they’re sure
to proclaim their loyalty and claim to be pure-hearted deputies. As the sheriff,
who do you trust?
The game is further complicated by the mechanics of range. The players sit in a
circle, and with your basic six-gun, you can only shoot the character next to you,
whether to the right or the left. The deck of cards includes guns that increase your
range, along with defenses — a Barrel you can hide behind to avoid attacks, or the
Mustang, which lets you ride farther away from everyone. So you may know that
Willy the Kid is an outlaw, since he’s taken a shot at the sheriff, but he may not
be close enough for you to hit with your pistol. Who, then, do you shoot instead?
In addition to your secret role, you’re dealt a character card at the start of
the game. This is revealed to all players, and has a name, a picture, and a special
ability. Rose Doolan’s eagle eyes are as sharp as any scope, and she can hit her
foes from farther away than normal. Vulture Sam is an undertaker, and he gets
to strip the dead of their goodies. Slab the Killer never misses, and it takes two
defense cards to dodge his bullets. Black Jack, Willy the Kid, Jesse Jones . . . names
and pictures alone help to add color, while the special abilities alter the gameplay.
When you combine these character identities with the role cards, it ensures that
no two games will be exactly the same.
The mechanics are simple and solid, easy to learn and fun to play. It’s not a
serious strategy game by any means; luck of the draw plays a major role, and if
everyone decides to gang up on you, there’s not much you can do besides protest-
ing your innocence. Yet I’ve found it to be one of those rare games that’s fun to
play whether you win or lose. The blend of role and character helps to make Bang!
extremely replayable, and as it can support up to seven players with the core set,
it’s a great party game.
Beyond the mechanics, Bang! is a wonderful game for people who enjoy diving
into the Spaghetti Western genre, made famous by Sergio Leone’s “Man with No
Name” trilogy of films. The characters provide a touchstone for this sort of sto-
rytelling, and the cards themselves add another twist. All the cards are bilingual,
printed in both Italian and English. At my table, we love mixing up the terms
when we play. When someone takes a shot at you, you can cancel it by playing a
Missed! card. Simple enough. But it’s considerably more fun to shout “Mancato!”
when you throw down that card. This is one of the few Italian words I now know
by heart, along with birra (beer). The familiar elements and the game’s simple
rules make it instantly accessible to anyone who’s ever enjoyed such Westerns as
A Fistful of Dollars, and it’s easy to teach to new players.
So if you’ve got a few friends over and the birra is flowing, Bang! is an excel-
lent game to throw on the table. Grab your cowboy hat, pour a shot of whiskey,
and tell that low-down rustler El Gringo that he’ll be sleepin’ under Boot Hill
tonight. It’s high noon, and it’s time for a showdown.
BANG!
O O O
Keith Baker is the designer of the card game Gloom and the Eberron
campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. His attack on the sheriff was
entirely accidental; he was cleaning his gun when it suddenly went off. If
you’d like to know more, go to his website BossytheCow.com.
Bruce Harlick on
Battleship
Key Designer: Clifford Von Wickler
Milton Bradley (1967)
When I was a kid, I played a lot of Battleship. The game’s plastic ships and
playing boards, which doubled as carrying cases, were perfect for capturing my
young imagination, and I spent a lot of time convincing my friends to come try
to sink my fleet before I sent their ships to the ocean’s bottom. Actually, it didn’t
take all that much convincing; it was a fun and quick game. Almost all my friends
had their own copy. Inevitably, whoever owned the set in use would grab the
patriotic, all-American blue board while the visitor would have to make do with
the evil, commie-menace red board. A few years later I would see some older kids
playing Avalon Hill’s Midway while on a family vacation and become entranced
by it. It reminded me of a more complex version of Battleship, which I had always
enjoyed, so when I returned home I bought a copy of Midway from Talbot’s Toys,
putting my feet and my mind firmly on the path toward wargaming, discovering
Dungeons & Dragons, and, ultimately, becoming a game designer.
Battleship is a fairly simple game. Each player has his own board, which con-
sists of a 10 by 10 grid with each column designated by a letter from A to J and
each row designated by a number from 1 to 10. Players place five ships of varying
size on the grid and then take turns calling out a grid square. If the square they
pick is empty, their opponent replies “miss.” If the square they pick is occupied
by a ship, their opponent calls out “hit!” Once a ship has suffered between two
and five hits, depending on its size, it is sunk. Whoever sinks their opponent’s fleet
first wins.
What makes the game fun is that the players can only see their own boards;
their opponent’s board with its ship placement is hidden from view. Battleship,
thus, is an excellent example of a double-blind wargame, and it’s this fog of war
that leads to the game’s challenge and strategy. When starting a game, you have
a number of options. How do you set up your ships? Is it better to cluster them
or to scatter them? Is the interior of the board better than the perimeter? Does
your opponent have any habits in his search strategy that you can exploit? When
you’re playing the game and seeking out enemy ships, you are presented with
other choices. Do you cluster your shots? Do you try some kind of pattern? Do
you believe that the other player breathed an actual sigh of relief after your last
shot, suggesting that you’re closing in on his ships, or do you assume it’s a bluff?
These subtleties, as simple as they are, keep players engaged.
You can play a more complex and challenging version of the game. One vari-
ant gives the players one shot per turn for each ship they have left in their fleet.
They call out all their shots in a turn at once, and their opponent then tells them
the results. As their fleet gets whittled down, they have fewer and fewer shots. An
even more challenging version only requires the opponent to call out the number
of hits and misses, but not to specify which shots were which.
Battleship taught me a lot about thinking strategically, about reading my
opponent’s reaction, and, most importantly, about paying attention to the game.
You really only needed to pay attention to your own actions during your turn in
most of the board games I played when I was young. Battleship rewarded you for
closely observing your opponent’s reactions. It also taught you to think logically.
Since Battleship didn’t include a random chance mechanic, you wouldn’t play hop-
ing for a good roll or draw of a card. Instead, you’d try to look for patterns and
think of ways to cover areas of the board with the least number of salvos. Could
that two-hit destroyer be hiding in the gaps between your shots? What’s the most
efficient way to find it before your foe sinks your last ship?
The game was also good for breaking bad play habits. If you had a tendency
to place your ships in the same types of patterns or in the same areas every game,
your friends would pick up on that and pound the heck out of your fleet until
you adjusted your style of play. Come to think of it, a lot of what I learned from
playing Battleship translates into good lessons for playing poker.
Battleship enjoys a long history. It was created as a pad-and-pencil game by
Clifford Von Wickler sometime in the early 1900s. Its first publication was as Salvo
from the Starex Novelty Company, in 1937, but it has been published under many
different names — Battleship, Combat, The Battleship Game, and Broadsides: The
Game of Naval Strategy, among others — by several different publishers over the
years. The game was popular with adults as well as children, so much so that the
Signal Oil Company sent copies of Salvo to servicemen stationed overseas during
World War II. They also gave copies away to patrons of their filling stations for a
Battleship O 25
few months before discontinuing that premium, saying, “Every Salvo game should
be sent where it’s most needed — for the recreation of our boys in uniform.”
Milton Bradley came out with the iconic board game version of Battleship in
1967, and that’s the one I remember from my childhood. Their patented pegboard
design made the game easy to play and infinitely reusable. Each of the hinged
cases held two boards; the horizontal one for you to place your ships and the
vertical one for you to mark your hits and misses with white and red pegs. The
vertical board also served as a barrier to prevent your opponent from seeing the
placement of your fleet. You could sit at a table or lie on the floor with the boards
back to back and strive to exert your naval dominance before your wily opponent
destroyed your fleet. It really was the stuff dreams were made of, at least for pre-
adolescent boys.
Milton Bradley has since published several versions of Battleship, including
a travel set and an electronic talking game that tracks your shots and announces
hits, misses, and sunken ships. Battleship has also been transported over to the
computer and various game consoles. It has attained a classic status and I like to
think that kids of future generations will playing this game and delighting in their
opponents’ anguished cries of “You sank my battleship!”
O O O
Bruce Harlick got his start in the gaming industry in 1981 as Hero
Games’ first employee, working on Champions and the rest of the Hero
System line. Starting as an editor, Bruce enjoyed a 20-year relationship
with the Hero Games, culminating with the job of company president. He
was responsible for the creation of some of Hero Games’ most memorable
characters, including the ever-popular Foxbat. After a brief hiatus from
game publishing, Bruce entered the video game industry, working on such
projects as the Matrix Online and DC Universe Online for Monolith
Productions, a Marvel Comics-based MMORPG for Sigil Games Online,
and an Indiana Jones game for LucasArts. In 2007, Bruce parted ways
with LucasArts and took a job with Paragon Studios to work as a lead
designer on the superhero genre MMORPG, City of Heroes.
James Wallis on
Bausack
Key Designer: Klaus Zoch
Zoch Verlag (1987)
“Bausack” is German for “building sack,” and Bausack is a sack of bricks.

A large, heavy cotton sack with knobbly projections from its contents, it makes
wooden clacking sounds when it moves. You empty out the contents and the
bricks cascade onto the table or onto the floor in a glorious, anarchic rush. And
instantly your mind is filled with possibilities. What can we do with these things?
What can we build? How can we play?
Bausack is that most wondrous of things: a game that is also a toy; a game
that has no one true set of rules; a game that reminds us of the great games of our
childhood when there were no limits except our imagination. It combines physical
and mental play into an experience where strategy, psychology, and an under-
standing of physics are as important as a steady hand. It is a delight.
The cotton sack contains about 70 wooden bricks. In the original edition
most of them are plain wood, but some are red and a small number are green.
Crucially, they are all different. No two are the same. There are large rectangles,
small rectangles, squares, cubes, cylinders, poles, ramps, L-shapes, arches, eggs,
half-eggs, circles and hemispheres, crosses, pieces with holes in them, pieces that
defy description, and pieces that are unmistakably doorknobs, eggcups, and a
model Christmas tree.
They’re all made from a good, solid hardwood with smooth surfaces, and they
demand to be picked up and held, stroked, played with, and balanced on each
other. And that’s where the heart of Bausack lies. It’s a tower-building game. In
fact, it’s a whole universe of tower-building games, or more precisely a toolkit for
designing tower-building games.
Everything you need to become a games designer is in Bausack. The designers
also supply a measuring tool (a piece of string with a clothespeg on it); a second,
smaller cotton bag filled with kidney beans; and one of the most charming sets of
rules I’ve ever read. It includes five suggested game-types, covering a wide range
Bausack O 27
of possibilities and variants. In the first and most basic — Tower of Babel, aimed
at players from five years and up — the players take it in turns to choose a piece
from the bag and add it to a communal tower. If someone causes a collapse, the
player immediately before them receives one bean. First player with five beans
wins. Simple and fun.
The second set of rules, Baukette, introduces the ideas of each player building
his or her own tower, of limiting the choice of bricks, and of last-man-standing.
The competition is to create the tower with the most bricks in it. If you’ve fur-
rowed your brow and asked why the players are not competing for height, then
you’re already thinking like a Bausack owner.
By the third set of rules, Knock Out, proper strategy has been introduced.
Again, players are each building their own towers. The beans are used to bid
against other players for the blocks in an auction. Knock Out isn’t about creating
the tower with the most bricks, it’s about survival. Using your beans to build the
smallest, simplest tower is a viable strategy here.
But Knock Out has two kinds of auction. In the simple one, players take turns
to choose a piece and auction it, participating in the bidding themselves. Unsold
pieces must be taken by the auctioneer. The second auction is a “refuse” auction;
the piece offered is a hard-to-use one, and each player must increase the bid or
be forced to use the piece himself. Crucially, the plain-colored pieces are quite
easy to build into a tower. Red ones are harder because they are curved, have only
one flat surface, or their flat parts are small or at sharp angles. Green pieces are
even harder to use. Suddenly you’re managing two different resources: the physi-
cal tower in front of you, and the beans you need to optimize your architectural
masterpiece.
I’ll mention here the rule that all beans spent in auctions go back into the bag.
But why? Why aren’t they given to the auctioneer? Would that work better? Does
keeping currency in the game unbalance things? Why not try it out, see how it
affects the dynamics of play — does it destabilize more than the towers? Bausack
doesn’t ask these questions about the rules outright, but it invites you, the player,
to ask them and experiment with them, just as you’re experimenting with the
design of your brick tower.
There are still two variants to go. Well Stacked is the first game to introduce
the idea of building for height, which again completely changes the dynamic of
the gameplay and the value of the different pieces. It also introduces a third auc-
tion type, the “risk” auction, which in turn adds yet another rule idea: players can
be forced to build on each other’s towers. The final set is the simply named 3 x
Red Wins, a tactical two-player game with basic auctions, each piece placed must
increase the overall height of the tower, and the first player with three red pieces
in his or her uncollapsed tower wins.
How many other variants can you think of immediately?
Bausack is closely related to Blockhead (a Games magazine hall-of-famer)
but beats it on many levels, not least of all because its pieces are made of nicer
wood, and in less garish colors, than any edition of Blockhead I’ve seen. Milton
Bradley’s Bandu was a version of Bausack but with only one set of rules, which
rather misses the point. After the original 1987 release, Zoch Games created a
second version, Sac Noir, in natty red and black colors with a slightly changed
set of pieces. A 2007 boxed version included the cotton sack and some of the Sac
Noir bits, but replaced the kidney beans with blue glass gems. The rules, thank-
fully, were almost unchanged.
What Bausack boils down to is a toolkit for Games Design 101. All the ele-
ments of the five rules sets provided in the basic game can be broken down and
then mixed and matched to create new games. Bausack almost demands that you
play with its rules, the same way that the lovely wooden pieces demand that you
pick them up and play with them. For example, I mentioned that some of the
pieces, the hardest ones to place, are colored green. None of the five sets of rules
refer to them. How do you use green pieces in the game? If you don’t have any
ideas of your own, ask an eight-year-old.
Plus, it’s huge fun, a crowd-puller at gatherings of games-players, a visual and
tactile treat, a toy in its own right, and a surprisingly strategic game of collabora-
tive-yet-competitive building. Just don’t — whatever you do — jog the table.
O O O
James Wallis was slightly stunned that two of his creations were featured
in Hobby Games: The 100 Best. He runs the games consultancy Spaaace
and the publishing company Magnum Opus Press, and is a visiting lec-
turer in games design at the University of Westminster. He lives in London
with his wife and 1d4 –1 children.
Paul Jaquays on
Black Box
Key Designer: Eric Solomon
Parker Brothers (1977)
Imagine you’ve got a box. Let’s say a black box, just for visual effect. Black
equals cool, right?
Size doesn’t matter, but it’s smallish, sort of flat, and, well . . . boxy. Now,
inside the box, place five atoms. Those atoms can’t be seen with the naked eye,
because they’re, like, really, really small. But you know that and you know they
are in there.
So, black box, four, maybe five atoms. We’re good so far? The trick is going to
be finding those atoms without actually seeing them.
What’s it made of? You mean the box? Um. Plastic. It doesn’t really matter. It’s
black and plastic. Black plastic. And before you ask, it doesn’t matter what kind
of atoms. It just doesn’t. Trust me.
Here comes the really cool part. We find the atoms by shooting lasers into the
box. Well, we could say narrow beams of light, not lasers. But lasers are so much
cooler. If the laser rips through to the other side of the box, like, um . . . something
does when nothing stops it, then you might suspect that an atom is not where you
shot the light, right? Maybe.
Now, imagine that the light smacks into one of those atoms . . . Well, yes. I
know atoms are very small, but that doesn’t make them impossible to hit. My
point is that laser light hits them and — pow! — it’s sucked right into the atom,
or detours off to the side of the box, or reflects back to its starting point. But now
you know where to find that atom. Maybe, or maybe not!
I agree that from the atom’s point of view even a tiny box is infinitely large.
Would it help if I drew a diagram for you? Better yet, let me make a model of
it. After all this is SCIENCE — did I say that loud enough? — not some kind of
game. Ah, silly me. You’re right it is a game. A fairly abstract and puzzling one,
at that.
And it takes more than a bit of imagining to get the better of a game like that.
The work of electrical engineer Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield, winner of

the 1979 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his invention of the CAT scanner, inspired
Eric Solomon to invent Black Box. Waddingtons first published it in 1976 and
then Parker Brothers released their version in 1977. Parker Brothers actually set
up a demonstration booth for the game at the 1978 Origins hobby game conven-
tion in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you played the game with their demonstrator, you
got a copy — which I did.
Called “the ultimate game of hide and seek” on the Parker Brothers edition
packaging, Black Box features gameplay that revolves around finding four or five
“atoms” (represented by marbles) hidden on a square playing board. The board
is laid out as an eight by eight grid, and the four edges each have an adjacent row
of positions where tokens can be placed to mark the entry and exit points for the
imaginary beams of light. One player hides the atoms. The other tries to find them.
If you’re interested in playing solo, the game rules include a number of premade
puzzles. This game describes better with diagrams, so bear with me and be as
imaginative as someone actually playing the game while I describe how it works.
The first player hides the atoms on the grid and marks down their locations
with a crayon on a plastic slate. The seeker, the player solving the puzzle, selects
an edge position and imagines firing a beam of light into the Black Box grid. If the
beam “misses” and hits nothing, then it strikes the opposite side of the grid. The
seeker marks both start and end locations with identical tokens.
The seeker now has a pretty good idea that the selected column or row is
empty and that the ones on either side of it contain no atoms. If they had, the
light beam would detour and come out at another grid position on the board’s
edge, or possibly even reflect back to the starting location. Detours strike the atom
tangentially — a fancy way to say they hit the “corner” of the atom — and bounce
away at 90-degree angles toward the grid edge; matching tokens are placed at the
detour’s start and end positions. Reflections are a special type of detour that sends
the light back to the origin. Reflections are marked only at the origin.
Hits occur when the light beam strikes an atom dead on and is absorbed into
it. Of course, the hit may not be in the row or column where the beam started. The
beam could actually detour, perhaps more than once, on its way to the hit. Tricky.
Like reflections, they are marked only at the origin.
The seeker studies the results of each light beam and places marbles to mark
Black Box O 31
suspected atom locations. When all are marked, the board is revealed and scored.
In a two-player game, roles reverse and the hider becomes the seeker.
Scoring is based on the number of light beams fired plus a penalty added for
missed guesses. Scores will vary from game to game, ranging from eight to 18
points, depending on the puzzle’s difficulty. Lower scores beat higher scores.
The game has been released through several publishers over the years:
Waddingtons, Parker Brothers, Franjos, and others, under the names Black Box,
Logo, Ko-Code, Ordo, and Planétaire. Finding a physical copy of the game may
be challenging, as it is currently out of print.
Happily, there are several versions of the game online that play like the origi-
nal, except for the ability to set up challenges for other players. That alone can
make getting a physical copy worth the trouble. I was surprised to find that the
polished online implementation by Bear Bibeault, which mimics the appearance of
the 1977 Parker Brothers edition, was my favorite.
I say surprised because the Parker Brothers version, despite the elegance of
its construction, can be visually confusing. The game itself is a beautiful piece of
industrial design — a self-contained black plastic box with curved corners, a shiny,
crisply molded play grid, yellow atoms, and flat, futuristic-looking markers in red,
yellow, and orange, with symbols on the orange ones to mark detours. Beautiful,
but I found myself seeing only the orange color and not the symbols. Waddingtons
and others resolved the same feature with colored pawns. It’s a less elegant solu-
tion, but possibly easier to follow.
The rules for Black Box are simple, but internalizing how they work is not.
What makes this game worthy of this collection is the type of spatial visualization
necessary to “see” how the hidden atoms affect the world. Understanding and
applying the feedback from the detours, hits, and reflections, even with props, to
deduce the location of atoms requires serious mental exercise.
As I said, it takes a bit of imagining.
O O O
Paul Jaquays pioneered pre-made RPG scenarios in his D&D fanzine

The Dungeoneer in 1976 and is well known for his enduring game adven-
tures Dark Tower and Griffin Mountain. He assembled one of the first
art and design studios for video game development at Coleco to make
ColecoVision games. After working as an illustrator, designer, author, and

editor, he returned to computer games in 1997, first as a level designer
for id Software, then as an artist for Microsoft/Ensemble Studios, and
currently as a senior level designer for CCP North America. At Southern
Methodist University he helped set up The Guildhall, one of the foremost
schools for digital game development, and continues as an advisor to the
program.
Lewis Pulsipher on
Blokus
Key Designer: Bernard Tavitian
Educational Insights (2000)
Blokus is a very easy to learn abstract strategy game playable by young chil-
dren as well as adults. It is that rarity, an abstract game that has some skill in it,
yet isn’t too complex for smaller children and casual game players.
In Blokus four players take turns placing, on a 400-square textured grid, plas-
tic polyominoes made up of from one to five squares. The shapes often remind
people of the video game Tetris, but all Tetris pieces consist of four squares. Each
of a player’s pieces must touch corner-to-corner, and only corner-to-corner, with
at least one of his or her pieces on the board. No “stacking” is allowed. When no
one can play any more pieces, the player with the fewest squares in total amongst
his unplayed pieces wins.
There are 21 pieces of each color. As you might guess, as the game goes on it
becomes harder to play the pieces of five squares, as opposed to the smaller ones.
A 15-point bonus is awarded if a player can play all his pieces, with an additional
five points to end with the single one-square piece. If you’re only playing once,
such bonuses don’t matter, but for a series of games the combined scores can
determine an overall winner.
The strategy comes in trying to maximize your own placement possibilities
while blocking the opponent. Because pieces can only touch at the corners, it is not
easy to block another player, and in a typical game chains of pieces intersect and
intertwine in a wide variety of interesting patterns. Early play consists of trying
to chain your pieces over much of the board, while confining opponents’ pieces
to corners.
The game quickly becomes interactive as each player’s move can strongly
affect the next player. There is probably a slight advantage to playing first, but
not noticeably so.
The raised plastic square board has indentations, via gridlines, to help keep the
plastic pieces stationary once played, though less physically capable youngsters
may have some trouble with placement. The pieces are transparent colored plastic,
robust enough unless they’re stepped on.
Because the game is played on a square board, it doesn’t work well for three
players, its biggest drawback. Blokus Trigon is an alternative published version
that works best with three, using a hexagonal board of triangles and polyominoes
consisting of triangles rather than squares.
Blokus is probably more interesting for adults than many games that are
accessible to younger children. As an abstract strategy game, Blokus is not for
adrenaline junkies or those who like physically active games. It is far more like
checkers than like Hungry Hungry Hippos. Yet it is very easy to learn, easy to
play — though not easy to play well — and at 20 to 30 minutes, it has a short
enough game time to “fill in” between longer games. Kids as young as three can
play, though they usually need to be older to grasp the strategy, and younger ones
may need help identifying legal placements toward the end of the game. Children
also like the attractive pieces, varying patterns, and orderly placement inherent in
the game, even if they aren’t playing it well enough to win.
How do you succeed? Each player begins by placing a piece in one corner.
Some people like to try to make a chain all the way across the board early on.
Many quickly play the different five-square pieces, especially the ones that cover
three diagonal spaces, while there’s still plenty of room. Remember, it’s not the
number of pieces you have left at the end, it’s the number of squares amongst those
leftovers that determines your penalty. So if you have one five-square piece, one
three-square, and one two-square, you score minus 10.
Some shapes are harder to fit than others, as you’ll learn from experience, so
you tend to place those earlier in the game. Hence each turn is a combination of
which piece to play and where to play it. Often a key move is one that lets you
escape through an opponent’s blockade into a new area of expansion.
The hub of the Blokus universe is the community at blokus.com. There you’ll
find an online demo as well as free play, or you can “watch” others compete. You
can also find online tutorials, though these will be more about the strategy than
about the rules. Hence it’s easy to try the game before you buy, and with a fairly
low list price, there isn’t a lot of risk in adding Blokus, or its similarly priced com-
panion Blokus Trigon, to your collection.
Players often wonder how the name is pronounced. Blocus (with a “c”) in
French means “blockade.” U.S. players usually pronounce the name “block-us,”
Blokus O 35
since a major part of the game is blocking; phonetically in English it would be

“blow-kus.”
This popular game has won many awards and engendered several spinoffs. In
addition to Blokus Trigon, there’s Blokus Duo/Travel Blokus, which is for two
and played on a smaller board. Blokus Gigantic offers a board 101 inches long
and 101 inches wide! There are also video game versions. Blokus 3-D is actually
a re-labeled version of the game Rumis. Look hard enough and you’ll also find
what appear to be knock-offs, such as Tetris – The Strategy Family Chess Game or
simply The Strategy Game. Copyright law only protects the wording of rules, not
the ideas in games, so this sort of thing happens more than you’d think.
In the U.S., Educational Insights was the first publisher of Blokus, but French
originator Sekkoia was bought by Mattel in January 2009. With ownership by one
of the world’s major toy makers, the game is likely to gain the visibility of such
traditional titles as Monopoly and Risk. This should make experienced opponents
more readily available for players who are interested in a skilled competition.
What parents and their children will remember best, though, is that Blokus is an
excellent, quick, easy-to-learn game for families.
Bernard Tavitian has a masters degree in mathematics and doctorate in bio-
physics, but no game design credits other than Blokus and its non-3-D variants.
The well-known four-color map theorem is mentioned with the designer’s biogra-
phy, which may help provide insight into the design process. Another source sug-
gests Tavitian was “inspired to create the game while trying to find an appropriate
frame for a painting of an orchestra made up of geometric figures.” In any case,
Blokus feels like one of those rare “why didn’t I think of that” games of brilliant
simplicity. Professional designers may spend years trying to devise such games, but
are unlikely to think one up; instead, “it just happens,” and often it happens for
someone who doesn’t otherwise design games.
The major design lesson from Blokus may be: Don’t discount very simple
ideas; occasionally one can be turned into a widely popular game.
O O O
Dr. Lew Pulsipher started playing board games more than 50 years ago.
He designed his own games, then discovered strategic “realistic” gaming
with early Avalon Hill wargames, and ultimately earned a doctorate in
military and diplomatic history. Formerly contributing editor to several

roleplaying game magazines and author of over a hundred game maga-
zine articles, he is perhaps best known as the designer of Britannia (U.K.,
U.S., and Germany in separate editions), Dragon Rage, Valley of the
Four Winds, Swords and Wizardry, and Diplomacy Games & Variants.
Britannia (second edition) appeared in 2006, with foreign editions
(German, French, Spanish, Hungarian) in 2008. He is also a frequent con-
tributor to Gamasutra/GameCareerGuide, sites for video game creators.
Information on his current projects can be found at PulsipherGames.
com. His “day job” is teaching game design to college students in North
Carolina.
Teeuwynn Woodruff on
Boggle
Key Designers: Bill Cooke, Alan Turoff
Rattle-rattle-rattle-rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle. CLACK!
Three minutes of silence.
The starting sounds of a round of Boggle are burned into my brain. Sixteen
letter cubes smashing around inside a plastic dome make a wonderful racket —
especially when contrasted to the three minutes of fierce silence that follows, as
the players furiously scribble down every word they can find in the resulting grid.
For those of you who have never played Boggle, or need a refresher, the game
comes with 16 dice, each with a single letter (saving the word game trope Qu) on
a side. The cubes rest in a square tray containing 16 slots, four per row. One player
places a plastic dome over the tray and shakes the cubes like crazy before placing
the tray down again. Players then have exactly three minutes to write down as
many words of three or more letters as they can find on the board.
When you create words in Boggle, you can only string together adjoining let-
ters. A cube can adjoin vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, but each letter must
touch the one before and the one after it to count. No letter cube can be used twice
in the same word either.
Once the three minutes are up, players compare words. If any two or more
players wrote down the exact same word, that word is crossed out. Players get to
score any word only they wrote down that round. Boggle games can end after one
round, 50 points, 100 points, or at whatever threshold the players choose.
That’s it. Boggle’s never going to win a prize for World’s Most Complex Game,
but that’s the beauty of it. There is an innate human drive to find patterns, to place
our minds and our world in order. Boggle appeals to the hunger for patterns we
all crave.
From the time we are infants, we search for patterns. Without the ability to
perceive patterns, we cannot learn, and therefore cannot survive. For those three
boggling minutes of word-finding goodness, players are constantly reinforced
by finding new words, new patterns, on the board in front of them. Well, except
when the occasional really horrid board shakes out. Then players spend those three
minutes wondering what words you can create from a Qu, a J, a K, and four Ls.
So, Boggle reinforces the pattern-hungry hamster in us all. But it’s also one of
the best brainy beatdown games of all time. Unlike with many classic word games,
Boggle provides little luck with which players can mentally shield themselves and
their abilities. In Scrabble, for instance, players draw letter tiles. Sometimes their
draws are better than others.
But Boggle presents all players with the same letters, in the same arrangement.
It’s up to each player and his or her lexical might to make something of those let-
ters in three minutes. When the timer runs out and the word dust clears, it’s often
brutally obvious where each player stands in the verbal dexterity prize ring.
As with a game like chess, this spare-no-ego aspect of Boggle makes it hard
to play much with friends or family who are not similar in skill levels. Just ask
my in-laws. We played Boggle together. Once. But, again, as with chess, the gloves
off approach can make Boggle tremendously fun and competitive for those with
similar skills.
Mike Selinker and I once played in a two-player Boggle tournament at Entros,
a gamer’s restaurant that has since closed — and a place that would take a whole
other essay to describe. There was our team, another team made up of a couple of
friends and fellow puzzle-heads (including Time’s Up! designer Peter Sarrett), and
everyone else. The entire tournament came down to the word QUININE. Mike
and I both found that most excellent word on the board. Our foes did not. Game
and tournament over. For a word nerd facing a truly worthy set of opponents,
that was awesome.
This brings up another point in Boggle’s favor: Its simplicity allows it to be
played in a variety of ways — most notably, in recent years, online. Online Boggle
affords thousands of players the opportunity to go on the Internet and battle away.
Boggle Jr., a simplified version of the game, allows children just learning to read
entrée to the word game realm.
These options are terrific for some, but when it comes to Boggle-philes, there
is really only one pressing question: Boggle or Big Boggle? Big Boggle, first pub-
lished in 1979, is a version of the game where, instead of having a four by four
grid of 16 letters to work with, players have a five by five grid of 25 letters. This
enlarged grid massively increases the number of words players can make on a given
Boggle O 39
board, so much so that only words with four or more letters are scored. Even with
that restriction, the number of words skilled players can create with Big Boggle,
well, boggles the mind.
Because of this amplitude, some players prefer Big Boggle to the more compact
original. I, however, fall firmly in the camp of preferring Boggle. It can be great fun
rampaging around with a verbal Uzi, spitting out words left and right, but when
it comes to scoring there are just so many words on most Big Boggle boards, it
becomes relatively unlikely two players will hit on the same ones. This leads to
less skill and interactivity than in the original. But if you want to demonstrate
your vocabulary and chew on an overload of letters, Big Boggle’s the way to go.
At its heart, Boggle is a game of verbal virtuosity and pattern recognition that
rewards all who play it. Even if you don’t win a game of Boggle, you can still take
pleasure in getting a new score or finding your biggest word ever. And, if all else
fails, you can always enjoy that sound.
Rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle-Rattle CLACK!
O O O
Teeuwynn Woodruff is an award-winning game designer, author, and

immersive puzzle events designer based in Sammamish, Washington.
Teeuwynn has worked on games including Dungeons & Dragons,
Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Harrow, Betrayal at House on the
Hill, and Duel Masters. Her puzzles have appeared in magazines such
as Games and Wired, as well as in Alternate Reality Games and at
the World Puzzle Championships. As creative director for Lone Shark
Games, she has staged large-scale immersive events for companies such
as Microsoft, Sony Playstation, Lucasfilm, Turbine, ArenaNet, and
Southpeak Interactive. Teeuwynn was a game designer at Wizards of the
Coast for more than a decade before joining Lone Shark Games. And she
will crush you at Boggle.
Fred Hicks on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

The Game
Key Designers: Rob Daviau, Bill Sabram, Craig Van Ness
For game designers, licensed properties are not easy beasts to tame.
While they come with the promise of big sales and high profiles, they also bring a
lot of heavy baggage to the party.
In some sad cases, that baggage weighs down the design and forces the game
to struggle to carry the ideas of the license along with the usual heavy load of such
“trivialities” as being entertaining and being worth your time.
Then there are those games that, under such pressure, soar and become some-
thing better — something exceptional. Something that enhances the True Fan’s
enjoyment of the original thing, acting as some sort of . . . uh, geek-love amplifier?
Nerdgasm ray? Work with me here. I’m no Joss, people!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Game is one of those exceptions. The game pulls
this rare feat off by recognizing everything that makes the TV series work.
Let’s break it down.
The Big Bads: While the TV show had its monster-of-the-week episodes, us fans
always knew that the season had an arc that was building toward something nice
and nasty: the villain of the piece, the “big bad.” These were the threats we weren’t
sure how Buffy and her friends were going to overcome.
Taking on the first four seasons of the show, the board game gives us the
Master, the Judge, the Mayor, and Frankenstein Adam. But like any master villain,
they don’t show up alone: you’ve got Spike and Dru, not to mention Darla, Faith,
Mister Trick, and more. Angelus waits in the wings — if he’s summoned, the Angel
Helps You Out card won’t do the do-gooders any good.
One player takes on the role of evil, and has a lot going for her. The big bad
starts out with three minions from the supporting cast, always goes first in the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer O 41
game, and can badly thrash most of the opposition in a straight-up fight. A die
rolled at the start of evil’s turn determines how many of its pieces it can put into
service before the “white hats” get their chance to stave off another Apocalypse.
Add to this a deck of evil cards with nasty tricks and plenty of opportunities to
draw from it, a victory condition tailored to what the big bad does best, and a
continually renewable supply of minions by way of the Hellmouth, and it looks
pretty grim for Buffy and the Scoobies.
You know, just like in the TV show.
But the Scoobies have some mojo of their own. Quick, to the Mystery Machine!
The Scoobies: All the other players — up to four of them — divide up the roles
of the Scoobies: Oz, Xander, Willow, and Buffy. (Some of the players take on
multiple roles when there are fewer than five at the table.) This really plays up a
part of the show that shined over the years: the emotional connection among the
white hats, and their teamwork in helping the Slayer beat the big bad. A Slayer
that stands alone is a dead Slayer, whether you’re talking about the TV show or
the board game.
Going in sequence, the good guys run around trying to pick up cards from the
various good-guy decks:
O Help Cards: They bring in other supporting characters for a boost,

whether it’s the Amazing Jonathan or Buffy’s mom;
O Research Cards: These enable helpful spells and other majik tricks;
O Weapon Cards: They’re weapons — full of the stuff what slays.
All of the do-gooders can get into fights, though for the not-Slayer set, it’s not
their forte. But that doesn’t matter. True to the way things work out in the TV
show, each good guy has something he or she does best. Xander can carry more
help cards, Willow can carry more research cards, and Buffy’s all about the weap-
onage. And Oz . . . well, we’ll get to Oz.
The show’s patented teamwork is foregrounded by the way play is sequenced.
With everyone on the good team going before Buffy, they can each do their part
to help her shine at what she does best: boot head and kick butt. Characters can
pass cards off to each other, allowing for a cascade of Scoobies-brand team-ups.
Xander grabs the best help cards, and passes one off to Willow. Willow uses the
help card to ramp up her efforts to cast a spell she’s researched. The spell sets up
circumstances for Buffy to boot maximum head. . . .
End to end, the game reinforces the theme of cooperation among the good guys
and competition with the big bad. Solid stuff.
The Trappings: Play takes place on a game board that represents a simplified
Sunnydale. All the important locations are there — the school, the Hellmouth,
various homes, the university, the Initiative, the library, the magic shop, and, of
course, crypts and graveyards. The homes are special. Bad guys of the bloodsuck-
ing persuasion can’t come in unless invited. The occasional invitation card does
pop up in the deck of evil, of course; the heroes can’t ever feel safe. Different cards
will be drawn depending on where a character goes on the map.
As the dice get rolled and the pieces move about the board, the moon phase
counter advances. Appropriate to the show, it’s nearly always night in Sunnydale.
During the new moon, evil gets to draw twice when it draws cards. During the full
moon, Oz drops everything he’s carrying and turns into a hulked-out, wolfy killing
machine. Then the full moon period passes and he is, typically, naked and sur-
rounded by vampires he’s just torqued off. Once every 13 “ticks” along this clock,
the sun comes up — just for a moment — and sets all the bloodsuckers on fire,
forcing them to run to the nearest cover. (13! I love the attention to detail there.)
And then there are the artifacts. Stationed at the four corners of the board,
these are inevitably the targets for an early-game mad rush. As items of great
power, artifacts in play change the game significantly depending upon whose
hands they fall into. Buffy with a magic sword? Aces! The Master with the mark
of the Anointed One? Doom!
Sound familiar?
The Fights: Sooner or later, it comes down to some kung-fu action. Buffy gets
to run through an assortment of weapons. Oz occasionally wolfs out and throws
down. The vampires come out to play and get all . . . fangy.
Using special fight dice, the game gives us some six-siders that show one of
six outcomes: a miss, a fang, a stake, and three flavors of pain (punch, jab, kick!).
Different characters roll different amounts of fight dice. In werewolf mode, Oz (and
Veruca) count the fang as a hit. With a wooden weapon, the Slayer gets a chance
Buffy the Vampire Slayer O 43
to dust a vampire when the stake icon shows up. With the right evil card — Sire
a Vampire — a bloodsucker might even get to turn one of the good guys into a
minion of evil, if she rolls enough fangs on the dice.
It’s fast, furious, and full of fan-flavor.
Mirror-Mirror Episodes: The show’s best episodes, and all those fanboy and fan-
girl what-if-X-happens moments, shine through as the game plays out. Oz turns
into a werewolf at inconvenient moments, dropping that crucial artifact in favor
of chewing on Drusilla for a while. Willow, Xander, or Buffy get turned into vam-
pires — flipping over their play-area marker to reveal the fangier version — and
start booting head in the name of evil (ah, costuming department, we love you so).
Bad Faith might start taking down Buffy’s best friends. The Demon Mayor might
strike at just the wrong moment, force Angel to go all Angelus, and win the day,
ruling over the burnt remains of Sunnydale with chipper reptilian cheer.
It’s the stuff of magic, my friends. The stuff of fan fiction!
Getting a licensed game right is hard. Getting it right enough that the fans cel-
ebrate what you’ve done is even harder. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Game, like
its heroine, faces this challenge down with a wooden stake in each hand, and dusts
it flat-out.
But it’s more than just that. It’s practically a given that Buffy geeks (like me)
will love this game to fangy pieces. But strip away all the licensed trappings and
you have a solid game in its own right, with just the right mix of complexity and
ease of use. Moreover, it offers a fascinating blend of both cooperative and com-
petitive play — a precursor, perhaps, to greats such as Shadows over Camelot.
To put it another way, non-Buffy fans can and do enjoy this game. And that’s
a remarkable feat all of its own. The design is good, whether you’re a breathless
Whedonite or a battle-hardened board gamer. And if you’re one those who haven’t
seen the show — and haven’t caught all the references I’ve been tossing out in this
essay — then maybe, just maybe, after playing the game, you’ll want to.
And that, my friends, is what earns Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Game its
spot as one of the hundred best.
O O O
Thanks to the support of his wonderful wife, Fred Hicks does what
makes him happy for a living. He contracts as a customer service special-
ist (for Indie Press Revolution) and art direction/layout guy (for Hero
Games and various other clients), and also runs indie game publishing
“microbrewery” Evil Hat Productions (evilhat.com). With Evil Hat, Fred
is developing the Dresden Files RPG (dresdenfilesrpg.com), thanks to a
license from his longtime gaming buddy Jim Butcher. Evil Hat has also
published other RPGs, such as Don’t Rest Your Head and Spirit of the
Century — both of which Fred had a hand in writing — with plenty more
to come.
James Ernest on
Candy Land
Key Designer: Eleanor Abbott
Grown-ups, especially gamers, love to hate Candy Land. The game is

frequently invoked as a prime example of a mindless, terrible design. But if you’re
a player of a certain age or disposition, Candy Land is a fantastic experience. This
happens once when you’re age three to six, and once again when you’re a profes-
sional game designer.
From the 2001 rules sheet:
Welcome to Candy Land! Come and visit some very special friends who
live in magical places like Peanut Brittle House, Gumdrop Mountains,
Molasses Swamp and other sweet spots. . . . Be the first player to reach
the Candy Castle by landing on the multi-colored space at the end of the
path.
Candy Land is indeed self-working and simple. The board is a single track
composed of colored spaces, and the deck is a mix of colored cards. On your turn,
you draw a card and move forward to the next space of that color. Some cards
have two colored squares; in that case, you move ahead to the second matching
space. A few special cards, such as the one for Queen Frostine, jump you to spe-
cific spaces on the board. This kind of card can even send you backward, if you’ve
already passed that space. Three of the spaces make you lose one turn, and two
are shortcuts.
A few details have changed since the game’s first release. The “lose a turn”
spaces used to be much worse: you had to draw a specific color to escape them.
The multicolored end space was added to make it more clear that you could win
by drawing any color that wasn’t on a space in front of you. By the 2004 edition,
the special cards could no longer send you backward and “molasses” turned into
“chocolate” because apparently nobody bakes at home any more.
I started playing Candy Land with my daughter Nora when she was three. And
as a child’s first game, it does the job. It allows kids and parents to play together
on a level field, and builds up the child’s understanding of what a game is. Kids
have some natural sense for this, but they need some practice with the finer points
of taking turns, following rules, and learning to lose graciously. Okay, for the first
few games Mom and Dad cheated so that Nora always won. It’s a sign that your
child is ready to play fair when she actually notices that you’re cheating.
Candy Land has what all children’s games need: a compelling theme and a very
easy set of rules. The theme is candy, though interestingly, you’re not acquiring
candy, just traveling through Candy Land. The rules are clear enough that children
can easily follow them, with no math or reading skills, and simple enough that
Nora, now seven, can still remember how to play the game after it spent more
than a year on the shelf.
Games are about challenges, and grown-ups don’t typically like Candy Land
because it doesn’t provide them with any choices. They often express this feeling
by saying “there is no strategy.” But there are many popular adult games that
invite no actual strategy, but plenty of choices. In craps, for example, there are
plenty of betting options, but they only barely affect your results. By this measure,
Candy Land and craps are pretty much the same game.
For a three-year-old, there are plenty of challenges in a game like Candy Land,
because it’s a challenge just remembering whose turn it is. Adding choices, even
empty ones, would just be confounding. Plus, with no decisions there are no
wrong decisions, so kids can have a fair chance of beating their parents and don’t
feel as responsible when they don’t win.
All of this explains why Candy Land is great for kids, which isn’t really a hard
case to make. Now I’m going to tell you why it’s also great for game designers —
or anyone else who wants to think about games more deeply.
When grown-ups talk about Candy Land they tend to use analytical terms.
Self-working game. High volatility. Markov chain. They don’t typically talk about
roleplaying. But for a child, Candy Land is clearly a roleplaying game. Kids can
play Candy Land without even understanding what a Markov chain is. Honestly,
I had to explain it three times to Nora.
Everything grown-ups know about games comes from socialization and prac-
tice. As a first-time gamer, Nora didn’t have any of this. So her approach to Candy
Land was the most interesting to me when she was first learning it. When I got
Candy Land O 47
“stuck on a gooey gumdrop,” Nora would move her pawn back to that space
and help get me unstuck. This completely surprised me, because as a grown-up I
assumed that a race game is unfriendly. She would move back to her own space
after helping me, but she always helped. And she expected this kind of socially
responsible behavior out of her parents, too.
Nora initially went through an “everyone wins” phase, in which the goal of
the game was for everyone to reach the end, in no particular order. Then she got it
in her head that she wanted to win first, and eventually she adopted the grown-up
attitude, which is that the game is over when the first person hits the finish line.
This is one of the more artificial features of a game, actually, and as a designer it’s
interesting for me to consider games where a more community-based approach is
appropriate, where the goal is for everyone to win. If that makes sense to a three-
year-old, why doesn’t it make sense to us?
Candy Land is a great educational game for kids and adults. It lets each gen-
eration pass along its own perspective about what a game is supposed to be. In
A Theory of Fun, Raph Koster says that games are fun when they provide just
enough challenge to be interesting, but not so much that they become confusing.
When a player thinks he’s seen all there is, he decides the game is boring. Sadly,
this can happen when you haven’t really seen everything, but you think you have.
Anyone who thinks he has seen all of Candy Land ought to play it again with
a child.
O O O
James Ernest is a designer of board, card, and computer games. He

began in 1993 as a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, and started
his own publishing company, Cheapass Games, in 1996. He has created
several popular and award-winning games, including Kill Doctor Lucky,
Button Men, Gloria Mundi, and Pirates of the Spanish Main. He currently
works as a senior designer at The Amazing Society, a Seattle-based online
games company.
Ian Livingstone on
Can’t Stop
Key Designer: Sid Sackson
One of the best games inventors of all time was Sid Sackson, designer of over
100 titles, including such classics as Acquire, Focus, and Can’t Stop. He was also
the owner of the largest collection of games in the world. He owned some 16,000
games that were meticulously archived and stored on floor-to-ceiling shelves on
just about every wall in his home in the Bronx. He was burgled several times but
never lost a single game!
I first visited Sid in 1987 to see his amazing collection. I went again in the late
1990s, but by then he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. After a long illness,
he passed away on November 6th, 2002, at the age of 82. Later that year Sid’s
incredible collection of games, books, and design notes was auctioned off at North
River Auction Hall in Keyport, New Jersey. Thus it came to be that on a winter’s
day in New Jersey, the major part of his life’s work was sold and scattered to the
four corners of the earth. To my mind that was a great shame because for some
years his family had been trying to find a museum or benevolent individual to take
the collection in its entirety. Alas, it was not to be.
Luckily for us all, we can still enjoy Sid’s great work. In Can’t Stop we have
a classic game that will appeal to just about anybody. It’s a game for two to
four players, the equipment consisting of four dice, a board, a set of markers for
each player, and three neutral tracking markers. The board features 11 columns
for each of the numbers 2 through 12. There are three spaces on the 2 column,
five on the 3 column, seven on the 4 column, nine on the 5 column, 11 on the
6 column, 13 on the 7 column, 11 on the 8 column, and all the way back down
to three spaces on the 12 column. The number of spaces in each column roughly
corresponds to the chances of rolling a specific number on two dice over several
turns. To win the game, a player must roll dice to match the numbers to capture
three of the columns.
On each turn a player rolls four dice and must divide them into two pairs to
Can’t Stop O 49
create two numbers. A player rolling 2, 4, 5, 5, for example, could make a 6 and a
10, or a 7 and a 9. Then the neutral tracking markers come into play. If they’re off
the board, they are placed on the columns corresponding to the chosen totals, in
this example 6 and 10 or 7 and 9. If the neutral tracking markers are already on
the board in one or both of these columns, they are advanced one space upward
from where the player’s own marker already sits. If the markers reside in columns
that cannot be made with any pair of the four dice rolled, the turn is over and the
player gains nothing.
Players who can continue have two choices: to roll again or to stop. For the
player who ends a turn, his or her markers replace the neutral tracking markers;
these will be the starting positions, should the player restart these columns on a
later turn. Players who do not stop must be able to advance one of the neutral
markers with their next roll or lose any advancement they’ve made during that
turn. When a player reaches the top space of a column and claims it, this column
is won and no further play in that column is allowed.
Don’t worry — it’s a lot simpler than it sounds!
Nevertheless, it probably doesn’t seem particularly exciting, so what is the big
deal? The fun of Can’t Stop hinges on the fact that people are greedy and always
want to ride their luck — often too far, losing all the gains they’ve made during
their turn. The game is usually a very noisy affair with all the other players baiting
the roller with chants of “Can’t stop! Can’t stop! Can’t stop!” And there is noth-
ing more rewarding than seeing the roller fail to make a required number, then
clutching his or her face in disappointment and slowly moving the neutral tracking
markers back to their starting points; another turn wasted through greed. Rollers
who end their turns quickly to consolidate their positions can expect to be teased
mercilessly for bailing out too soon. More a case of Can’t Win than Can’t Stop!
For the roller, on the other hand, there is nothing greater than the feeling of smug-
ness gained from making that extra roll against the odds and getting a marker to
the top of a column, letting those noisy opponents know who the superior player
is in no uncertain terms.
Since this is a dice-based game, success depends on luck. But like backgammon,
an experienced player will usually beat a rookie player, as there are many tactical
and strategic opportunities to be exploited. A player always has choices — which
markers to advance, whether to roll again or not — and these can be difficult
decisions. A player can focus on tall columns with easy-to-roll numbers such as 6,
7, and 8, or focus on the short columns with difficult-to-roll numbers such as 2

and 12. If your markers are in the shorter columns, a player should choose to re-
roll less frequently, since there is much lower chance of matching those high and
low numbers. But if another player is close to claiming a column, then it’s a good
strategy to push your luck, hoping to steal it. There is real benefit in keeping the
neutral tracking markers off the board for as long as possible as there are very few
rolls that cause a turn to end when those markers are not yet in play.
The fun in Can’t Stop is derived from a balance of human nature — the desire
to push your luck — and a simple but effective design. The game mechanic is
based on odds calculations, the fact that it’s easier to roll a 7 with two dice than
it is to roll a 2. The chances of rolling a 2 is 1 in 36 and the chances of rolling a 7
is 1 in 6 (6 chances in 36). And that’s where choice — and the fun — lies. Should
I roll again and risk everything, or should I end the turn now and risk losing the
column to an opponent? Decisions, decisions! Simple or not, one thing is certain:
people always want to play Can’t Stop again and again because it makes people
roll dice exactly as its title would suggest. Can’t Stop is a light, fun game but a
classic nonetheless.
Sid Sackson was a major pioneer of the games industry and we owe him a
tremendous debt. With Can’t Stop and his other great designs and books, his great
legacy lives on.
O O O
Ian Livingstone is Life President at Eidos, the U.K.’s largest publisher

of video games, where he secured many of the company’s major fran-
chises, including Tomb Raider and Hitman. In 1975 he founded Games
Workshop, Ltd. with Steve Jackson and launched Dungeons & Dragons
in Europe and the Games Workshop retail chain. In 1977 he launched
White Dwarf and was its editor for five years. In 1982, again with Steve
Jackson, he devised Fighting Fantasy, the series of interactive gamebooks
that has sold over 15 million copies in 23 languages. He wrote more
than 20 books in the series. He has also invented several board games,
including Boom Town, Judge Dredd, Automania, Legend of Zagor, and
DragonMasters.
Bruce Whitehill on
Careers
Key Designer: James Cooke Brown
What makes a good game good? Or, for that matter, a great game great?
Anomalies aside — Trivial Pursuit is one of those — a good or great game, besides
fostering social interaction or being just plain fun, should have at least the follow-
ing characteristics:
O It should be easy to get into, which means, also, having simple rules;
O It should offer an opening game, mid-game, and endgame, each of

which differs from the other;
O It should have replay value — that is, the game does not become
repetitive or boring over time;
O It should have a level of complexity that requires decision making

rather than relying mostly on luck.
Some games that do not conform to all of the above still deserve a special place
in the ranks of the best games. In Careers, for example, luck is probably a greater
factor than strategy, but the game, nonetheless, endures.
Careers has been around since 1955. It was self-published by its inventor, James
Cooke Brown, a sociologist known primarily as a science fiction author and the
creator of the artificial language Loglan. (Yes, there is an international flock of
Loglanists.) His 1970 novel, The Troika Incident, explored a free knowledge plat-
form similar to the Internet and called for social change through open education.
Brown died in 2000 at age 78. His single game, Careers, has become a classic.
Many “classic” games have been around for so long because, well, because our
grandparents played them as kids, then bought them for our parents, who, in turn,
bought them for us. Some of these favorites — the “throw-dice-and-move” variety
of games based primarily on luck — were not very good two generations ago and
certainly haven’t gotten any better over time. Why, then, have they persisted? Why
are they still so popular? Alas, that’s a whole ’nother book. Right now, the ques-
tion is, why has Careers lasted — and should you buy the game for your family?
I probably played Careers when it first came out in the late 1950s, a time
when I really didn’t know the makings of a good game. What captured my atten-
tion was that Careers is a game where you, the player, decide what you have to
achieve in order to win. You set your own goals. The game is divided into three
basic categories of life: money, happiness, and fame, translated into the symbols
of dollar signs, hearts, and stars. Maybe fame is not really one of life’s necessities,
but judging from today’s boom in Internet blogs and “reveal yourself” websites
such as YouTube and Flickr, I would guess it’s high enough on many people’s lists.
Anyway, you choose how much money, how much happiness, and how much
fame, up to a total of 60 points, you would need to win — what today’s games
refer to as “victory conditions.” Two dice take your pawn around the board’s
perimeter. Land on a space that allows entry into college or into a profession, and,
if you meet the requirements, you can take that career path. Requirements usually
mean money, but experience also counts, so you can return to the same career
path and it won’t cost you anything the second or third time. In fact, each time
you go, you get an extra experience card, and these move-instead-of-using-the-dice
cards are crucial in bypassing the many pitfalls you can encounter en route; after
your fourth visit along the same career path, you even get a free trip to Florida
or Hawaii or Majorca, or elsewhere, depending on which edition you’re playing.
You use only one die along a career path, accumulating one or more of life’s
necessities on your journey, but different career paths offer a different balance of
each. Hollywood, for example, gives you the most fame, whereas Big Business will
provide you with more money. It may be a good idea to go to college first, since
a college degree is often a requirement to get into a career with entry fees waived
or reduced. College can also raise your annual salary — which you get every time
you pass Payday — resulting in a much faster accumulation of wealth.
Of course, there are hazards in every career: in Farming you can lose half your
cash in a hailstorm, and a scandal in Hollywood will give you 10 star points but
cost you all your happiness; in Big Business, a slump will cut your salary by half,
and in Politics, if you’re “caught with mink” you lose half your fame. Even in your
journey around the perimeter you can be forced to dig into your savings as a result
of shopping, rent, hobbies, inflation, or, of course, taxes.
Careers O 53
Because of the dice, chance plays a substantial role in Careers, though, one
might say, this is true to life. It may be a major detriment for serious gamers, but,
for me, it doesn’t minimize the value of one of the first designs to allow players to
choose their own objective. For this alone, Careers deserves a spot in the top 100.
Careers is more than just a fun game — it offers an insight into our chang-
ing interests and values, and also points out variations across different cultures.
Careers has been sold worldwide under such names as Carrière, Carreiras,
Carrières, Karriere, Karriär, Il Gioco delle Carriere, and Jogo das Profissões. The
number of titles and makers tells you just how well the game has persisted. It has
been published by Parker Brothers, Pressman Toy, Tiger Electronics, and Winning
Moves in the U.S. (it was off the market from 1984 until reissued by Tiger in
the 1990s), and in Europe by Schmidt, Clipper, Estrela, Gibsons Games, Jumbo,
Majora, and Miro Company.
The careers themselves have changed over the years, reflecting shifting voca-
tional interests. Farming, Expedition to the Moon, and Going to Sea from the
1950s edition were gone by the 1970s, replaced by Ecology, Teaching, and Sports.
Computer Science was added in one edition.
The corner spaces Payday and Hospital have stayed the same, but Florida
Vacation and Park Bench have not. A Hawaiian Holiday seemed more glamorous
than zipping down to Florida by the 1970s. In Europe, the original Franz Schmidt
German edition offered a holiday in Majorca (Urlaub auf Mallorca), but a later
German Parker Brothers edition brought players to a mansion in Switzerland
(Landsitz im Tessin). Park Bench, named for the place where the poor and unfor-
tunate spent their days — and often nights — was superseded by Unemployment,
a term that fit the upper echelons as much as the down-and-out.
The game is usually recommended for ages eight and up, but at least one
German edition reads 10 years and up, and the 60 minutes suggested playing time
is shown on other versions as from 45 to 90 minutes. Incidentally, Careers for
Girls made a brief, unpopular showing in 1990, featuring career paths for Rock
Star, Fashion Designer, and Super Mom, while removing some of the game’s key
strategic elements; it was a bad career move.
The 1971 Parker Brothers edition, for reasons I can’t fathom, reduced the eight
career paths to six. Hollywood was changed to Show Biz, and Expedition to the
Moon became Space; we had, after all, reached the moon in 1969 and were set-
ting our sights on the planets. Sports was added and Uranium Prospecting in Peru
eliminated. European vocations in later editions included Theater, Teaching, and

Environmental Protection. It is not surprising which two career paths survived
over the decades: Big Business and Politics.
As a thematic game, Careers tells us something about society and culture, and,
based on the goals players choose, may even reveal a little about the players as
well. It’s to be hoped that Careers will be on the market as long as there are —
well, careers. The current version, marketed by Winning Moves, is pretty faithful
to the original, except for some minor modernizing; they restored the earlier career
paths, with the exception of my favorite, Uranium Prospecting in Peru, which is
now merely Exploring. Still, if you can’t find an original, this is the best contem-
porary edition of the classic game.
So, should you buy Careers for your family?
Buy it for yourself, but let the kids play, too.
O O O
Bruce Whitehill’s research on American game companies and his under-

standing of what made good games good led to a full-time position as a
developer with Milton Bradley in the 1980s. He invented, among others,
the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! game and, years later, was responsible for
developing the Know-It-All edition of Trivial Pursuit. He went on to
do work for most of the majors, including Hasbro, Mattel, Pressman,
and Winning Moves. Bruce, a native New Yorker, continues to develop
games (Change Horses, a race game in which the horse that comes in last
wins, and Drei) from his home in Germany, where he moved in 2005.
In 1985 he founded the American Game Collectors Association — now
the Association of Game & Puzzle Collectors — and he is the author of
Games: American Games & Their Makers and Americanopoly: A View
of America Through Its Games. He has worked on the editorial staff of
three games magazines and has written over 100 articles. Bruce enjoys
nostalgia, the arts, travel, photography, collecting, curling, yodeling, and
accumulating unusual objects. His favorite word is whimsical.
Jared Sorensen on
Cat
Key Designer: John Wick
Wicked Dead Brewing Company (2004)
“Cats are parasites on the culture, feigning affection for their masters and
mimicking the cries of babies to gain instinctive sympathy from humans.”
— Jonathan Tweet, Over the Edge
I don’t see the point of owning a cat. I’m not an ancient Egyptian who wishes
to pray or a witch looking for a familiar. I’m neither a sailor nor a farmer and,
despite being a New Yorker, I don’t have a rat problem in my apartment. The sad
fact is that if I get near most cats, I puff up like a blowfish, my skin turns bright
red, and I sneeze, wheeze, and cry. Allergies, man. So me and cats? Not going to
happen. Ever. No matter how cute or furry or engaging they are. So why would I
advocate playing one in a roleplaying game?
In the summer of 2001, I was living in the Bay Area. I met up with designer
John Wick at a local convention. We were walking around, talking about games and
movies and stuff, and he asked if I wanted to play in a demo of his new cat-themed
RPG. So a few hours later, my cat character (a black British shorthair who spoke
like Winston Churchill) and a few other cats were roaming the neighborhood, on
the lookout for dogs, free food, and boggins.
Now, dogs and food are always important things to look out for, but boggins?
According to John, boggins are demonic creatures that love to torment humans.
The problem is that they’re invisible to humans. Some boggins sit atop people and
cause them to become fat and lazy. Others whisper secrets and lies in the ears of
impressionable humans in order to incite jealousy or self-doubt. These shadowy
creatures become more substantial as they feed on the fears and insecurities of
humans, until the boggin takes control over its unfortunate victim.
This is where our little hairy heroes fit in. Cats aren’t simple animals in this
game. They are sensitive to boggins and are charged with the responsibility of
protecting mankind from the boggin threat. Every thousand years, there’s a contest
that takes place in the Kingdom of Dreams. In the most recent contest, the cats
won the right to rule the world. Humans came dead last so the cats must protect
them. You see, those humans, not having sharp teeth, claws, night vision, agility,
or warm fur are kinda pathetic compared to dogs and cats if you think about it.
Besides their physical qualities, cats are also magical creatures that can enter the
Kingdom of Dreams and cast little spells designed to help them in their role as the
guardians of humans.
This is where Cat: A Little Game About Little Heroes is the most clever. All
those weird behaviors that cats exhibit? They’re explained in the game. Why do
they hate getting wet? Why do cats play with prey they’ve captured? Why do cats
always land on their feet? These details and many more are described in terms
of this fantastic world. Because you don’t need to be a cat-lover or cat owner to
know how cats act, anyone can relate to and even pretend to be a cat. The setting
is your house, your backyard, your neighborhood. The people and pets therein?
Those are the other characters in this world: the beagle that barks at you when
you walk past his yard on the way to school; the flock of pigeons that loiter near
the park, begging for crumbs of bread like it was spare change; the amiable skunk
that ambles its way across your patio at nine o’clock every night. These are friend
and foes, allies and antagonists.
Cat characters are rated in terms of parts of their bodies: claws, coat, face,
fangs, legs, and their magical tails. The traits may be the best, or strong, or merely
good. The take-away is that, of course, cats aren’t bad at anything. Actions taken
in the game are similarly rated as easy, moderate, or hard. Your cat’s traits give it
a number of dice to roll whenever it takes a risk. The more “evens” you roll on
the dice, the better you do. Simple. And you can use any type of dice when taking
risks. The system John uses in several of his games is called the Advantage System
and revolves around entertainment, narrative, and drama to earn extra dice for
your rolls. A player whose cat is hiding from a pack of dogs could narrate: “It’s
dark, raining, and I’m sitting up high on a dumpster.” Because those three facts
contribute to the cat’s stealth attempt, that player earns three bonus dice.
Do I need to mention that cats have nine lives? These are used like a combi-
nation of hit points and drama dice, allowing cats to avoid trait-damaging scars
or to take risks without a chance of failure. Add a reputation mechanic and style
points, and the Advantage System used for Cat is quick, fun, and puts emphasis
on the players’ decisions.
Cat O 57
What makes Cat so special is its accessibility. The book is a slim tome just over
40 pages long, a far cry from the usual roleplaying game running hundreds of
pages. The artwork is just public domain clip art of animals, the text is light and
engaging, the rules are just interesting enough without being weighed down by the
boggin of realism. In keeping with the independent RPG spirit, it’s a game you can
read in an hour or two and play with your friends that night. Cat’s simplicity is
a merit. Although meant to be played with adventures set in your own backyard,
some have successfully ported the game to fantasy realms, pirate ships, and even
the bridge of the Nostromo in deep space, where it’s Jones the Cat and not Ellen
Ripley who is the true protagonist facing off against the Alien — or is that just a
big, toothsome boggin?
Cat invites families to get together and play a roleplaying game. One that’s full
of adventure and danger but not violence and bloodshed. A game where kids are
encouraged to not just use their imaginations to create the characters but to have
a vested interest in the game world through their ability to change it. Using Cat
as a vehicle for storytelling and sharing, parents and children can collaborate on
these tales of brave feline heroes. The monsters are scary but fantastical, while still
based enough in reality that children can understand them.
Much like Kipling’s Just So Stories, Cat explains our reality through fables that
each contain a nugget of truth . . . and in doing so strives for a greater Truth that
cannot be encompassed by mere fact. The Truth is that people are noble but frail
creatures and may not be able to handle every situation without help. And, as with
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, this help can come in the smallest and most unlikely
of forms. Are the heroes feline guardians that can enter the dreams of sleeping
humans and save them from nightmarish intruders, or are the real heroes of the
stories the tellers themselves, unfettered by adult concerns and able to create and
imagine what jaded eyes cannot? In Cat, they’re one and the same, and just playing
the game is enough to keep the boggins at bay.
Cat’s subject matter is instantly recognizable and beloved by many, including
that much-vaunted demographic of female gamers and children. It’s a roleplaying
game that needs no clever pitch aside from this one: “You play cats that must
protect humans from monsters they can’t see.”
And best of all, I’m not allergic to it.
O O O
Jared A. Sorensen is allergic to cats and lives in New York City. His
published games include InSpectres and Lacuna Part I: The Creation of
the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City. In his role as a computer game
designer, he’s done everything from scripting porcine vocalizations in
Petz 3 to designing tombs and crypts for Dungeons & Dragons Online.
Find out more about his work at memento-mori.com.
Wolfgang Baur on
Cathedral
Key Designer: Robert P. Morse
Family Games, Inc. (1978)
The pieces are wooden and the saw-marks are quite visible. The board is a
lined but otherwise empty space reminiscent of a Cartesian plane. Cathedral is the
game I gave my parents when I wanted to share my love of gaming, and the set I
gave them 25 years ago is still in use. Frequently.
In essence, Cathedral is a territory or geometry game, like Othello, go, or
draughts. It features a large cathedral-shaped piece, which was inspired by
Christchurch in New Zealand. In fact, designer Robert Moore was a pilot with
the Royal New Zealand Air Force and saw the cathedral from the air frequently.
That large cross-shaped cathedral piece is put down on the 10 by 10 square
board to start the game, and the players take turns trying to enclose sections of the
board using smaller buildings all around the cathedral. The shapes are Ls and Ts,
straight sections and zigzags, rather much like the Tetris pieces. You try to secure
enough space to place all your pieces while preventing your opponent from doing
the same.
A bit of a digression on the game pieces, if you’ll indulge me. Being made of
varnished wood, they are much more beautiful than Tetris. And more than that,
putting the beautiful little pieces on the board creates the illusion of building a
tiny little medieval city. It’s clear that it would not be as wondrous a game if you
were building a tiny little strip mall, but really, the pieces have battlements and
crenellations and they’re perfect for the mood of the game. Especially if you’re
the kind of game player who appreciates words like battlement and crenellation.
A simple board and little buildings. That’s really about all there is to the game.
Except that it’s perfectly balanced and totally addictive, and short. You can
play a game in 10 minutes or 20, and that makes it both good design — few family
games run for hours and hours, after all — and easy to say, “Just one more game.”
It’s board gaming nirvana.
The rules are so simple they seem inevitable, and the simplicity plays into the
game’s sense of timelessness. You’d think Cathedral has been around for centuries,
when really it’s relatively new as classics go. It just feels like a cathedral does, as
something inevitable and permanent.
Simple designs like this are very rare, but very durable. Othello, go, and chess
are classics, after all, but they don’t require dice or cards or moving pieces around
a track. It’s elegant. This is an overused bit of praise among family game and board
game designers, but for a game this stripped down, it’s the right word.
Cathedral’s elegance shines from those first few pieces you put down, and if
you have a head for spatial relationships at all — such as those found in jigsaw
puzzles, car engines, or sewing patterns — you’ll soon see how things might
develop. If the plan doesn’t work out, the next game beckons. If you grow tired,
someone who has been watching may want to take his or her turn. There’s an easy
flow to the game, and there are no dice or cards to distract you. Pure geometry.
The ancient Greeks probably would have gotten a kick out of it.
Despite all my talk of geometry and space, Cathedral is actually not an intimi-
dating game to look at or play. There’s a sense that it could easily be enjoyed over
a pint at any pub — or even after several pints. It’s less complex than go because
the board is smaller. Plus, it has high replay value. The variable starting position of
the cathedral piece throws a curve ball at the start of every game, keeping it novel.
Oh, and did I mention that there are more pieces than can possibly fit on the
board? Cathedral often winds up with a bit of musical chairs to it. All you need to
do on your turn is put down one piece. If you can’t, you’ve lost. It seems so easy,
but there are tricks. Clever shark tricks, such as where the cathedral starts and
whether your strategy is to seize one big chunk, or deny space to your opponent,
or take several smaller chunks.
If I just put this piece here, you’ll think, I can still pull this off. Okay, there’s a
fair bit of wishful thinking sometimes, as it becomes clear that you have stretched
for “a cloister too far.” But if you have a competitive spirit at all, that means it’s
time for — say it with me — “Just one more game.”
And this is the other great joy of Cathedral: it evens the playing field a bit
between various levels of skill, since even risky strategies can pay off if your
opponent is dozing. And unlike many family games, it’s a two-player design, so it
has an element of direct competition. There are no side-deals, not enough rules to
argue over, and no chance that someone else might play kingmaker even though
Cathedral O 61
they themselves will surely not win. Two-player games have that sense of pure
competition about them, and that’s definitely a strength for Cathedral.
My father plays chess, and has always been a bit of a shark. My mother
doesn’t, but has a competitive streak. Both enjoy Cathedral. I enjoy the fact that,
though I suspect they were always puzzled by my love of game design, they both
understand the appeal of family board games. There are really only about six or
seven of them at their house that see a good deal of use. Cathedral has remained
one of them because of its speed, its simplicity, and the sheer joy of placing that
one, perfect piece that seals your opponent’s doom.
O O O
Wolfgang Baur is a winner of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in

Game Design as well as the editor and publisher of Kobold Quarterly, a
magazine for sword-and-sorcery RPG fans. He has worked on staff or as
a freelancer for TSR, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Green Ronin, Malhavoc
Press, and Chaosium. These days, he most often writes in a collaborative
style with fellow gamers and designers in a patron-sponsored series called
the Open Design projects, to great acclaim and critical success. Baur is
best known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons and in particular for
adventures for that system, including multiple ENnie Award-winning and
Origins Award-nominated titles. He’s also a huge fan of abstract board
games. Even the bad ones. You can find him and his magazine online at
koboldquarterly.com.
John Scott Tynes on
Clue
Key Designer: Anthony Ernest Pratt
Parker Brothers (first U.S. edition, 1949)
If I suggested you try a classic card game in which players had limited
knowledge of each others’ hands and through a process of bluffing, psychology,
and deduction one player would make educated guesses as to the other cards in
play and thereby win, you might expect me to pull out a poker deck. While com-
monly considered a board game, Clue is mostly a card game with real thematic
similarities to poker, a game seemingly of cold, ruthless logic that is nonetheless
often won by the gutsiest, most intuitive, most manipulative player. As with the
best family games, Clue can be played and enjoyed by children and yet, revisited
as an adult, it reveals depths you never noticed.
The game’s designer, Anthony Earnest Pratt, had no such subtle intrigues in
mind. In 1943 he was in the British Home Guard working variously as a fire
warden, a reserve soldier, and a laborer in a munitions factory. One evening he
reflected nostalgically on the pre-war idyll, when, as he told a reporter for the
Birmingham Evening Mail newspaper in 1990:
All the bright young things would congregate in each other’s homes for
parties at weekends. We would play a stupid game called Murder, where
guests crept up on each other in corridors, and the victim would shriek
and fall to the floor. Then came the war and the blackout and it all went,
‘Pouf!’ Overnight, all the fun ended. We were reduced to creeping off to
the cinema between air raids to watch thrillers . . . I did so miss the party-
ing and those awful games of murder.
Pratt went on to invent his own “awful game of murder,” which was anything
but awful. He spent 18 months refining his design while his wife Elva illustrated
the board and cards, and then he filed his patent. Further refinement followed and
in 1947 his patent was awarded. The following year he licensed it to Waddingtons
Clue O 63
Games and in 1949 it was published both in England and in the United States. In
England, Clue was and still is known as Cluedo, a title that plays on the popular
game Ludo, a cross-and-circle design similar to the U.S. game Parcheesi. Evidently
Cluecheesi didn’t have quite the right ring and so Parker Brothers renamed it Clue
for the U.S. release.
Pratt’s original patented design has only a few minor differences with Clue as
we know it today. Cards were dealt into rooms on the board and players began the
game by hurrying around to pick up as many as they could. Only when all cards
had been retrieved could the game begin. While this sounds mildly entertaining,
the result is that some players end up with more cards than others, and of course
rolling a die to move around Tudor Close — as the mansion was known in the
first published edition — was as tiresome as it is in the main phase of the game.
Waddingtons ditched this idea in favor of dealing cards evenly and right they were.
The patent also had a different approach to making suggestions: each player had
a limited number of counters and spent one for each suggestion. If you ran out
of counters you could only make an accusation. Waddingtons changed this to
require the player to enter the room named in the suggestion, which serves as a
reasonable limiter.
So how does one win at Clue? When you play it as a child, you travel the
board and quiz other players on combinations of murderer, weapon, and room,
eliminating those that are revealed to you and gradually honing in on the real ones.
The more times you ask, the more information you gather and the more accurate
your guesses get. Eventually you know conclusively what the three mystery cards
are and make your accusation — or you get too impatient and make your best
guess.
That’s how I played Clue as a child, anyway, and it wasn’t until I came back to
it after 20 years that I learned how you really play Clue. This is a game of deduc-
tion, one that calls to mind Sherlock Holmes’s maxim that when you eliminate the
impossible what remains is the truth. Clue is all about eliminating the impossible
and when you play it as an adult — or as a precocious youth — you realize that
the best way of doing that is to record not just your own observations but also
the cards you think others have. For example: if player A suggests Mr. Green, the
Hall, and the Candlestick, and player B shows one of those cards to A, make a
note that B might have Green or Hall or Candlestick. If player C later suggests
Mrs. White, the Hall, and the Revolver, and player B has one of those cards, your
notes suggest that player B might well have the Hall card in hand since that card
is common to both suggestions B responded to. The more such notes you take, the
more you’ll be able to eliminate cards from consideration without even having to
see them displayed. Played this way, Clue becomes an intense exercise in observa-
tion and note-taking. Indeed, if you search for Clue strategies online you’ll find
notation systems designed to help you do just that. It’s an obsessive way to play
the game — but it is also how to win.
Unless, of course, you graduate to the highest level of Clue: the bluff.
When faced with a table full of players using arcane notation systems to track
every single suggestion, the only reasonable thing to do is throw misinformation
into the mix and muck up your rivals. The most straightforward way of doing this
is to make a suggestion in which two of the three cards you request are already in
your hand. That will quickly reveal if the one card you care about is in play, while
leaving the other two a mystery everyone else might seize on. More sophisticated
bluffs include asking for cards you already know exist in someone else’s hand, in
the hopes of calling attention to the wrong things, or even just being conspicuous
in how you take notes and when. If you’re really devious, consider this kind of
stratagem: when responding to a player’s suggestion, blurt out or mumble some-
thing like, “Hang on, let me decide which one to show you,” which suggests that
you have two of the cards the player asked for even though you really only had
one. Act properly embarrassed by your pretend slip and watch as everyone at the
table hurriedly scribbles new — and faulty — notes. (Should this deception trouble
your conscience, keep in mind that when the mystery cards are revealed you may
well turn out to be a murderer. What’s a little bluffing between homicide suspects?)
Given the preceding strategies, you should now begin to realize that when
properly played by skilled sleuths Clue is the worst party game since mumblety
peg and would probably have been thrown aside by the “bright young things”
that Pratt pined for. For there is nothing that kills a party deader than a tableful
of furrowed-brow, note-scribbling players who say nothing but the occasional sug-
gestion and who are intently and silently observing each other for any slip, gaffe,
or tell. While playing Clue at this level is a fascinating and engaging experience
genuinely reminiscent of poker, it’s certainly no Pictionary in terms of getting a
bunch of people riled up to shout, hoot, and guffaw. No, Clue is the real deal: a
cold-blooded game of logic, deduction, and bluff that leaves its players sweating
from sheer mental exertion.
Clue O 65
I love it to death.
In 2008, Hasbro updated the game with a new setting, revised characters,
and some new rules. While the new version is variously subtitled Reinvention or
Discover the Secrets, Hasbro considers this new version to be the main Clue game
going forward, unlike the various Clue spin-off card games and DVD games and
Simpsons variants over the years. We’ll see if it lasts, but it does introduce some
interesting features.
The board — which now depicts a decadent Hollywood mansion instead of an
English country manor — has more and smaller movement squares. There’s farther
to travel, but you roll two dice instead of one. This gives you a bell curve result
instead of a linear one, which means all players tend to move at about the same
rate with fewer frustrating low rolls hampering your progress.
Further, each character has a unique rule exception you can use once per game.
For example, Mister Plum — now a video game designer instead of a professor —
can make two suggestions in a single turn.
Finally, there is a deck of “intrigue” cards you draw in response to die rolls, or
landing in certain spots, or being summoned to a room for a suggestion (which is
now called “starting a rumor”). Most of these one-use cards provide rules excep-
tions allowing you to block a player’s rumor, peek at a card, and so on. Eight of the
intrigue cards are “clock” cards and whoever draws the eighth clock is murdered
and out of the game; the eighth clock card is then reshuffled into the remaining
deck and if drawn again, another player is killed.
The changes introduced in this new version range from ingenious to negligible.
The new movement rules and board scale are a big improvement and a hands-
down winner of an idea. The character powers and intrigue cards give the game
some moments of surprise but the fact that the powers rarely interfere with other
players mean they have little tactical use; in other words, since they mostly ben-
efit you and harm no one else, there’s no incentive to hoard them for a decisive
moment and you’re better off using them as soon as possible to gain more clues
sooner. The clock cards provide a great deal of tension late in the game and can
also speed up a long game by lowering the number of players near the end, but
players may not appreciate being punted out this way.
Despite the revisions, the core of Clue remains unchanged: deduction, notation,
and bluff. If you don’t get the new version, you aren’t missing anything revolution-
ary. Conversely, if you fancy yourself a traditionalist I do advise that you get the
new edition and ignore the intrigue deck and character powers but use the new
board and movement rules — they simply make Clue a better game.
I now wish to make a suggestion: that Clue will always be with us. Further, I’ll
make an accusation: that it offers an unusually rich logical challenge wedded to
an intriguing theme of murder and mystery. It may not be a life-of-the-party game,
but for a gloomy Saturday afternoon with the usual suspects, it’s a killer.
O O O
John Scott Tynes is an award-winning game designer and writer in

Seattle. He currently works for Microsoft Game Studios where he is a lead
designer making video games for the Xbox 360. In years gone by he was
the founder and editor-in-chief of Pagan Publishing and Armitage House,
where he was the co-creator of Delta Green, and was also the co-creator
and line editor for the Unknown Armies RPG at Atlas Games. He has
served as a film critic, video game critic, graphic designer, web designer,
videographer, and screenwriter. His film The Yellow Sign is available on
DVD from Lurker Films, and his various books litter the used bookstores
of the world in several languages. He is very fortunate to have married the
love of his life, Jenny, and to have a darling daughter, Vivian. He smokes a
pipe and drinks brandy from a snifter because, by God, someone should.
Alessio Cavatore on
Condottiere
Key Designers: Dominique Ehrhard, Duccio Vitale
Eurogames (first edition, 1995)
Some translation dictionaries define the Italian word condottiere as

“warlord” in English. I don’t think that this conveys the nuances implied by this
word for an Italian speaker. It would be better translated as “captain,” not in the
sense of modern military hierarchy, of course, but rather in that of “mercenary
captain,” or simply “commander” or “leader,” as understood in the late Middle
Ages and the Renaissance.
This is important to me because this evocative game title immediately con-
jures in my mind images of that period, at least as I’ve experienced it through
films, books, and comics. This atmospheric feeling is then beautifully compounded
by the graphics of the game box. The choice of colors is a warm and deep red,
reminiscent of a tapestry, but above all, I absolutely love the cover’s image. It is
a detail of “La battaglia di San Romano” (or “The Battle of San Romano”) by
Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello. Now, I’m not a great art connoisseur, but
Paolo Uccello’s triptych has always been one of my favorites. It represents a battle
between the armies of Florence and Siena, and I always loved the way Uccello
portrays the cavalry clash — the knights charging into each other amongst a forest
of lances, the details of the armor and weapons. You must go on the Internet now
and have a look at these three beautiful paintings!
The game’s contents are high quality and in keeping with the attractive box.
First of all there is a map of Italy, nicely drawn to retain the feeling of a print
from the period. It features many of the duchies and other principalities that were
constantly vying for supremacy, or fighting to defend their independence, in the
Italian Renaissance. See? This game is also teaching you history! One of these city-
states happens to be my hometown of Torino (Turin), and this always constitutes
a weakness for me when playing the game: I’ll go to any length to make sure I
control it! It’s nice to see how the chauvinism of those distant centuries still hides
in the heart of modern-day Italians. . . .
The control markers and condottiere token are made of wood, always nicer to
the touch than plastic, and then, last but certainly not least, there are game cards.
They are a beautiful rendition of traditional playing cards, in a way reminiscent
of tarots — and let’s face it, there are very few things out there in the world of
gaming that are more mysterious and fascinating than tarot cards.
So, I find the graphics and presentation of the game perfect at setting the scene,
but that’s not the only great thing about Condottiere. The game is simple, easily
accessible to the whole family — the rules are explained in a mere six pages, which
is always an excellent start.
The game mechanics are, however, certainly not simplistic. Condottiere can be
played by two to six players, although I think it plays best with three or four. At
the beginning of the turn, each player is first dealt a hand of cards. These normally
represent mercenary units of different strength, but the deck also includes many
different special cards. The player with the title of condottiere then picks a city
on the map to fight a battle over, deploying one of the cards from his hand as the
beginning of an attack force. Each player who is interested in that city then does
the same and this keeps going around, each fighting player adding one card at a
time to his army. The strengths of the armies increase until the players decide to
stop adding troops or the effects of a special card kick in. When the battle ends,
the player with the highest total captures the city. He places one of his control
markers onto the city, becomes the new condottiere, and picks the new city that
is to be attacked. The game is won by controlling a certain number of contiguous
cities; this number varies with the number of players.
This mechanic seems a bit too straightforward until you factor in the special
cards, which spice it all up and are the element that makes the gameplay so enjoy-
able. The specials have various clever effects. My favorite has to be the scarecrow
card, which allows you to withdraw your best military units from the battle and
take them back into your hand. This is directly inspired by records of the period
that describe how, during a battle or a siege, the ranks of an army were made to
look much greater to enemy scouts by the cunning use of many a ruse. So even
the special cards augment the game’s excellent historical flavor. Other specials
include winter, the heroine, the bishop, the drummer, the surrender card — all with
interesting and powerful game effects.
Once all players but one have run out of cards, the turn ends and the new one
starts. The players receive a new hand of cards and the battles begin anew, but
Condottiere O 69
here we find another element that I really appreciate. The players also receive two
extra cards for each city they control. This is vital to counter the classic “he’s in
the lead, let’s get him!” syndrome.
Condottiere is a simple game that can be enjoyed by the entire family, but
there’s more to it than that. It also creates a nice historical atmosphere and
remains truly interesting for veteran gamers through its clever mechanics. It is
quite challenging to manage your resources successfully, and defeating all your
enemies may call for more than just the military forces fate has delivered into your
hands. In those instance, when brute force fails, you’ll have to resort to trickery,
bluffing, and misdirection. And if nothing else works, you can always employ the
Borgia’s methods of doctoring the opponents’ beer and pret — pizzas!
O O O
Alessio Cavatore was born in Turin, Italy, on Valentine’s Day 1972. In

1995 he moved to Nottingham, England, to work for Games Workshop.
In the 12 years he worked there as a full-time game designer, he wrote
both rules sections and supplements for all three of the company’s main
games: Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40,000, and The Lord of
the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Today he divides his time between work-
ing as a part-time rules editor for Games Workshop and his own projects.
One of the latter is his own games company, River Horse LLP, which in
2008 published Shuuro, the game of creative chess.
Elaine Cunningham on
Connect Four
Key Designer: uncredited
We moved to California when my sons were six and three. During our
two years there, our favorite weekend haunt was The Purple Cow, a funky little
coffee shop just off the beach in Marina del Rey. The location was unbeatable and
the menu was pretty good, but the real draw was the upstairs loft, which was
supplied with three or four small tables and an assortment of table games. That
convivial atmosphere was new to us — something we’d later rediscover in British
and Irish pubs. In fact, during a business trip to London, my partner spent a
pleasant evening playing Connect Four with some of his fellow pub-goers. When
one gentleman asked Bill how he’d gotten so good at the game, he responded,
“Well, I play with my six-year-old a lot . . .”
A little tactless, maybe, but it nails the reason why I consider Connect Four to
be one of the best family games. It’s as fun for adults as it is for kids, and even
pre-literate children can learn the game and play it fairly well. At the age of six,
our son Andrew won more often than he lost. Any parent who’s paying attention
knows that a legitimate victory matters. Kids usually sense when parents throw
a game. Even if they don’t, they’re in for an unpleasant surprise down the road.
For several years, my two sons and I ran a strategy gaming club at one of the local
schools. At the first session, one fifth grader threw a tantrum after losing a strategy
card game. When I asked why he was so upset, he burst out, “I didn’t know I
could lose!” A family game that kids can truly win provides a great opportunity
to teach them how to win and lose with equanimity. Individual games of Connect
Four go by quickly, making it easier to teach give-and-take and help kids foster an
optimistic “there’s always next time” attitude.
Connect Four is an abstract strategy game based on a simple principle: to win,
you need to get four of your checkers in a row while preventing your opponent
from doing the same. It’s an expanded version of tic-tac-toe, played on a vertical
Connect Four O 71
frame seven spaces wide and six spaces deep. Players take turns dropping disks
into the frame until there’s a win or a draw.
At an early level of play, the first skill to be mastered is pattern recognition.
Strategy can be as elementary as that depicted in a popular television commer-
cial from the 1970s. After losing a game to her brother, a little girl says, “Hmm.
One more game,” and proceeds to set up a diagonal win. “Pretty sneaky, Sis,”
her brother admits — a line that’s become a standard pop cultural reference for
Boomers.
The strategy can be considerably more complex, with players “forcing” a win
by setting up two three-in-a-row situations. On October 1st, 1988, James D. Allen
was the first person to “solve” the game, followed a few weeks later by Danish
computer scientist Victor Allis. Allen started playing the game during a stay at a
beach resort. He noticed that memorizing a few openings or principles enabled
players to win consistently, and he determined to find out why. After figuring out
the winning move in a particular scenario, he wrote a computer program to verify
the solution. One thousand computer hours and one billion solutions later, he
proved that in a game of “perfect play,” the player who goes first can force a win
by playing to the center. Starting in either of the two adjacent columns allows the
second player to reach a draw. Starting in any of the four outer columns allows
the second player to force a win.
In tic-tac-toe the first player can easily and consistently force a win. Not so
with Connect Four. In The Complete Book of Connect 4, Allen writes:
It turns out that Red (the player who moves first) can win every game if
he or she plays perfectly, but that doesn’t mean Black (player who moves
second) has no chance. There are many, many difficult variations, and
even the very best human player in the world isn’t fully confident of vic-
tory when he moves first. When two experts play each other Red almost
always wins, but non-expert play varies.
Allen observes that, paradoxically, he finds it easier to win against opponents of

medium skill when he moves second.
People who appreciate tradition may be pleased to know that Connect Four
has been around for centuries. It has been known as plot four, four in a line, four
in a row, and several other names, including the more colorful “The Captain’s
Mistress.” According to legend, British explorer Captain James Cook was so fond
of this game, which he played nightly in his cabin with the scientists who accom-
panied his three voyages, that the crew jokingly referred to it as the “captain’s
mistress.”
Parents looking for non-electronic, face-to-face travel activities will want to
consider the travel-sized version of the game. The vertical frame contains the
playing pieces, making it as ideal for car and airplane play as it was for Captain
Cook’s sea voyages. In fact, there’s a variation of the game for almost every cir-
cumstance and taste. You can find giant, three-foot-tall frames for yard and pub
play, games that allow play between two rival sports teams, even a SpongeBob
variety. For folks who treasure finely crafted games, there are wooden versions of
The Captain’s Mistress that are as beautifully made as any chess set. Adaptations
of the game are also available for Game Boy and on any number of free online
sites. While solitary electronic play defeats a central purpose of any family game,
these options might be attractive to a child who’s determined to master the game
and looking for extra practice outside of family game time. Connect 4 Advanced,
a 3-D version, is not currently available, but those who wish to add a third dimen-
sion of play might want to try A. P. Nienstaedt’s Score Four, which is played by
placing beads on a four by four grid of metal posts.
Games can become a treasured part of family traditions. Connect Four has
been around for a very long time, and its adaptability suggests that it will endure.
Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now, my sons will be playing with their children. I
hope so. It’ll do them good to play with someone who can beat them.
O O O
Elaine Cunningham is a fantasy writer, former teacher, and mother

of two avid gamers. Even though both sons are now in college, the
Cunninghams still manage the occasional family game night. Elaine has
been consistently losing strategy games to her sons for over a decade,
but she still manages to hold her own in word games such as Boggle and
she’s a formidable Bananagrams opponent. She has written novels and
short stories in several game settings, including the Forgotten Realms,
Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and EverQuest.
Will Hindmarch on
Cranium
Key Designers: Whit Alexander, Richard Tait
Cranium, Inc. (1998)
It was the turn of the century. I was a college washout and a barista at
Starbucks. I was in my early twenties and I was a self-described gamer, playing
things like D&D’s then-new third edition and niche hobby games of all kinds,
whether they used boards or cards, dice or discs. Games were my thing and I was
to them as the shopkeeps in High Fidelity were to records (the movie came out
that same year) — too snobbish to like something popular.
We sold one board game at the Starbucks where I worked. It came in a bright
and colorful box, decorated with cartoon characters. It was called Cranium and it
billed itself as “a game for your whole brain,” so its logo was a cartoon brain. It
was a party game — meant to appeal not to gamers, but to the general public. At
the time, I thought “the public” was a separate group from “game players.”
We kept four or five of them in a darling wicker basket near the register. I
watched customers hoist the box, turn it over, smile, and admire. More than a
few, seeing what looked like a good time packaged inside that box, took it home
with them.
I scoffed. I scoffed at fun, because I was the kind of snob that mistook being
dismissive with being refined. So when we set up the store’s display copy of
Cranium on a lazy afternoon and played a few turns, you can imagine how frus-
trated I was to discover it is . . . simply fun. It isn’t about resource management or
city building or the French Revolution. It isn’t “about” anything, except it’s about
you. It’s designed to make antics.
Almost immediately, we played that display copy to within an inch of its life.
We played it with customers as they came into the store, asking them trivia ques-
tions, humming melodies at them, and challenging them to sort out anagrams to
win completely unauthorized discounts on their coffees. We gave away some free
coffees and we sold a bunch of copies of Cranium.
The thing about Cranium is you’ve almost certainly already played some
part of it. The game itself is more evolutionary than revolutionary, a genetically
engineered super-party-game combining the DNA of Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary,
Barbarossa, charades, and I think maybe woolly mammoth genes pulled out of
Siberian ice, to make it big and fuzzy. It’s like a nerdy decathlon.
In action, the play is familiar. Teams of players race their pawns around a
color-coded board, participating in various color-coded activities on their way to
a final gauntlet of activities at the board’s center. Successfully complete an activ-
ity like sketching (sometimes while blindfolded) clues for teammates to guess or
spelling a word backward in one try, and your pawn advances toward the center.
The first team to finish the circuit around the board and complete the final round
of activities wins.
The fun often isn’t in answering the questions but in knowing the answer
to the questions when the other team doesn’t. The fun is in relishing your own
opportunity to say, “I know this one” or “I can do this.” The fun is in watching
your friends hum and draw and sweat and rue.
The challenge lies in choosing who must sketch and who must sing. On
key spaces around the board, your team gets to choose which of four colored
boxes the next activity card is drawn from, adding a dose of strategy to the mix.
Activities come in four main categories: art, language, trivia, and performance.
Each category contains three or more kinds of activities; for example, individual
cards in the art category might ask a player to sketch a clue, sketch a clue with her
eyes shut, or sculpt a clue out of the Cranium Clay included in the game.
Everything that makes Cranium not just distinctive, but a landmark in
American board game publishing, hangs on those activities.
The game works as a package, and I mean that two ways. First, Cranium
packages multiple games’ worth of activities into a single product, making it that
much easier for lots of people, with different interests and skills, to get together
to play. The people who know trivia and the people who are fearless in charades
can agree on Cranium.
Second, the packaging itself inspires people to pick up the box and give it a
closer look — people who might not otherwise think to look at a board game in
a coffee shop. Compare that with the designs of Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary
boxes. They’re built to look stolid and respectable on a bookshelf, more like
grown-up diversions than playthings. As it says on the website of Foundation
Design, the firm that gave Cranium its look: “We saw through open eyes that the
Cranium O 75
board game industry was not keeping pace with the rest of the consumer products
world, and that relevant and creative design could make a tremendous difference
in gaining the attention of consumers in a tired segment.”
Foundation partnered with artist Gary Baseman, whose animated TV show
Family Pet debuted in 2000. Baseman designed characters — from a worm in a fez
to a space-alien with a jet pack — to represent each of Cranium’s four categories
and thus player types: Creative Cat, Data Head, Star Performer, and Word Worm.
Baseman’s art reminded people that, oh yeah, games are fun.
Cranium was designed, as a package, to get casual would-be game players to
take notice and, as a game, to make it easy to suggest to friends.
The publishers, Cranium, Inc., then took their new, good-looking game and put
it not only where people would see it, but where no one would expect to find a
board game at the time: Starbucks. Instead of vying for shelf space with Monopoly
and Scrabble, their game was sharing a comfy stage with chocolate grahams and
coffee beans. You know what goes great with coffee after dinner? A board game.
That’s how I ended up giving free lattes to strangers willing to hum The Beach
Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” to the person in line behind them.
Now zoom out from that Starbucks store up into the sky, until you’re looking
down on the shop like it’s in a satellite photo. The store recedes into a map of trees
and streets, becoming part of the city, the state, and finally the continental United
States. Picture every Starbucks store being represented on your satellite image by
a little green Starbucks logo. That couple that just walked out of the local store?
They leave a dotted line behind them as they go from the cash register to their
car to their front door. With a cute sound like a suction cup releasing its grip, a
Cranium brain logo appears over their house. Pop!
Now imagine a dotted line leading out from each Starbucks logo on your map.
Each dotted line ends in a Cranium brain popping into existence over another
house, apartment, or condo. Even if each Starbucks store gives off just a few
dotted lines, and even if each line ends in just one Cranium brain, that is a lot of
Cranium brains.
We play in a post-Cranium America now. The look of casual American board
games has changed. Even better, a lot of people — players and publishers alike —
were reminded how much fun games are supposed to be.
O O O
Will Hindmarch is a freelance writer, graphic designer, and game

designer looking for a jet pack. He’s designed or developed games and
books for Atlas Games, White Wolf Game Studio, and Fantasy Flight
Games, among others. Will co-founded Gameplaywright Press — found
online at gameplaywright.net — with designer Jeff Tidball, with whom
he published Things We Think About Games in 2008. His writing has
also appeared in The Escapist, Geek Monthly, and McSweeney’s Internet
Tendency. He teaches world-building and game design as part of the
Shared Worlds program at Wofford College. When he’s not working, he
probably should be.
Erik Mona on
Crossbows and Catapults

Key Designer: Henri Sala
Lakeside (first edition, 1983)
In 1983 I was a young lad of eight years, buried to the knees in Dungeons &
Dragons manuals, spouting quotes from Clash of the Titans, and marveling to the
Saturday morning adventures of Thundarr the Barbarian. Though I considered
myself an expert at the time, the D&D rules were a complex mystery to my young
mind, an enticing path that would take years to master. I was eager to conquer the
enigma, but the game’s near fatal flaw at the time was that it never quite managed
to capture the interest and imagination of my little brother Kirk.
My junior by almost two years, Kirk wasn’t looking for a game that doubled
as a lifestyle choice, but he certainly didn’t have anything against swordplay and
crushing violence. We were, after all, little boys. We were also best friends, con-
stant companions, and the most determined of rivals. Our game of choice had to
be adversarial and it had to offer its loser a generous degree of humiliation. Simply
put, it had to be Crossbows and Catapults.
Crossbows and Catapults pits two armies of 16 plastic warrior figurines
against one another amid terrain composed of miniature towers and plastic inter-
locking blocks that can be constructed into defensive walls. Each player has both
a crossbow and a catapult, rubber-band-fueled siege weapons that launch plastic
disks at enemy soldiers and fortifications. Players set up their armies and for-
tresses about a meter apart and thereafter take turns shooting disks at each other’s
encampment until all of one army’s warriors have been knocked over.
Kirk and I played hundreds of games of Crossbows and Catapults in our grade
school years. I always chose the tan-colored Viking warriors, leaving him with
the gray, squattish barbarians. As the older brother it was my right to claim the
army most appropriate to our Norwegian heritage and our local NFL team. A few
years after the original 1983 set, Tomy released an expanded Grand Battleset
that included a few extra pieces. This revision renamed my “good guy” Vikings
the “Impalers of the Clannic Shelf” and Kirk’s hated barbarians became the
“Doomlords of Gulch.” One suspects that Crossbows and Catapults was the only
family game in the 1980s to encourage little children to play “impalers,” but that
sort of over-the-top violence made us love it even more.
Over last year’s Christmas holiday I mentioned to Kirk — now 32 — that I had
chosen Crossbows and Catapults as my selection for Family Games: The 100 Best.
I lamented that I would have to pick up a copy on eBay or check out the mod-
ern edition of the game (Battleground: Crossbows & Catapults by Moose Toys).
Surely our original set was lost long ago. “Nonsense,” Kirk said with a smile, that
old twinkle flashing in his competitive eyes. “I know exactly where it is.” When
he fished the battered purple box from under a sink in my parents’ house my eyes
were flashing as well.
If not for the Grand Battleset, we would never have been able to pull together
enough pieces to run a complete game. The very act of playing Crossbows and
Catapults shoots little plastic men, projectile disks, and terrain all over the house,
blasting enemies under couches and into adjacent rooms, never to be seen again.
Plenty of original pieces were long gone, but between the two sets we cobbled
together enough pieces to run a proper game.
Once again, I claimed the Vikings/Impalers, leaving Kirk to the somber gray
Doomlords. As we set up our defenses we tried to remind ourselves how to play,
peeking inside the tattered rulebook to confirm what the flood of memories han-
dling the pieces had unleashed. It didn’t all come back easily. I’d forgotten the use
of the five flag standards assigned to each team, and I’m not sure we ever used the
spell cards included in the Grand Battleset. And what about the original game’s
flat mats on which you were supposed to build your fortress? Each had a treasure
vault at the center, which you tried to protect from your opponent’s projectile
disks. But the Grand Battleset rules didn’t mention the mats, so we set them aside.
It had become clear that different versions of the game contained slightly different
rules variations, and as we blasted disks at each other on the hardwood floor, Kirk
and I began to remember additional rules that we had invented to make the game
move more smoothly or to increase the mayhem.
Kirk wiped me out in the first match in our best-of-three series, picking off my
warriors manning my crossbow, a crippling blow that forced me to rely on the
inferior catapult. Crossbows shoot their disks straight across the floor, resulting
in significant power and accuracy. The catapult, on the other hand, lobs disks in
Crossbows and Catapults O 79
a weak and unpredictable arc. You often score a flag or an extra warrior or two
with a lucky bounce, but just as often you don’t manage to hit a thing.
One loss behind me, we immediately reverted to the violent glee that attracted
us to the game as kids, souping up our siege engines with a second rubber band.
Learning from my mistakes I swiftly disabled Kirk’s crossbow and picked off his
warriors one by one. Slammed by a double-torqued disk, the poor Doomlords
ricocheted off the walls of my parents’ house, landing in the other room before
my screams of exaltation had ended. It was all tied up, warrior against warrior in
a conflict more than two decades in the making.
Not to be outdone, Kirk proudly hoisted the bloody red flag of youth. I knew
I was in trouble by the time we started our third game just by the look in his com-
petitive little eyes. By the time half of my proud Viking warriors had been sent to
the halls of Valhalla on a flying blue projectile disk, I was already dealing with the
most significant challenge to an adult player of Crossbows and Catapults — sitting
on a hardwood floor for an hour without breaking your butt or your back. The
game itself worked just as well as it did 26 years earlier, even if I didn’t. When the
last Impaler crumbled under the barbarian assault and fell face first in front of the
wreckage of my once-proud castle, I knew that despite my loss, despite my ach-
ing back, and despite the wild, vindicated smile on Kirk’s smug face, I still loved
Crossbows and Catapults.
The game’s miniature figurines and terrain introduce young kids to the con-
cepts of more complicated miniatures battle games such as Warhammer or Flames
of War, planting seeds that could easily lead to a lifetime of challenging, strate-
gic gaming. In fact, because the game is so open to new rules, Crossbows and
Catapults goes a significant distance toward making junior game designers out of
its players, as it certainly did for me. Once you start adding rubber bands to your
siege weapons and mixing-and-matching pieces to experiment with new house
rules, the next step is evaluating those rules to see if they work. That’s precisely
how a designer playtests a game. With all the fun, interlinking parts, it won’t take
long for a young gamer to use the pieces in Crossbows and Catapults to begin
crafting his or her own creations.
Plenty of other games with more complexity, more gravitas, and more critical
acclaim appear elsewhere in this book. None of them survived as a family treasure
nearly 30 years under my parents’ sink awaiting a rematch with the greatest rival
of my life. If that doesn’t make Crossbows and Catapults the “best” game for
every family, it’s certainly enough to make it the best family game of mine.
O O O
Erik Mona is the publisher of Paizo Publishing, LLC, creators of the

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Planet Stories line of pulp fantasy
novels. Mona has won more than a dozen major game industry awards
and his writing has been published by Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Green
Ronin Publishing, and the MIT Press. An avid collector of pulp magazines
and science fiction paperbacks, Mona spends most of his scant free time
reading old fiction and posting about it online. He lives in the Ballard
neighborhood of Seattle.
William W. Connors on
Dark Tower
Key Designers: Roger Burten, Alan Coleman, Vincent A. A. J. Erato
Almost from the introduction of roleplaying games, people have tried

to capture the experience in an electronic format. This generally meant handing
over the duties normally associated with a game master to some sort of computer.
After all, there’s an awful lot of effort involved in being a GM. You have to create
the storyline, draw dungeon maps, memorize rulebooks as thick as a typical piece
of congressional legislation, and oversee a hundred other details. It can be tremen-
dously rewarding but, as I said, it’s a heck of a lot of work. Of course, these days
the idea of a computerized game master is taken for granted thanks to such online
games as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, EVE, and City of Heroes.
For my money, however, they all owe their success to an almost-forgotten game
published more than 25 years ago.
In 1981, Milton Bradley released Dark Tower. The box cover called it “a
fantasy adventure born of electronic wizardry.” At the same time, they unveiled a
television ad with none other than the legendary Orson Welles. (Youngsters out
there should Google “Citizen Kane,” “War of the Worlds,” and “The Shadow.”)
Well, I don’t normally think celebrity endorsements count for anything, but if
Orson Welles pitched it, I had to own it!
Before I go into details about its gameplay, let me tell you about the game’s
namesake: the Dark Tower itself. This is the heart of the game and, for its time,
something akin to a board game supercomputer. Remember, we’re only talk-
ing about nine years after the release of PONG and one year after the debut of
Intellivision. (Okay, kids, Google those too!) The Dark Tower is molded of dark
plastic and shaped like a tower about a foot or so tall. Sagacious readers now
ought to be able to figure out how the game got its name.
One facing of the tower is marked by a translucent panel behind which a num-
ber of photographic, slide-like icons are stacked on a rotating mechanism. During
play, the machinery inside the tower turns to bring various icons into position and
then backlights them so the player can see them clearly. If you are attacked by the
dragon, the tower grinds away for a second to bring the dragon icon into position
and then illuminates it. In addition, a small variety of sound effects enhance the
image displayed — like the triumphant “dit-di-da” that tells you a battle is going
your way or the somber tones warning you that some of your party have died of
starvation. Positioned below the display panel is a small control pad where players
enter the actions they will take during a turn. These include things like “move” or
“fight.” Many of the buttons have different functions depending on what’s hap-
pening at a given time — but they’re all clearly labeled so it’s easy to know which
button to press.
During play, the tower is placed in the center of a circular board where it can
be rotated to face the active player. Thus, you are able to conduct your turns more
or less in secret. The board represents a fantastic realm divided evenly into four
kingdoms. Each of the players assumes the role of a kingdom’s hero and sets about
to explore the world — starting with his own kingdom and then moving sequen-
tially through the others. Along the way, each hero must collect three keys — one
from each of the other kingdoms — before returning to his or her home territory
to attack the Dark Tower and, if successful, win the game.
Of course, it takes more than a full keychain to defeat the Dark Tower’s defend-
ers. At its heart, this is a game of resource management. Each player begins with a
small number of warriors and a supply of gold and food. Warriors cost gold and
the more of them you have, the faster your food supply is, well, consumed. Still,
you’re going to need a large force to take on the brigands hiding in the tower so
this means you’ll need gold to hire warriors and buy the food they need. The best
way to get that is by exploring ruins and tombs. Of course, those tend to be full
of brigands who will attack and kill some of your warriors. The balancing act can
be quite a challenge. Along the way, you’ll probably want to pick up a few more
unique allies to help out. Scouts, healers, and beasts all give you special bonuses
but cost money. Other treasures and hazards, such as magic swords, dragons, or
wandering wizards, are scattered throughout the realms as well.
It would have been easy to make the electronic aspects of Dark Tower just a
gimmicky afterthought. The designers of this masterpiece didn’t settle for that,
however. Instead, they complimented a fun board game with features difficult to
capture in traditional games. The best example of this is the “just one more round”
frenzy that grips you during combat. When enemies attack, the game balances their
Dark Tower O 83
numbers to challenge the size of your army. Thus, you never get overwhelmed and
you never get a cake walk. That said, losing a round of battle is far harder on the
brigands than it is on you. If the first round of combat goes against you, there’s
always the hope that the next one will improve your fortunes. And if you lose that
one, too — well, you can still hope for a comeback on the third round. Although
you can run from any battle, I’ve often seen large armies whittled down by players
determined to hang in there for just one more turn. Something in human nature
makes it very difficult to press the “retreat” button, even when you know you
should, and the designers took full advantage of that fact.
The actual design credit for Dark Tower is a matter of some controversy. The
game itself did not credit any designers, a typical practice at the time, though
the Milton Bradley patent identifies one Vincent A. A. J. Erato as the inventor.
But after Dark Tower’s release, independent designers Alan Coleman and Roger
Burten successfully sued Milton Bradley for using aspects of a microprocessor-
controlled game called Triumph they’d pitched to the company a few years earlier;
after a lengthy court battle, they were awarded more than $700,000 in royalties.
Despite the fact that Dark Tower is intended as a multi-player board game, it
makes a fine solo game. The structure of the gameplay is such that each player is,
really, engaged in a solo game. The bandits you fight, the treasures you find, and
all other aspects of the contest are controlled by the computerized game master
inside the Dark Tower. Of course, like any board game, table talk is half the fun
and you lose that in solo play. Indeed, while I admire the skill and talent that goes
into the creation of World of Warcraft and all those other Dark Tower descendants
I mentioned earlier, that interactivity is something they’ve all lost.
Like many longtime gamers, I have a huge collection scattered around my
house. Some of these are classics, but most aren’t even worth the trouble of tossing
in the recycle bin and never see the light of day. Dark Tower is different. A working
copy of the game can fetch several hundred dollars these days. In fact, I’d like to
make those of you who remember and love this game as much as I do extremely
jealous. My original copy of Dark Tower still works perfectly and we dig it out
several times a year to play it.
No, you can’t buy it. But buy me a Guinness some time and I might invite you
over to play.
O O O
William W. Connors is a lifelong gamer who’s been lucky enough to get

paid for it since the mid-1980s. He’s worked for a number of companies,
either on staff or as a freelancer, including TSR, Wizards of the Coast,
id Software, Hasbro, and Senario LLC. He is best known as one of the
guiding forces behind the classic Ravenloft game line. He currently resides
in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife Kathryn and two sons, Chris and
Patrick. He spends his free time playing City of Heroes, watching rugby,
and remembering the days when his favorite baseball team was good. All
in all, it’s a pretty great life.
John D. Rateliff on
Dogfight
Before Blue Max (1983), before Ace of Aces (1980), before even Fight in
the Skies (1968) — better known through its repackaging in roleplaying-lite form
as Dawn Patrol (1982) — there was Dogfight. Dogfight was originally published
as the third in a series of four board games in the American Heritage Command
Decision series, following Battle-Cry (1961, just in time for the Civil War centen-
nial) and Broadside (1962) and being following in turn by Hit the Beach (1965). Of
these, Dogfight, Battle-Cry, and Broadside were rereleased in 1975 to accompany
a new entry in the series, Skirmish, which replicated Revolutionary War campaigns.
Dogfight mixed the simplicity of a board game with the elements of strategy
and historical background hook of a wargame. Each title was devoted to recreating
a specific type of warfare from a specific era: the massed armies of the Civil War,
naval combat in the War of 1812, WWI aerial combat, and WWII island-hopping,
respectively. Each also came with an accompanying lavishly illustrated booklet,
created by the editors of American Heritage magazine. In the case of Dogfight,
this took the form of a 32-page digest recounting the deeds of famous World War
I flying aces. At least one of these men, leading American ace Eddie Rickenbacker,
was still alive at the time, which added a sense of living history to their account.
I can’t be the only player who loved the game and then went on to read the
American Heritage and Time/Life coffee table books on the subject or to develop a
long-term interest in this particular conflict. It was thanks to Dogfight that I knew
what an Immelmann turn was by the time I was 10, just as Battle-Cry sparked a
lifelong interest in Confederate history.
Most of the American Heritage releases were two-person games, but Dogfight
allows for two, three, or four players. Unlike the dominant “track” games of the era,
like Monopoly or Life, its board is a simple grid with a squadron of three planes in
each of the four corners: two Allied/American and two German. Each squadron can
have one plane in flight at any given time, represented by mounting the little model
plane on a stand. Any plane can fly anywhere on the board its player chooses, but
its actions are restricted by two randomizing elements: cards and dice.
The dice control how far a plane can move on its turn, and cardplay deter-
mines the outcome of combat between planes — that is, the actual dogfights.
Facing, chosen by a player at the end of his move, has no effect on movement
but is vitally important in combat. When enemy planes enter combat, each player
plays one card from his hand. If the two planes meet head-on, they exchange
Bursts, and whichever plays the most powerful burst of gunfight shoots down
the other’s plane. A side attack, by contrast, can only be evaded by a Barrel Roll.
A rear attack can similarly be countered by a Loop. Since each player only has
a limited number of cards in his hand at any given time, he obviously tailors his
attack to take advantage of his strengths, while a wise player includes a back-up
plan in case the first shot does not settle the conflict.
A plane that shoots down an enemy and returns safely to base becomes an
Ace, and its card hand increases from four to six, although that larger hand applies
only to that plane, not others in the same squadron. Similarly, a Double Ace can
draw up to eight cards, giving a veteran pilot a distinct advantage against a novice.
It’s possible to shoot down planes on the ground, but anti-aircraft markers sur-
rounding each airfield make this a risky strategy. Once all six planes on one side
have been shot down, the game is over.
Simple to play but not without strategy, Dogfight also lends itself to the cre-
ation of home rules that make the air combat more dramatic. For example, we
always played it so that if the first exchange of Bursts in head-to-head combat
cancelled each other out (which is what occurs when both planes play Bursts of
equal value), the dogfight went into a second or even third round until one plane
shot the other down or both ran out of cards. Similarly, while the official rules use
Barrel Rolls merely to escape a side-attack, we allowed them to also turn the tables
and position the defender so that he could now shoot down the erstwhile attacker
instead — unless the latter can evade with a Barrel Roll of his own, in which case
the combat continues. Since there are 10 Burst cards, three Barrel Roll cards, and
only two Loop cards in each squadron’s deck, and since a plane can only draw
four cards before setting out on a mission, the system encourages card-counting
when planning out the best mode of attack: knowing that your enemy has already
used up his high-value Bursts but not yet played any Loops, for example, would
make a head-on attack a far better plan than a rear attack.
Dogfight O 87
In addition to its easy-to-learn rules and flexible gameplay that encourages the
development of favorite strategies, the game’s toy value also contributes greatly to
its success. Rather than mere markers, the planes are represented by little planes,
with propellers that actually spin. And, in an inspired touch, Milton Bradley used
a different model design for the two different sides’ planes. The American planes,
made of green plastic, are immediately distinct from the German planes, which are
not only red and slightly larger but clearly represent an altogether different design
of biplane. Indeed, I took this a step further by removing the top wing from one
German plane, converting it into a monoplane (such monoplanes having seen use
early in the War), and affixing the spare wing to another of the planes to create a
Fokker Triplane, a la the Red Baron.
This sort of customization, both of game components and rules, shows that
Dogfight shares a feature with other favorite games that stay in print year after
year. Such games lend themselves to the creation of home rules, not because the
players don’t enjoy the game as it is, but because they feel it would be even better
with an addition here and a change there. That they feel comfortable introduc-
ing new rules suggests a sense of ownership, of making the game their own, and
reveals a belief that they understand the game in the same way as the original
designers did. And of course their own contributions make the game even more
appealing to themselves and their gaming friends.
By combining an appealing topic with a simple design that encouraged tactical
thinking and easily led to player involvement on the deeper level of creating home
rules, Dogfight served as a “gateway game,” preparing those who played it in their
preteen and teen years for more complex wargames later on, such as Avalon Hill’s
Richthofen’s War (1972). In this its impact was rather like that of Risk, except that
whereas Risk is slow and epic, mirroring the rise and fall of empires, Dogfight was
short and dramatic: knights jousting in fatal combat.
In the end, these much-loved Command Decision games failed to establish
themselves as perennials, as Monopoly or Clue or Risk or Life did. American
Heritage is no longer the iconic presence it once was, Time/Life Books are no
more, and even Milton Bradley fell to a corporate merger a quarter-century ago.
But the audience Dogfight and its fellows created endured. We could use another
set of games like them to help create a new generation of gamers.
O O O
John D. Rateliff multiclasses between being a Tolkien scholar and a

game designer/editor. Among his scholarly works are the Mythopoeic
Award-winning The History of The Hobbit, a two-volume edition of the
original manuscript drafts of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit with extensive
commentary; a dissertation on the short stories of the great Irish fantasist
Lord Dunsany; and a contribution to Christopher Tolkien’s festschrift,
Tolkien’s Legendarium. Among his more than 60 RPG credits are Night
Below, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, d20 Cthulhu; the adventures
Return to the Keep on the Borderlands and The Standing Stone; and the
third edition Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, the core
works of the d20 system, which he co-edited. Recently he combined both
interests with “A Brief History of Tolkien Roleplaying Games.” He lives in
the Seattle area with his wife and three cats, whose names derive respec-
tively from a Beatles song, a Great Old One, and Tolkien.
Robert J. Schwalb on
Dungeon!
Key Designers: David R. Megarry, Gary Gygax,
Mike Gray, Steve Winter
TSR, Inc. (third edition, 1981)
Of the many games to come out of the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons may be
the most important. It was a strange game, new and exciting, filled with complex
rules scattered across several booklets, indecipherable to all but the most dedicated
fans, and even then, it would be liberally modified with home rules to meet their
tastes. But D&D wasn’t the only game to see publication from TSR during this
era. Their oft-overlooked Dungeon! fantasy board game burst onto the scene in
1975. While it certainly didn’t achieve the same popularity or status as its more
famous sibling, which had been released a year earlier, its similarities to D&D
make it a great introduction to all roleplaying games, even after more than 30
years from its initial release.
D&D features many things, but the four most important elements are locations,
adventurers, treasures, and monsters. In the game, adventurers descend into dun-
geons, fight monsters, and take their stuff. Certainly this is an oversimplification
and D&D through the years has moved closer and farther from these elements
as the game has evolved. But at its core, these sorts of things are what players do
when they break out the game.
The dungeon can be a dank labyrinth filled with tricks and traps or it can be
a castle, a ruin, a dense forest, or a tangled city quarter; it doesn’t matter so long
as there is a confined environment through which the adventurers must move to
reach the end, complete the mission, or achieve some other goal. Dungeon! uses
the most familiar D&D environment, setting the game in a massive, sprawling
maze with endless corridors linking large chambers and rooms, where unknown
perils lie in wait and fabulous treasures invite discovery. The board’s illustrations
hint at the sorts of dangers found here, with an assortment of creatures peering
up threateningly at the players, promising unspeakable ends to any who dare enter
their demesne.
Both games see players taking the roles of adventurers, doughty heroes who
brave all sorts of terrible situations for glory and plunder. Although players create
their own characters in D&D, options can restrict their choices so each player
fills a particular niche or role: the brawny fighter, the dexterous thief, and so on.
Dungeon! dispenses with character creation, but it still allows players to choose
an adventurer. Like the D&D character classes they reflect, each Dungeon! adven-
turer possesses advantages and disadvantages, and it’s up to the player to exploit
the former and mitigate the latter. The basic game offers the hero and the elf as
options, while the expert game introduces the superhero and the wizard. The hero
is better in combat than is the elf, but the elf can navigate the board more easily,
finding secret doors and thus access hidden rooms. The superhero outstrips all
others in combat, and the wizard has spells to pop around the board and destroy
monsters from afar, but both have to venture deeper into the dungeon if they
would emerge victorious.
Players must hoard treasure to win the game. The adventurer chosen deter-
mines the amount required. Basic adventurers need less, while expert adventurers
need more. The dungeon is divided up into six levels, with increasingly valuable
treasures the farther down you go; in this way, the game expects players to delve
deeper into the dungeon to gain greater rewards. The treasure values correspond
closely to experience points in D&D, which means Dungeon! mirrors that aspect
of the RPG, too, if you equate winning with gaining a new level for a character.
The treasure is not just lying around for the taking, however. Monsters protect
it and they aren’t likely just to hand it over to the first thug in armor who wanders
into their lair. To collect the treasure, the adventurer must defeat the beasts. In
game design terms, monsters represent the obstacles the players must overcome
to win. The monsters also impart much of D&D’s flavor to Dungeon! Iconic
critters from the roleplaying game populate the depths, including such horrors as
the dread red dragon, giant lizards, and orcs. Because the creatures get tougher
the deeper a character moves into the dungeon, the game reflects the play scale of
D&D, with higher level dungeons presenting more dangerous threats and greater
treasures. Players may risk defeat by venturing into the tougher regions, but if they
succeed, they can attain a far swifter victory.
These elements alone would not be enough to make Dungeon! the perfect
introduction to Dungeons & Dragons, but their skillful presentation captures the
RPG experience with remarkable flair. The game simulates the exploration and
Dungeon! O 91
discovery central to D&D, draws players into the environment as they risk their
rewards and a potential defeat to face tougher monsters in more remote parts of
the dungeon. The game even reflects character improvement, letting players better
their warriors’ chances in combat by acquiring potent magic items that can boost
their attacks or let them glimpse ahead to choose the monsters they face, just like
how D&D adventurers become more powerful as they gain levels.
Dungeon! is not without its flaws. Unlike the typical roleplaying game, it pits
players against one another even as they fight the monsters. The best strategy, in
fact, is to work against everyone else. When a monster defeats an adventurer, the
player must drop a treasure card. An opportunistic rival can then sweep into the
room, beat the monster, and claim not only the dead beast’s treasure but all other
treasures dropped there. And because the expert adventurers are far more effec-
tive than are their basic counterparts, ruthless players with high-powered warriors
often run through the easier rooms first. Once a location offers up its rewards, it
doesn’t spawn any new monsters or treasures; if a sweep of the easiest levels of the
dungeon is accomplished swiftly enough, a player can force weaker adventurers
into tougher rooms where they stand little chance at defeating the lurking deni-
zens. The emphasis on inter-player conflict can limit the game’s appeal to those
who like more cooperative designs, but it’s a minor drawback, at worst.
In all, Dungeon! provides a strong foundation for playing D&D and is, more
importantly, a lot of fun in its own right. The game has seen several editions since
its initial release in 1975. The third, published in 1981, boasts revised rules by Mike
Gray and Steve Winter that streamline and simplify play. The most recent versions
are 1989’s The New Dungeon, which features a larger board, more character
classes, and better rules for player interaction and cooperation, and 1992’s The
Classic Dungeon, which further tweaks to the combat system. Although copies of
any edition of Dungeon! can be hard to find, if you run across one, do yourself a
favor and snag it. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more enjoyable dungeon crawl
board game or a better gateway to the D&D experience.
O O O
Robert J. Schwalb is an award-winning RPG designer and developer, best

known for his work on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the d20 system,
and Dungeons & Dragons. With over 100 titles to his credit, Robert has
designed or developed RPG accessories and games for the best publish-
ers in the industry, including Green Ronin, Wizards of the Coast, Black
Industries, Fantasy Flight, Paradigm Concepts, Paizo Publishing, Kenzer
& Company, AEG, Goodman Games, and others. All the magic happens
in his Tennessee office, from which he occasionally emerges to see his
lovely wife and his pride of fiendish, gelatinous, half-illithid cats.
jim pinto on
DVONN
Key Designer: Kris Burm
Rio Grande Games (English edition, 2001)
I’m not going to explain to you the influence of the Euro board game scene
on modern game design and the gaming hobby. Chances are you already know
what you love — maybe not exactly why — but the impact of The Settlers of
Catan, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, and many others on the titles available at the
local shop is profound and still growing, many years after their initial releases.
What you may not know is that a relatively obscure designer named Kris Burm
went ahead and turned everything we know upside down with six of the best
board games ever made.
Seriously good stuff.
In that series of six games, known collectively as Project Gipf, Burm designed
and released hit after hit, with titles that used components in ways most other
designers never considered. Each game won awards and earned accolades as some
of the best in the industry.
For me, there is none better than Dvonn.
Elegant. Dynamic. Simple. I’m not sure how a game can be all three of those
things at once, but Kris Burm has made a living showing us just how easy it is for
him to capture and combine those qualities.
It’s difficult to describe Dvonn. It’s everything — strategic, casual, fast, fun, even
a family game. Because of the short learning curve, the single move action, and the
straight-forward victory condition, anyone can learn to play Dvonn.
Really.
Even grandma.
The box holds nothing more complicated than a board, 23 white, 23 black,
and a trio of red playing pieces. That’s it. Do I need to review that? A game board
and 49 disks in an age of component-dependent board games, Dvonn and its
cousins stand out as hallmarks of ingenuity and excellence.
I’m running out of superlatives here.
The goal is to control as many pieces as possible by game’s end by stacking

them atop one another. I just had to re-read that. Yes. Dvonn is that simple.
In fact, the game is so simple, if you search online for the rules, you’ll find a
325-word document on how to play. That’s shorter than this essay, if you’re not
a word counter.
Set-up is a vital part of the game, with players taking turns placing the red
Dvonn pieces first and then their own colored pieces. The board holds exactly 49
disks; once the set-up is complete, play begins. And even in this Burm proves his
genius of design. Since one player gets to place a Dvonn piece first (which helps to
shape control of the board) and gets to “move” first, the second player is rewarded
with the first placement of his or her colored game piece.
And if you don’t think that’s important, you’ve not played Dvonn.
Players take turns moving disks one at a time. He may only move a piece of
his own color, determined by the topmost piece in a stack. Pieces travel along a
straight line a number of spaces equal to the size of a stack. So a single piece moves
one space, a stack of three travels three, and so on. A move can never end on an
empty space and a stack cannot move if it is surrounded on all sides. Finally, the
Dvonn pieces can only be moved if they are part of a bigger stack.
That’s all you need to know about movement.
However, should a piece ever lose a line of contact with a red Dvonn piece it’s
discarded and removed from the board. Regardless of how it happens, both black
and white pieces leave play if they cannot draw a line back to a Dvonn piece. It’s
dangerous and costly, but sometimes you’ll want to do this on purpose to one of
your stacks, especially if your opponent has a lot of his tokens in play.
The game continues until no more moves are possible.
That’s it. Set-up and play takes about 30 minutes. Faster than dad or mom
could read a bedtime story to a kid.
Dvonn’s simplicity has made it popular around the world. The winner of an
impressive number of awards, the game is a cult favorite among those who love
abstract, obscure, themeless games, making it part of a not-so-exclusive club. It
even has its own lexicon with terms like melee, settlement, end trap, dominance,
payoff, and amputation all having key meanings during strategy discussions.
I have to admit, for a family game, this can all be a bit overwhelming. What
parent-child game is going to include a debate over why “unleashing” a certain
stack creates two “weak clusters,” one of which is most likely to get “cut off” or
“immobilized,” giving the kid “local dominance”? This may sound obscure, but
Dvonn O 95
the game itself is actually quite simple once you play a few times. And I guarantee
you’ll play more than once after you’ve opened the box. This level of depth is what
makes Dvonn playable and replayable by nearly anyone and everyone. You only
have to lose once to get hooked and say, “I get it now. Let’s go again.”
Still not convinced Dvonn belongs in this book?
Abstract strategy games are about visualization. As a game, go stands apart
from so many designs because you can always look at the board and know where
you stand. There is no hidden information. No surprise finishers. No way to com-
plain that you didn’t “see what was going on.” With Dvonn you get all that, along
with gorgeous game pieces and a unique game board.
Unlike traditional strategy games such as chess, Dvonn has few rules and only
one piece to move. Set-up is vital to play, too, making it interesting right from the
first action. While you can experiment with strategies and see where the game
takes you, you’ll only get better by playing again and again.
Lucky for you, you’ll want to do exactly that.
In fact, Dvonn’s endlessly appealing nature means that I have to stop writing
right here, because it’s calling to me. Let me wrap this up by inviting you to do the
same. Seriously. Stop reading and give Dvonn a try. And if you don’t exactly thank
me for introducing you to this brilliant, but addictive game, at least you’ll know
that you’ve always got someone else ready for another game.
O O O
jim pinto is a 15-year veteran of the gaming industry, with numerous

credits in a dozen categories, including writing, design, development, art,
and editing. His latest fiasco involves a gondola, 87 conspirators, and a
19th century Masonic voting box. jim pinto is a multicultural savant. He
knows hello in 20 languages, as well as most of the world’s capitals. His
first book in the gaming industry was about Japanese culture. His favorite
novel is French, favorite movie is Chinese, favorite country is Rumania,
favorite food is Indian, and favorite wife is Korean. He might have won
a few ENnies, an Origins Award, a Player’s Choice Award from InQuest
magazine, and $50 from a college fiction contest. He’s not sure. He has no
children, pets, or lice. jim pinto is allergic to capital letters.
Gav Thorpe on
Easter Island
Key Designers: Odet L’Homer, Roberto Fraga
Twilight Creations, Inc. (2006)
The first rays of dawn creep across the sea, fingers touching lightly upon a
barren shore. As day breaks, all is still save for the crash of the surf. An ululating
cry cuts the stillness. A monolithic head, heavy of brow and stern of expression,
looms out of the dawnlight, the ground rumbling beneath it. The gigantic head
turns ponderously, catching the sun’s rays upon its stony scalp. Its eyes flare golden
and a moment later a beam of blinding brightness cracks the air. The bolt strikes
another head rising out of the morning mist, crackling over its rocky skin before
bursting forth on a new trajectory. The beam engulfs a third head. Writhing ener-
gies build until the head explodes in a shower of rocky shards. As more immense
statues grow into life, battle has begun!
Like chess and Stratego, Easter Island is one of those games that drives you the
right sort of nuts trying to second guess your opponent so that you can figure out
what to do next . . . The gameplay is all about planning and visualization, impor-
tant things for any budding games player to learn. Not only that, but the quirky
visual design — that of giant Easter Island Moai heads — has a bizarre appeal
all its own. The chunky Moai heads have a nice weight to them as you shift them
across the board, seeking to outmaneuver your opponent. Making suitably deep,
grinding noises as one moves the heads only adds to the drama.
The backstory for the game is delightfully spurious. The Easter Island heads
were created by wizards to battle each other and are no less than sun-powered
beam weapons! The two wizard-players place and move their Moai heads across the
board and capture the sun’s rays to blast their opponent’s heads out of existence.
The rules are simple, though a little tricky to explain in abstraction. To win the
battle is simple — reduce your opponent’s magical minions to a single Moai head
on Easter Island.
The game is played on a five by five grid representing the eponymous island,
Easter Island O 97
and the Moai heads are placed and moved between the nodal points on this grid.
Players have seven statues and eight sun tokens. Each statue has a specific facing
along the grid, which is very important. Surrounding the grid is a circle upon
which the players place sun tokens that are then used to unleash the beam attacks
of the Moai heads. The players start with four of their statues on the board, placed
in alternating fashion. They then take it in turns, during which a player can per-
form any two actions from the following list: place another statue; place a sun
token face down; rotate a statue; move a statue in a straight line; and activate a
face-down sun token.
The positioning and facing of the statues is the key to the game. When a sun
token is activated, it projects a beam onto the island along a line of the grid. This
line goes straight ahead until it meets a statue. If the beam hits a statue from the
left or right it continues in the direction the statue is facing (thereby making
a 90-degree turn). If it hits a statue from the front or the rear, it is stopped but
destroys the statue. Statues are also destroyed if they are hit a second time by the
same sun ray, or if they are the last statue the sun ray will pass through on its way
off the island.
A simple turn of a statue, or moving one out of the path of a potential beam,
can drastically alter the beam’s future course. Any move can lead to groans and
forehead-slapping moments as the realization dawns that you’ve been outfoxed.
Though each player can only activate his own sun tokens, the beams can destroy
a Moai head of either side; if you fail to plot the beam’s path correctly, you might
end up blasting your own stony minion!
Since it is only statues on the island that count for victory, you can lose whilst
still having statues not yet placed. This means performing a constant balancing act
between feeding statues into the battle, maneuvering those in play into advanta-
geous positions, and making sure that you have sun tokens to activate when the
opportunity presents itself. Having only two actions per turn, and being unable
to both place and activate a sun token in the same turn, means ensuring that no
matter what your opponent does, when you next activate a sun token one of his
heads is going to explode.
This is where planning and visualization skills become so important. There’s
nothing quite as satisfying as working out a killer trap that your opponent can-
not escape. Conversely, there’s nothing quite as desperate as realizing you’ve been
done; you frantically look at every possible combination of moves trying to avoid
your fate, but to no avail.
As a family game, Easter Island has simple enough mechanics that anyone can
play it immediately. The tactical learning curve can be steep, as careless play will
be quickly punished by a canny opponent, but the lessons will be swiftly learned.
Its simplicity makes it an ideal introduction to the principles of strategy gaming
— more depth than draughts (or checkers, if you prefer!), but not as daunting as
go or chess.
Fiery bolts crisscross the island, and the air is rent with the shattering of rock.
Smoke trails twist languidly from the shattered remains of the Moai, lifeless eyes
glaring at the sky from their rubble piles. As dusk swathes Easter Island, the long
shadows of the survivors stretch across the vanquished.
Tomorrow the battle begins anew.
O O O
Gav Thorpe worked in games development for Games Workshop for 14

years, writing and co-writing dozens of games and supplements, including
Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Epic 40,000, Gorkamorka, Battlefleet
Gothic, and Inquisitor. He has also written novels and short stories, com-
ics, and computer game scripts. He now works freelance full-time as a
designer and science-fiction and fantasy author. He lives in Nottingham,
England, with a mechanical hamster that goes by the name of Dennis.
Jeff Grubb on
Eurorails
Key Designer: Darwin Bromley
Mayfair Games (1990)
Trains and games — two favorites of childhood. Crossing the country on

vacation as a child, the family station wagon was halted at rail crossings as the
rolling stock thundered past, and we counted the cars until the caboose — now
replaced, in these later, lesser times, by the End of Train (EOT) Device — finally
rumbled past. Games based on the romance of the railroad would be a sure thing,
right?
And there have been many such games, starting with the venerable Rail Baron,
which showed up from Avalon Hill in the mid-1970s. But while Rail Baron gave
you the thrill of moving trains about and collecting for your cargoes, those trains
ran over existing lines, already printed on the game board. Where was the joy of
building your own continent-spanning railway in miniature?
The answer lay in another component of childhood: crayons. The ability to
draw your route on an easily cleaned, laminated map would allow you to expand
your railway empire as your needs demanded, creating a spiderweb of commerce,
spanning broad rivers and snaking through mountain passes. In addition, it
required only a bare minimum of artistic ability, which made it a perfect game for
both young and old. Eurorails combines geography, trains, tactics, and Crayolas
into one perfect package.
The Eurorails board is a flat puzzle-piece board of Europe, from Oslo to
Naples, and from Lisbon to Warsaw. As the game uses local spelling, a nice conti-
nental touch, the map therefore stretches from Oslo in Norway to Napoli in Italy,
and from Lisboa in Portugal to Warszawa in Poland. The various cities on the
map provide goods noted near their locations — Cardiff provides hops, chocolate
comes out of Bruxelles and Zurich, and tourists are the major export of London
and the Ruhr Valley (Düsseldorf and Cologne). National boundaries are present
on the map but matter little in the spirit of game.
You begin with the freight locomotive, the smallest and slowest of the four
locomotive types available, and a fistful of ECU — European Currency Units, a

predecessor to the Euro, available in million (M) units. You also get three demand
cards; more on this last in a bit.
A normal turn consists of two parts. In the first, you load up your train, pick
up freight, make deliveries, and collect money. The second part you build, spend-
ing up to ECU 20M to lay track or upgrade your train. You need track before you
can run, so the first two turns consist of track building only.
Building is easy — connect the dots, representing mileposts, on the map. Clear
terrains costs little (ECU 1M). Mountains are a bit . . . steeper (ECU 3M, and ECU
5M for the alpine reaches). Crossing rivers costs more, as does entering cities of
various sizes. The larger the city, the larger the costs; indeed, the major cities —
such great metropolises as Berlin, London, Paris, and Madrid — occupy multiple
mileposts. The early game is a race for your cash flow — picking up those demand
cards that will pay off early, providing the cash for future expansions.
The demand cards are the heart of the game. Each lists three destinations on
the map, a good that each destination wants, and the amount they are willing to
pay for it. Short runs make small amounts: Berlin will pay ECU 10M for cheese,
which can be picked up in nearby Holland. Long runs bring greater rewards:
Birmingham, an option on the same demand card, will pay ECU 44M for tobacco,
and the quality leaf comes only from Naples. Each card has three such options,
so you can choose your freight according to your needs. A single long stretch of
track will pay off handsomely only if you can run multiple high-paying loads on
it. You can also use other players’ lines, though at a cost, so that sometimes you
can deliver a pricey cargo on track that someone else has so nicely built for you.
The demand cards are random, so you are often building against future expec-
tations. But the deck also contains event cards — floods, derailments, taxes, and
even strikes that can upset or slow your progress. Even the best-laid tracks can be
hindered by record snowfall near Munich or fog around Frankfurt.
You can improve your engine over the game. You begin with a slow freight,
capable of hauling two types of goods and mere nine mileposts per term. You
can upgrade to either a fast freight (same capacity, moves 12) or a heavy freight
(hauls three types of goods, but still moves nine). From either improvement you
can upgrade to the superfreight (three loads, moves 12). When to upgrade is a key
moment in the game.
While I feel Eurorails is the best of the “Crayon Rails” games, it was not
Eurorails O 101
the first of its type. It is the direct descendent of Empire Builder (1980), also by
Mayfair, which establishes the mechanics that Eurorails perfects. And I would be
remiss not to mention that Empire Builder itself is not the first of this gaming
style. Railway Rivals was a British game that used disposable maps early on and
thrived in play-by-mail in the 1970s and 1980s, before finally seeing widespread
publication from Games Workshop in 1984. Though both games exist in a simi-
lar timeframe, Mayfair eschewed the more intimidating hex grid for the simpler,
friendly, but functionally identical milepost system.
So if Empire Builder was the first of the Mayfair rail games (and it has gone
through five editions), why do I consider Eurorails superior? Part of it is the simple
improvement and refinement of design over time. There is excellent balance of
options on its map, the goods available, and the demand cards. There is no “killer
strategy” that guarantees a win if you’re the first to grab a particular line. Indeed,
there is often the question if you want to pay for a pricey ferry to England or write
off the isles entirely. (You only have to connect seven of the eight major cities and
have ECU 250M to win, so a London-less victory is very possible.)
Part of the game’s charm is its very simple, elegant graphic design. When
Eurorails first came out, it “felt” European — very modern and clean. This was at
a time when European board games rarely made it to this side of the Atlantic, so
it had an exotic nature all its own. And part of the appeal is the sense of discovery
and geography; even Americans with an idea of Chicago and St. Louis as good
train hubs have to figure out where Bordeaux and Krakow are on the map.
The Empire Builder family of games is more than just the original and
Eurorails. It includes British Rails (1984), Nippon Rails (1992), Australian Rails
(1994), India Rails (1999), and Russian Rails (2004). They have even taken flights
of fancy with fantasy (Iron Dragon) and science fiction (Lunar Rails) versions.
Empire Builder is itself a classic, but Eurorails builds upon the foundation of
its rules to create an enchanting, engrossing, and replayable game. It is a game
that rewards competition and planning without encouraging cutthroat behavior. It
demands a combination of skill and good fortune to succeed, a wonderful leveler
for families, friends, and married couples. It summons up the romance of the rails,
of thundering engines and rattling freight cars filled with goods from far-off places,
and brings it all to the table. And each game begins with a fresh vista of Europe
laid out before you, ready for your crayons, your luck, and your railbuilding skills.
All aboard!
O O O
Jeff Grubb is an author and game designer and secret train fan. He is the
author of over a dozen novels and 30 short stories, and currently builds
fantasy worlds for computer game companies. He and his lovely bride
(and occasional co-author) Kate Novak have played a number of the rail
games mentioned above, and find that they are less bloodthirsty about rail
building and railroad ownership than they are about, say, Scrabble. They
live in Seattle and can hear the trains down in the Rainier Valley at night
sounding their lonesome whistles at the crossings.
Kenneth Hite on
Faery’s Tale Deluxe

Key Designers: Patrick Sweeney, Sandy Antunes
Green Ronin Publishing/Firefly Games (deluxe edition, 2007)
roleplaying games intended for children are something like Dr.

Johnson’s famous dancing dog: it doesn’t matter how well the dog dances, the
wonderful thing is seeing it done at all. By Dr. Johnson’s standard, then — by any
standard, actually — Faery’s Tale Deluxe is Baryshnikov. A simple, elegant incen-
diary for the imagination, this is one terrific little roleplaying game.
While it is certainly possible, and a great deal of fun, for a bunch of adoles-
cents of any age to play Faery’s Tale Deluxe, Patrick Sweeney and his collabora-
tor Sandy Antunes aimed this game at parents or uncles who want to experience
roleplaying games with children who aren’t quite up to dungeon-delving. They hit
their target: the game is more than kid-friendly; it’s downright kid-centric. The
milieu is the world of children’s fairy tales, from Grimm (or really, from Andrew
Lang) to Disney, tending toward the brighter, more exciting sort of story. There’s
no need to buy a setting book or any more material — it’s all wonder stuff that
we all know from our own childhood, expertly evoked by the game text. (Text
including, I should mention, four charming pieces of short game fiction written
by Robin D. Laws.) The whole book is a mere 96 pages long, and the core rules
only run about 15 pages. Even that count seems higher than it really is: there are
long, helpful examples of play throughout the rules text, and a generous splash of
delightful art as well. You can certainly explain it all in just a few painless minutes,
once you’ve read it yourself.
Each player takes the role of a faerie, picking from four types: a playful pixie, a
shy brownie, an adventurous sprite, or a rambunctious pooka. The narrator plays
everyone else: other faeries, wicked trolls, clueless humans, friendly animals, and
scary monsters. Everyone has three attributes: body, mind, and spirit, with a magi-
cal power and hit-point pool called essence. (If you lose all your essence, you don’t
die, you just go to sleep for a bit.) All faeries, and most other things, have various
gifts, ranks, and so on to personalize themselves — though you have to work your
way up to “faery princess.” Thus, you can have four pookas in one group, each
with her or his own gifts, like acrobat, or musical, or sneaky, or brave, or one of
each faerie type, or any combination the players pick, with no fighting over who
got to play “the good one.”
The rules are appropriately simple, but quite robust. In a contest or skill test,
roll a number of dice equal to your tested attribute: with enough even dice, you
succeed. It can get a little more complicated than that for duels, battles, and other
special circumstances, but it certainly doesn’t have to. (There’s also a live-action
rules set, for playing outdoors or as part of a more free-roaming social event.) You
can spend essence to get extra successes, or to use your gifts. You can get essence
as a reward for good behavior, or as a reward for adding complications to your
own adventure: “What if the rabbit is actually a troll in disguise?”
This last notion helps the players control the story, fine-tuning it to their own
curiosity. An even more interesting and original mechanic, the economy of boons,
represents the favors faeries and animals and such people owe each other. Boons
function as a reward for good behavior on adventure, a more conventional experi-
ence point marker, a source of magical enchantment, and best of all, an in-game
social currency — “I will grant you two boons if you free me from this mousetrap,
good Cat.” This mechanic encourages the players to interact with the setting,
rather than just waltzing past on the way to the fight scene. For the narrator, it
provides ways to shift the story if the players are losing interest or getting too
worried, and it sows promising narrative seeds for “the next day in Brightwood
Forest” and “So what happened next?”
For kids who haven’t quite got the whole “counting successes” thing down,
the game has even simpler rules options in the “For Kids” sidebars throughout.
One very helpful such sidebar provides some quick rules of thumb for designing
adventures, based on your child’s age and developmental level. If you don’t feel
up to designing adventures, the book contains three pre-made adventures, two of
them based on classic fairy tales (“Jack and the Beanstalk” and “The Frog Prince”)
and one all-new fairy quest. It also has pre-made monsters, and animals, and
trolls, and so forth, with a wonderful modular system for making more. Want a
fire-breathing mouse? Add “breathe fire” to “Mouse,” and you’re done. After all,
a game like this always rewards improvisation, by the narrator and players alike.
A Faery’s Tale Deluxe story can get as complicated as the narrator wants to
make it, or as minimalist as “make the dragon stop being so mean.” There is even
Faery’s Tale Deluxe O 105
an optional rules section on dark essence, for people who can’t quite let themselves
believe in fairies without something like that. (Tinkerbell would be so sad for
them.) But at its heart, Faery’s Tale Deluxe is simple — and better yet, it’s joyous.
It’s about sharing the joy of centuries of tale tellers and parents with the next gen-
eration, about weaving kids into both the magical world of fairies and the won-
derful world of their own parents’ imagination. Sweeney’s game is both openly
welcoming to, and beautifully suited for, gamers too young to understand that
murdering strangers is the only kind of fun you can have in a roleplaying game.
And — just perhaps — for gamers getting a little too old to understand it, too.
O O O
Kenneth Hite is a multiple Origins and ENnie Award-winning game

designer, developer, editor, and author whose work includes 70-plus role-
playing games and supplements from the Star Trek Roleplaying Game
to GURPS Infinite Worlds to Trail of Cthulhu. He is also the author
of Cthulhu 101, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to U.S. History Graphic
Illustrated, and two children’s books based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft:
Where the Deep Ones Are and The Antarctic Express. His column
“Lost in Lovecraft” appears in Weird Tales magazine; he reviews games
and surveys the RPG industry in his other column “Out of the Box” at
indiepressrevolution.com. He lives in Chicago with his wife Sheila and
and a cat whose idea of a family game is Run Like a Crazy Person Up and
Down the Stairs. His niece Cailin is a super genius.
Richard Dansky on
Family Business
Key Designer: David Bromley
Mayfair Games (1982)
1991, the floor of the living room of a semi-off-campus housing unit at

Wesleyan University, in central Connecticut. Six of us sit there around a Family
Business deck, concentrating hard. Among the six are a future assistant dean at
an Ivy League university, a budding biology professor, a professional economist in
the making, and a somewhat disheveled author type. Other notables of this sort
sit in loose agglomeration throughout the room, heckling and cheering and wait-
ing their turn.
The future prof looks balefully around the group, his gimlet gaze passing over
each too-full lot of mobster cards in front of each player. “Why,” he demands, “is
nobody shooting? There ought to be shooting!”
Shortly thereafter, there is shooting, all of it directed at one player. Laughter,
too, though that’s aimed at everybody.
Family Business has no business, you might say, being as fun, as enduring, or as
addictive as it is. Blessed with a bewildering number of special rule cards, designed
so that a player’s turn can be skipped nigh-endlessly, and set up so that anyone can
be wiped out in a heartbeat if they’re in the wrong place — or if they complain
there isn’t enough shooting.
And despite all that, it works. It works magnificently.
Originally released in 1982 by Mayfair Games, the game has been through
multiple editions, each largely designed to provide better information to the player
as to what the cards — there are rather a lot of them — actually do. The game
was designed by David Bromley, and its iconic, classic “gangster” look does much
to establish its tone instantly.
Basic gameplay is simple. Each player controls a “mob” consisting of nine
mobsters. Each of the mobs corresponds to a historical gang entity, and each of
the cards has the name of a real mobster-type on it. Players are dealt a hand of
Family Business O 107
five action cards, drawing up to six at the start of each turn, and with these cards
they attempt to wipe their competition off the face of the earth. At the center of
the table is slim brick-patterned board called “the Wall,” which is really nothing
so much as Death’s waiting room, to be visited, single-file, by doomed mobsters.
The basic play mechanic involves dropping a contract card on another gang’s
mobster. If it’s not blocked — and anyone can play a blocking card, not just the
target — the mobster in question doesn’t die immediately. Instead, he is added to
the “hit list” and moved to the Wall, there to nervously await his ultimate fate. Get
six mobsters on the Wall — or use a special card to trigger shooting early — and
a mob war starts, knocking off the mobsters on the hit list one per turn, starting
at the front of the line.
Of course, you can play other cards to get your guys off the Wall, or at least
move them to the back of the hit list line — or you can add someone else’s thug to
the back of the line even as the front goes down under a hail of lead. It’s that ten-
sion — Will I get my guy back before the shooting starts? Can I rescue him before
the shooting reaches him? Can I sweet-talk anyone into saving my guys? — that
seasons the basic gameplay, giving it a delicious element of uncertainty.
Throw in the fact that you can work the other side — use cards to manipulate
the order of the hit list to shove your enemies’ mobsters up front on the Wall, or
to steal the other mob bosses’ turns, thus preventing rescues — and what could
have been a simple countdown mechanic suddenly becomes energized by plot and
counterplot, alliance and betrayal.
And I can’t forget to mention the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre card. It instantly
kills everyone on the Wall, and is a sure-fire guarantor that any survivors will
come after you with blood in their collective eye.
The trick, of course, is to ensure that there are no survivors. . . .
2006, deepinthehearta Texas. It’s past midnight at the inaugural Project

Horseshoe, a small invite-only game design think tank. I’m sitting at a table with
some of the folks I consider idols, the people who designed the games that made
me think maybe I could do the same someday. Noah Falstein is there. So’s Steve
Meretzky. Guys like that. And then Noah looks around, slaps a card down on the
table, and says in a enthusiastically poifect Brooklyn accent, “Youse. Contract.”
And I can’t help it. I find my own accent, slide a mobster — Jacob “Greasy Thumb”
Guzik, I believe — onto the Wall, and say, “Dat’s it, we’re goin’ to da mattresses!”
One of the cleverest things about Family Business is that it relies on social
mechanics as much as on game mechanics. It’s certainly possible to dogpile on
defenseless players and wipe them out one at a time, but optimum strategy — and
the social nature of the game — suggest instead that it’s best to make sure nobody
gets too far ahead. That often means keeping the little guys in the game until the
big guys get ground down to their level, allowing players to stay involved and
take key roles even if they’re not blessed with the most mobsters at any given
juncture. It also means that even a player who gets whittled down early stands a
chance of making a victorious comeback, since it’s potentially worthwhile for the
other mob bosses to keep him or her around until they can make their move. The
rubber-banding is social, not mandated, and that makes it all the more meaningful.
But the social aspect doesn’t end there, or with the horsetrading of favors,
rescues, and rapidly shifting alliances that make up the average round. If it did
— well, the game wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. No, what sets Family Business
apart is its virulently infectious metagame. You can’t just play Family Business,
you have to get into character. Two turns in, max, and everyone is lobbing deses
and dems and bad Brooklyn accents around the table. Don Corleone impressions,
or attempts at them, abound. Players talk to their mobster cards like a godfather
issuing instructions to one of his Mafiosi, or argue with one another as to which
of their functionally identical mobster cards has to go up on the Wall in response
to a contract.
And in that moment, you forget all about the cards and the mechanics and just
have plain old fun, and if there’s a better recommendation for a game than that,
I don’t know what it is.
It’s 2009. I swap a few emails with my friend Rob about our upcoming fantasy
baseball draft, the 18th year we’ve done this crazy thing. It was his living room
floor we sat on back in 1991; he’s the one who started the shooting in that long-
gone game. We’d played Family Business the night before his wedding, keeping
the rounds going until the wee hours for a glorious, goofy sendoff to his bachelor-
hood. He asks if I’m bringing my Family Business deck with me to the draft. I
reply, “Of course,” and ask if he’s taught his son to play yet.
“Not yet,” he replies. “But soon. After all, it’s the family business.”
O O O
Family Business O 109
Richard Dansky is the manager of design at Red Storm Entertainment

and the Central Clancy Writer for Ubisoft. Formerly a designer for White
Wolf Game Studio, he is also the author of the critically praised novel
Firefly Rain. He has contributed extensively to game series including
Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Might and Magic, and Far Cry,
as well as White Wolf’s World of Darkness and Trinity Universe game
lines. Richard lives in North Carolina with his wife and their inevitable
cats, except when off in mysterious locations performing top-secret
missions for Ubisoft.
Warren Spector on
Focus
Whitman/Western Publishing Company (1965)
Focus, also known as Domination, stands as one of the finest pieces

of work by one of the great game designers of all time: Sid Sackson. In Focus,
Sackson created an elegantly simple game that takes, as they say, minutes to learn
but a lifetime to master. A casual game of Focus can be played in 30 minutes; a
studied game can take all night. As a two-player game it’s spectacular; as a four-
player game it’s really, really good; but as a three-player game Focus is an absolute
standout, one of the few truly great three-player games ever made — maybe the
only one. This quality alone earns it a place in any pantheon of great games. But
Focus offers exceptional entertainment, regardless of how many players you have.
The rules of Focus are simplicity itself. Each player takes a uniquely colored
set of stackable pieces and places all of them in a predetermined pattern on a six
by six grid board, leaving a one by four extension on all four sides. (Imagine a
checker board with the corner squares cut out of each corner and you’ll have the
picture.) Pieces move horizontally or vertically a distance equal to the height of
the stack you pick up. On the first turn, then, all stacks are one-piece high and
move one space. On subsequent turns, stacks that land on top of other stacks
merge, meaning stacks can be built up to a maximum height of five pieces, for a
maximum move of five spaces. If a move ends with a stack higher than five pieces,
pieces are removed from the bottom of that stack until the stack is five pieces tall
again. Pieces of the color controlled by the player who created the stack more than
five tall are removed from the board and placed into that player’s “reserve” pool;
pieces of the opponent’s color removed in this way are captured and removed
from play permanently. The player whose piece is on top of a stack controls the
movement of that stack. On a turn, players can move an entire stack they control,
can move a portion of any stack they control, or can place a piece from their pool
anywhere on the board — whether on an empty space or atop any stack, whether
Focus O 111
or not they control it. The winning player is the last player who can make a legal
move, placing a piece from his or her pool or moving a stack he or she controls.
There are two advanced rules, designed to prevent stalemate — which, to be
fair, can happen far too easily if players simply mirror each other’s moves. To
paraphrase, a player who imitates the other player’s move is declared the loser.
Not a great rule, frankly, and inferior to the other advanced rule, applied before
play begins, that lets each player move one of his or her opponent’s pieces to
another spot on the board, breaking up the symmetry that makes the stalemate-
by-imitation outcome possible. Play with one or both of these the advanced rules
and the game is pretty much flawless.
That’s it. The number of pieces, the number of colors, and the starting position
of the pieces varies with the number of players, but the rules remain unchanged.
Focus is a game of sudden, rapid, and continuous interaction. Unlike most
abstract games, which feature extending openings during which players set them-
selves up for future success, Focus puts players in conflict from turn one. If chess
is war, Focus is a street brawl.
But it’s a brawl that requires brains as much as brawn. Do you build up tall
but vulnerable stacks and risk losing pieces to capture or do you create an army
of smaller, more mobile units that can take down your opponents’ stacks? Do you
jealously guard your stacks or do you relinquish control, since doing so might
mean gaining advantage elsewhere on the board or gaining reserves or even cap-
turing enemy pieces by moving some pieces in the stack while leaving an opponent
in control of the remainder? Can you take the surest way to victory and maneuver
multiple stacks so they converge on a single enemy stack? Can you draw first blood
when two large stacks end up on the same row — a classic and devastating situa-
tion you want to try to create in any Focus game you play — or will you be crushed
by a sudden enemy attack? How and when do you play your reserve pieces?
Whether played fast, fun, and deadly, or slow, steady, and, well, deadly, Focus
is a game that rewards players from start to finish. Despite the abstraction level,
it provides satisfying visual rewards. The simple mechanic of Height = Speed/
Power ensures that even the youngest or most casual of players can glance at the
board and “get” what’s going on, instantly. You don’t have to hunt for patterns or
struggle to spot others that might unfold several moves in advance — the patterns
are right there for all to see. Focus communicates more with less, visually, than
almost any other game.
And then there’s the three-player mode. Same rules, same instant action, same
thought-provoking play but perfectly balanced and — the truly amazing thing —
not requiring or even encouraging two players to team up on a third. That happens
in most other games that claim to be balanced for three players — the big, no
fun allowed, gang-up “strategy.” In Focus, it just doesn’t happen. It’s each player
against every other player, and even when someone seems to be out of it, the
mechanic of freeing pieces temporarily trapped in stacks means there’s a chance
you’ll come back, even when things look truly bleak. Just a masterpiece of clever
design.
Focus has been through more publishers, and released in more formats, than
most games — so many, it’s hard to keep them all straight. It first appeared in
Martin Gardner’s column in the October 1963 issue of Scientific American, or so
I’ve read. (I’d be lying if I said I’d seen the actual article or could say anything
about the context.) There were boxed versions from Western Publishing in the U.S.
and Kosmos in Germany as far back as the mid-1960s. Parker Europe released a
version in 1980 and the game won the 1981 Spiel des Jahres award.
My first encounter with the game was the 10-page description Sid Sackson
included in his book, A Gamut of Games, back in the late 1960s. (You can read
more about A Gamut of Games in another essay in this book; I’ll just add that
Gamut is required reading. Go find a copy. Now. You can come back and read
the rest of this later. I’ll wait. . . .) I have to admit, I didn’t actually play the game
back then. I didn’t actually know anyone who played board games, sadly, so
the first version of the game I played was Milton Bradley’s 1982 edition (called
Domination) — still my favorite edition, with great pieces, a nicely turned out
board, and a great title. I mean, which would you rather play, a game called
Focus or one called Domination? No contest, right? Kosmos published a nice
new German edition in 1998, with the old Focus title attached. And that’s it. The
game’s been out of print for decades. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
Focus is unique, fun, innovative and challenging, and has a nearly 50-year-
history, but what good is all that if you can’t get your hands on a copy of the
game to play?
Well, if you’re like me, you can go on eBay and bid on every copy that comes
along. You can troll garage sales and flea markets and online board game stores.
Domination — the Milton Bradley version of the game — shows up at relatively
low cost more frequently than you might expect. I buy every copy I find so I
Focus O 113
always have some to give away to deserving friends. I try to have at least half a
dozen copies on hand at all times, as well as a copy at home and at the office.
If going the used game route doesn’t appeal to you, you’re still in luck. In A
Gamut of Games, Sid Sackson had the foresight to include instructions for making
a homebrew version of Focus. All you need is interlocking checkers in two, three,
or four colors (the number and colors depending on how many players you have)
and a checker board (you simply ignore the three squares that form an L in each
corner).
Finally, and most oddly, there is a commercially available version of a game so
like Focus it might as well be Focus — but you might have to screw up your cour-
age a bit to buy a copy. The game is called Stacked. It’s published by a company
called California Exotic Novelties, whose wares are typically found in . . . ahem .
. . adult bookstores. You can also find it at Amazon.com and elsewhere online if
you’re hoping for a more discreet shopping experience.
Technically, Stacked is an “adult” game and the playing pieces are designed
to resemble (loosely) a woman’s breasts. Having said that, unless you were told
they were breasts, you’d never know, so it’s safe to play with the kids — once you
lose the box. The game remains abstract, graphically fantasy-free, and completely
family friendly. Frankly, if I were an “adult” game player and I bought Stacked,
I’d be pretty disappointed, at least until I played the game and had the time of my
life. Apart from one aspect I’ll get to in a moment, the game is identical in every
way to Sid Sackson’s masterpiece. The Stacked playing pieces lock together just
like the old Focus or Domination pieces; the board (a 10 by 10 grid, unlike the
original Focus board) is designed to keep the pieces in place, a not insignificant
thing when playing Focus; and the rules — with one change — are the Focus rules.
Perhaps most intriguingly, the designers of Stacked specified different starting
positions than Sid Sackson did. Changing a single element in a well-established
game design is a classic game development exercise and gives students of the field
an opportunity to explore how changing one element of a game affects the play
of the game — something game developers do all the time, as they playtest and
refine their rules. So, in addition to all the fun of Focus, Stacked offers a lesson in
game design!
However you do it, you owe it to yourself to play Focus. Find a used copy
of Focus or Domination, build your own set, or buy Stacked (throwing away the
box!), but find a way to play one of the finest games from one of the finest game
design minds in board gaming history. If you find yourself with three players, you
can forget about the qualifier, “one of,” and simply enjoy the best game you and
two of your friends will every play together.
O O O
Veteran electronic game designer/producer Warren Spector heads

up videogame developer Junction Point Studios, a division of Disney
Interactive Studios. Warren has worked in the game industry for 26 years,
the first six in tabletop gaming with Steve Jackson Games and TSR, Inc.
His video game career began in 1989 with Origin Systems, where he
produced games in the Ultima, Underworld, and System Shock series,
among others. A brief stint with Looking Glass Technologies was followed
by a seven-year stint as founder and general manager of Ion Storm’s
Austin development studio. There he directed the award-winning Deus
Ex and later oversaw development of Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief:
Deadly Shadows. Warren left Ion Storm in 2004 to found Junction Point
Studios, Inc., where he and his team developed concepts for a variety of
creative and publishing partners. In July 2007, the company was acquired
by The Walt Disney Company and Warren is a happy Disney vice-president,
and Junction Point general manager and creative director.
Corey Konieczka on
For Sale
Key Designer: Steffan Dorra
Überplay (second edition, 2005)
“I won by selling an outhouse for $10,000.”

— overheard after a game of For Sale
For Sale is a humorous and easy-to-learn card game about buying and selling
whimsical real estate. I know what you’re thinking: How can a game about real
estate be fun? Well, guess what, naysayer — For Sale is not only an enjoyable and
exciting game, but one of the best family games on the market.
I am often surprised when a game can turn a mundane or even stressful real-
world topic into a pleasurable social experience. It’s relatively simple to make a
fun game about fantastical things like mind-melting alien robots, but it takes real
skill to design a great game about folding laundry. Or real estate transactions.
Let’s start with a basic overview of For Sale. Upon opening the box, you will
discover that For Sale comes with the highest quality cards and tokens. All kidding
aside, I’ve often seen these cards used as examples of what playing cards should
feel like: textured, thick, and slick without feeling unwieldy or slimy. If you’ve
never felt a slimy card, consider yourself lucky.
In For Sale, each player takes on the role of an investor trying to buy real estate
as cheaply as possible and then sell it for big bucks. This practice — commonly
known as “flipping” — is quite topical, and I’m sure you can find a reality TV
show about it playing right now if you cycle through the channels on the cable
box. You’ll want to stick with the game, though; it’s a lot more fun and you don’t
have to sit through all those competing fast food and miracle diet commercials.
The gameplay itself is broken into two distinct phases. In the first, players
participate in an auction and use their limited pool of money to purchase different
properties, each with a value between 1 and 30. The player who wins a property
spends all the money bid, but other players must pay out only half of their bids.
This clever mechanic makes for some very interesting strategies.
After five rounds of bidding, play proceeds to the second phase. In this phase,
players use their purchased properties to acquire the highest paying checks. These
checks range from $0 (“void”) to $15,000. After revealing a number of checks
equal to the number of players, each player secretly chooses one of his properties.
All properties are then revealed. The highest-value property receives the largest
check, the next highest gets the second largest check, and so on down the line. This
continues until all players have sold off all their various mansions, space stations,
and sewer dwellings. Everyone then tallies the total from their checks and their
leftover cash. Just like in real life, the person with the most money wins. Just ask
Howard Hughes.
Now that you’ve sampled the filling of the pie, let us discuss the flaky good-
ness that holds it all together — the elements that make this game one of the best.
The primary purpose of any game is to entertain, and there is no shortage of
entertainment here. Fun gameplay with a whimsical tone makes For Sale an all-
around winner. The humorous real estate properties do much to set the mood.
When someone gets stuck with an outhouse or a cardboard box, there is bound
to be giggling or even cheering from the other players. These moments define the
For Sale experience, as do the times when someone with a supposedly high-value
property gets burned. You shouldn’t be shocked to see an exchange of high fives
after an opponent sells his mansion for a void check.
Basking in your friend’s pain is only part of the fun. On an intellectual level I
enjoy calculating when to push my luck on a bid or when to bluff my opponents.
The bidding mechanism adds an element of psychology to the proceedings, as
players are left to ponder the depths of their buddies’ greed — and how best to
exploit it.
I also enjoy the challenge and excitement of turning a cheap property such as
the doghouse (value a lowly 4) into a high-value check. Although the card draw
introduces an element of luck into the game, this is mitigated by the fact that all
players have to build a strategy around the same cards.
The decisions required to form that strategy can be wonderful excruciating and
add to the game’s cheerful drama. Do you spend over half of your money to get a
certain top-tier property, or do you save your funds and take a cheap “manhole”
property? The choices you make have a far greater impact on the game’s outcome
than the luck of the draw.
I would be a little dense to call something one of the 100 best family games if it
For Sale O 117
wasn’t educational in some fashion. Even with its light tone, For Sale teaches many
things, including rudimentary math skills and risk management. These skills are
honed by having to manage a limited pool of money and make decisions on when
to use it. Play this game with your children, and in no time they’ll be prepped for
the world of high-stakes real estate. Or at least a math quiz or two.
On a related note, one of For Sale’s strongest points is that it’s easy to teach.
Players will quickly understand the bidding system, since grasping it only requires
they master such tricky concepts as “30 is better than 1.” The game only takes 10
to 15 minutes to play, so I usually run through at least two games in a row with
newbies. By the second game, even green players often start to develop their own
bullet-proof strategies. Even without new players, I find myself wanting to play
For Sale again and again, once the cards are on the table, as it were. At the end
of each game, I analyze the events that led me to victory. (I only lose if someone
cheats.) I then think about how I could have performed better, which, alas, is quite
often an impossible task.
Let me quickly summarize my findings, mostly for those of you who skipped
ahead to the last paragraph. For Sale is a quick, exciting, and easy-to-learn card
game in which players bid for properties and then sell those properties in order
to become the wealthiest mogul in the room. It is a blast to play, has a touch of
humor, and is low in cholesterol. Even if you shudder at the thought of the actual
real estate market, you’ll find For Sale one sweet, sweet pastry of a game.
O O O
Corey Konieczka has designed numerous strategy and adventure titles

for Fantasy Flight Games. He is most well known for designing Battlestar
Galactica: The Board Game in 2008. He has worked on numerous
other strategy games and expansions, including Warrior Knights (2006),
Twilight Imperium: Shattered Empire (2006), Middle-earth Quest (2009),
and the Origins Award-winning StarCraft: The Board Game (2007).
Corey works full time as a senior game designer, developer, and producer
for Fantasy Flight Games. Originally from New Hampshire, Corey and
his wife Shannon now live in the frosty depths of Minnesota.
James M. Ward on
Fortress America
Key Designer: Mike Gray
The Gamemaster series was a set of high-ticket board games — high

ticket for the 1980s, anyway — that covered a wide spectrum of historical topics.
The first releases dealt with piracy on the high seas (Broadsides and Boarding
Parties), World War II (Axis & Allies), and the Roman Empire (Conquest of the
Empire). The best title of the Gamemaster series came out in 1986 and was called
Fortress America.
The premise of Fortress America is very much in keeping with the mood of
the mid-1980s, a time when movies like Red Dawn (1984) and Chuck Norris’s
Invasion U.S.A. (1985) reflected the country’s Cold War fears. Set in the near
future, the game presents an America under assault on the West Coast by the
Asian Peoples Alliance (in yellow plastic), on its southern borders by the Central
American Federation (in blue plastic), and on the East Coast by the Euro-Socialist
Pact (in red plastic).
The U.S.A. player faces the challenge of defending 30 major city territories
from the invaders. It’s a three-front war, with the enemies of freedom moving
aggressively into the U.S. from the very first turn. But the American forces possess
two important tools unavailable to the invaders. The country’s laser defense weap-
ons allow its military a chance to destroy an enemy unit anywhere on the game
board. The U.S.A. can also count on fierce partisans that mount surprise attacks
against the would-be conquerors. In the end, the Americans must retain control of
13 of their original 30 cities to win. The combined invading forces must control
18 cities if they’re to emerge victorious.
Since the game’s backstory is premised on a sneak attack, the invaders get
the first move, which means the U.S.A. is at a disadvantage right from the start.
The special weapons at its disposal and the fact that the U.S.A. gains lasers and
partisans each turn helps even things out on the battlefield as the game progresses.
During combat, which is extremely simple and easy to manage, defenders fire
Fortress America O 119
first; that gives them a natural advantage in holding territory, further balancing
the game. So, too, the ability of the U.S.A. to recapture conquered cities. In all,
the more turns the game lasts, the better the chance the Americans have to win.
It’s also important to note that the invading forces are not a unified whole. The
three groups work together to defeat America, but they also jockey for dominance
in the conquered territories. At the end of a three- or four-person game in which
the invaders win, an individual winner is declared from amongst the conquerors.
This smart design element means that the invaders may not support each other at
all times, if only to prevent one of them from building an insurmountable lead.
Discord among their enemies certainly works to the advantage of the stalwart U.S.
defenders. This competition mechanic also means that Fortress America works
well for two, three, or four players, an unusual strength for this type of game.
There are several other reasons why this game belongs in everyone’s collection:
Components: When set out on the board, the game simply looks great. Highly
detailed plastic infantry, partisans, mobile units, hovertanks, helicopters, bombers,
and lasers fill the nicely rendered map board from one end to the other. Play value
and functionality are both taken into account with the pieces. Each different unit
type uses a different die in combat, and their distinctive look helps players keep
their forces straight and the action moving. Laser emplacements and bombers roll
10-sided dice, hovertanks and helicopters roll eight-sided dice, and infantry,
partisans, and mobile units roll six-sided dice.
Combat Mechanics: There are lots of fun features and clever design elements
built into the combat in Fortress America. Normally, in every die roll, you destroy
your target on a 5 or better, or 6 or better if the target is in a city or mountain
region. However, with the Combined Arms rule, a player assaulting a target with
at least one unit of each class — foot, air, and mechanized — makes any attack
succeed on a 5 or better. Getting all the units aligned correctly can be challenging,
though it’s worth the effort. Also, helicopters can leap over enemy-held territory
to attack or defend, making a helicopter strategically invaluable or a huge target,
depending on whose helicopter you’re talking about. There’s also the dreaded U.S.
laser emplacements; each turn the American player rolls a die for each laser to lash
out at one enemy unit. The way these lasers work is perfect for striking fear into
the hearts of the invaders.
Rules Presentation: The rules are simple and easy to understand. Although
the rulebook itself runs a slightly daunting 24 pages, players really only need to
read through it once and can focus on the last page during a game. It includes
all the important details they’ll need. Better still, the rules feature an unusually
high number of examples. If players run into any questions during a game, these
explanations and illustrated diagrams are sure to answer them quickly and clearly.
Replayability: Replayability is, for me, a vital feature of any successful game, and
Fortress America has that in big measure. Placement of partisan reinforcements
is determined by a set of cards, so the guerrillas show up in different spots every
game. There are also many different attack and defense strategies that can be
employed by both the U.S.A. and the invaders, from concentrating powerful forces
to gain a specific objective to a more balanced, dispersed battlefront. No single
strategy will always work, and every new game introduces fresh challenges.
I asked Mike Gray, the designer of Fortress America, what he liked most about
the game and he said, “I think the use of the three colors of dice to simulate the
different types of units was extremely creative.” I have to agree. The more sides to
the dice, the greater the likelihood to hit.
This subtle, but effective creative touch is typical of Mike Gray’s games. He’s
long been known for striving to make every product he creates fun and unique. I
had the wonderful opportunity to witness this firsthand when I worked with Mike
at TSR. Throughout that time he shared his design skill and rare insight into gam-
ers with the rest of the staff, much to our benefit. For him, good design has always
been about simple-to-understand rules. Even in his most ambitious efforts, such
as Fortress America, he makes the complex accessible by breaking up the game’s
most challenging aspects into easily understood packets.
My humble friend would never admit it, but to my mind, he’s one of the best
game designers of his generation. And Fortress America is his masterpiece.
O O O
Obviously, James M. Ward was born and, not quite as obviously, he has
lived a pleasantly long time. He married his high school sweetheart and
she’s put up with him for 38 years. He has three unusually charming sons:
Fortress America O 121
Breck, James, and Theon. They in turn have given him five startlingly
charming grandchildren: Keely, Miriam, Sophia, Preston, and Teagan.
In that same stretch of time he managed to write the first science fiction
roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha; worked for TSR and did lots of
things for Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons;
and designed the bestselling Spellfire and Dragon Ball Z CCGs. He has
written all manner of things he is unusually proud of: the Dragon Lairds
board game, the novel Halcyon Blithe, Midshipwizard; the My Precious
Present card game; and the RPG supplement Of Gods & Monsters. He
reads a lot, greatly enjoys fencing with a rapier when he gets the chance,
and constantly gets beaten in board games by his friends. Currently he is
the managing editor for Troll Lord’s Crusader magazine and the go-to guy
when his sons need a babysitter.
Stan! on
Frank’s Zoo
Key Designers: Doris Matthäus, Frank Nestal
It would be completely fair to say that Frank’s Zoo is a simple trick-

taking card game and leave the commentary at that. You don’t need to know any
more in order to enjoy it, and certainly your kids will become hooked on the game
without ever understanding why they find it so compelling and what drives them
to want to play hand after hand.
Of course, it would also be completely fair to say that Frank’s Zoo is a master-
fully crafted game, one that takes several concepts that are key to understanding
and enjoying more complex games and presents them in a format that is accessible
to new gamers and in such a subtle way that the kids never feel like they’re being
talked down to or even taught a lesson. This makes it very much a “gateway”
game — one that leads young players to take an interest in games beyond the
classics and gives them the basic skills they’ll need to be successful playing designs
with deeper levels of strategy.
On top of all that, and most important of all, Frank’s Zoo is just a heck of a
lot of fun to play no matter what your age.
Experienced gamers will notice right off that Frank’s Zoo is similar to The
Great Dalmuti and Corporate Shuffle; while it is certainly a game about taking
tricks, the real goal of any round is to be the first player to empty your hand. In
the game’s basic version, the contents of the cards you’ve taken in your tricks have
no impact at all on winning. It’s all about speed.
At the start of the game, the deck is shuffled and all the cards dealt out to the
players. Each card features the image of an animal and, superimposed above it, pic-
tures of animals that can be played to beat that card. It is immediately obvious to
all but the most innocent-minded players that in Frank’s Zoo “beat” means “eat”
or at least “beat up,” and the game really is a metaphor for the food chain — or
the “circle of life” for those who prefer to use Disney movie references to explain
such things.
Frank’s Zoo O 123
So by the logic of the cards, a mosquito is beaten by a mouse, a hedgehog, or

small fish. The small fish is beaten by a large fish, seal, crocodile, or orca. One of
the interesting things about Frank’s Zoo is that a card is only beaten by the listed
animals and not any of the others. In other words, while orcas might eat small fish,
they will not eat mosquitoes. This creates a more robust hierarchy than a simple
string of numbers, but since it is presented pictorially, the hierarchy’s actual com-
plexity isn’t visible to the players or something they need to ponder. All they have
to know is “what beats the card on the table now.”
The player who leads may play any number of cards as long as they all represent
a single type of creature. The only exceptions to this are a single Joker that acts as
a wild card and a handful of special conditions that allow certain animals to act
as specific other animals.
In response to the lead, the next player may play an equal number of cards
with a single animal type that beats the one in the previous play or a number of
cards one higher than the previous play but featuring the same animal. In other
words, if the first player puts down a mosquito the next player may play a single
mouse, hedgehog, or small fish card, or a pair of mosquito cards.
While that may sound a trifle difficult when written out, I’ve always been
amazed at how intuitively even young players pick up the rules once they are
shown an example. That’s another bonus to the pictorial hierarchy; it keeps the
game’s central action on the table in front of the players.
The hand continues around the table, each player having the opportunity to
build on the current set of cards or to pass. Passing does not eliminate the player
from the hand entirely. Should the action get back around to that player again, he
or she still has the option of playing on the cards then on the table. If, however,
play is passed all the way around the table to the person who laid down the cur-
rent cards, that player wins the hand, collects the cards, and sets a new lead. When
a player runs out of cards, he or she is out of the round.
Players get points based on the order in which they exit the round and the
number of players in the game. The first one out gets a number of points equal to
the number of players, the second out equal to that number minus one, and so on
down the line. The game ends when two or more players have collected 19 points.
Beginners can make plays based solely on whether or not they have cards
that meet the current requirements. For example, if the lead puts down a single
polar bear and the next player has a pair of elephants, he or she can put down
a single elephant in response. After running through a number of games, though,

one learns that it’s sometimes better to pass on a low-level play in order to make
a higher-level play later on. In the example above, you might want to save the
elephants to play as a powerful pair later on.
The lessons the game teaches in timing and strategy are ones that young players
will be able to apply to many other advanced games, sports, and even life situations
they encounter as they mature.
There is an advanced version of the game that is played in teams, with pair-
ings decided by the results of the first round of play. This version also includes
more complicated scoring rules: the combination of cards taken over all the tricks
provide bonuses or penalties to the total points earned for the round. While these
rules work well enough, they don’t really add anything to the game. They mostly
seem to be an attempt to make Frank’s Zoo more appealing to experienced game
players — an attempt that is not especially satisfying. Frank’s Zoo is very good at
what it does in its basic form and those who want more complex gameplay will
be happier digging out different games than they will be trying to amp up this one.
Having said all that, most games of Frank’s Zoo I’ve participated in have
ignored the scoring entirely, opting instead to just keep playing round after round
until everyone has had his or her fill. The action is fast and the players’ race to
empty their hands makes a round feel like a complete competition. Each new
round is almost like a starting a new game.
In the end, Frank’s Zoo is a game that can be played by children as young as
eight, fully understood by most 10-year-olds, and enjoyed by just about everyone,
regardless of age. But, more to the point, it’s a fast, fun, and surprisingly addictive
design that the whole family can enjoy together. Just remember one rule: before
you start playing, make sure that it’s early enough that you can fit in several games
before everyone’s bedtime.
O O O
Stan! has been publishing cartoons, games, and fiction professionally

since 1982. He’s authored two novels, 15 short stories, and more than 50
game products, plus innumerable comics and cartoons. He has been lucky
enough to earn Origins Award nominations in all his chosen disciplines:
Best Roleplaying Supplement (Heroes of Sorcery), Best Game-Related
Frank’s Zoo O 125
Short Fiction (“The Insurrection That Never Was”), Best Graphic Fiction
(Bolt & Quiver: Back to Basics), and twice for Best Roleplaying Game
(SAGA Fate Deck and Pokémon Jr. Adventure Game). Currently Stan!
serves as the creative director for Super Genius Games and is freelancing
as a writer, cartoonist, and game designer. He also sings a lot of karaoke.
He lives in Vista, California, and hopes to one day soon be the owner of a
Sony Aibo robot dog. Visit him online at stannex.com, doodle-a-day.com,
or storytimewithstan.com.
Bruce C. Shelley on
The Game of Life

Key Designers: Milton Bradley, Reuben Klamer
When I think back on the games that I played in my youth, The Game of
Life stands out as one of the most memorable. I believe today that it has stayed
with me not just for the obvious reasons, such as it was fun and easy to play, but
also for reasons I would have had difficulty articulating as a child or early teen.
Life is a fairly straightforward game where you spin a dial to advance along a
track. The decisions you can make are relatively limited, but the game’s theme and
the concepts it invites players to deal with set it far apart from its competitors.
The game begins with all players apparently finished with high school. They
then advance through the years of their lives, establishing a career, getting married
and building a family, and, if fortune smiles upon them, retiring to Millionaire
Acres. At the start players have to decide whether to go off to college — which
might result in a better job, but requires taking out loans — or to just head straight
to work. Advancement is marked by the movement of small plastic convertible
cars, with spaces inside for you, your spouse, and children (more children required
a convoy of cars). The goals of the game are a reflection of the booming 1950s and
1960s in America: make a lot of money and retire rich. Key squares are paydays,
where you collect money for your ever-mounting pile.
The game stood out for my younger self and so many others of the time —
it was a huge bestseller — for many reasons. First, it was a visual feast. Where
Monopoly and Parcheesi had mostly white, empty boards, the Life board was fully
colored, partly three-dimensional, and stuffed with information. Even those little
pink and blue pegs representing children were iconic. Second, playing Life was a
progression toward clear goals: be financially successful and acquire the things the
adults in our lives seemed to want — family, careers, prestige, wealth, and so on.
It featured a clean end point and did not take long to complete, where competing
games were often more open-ended. Third, Life was only mildly competitive and
not intimidating. While you couldn’t attack the other players — with one excep-
The Game of Life O 127
tion that I’ll get to in a moment — you could tell at a glance how you were doing
in comparison and strive to be better.
The game was also delightfully silly at times, especially when it was your turn
to spin the wheel to determine how far your little car would move. In the 1960
version, and perhaps for years to follow, this spinner wasn’t well designed and
often came flying off its post to rampage over the board like a tornado hitting
our little world. Convertibles, buildings, and peg people scattered everywhere. We
learned to note where our car was before each spin, particularly when playing
with certain people. I remember some friends who, if they felt they weren’t doing
too well with their “life,” would take a perverse pleasure in wrecking everyone
else’s. (No parallels with reality there, right?) I understand that in more recent
versions of Life a player can get a job that pays him every time the spinner comes
off, which is a clever way to discourage such disruptions.
In retrospect, I see that Life gave us a chance to play at being grown-ups con-
trolling our own destiny, at a time when our parents dictated so much of what we
could and could not do. It was a precursor of the roleplaying games to come. By
choosing the education, career, and family for my character, I was leveling up as
my game-life progressed. My pile of cash was my experience point total.
Life let us be adults and make adult decisions for a few escapist hours. It felt
very sophisticated to deal with insurance, loans, and stock certificates, obscure
stuff we overheard our parents discussing. Life put those things in our hands for
the first time, even if only as playthings.
There is a heavy luck element to Life that I believe helps it as a social game
because there is no big advantage to experience or cleverness. The spinner is the
great leveler and there are few opportunities to make smart decisions. So children
can play with adults and all can have fun with an equal chance to do well.
The Game of Life that I played, first published in 1960, traces back to a game
invented a century earlier by Milton Bradley himself. The Checkered Game of
Life featured a checkers-like board and had a heavy moral overtone. Winning was
not achieved by accumulating wealth but by being principled and avoiding bad
behaviors; landing on Suicide, for example, knocked you out of the competition.
And even that 19th-century version may have roots going back thousands of years
to ancient games with similar moral themes.
When the company named after Milton Bradley revived Life for the game’s
centennial they decided that, while the heavy moral lessons of the older edi-
tion might have worked in post-Civil War America, they would have been fatal
to its success in 1960. The company turned to the group that had invented the
Hula Hoop to recast the game; the designer who tackled the assignment, Reuben
Klamer, connected brilliantly with the era’s middle-class expectations.
Life continues in print today, though it has undergone a number of revisions to
make it more contemporary and more fun. There are a few more decisions to make
and tactics to consider. The emphasis on making money is still there; attempts to
modify that have not been as successful as some of the other design tweaks.
The central notion of The Game of Life — blending easy gameplay with the
theme of playing through the highlights of an adult life experience, even one so
simplified — is clever and appealing. Letting young people act out a future of
their making is a powerful attraction, as suggested by Life’s long and successful
history. And though the heavy moral component has been stripped away, the game
still teaches lessons about actions and consequences. I wonder how many young
people recall playing The Game of Life when a few years later they have to decide
whether or not to go to college. . . .
O O O
In 1980, Bruce C. Shelley joined friends from the University of Virginia

game club to help start Iron Crown Enterprises (original publishers of
the Middle-earth Role Playing line). Following a brief stint at Simulations
Publications, Inc. (commonly known as SPI), he spent nearly six years at
Avalon Hill, where he designed several titles and developed such classics
as 1830, Titan, and Britannia. In 1988, he joined Microprose Software,
where he managed and contributed to the design of many projects. He
was Sid Meier’s assistant designer on the original editions of Railroad
Tycoon and Civilization. After working briefly as a freelance writer of
game strategy guides, in 1995 he joined another old friend from the
Virginia game club, Tony Goodman, who was starting Ensemble Studios
(ES) to make computer games. At ES, Shelley helped establish the com-
pany’s development process and create the Age of Empires series. He has
been invited to speak about game design on five continents and served for
six years on the board of directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts and
Sciences. In 2009, Bruce was inducted into the Academy’s hall of fame.
Phil Orbanes on
A Gamut of Games
Random House (1969)
A Gamut of Games is arguably the best book of original games published

during the 20th century. Rules for 38 diverse games, playable with everyday imple-
ments, grace 185 of the pages in Sid Sackson’s memorable first book.
I had the good fortune of meeting the legendary game inventor/historian in
February of 1968, while attending my first New York Toy Fair. At the time, I was
in college and running my little game company, Gamescience Corporation. An
invitation to dinner by Sid included a special treat: a look at the galleys of his
book, scheduled to publish the following year, and a discussion of its concept and
ambition.
Sid’s love of games and his egalitarian nature became quickly evident. The
38 designs in the book cover a broad swath of competitive endeavor and include
board, card, and paper-and-pencil games. Their themes range from the wildly
abstract (Skedoodle) to highly realistic (Origins of World War I), and from seri-
ous (Plank) to devilish fun (The No Game). Sid reached out to 13 inventors to
contribute 11 of these games, and also delved into the public domain to bring five
little known designs delightfully to light. The remaining 22 sprang from his highly
creative mind — a mind that was forever capable of turning a series of everyday
objects into a clever little creation by means of a few deft rules.
There is another quality of A Gamut of Games that makes it so richly Sid. It is
highly lucid. From the moment I encountered my first Sid Sackson game, Acquire,
I was struck by his ability to craft clear, comprehensive rules with a minimum of
words. His is a standard that any inventor would be proud to approach. Ironically,
this talent was in marked contrast to his halting, scattered, somewhat nervous
verbal skill. But in A Gamut of Games, one would never suspect.
What was Sid’s motivation to write this book? As he explained to me that eve-
ning, he was very bored by the typical “Hoyle” game compendiums of the era.
Edmund Hoyle had only written treatises on a handful of games during the mid-
1700s, but the phrase “according to Hoyle” came to represent the final word on
the rules of all standard games in compendiums published ever since. Sid felt that
there were many other great games, playable with components used in “Hoyle”
games, and he wanted to make these known to modern players. Armed with Sid’s
book, anyone could easily assemble the needed components and have at all the
rich designs it contains.
As an example, Sid’s party game Haggle uses ordinary playing cards, slips
of paper, and an envelope for each player. Sid designed this several years before
party games became the rage. Aimed at a large number of players, it is best played
amongst friends, given its elegant intricacy. Its object is to have the most valuable
“collection” of cards at game’s end.
Each player receives a random collection of cards, which are kept secret, and
one or more slips, which the host has filled out beforehand. These contain the
“rules” to evaluate your cards. Each player will have, therefore, a subset of under-
standing. A typical slip might contain something like this: hearts are worth three
points each and every 10 you hold will double your final score.
Play is set for a particular amount of time — perhaps 30 minutes, if used as
a party warm-up, or, for the devoted, the entire party itself. Players trade cards
on any terms agreed to. Importantly, they can also trade information about the
“rules.” At time’s end, each player stuffs his or her final card collection into an
envelope and hands it in. The host, having set the rules, tallies the score. Highest
score wins a prize. The bigger the party, the bigger the likely prize. Clever rules
could make for an unforgettable experience.
All My Diamonds is another gem (no pun intended). To quote Sid: “[This] is
a game I conceived as a change of pace from poker. Although there is no similar-
ity in the play, it satisfies the same urge for speculation. It is basically an auction
where players must decide whether they can earn more by buying or by selling.”
All My Diamonds is played with a regular deck of cards, with the 10s removed.
Cards are divided into sets, with each card belonging to its “value” set (picture,
high, middle, or low) and also its “suit” set (diamonds, hearts clubs, or spades). To
win a hand, a player needs to collect 10 cards from any of the eight sets. Players
exchange cards by auctioning groups in a common set — like “all my lows” or
“all my diamonds” — from which comes the game’s title. The more cards in the
offering, the bigger the player’s share of the points bid, with the remainder going
into a pool. Shrewd auctioneers will get more in value than they offer, and the first
A Gamut of Games O 131
player to collect a set wins the pool. At game’s end, high score prevails. All My
Diamonds packs a great deal of fun, thought, and interaction into a game you can
play with just a common poker deck.
Lap is a game that requires only pencils and paper. It is representative of the
creations others submitted for Sid’s book — in this case the brainchild of Lech
Pijanowski, a Polish film critic. We’ve all played Battleship, where, on a grid, we
place symbols representing our fleet. In Lech’s two-player game, the 64 cells of
an eight by eight grid are coordinated by a letter and number: A through H; 1
through 8. These are divided into four equal sectors. While each sector must con-
tain 16 contiguous cells, its shape is otherwise up to the player. Your mission is to
determine the boundaries of your opponent’s sectors before he deduces yours. You
do this by calling out, on your turn, the coordinates of four cells that comprise a
square. Your opponent tells you how many of these cells lie in which of his sectors.
The game is at once intuitive, yet far more challenging than Battleship.
Sid organizes these games into six sections. For example, “In Search of Big and
Little Game” includes Mate, Blue and Gray, Le Truc, Plant, Zetema, and Hekaton.
“Game Inventors Are People Too” includes Lines of Action, Cups, Crossings, Lap,
Three Musketeers, Paks (an excellent and novel card game), Skedoodle, Knight
Chase by the legendary Alex Randolph, and Origins of World War I by James
Dunnigan, the master of the military game.
The book concludes with a rather esoteric mention of 300 or so games, either
on the market in 1969 or expected to shortly appear. These were either favorites of
Sid, from his vast collection, such as Cube Fusion, or standards such as Monopoly.
It should be noted that until A Gamut of Games, there had been no book mention-
ing such a vast array of published, proprietary games. Several editions have been
published over the years, with some updates of the games reviewed. Sid’s vast
knowledge of games constantly expanded.
It is well worth noting that Family Games: The 100 Best, and the earlier Hobby
Games: The 100 Best, are, through their individual essays, direct descendants of the
review sections originally found in Sid’s A Gamut of Games. For this reason, and
many others, I tip my hat here to Sid Sackson for all he accomplished for gamers
in the brevity of those 210 magical pages.
O O O
Phil Orbanes serves as president of game maker Winning Moves, Inc.

He’s been the inventor of many games since his college days, including
Cartel, Infinity, Monopoly: The Mega Edition, the Monopoly Playmaster,
Clue the Card Game, CirKis, and King Me! With Sid Sackson, he co-
invented the Six Pack of Paper and Pencil Games for the firm Gamut
of Games (whose founder was not aware of Sid’s book at the time). He
is the author of The Monopoly Companion, The Game Makers: The
History of Parker Brothers, Rook in a Book, and Monopoly: The World’s
Most Famous Game. He often serves as chief judge at national and world
Monopoly championships.
Monica Valentinelli on
Gloom
Key Designer: Keith Baker
Atlas Games (2005)
When I think of all the family games that I played as a child, I don’t remem-
ber their rules so much as the enjoyment they brought or just the look of them.
On rainy days we’d break out favorites such as Uno and Hungry Hungry Hippos,
which were a lot of fun — but also filled with color. In fact, most children’s board
and card games are cast in vibrant hues, the sorts of bright primary colors that you
see in Mouse Trap or at least the soothing pastels of Candy Land.
Gloom is unlike the games of my childhood because happy colors aren’t part
of its design. In fact, being happy isn’t what Gloom is about at all. Primarily
printed with white and black ink on see-through cards, Gloom is, well, gloomy.
The bleak graphics allude to the seeming absence of light — physical, emotional,
or spiritual — in the game’s world. Plagues, financial disasters, very angry pets,
relationship issues — if it’s bad, it will probably happen to someone in the game.
The slyly sarcastic tone of the card text, coupled with the odd and ghastly
characters rendered in a style reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s, immediately sets
the stage for a half-hour of cheerful mayhem. Remember the old adage “You can
choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family?” In Gloom, the very first
thing you do is pick which family you want to make as miserable as possible.
Your potential victims are the unlucky folks residing at Castle Slogar, Hemlock
Hall, Blackwater Watch, or Dark’s Den of Deformity. (Admittedly, I’ve never been
able to choose the Dark’s Den of Deformity family, primarily because of the creepy
clown whose claim to fame is “Mister Giggles always has a smile for the children.”)
In subsequent expansions, Atlas added new families to persecute, but the core game
focuses on these four.
Now that you’ve chosen which family you’re going to torment, you’re ready
to play. It may take you a round or two to catch on, but the game itself is easy
enough. First, shuffle the deck and draw five cards. Next, take a good, long look
at those cards. You’ll notice positive numbers and negative numbers. Negative
numbers are really good to attach to your family members; they indicate some-
thing bad happening. So you might decide that the character Angel “was ruined
by rum” or “was jinxed by gypsies.” Positive numbers, on the other hand, signal
something outwardly fortunate. Maybe Cousin Mordecai “was delighted by duck-
lings” or Darius Dark “found love on the lake.” You’ll want to shower the good
fortune in your hand on others. Your goal, remember, is to make your family as
utterly miserable as possible, so being nice to everyone else betters your chance of
winning and undermines theirs.
When designing Gloom, Keith Baker wondered if it might be possible to have
players compete without hurting one another in the game. The solution was this
inventive inversion of goals. As Keith describes in his design notes, “In Gloom,
you don’t want to be the last one standing, you want to be the first one down.”
The cards themselves are similarly novel. They’re transparent, so each one you
play stacks up on the one beneath it, literally heaping bad or good fortune on the
base character card. Sometimes there are special symbols on the cards that offer
more negative points when the character is no longer active; sometimes there
aren’t. After you’ve decided your family member is miserable enough, you can use
what are known as Untimely Death cards. That’s when, for example, it’s revealed
that poor Professor Helena Slogar “was eaten by bears.” However, not even death
is final. Even though the good professor rests in peace, other players can bring
her back from the dead by playing an event card. And thus her misery continues.
The game ends when an entire family has been killed, regardless of their point
value. Then players total up the points on everyone’s dead characters and declare
a winner. Whoever has the greatest negative number wins.
Even though I’ve played dozens of sessions, no two games of Gloom have
been exactly alike — save in one important way: in every session, the characters
came to life. Players seem downright possessed to read the cards aloud in suit-
ably macabre voices (you’ll quickly learn who at the table can do a passable
Peter Lorre) or to announce a character’s fate with the utmost melodrama. “Lola
Wellington-Smythe, the wild child, [choked sob] died without cares for . . . zero
points.” From the quotes printed on Gloom’s cards to the instructions themselves,
the game inspires this sort of roleplaying, whether or not the players have ever
seen an RPG before. In that, Gloom qualifies as an interesting gateway game.
More importantly, even players who prefer more serious, realistic pastimes tend
to really let loose and have fun with the game’s dramatic leanings.
Gloom O 135
Gloom is one of the best family games on the market because it combines
clever design with charmingly grim humor. This mixture of fun and shocking mis-
fortune has long been a mainstay of entertainment for kids, and has been seen most
prominently in recent years in Lemony Snicket’s brilliant A Series of Unfortunate
Events books. After all, no matter how often you may tell a child that everything
is wonderful, they know by the time they get to be eight or nine that the world
is not a perfect place. In a way, Gloom acknowledges that reality and allows all
who play it to confront that unhappy fact in the most pleasant fashion possible.
Now if you’ll excuse me, all this talk about making people miserable has me
wondering what’s going to happen next at Hemlock Hall. You see, someone has
been trying to help Goody Zarr get married magnificently, but I think she’d be
better off if she were mauled by a manatee. Maybe then she’ll meet her untimely
death by being baked into a pie.
Unpleasant, yes, but I’m willing to bet that Goody’s tragic misfortune will
bring a smile to someone’s face. Maybe even yours.
O O O
Monica Valentinelli splits her time between writing, working in

Internet retail, and filling the role of project manager for the horror and
dark fantasy webzine FlamesRising.com. As a gaming industry freelancer
Monica’s credits include Worlds of the Dead from Eden Studios; an
award-winning short story entitled “Promises, Promises” for White Wolf’s
Promethean; and the horror short story “Pie” in the anthology Buried
Tales of Pinebox, Texas. To read more about Monica and her latest
publications, visit her blog at mlvwrites.com.
Matt Leacock on
Go Away Monster!
Key Designers: Ann Stambler, Monty Stambler
Gamewright (2001)
The curtain sewn by her grandmother rustled. It was not the type of noisome
rustle explained away by a sister descending from the bunk above. No, this was
the worst kind of rustle — the kind with an unknown maker. She decided her best
strategy was to lay there motionless. She took a breath and assessed the situation.
To her horror, she found that her right arm wasn’t entirely covered by blankets.
This posed a dilemma: uncovered, her arm was vulnerable, but if she were to move
it she might attract the attention of the creatures lurking in the dark.
She decided it was worth the risk. She quickly slipped her arm under the cov-
ers. As she did so, she noticed another rustle in the curtains. Unbearable. Another
minute passed. Slowly, her curiosity won out over caution. She raised her head up,
just enough, to peek through the gap in the curtains. She needed to see if she had
remembered to shut the closet door. One more inch. There.
The closet was open.
She couldn’t take it anymore. Summoning every ounce of courage, she yelled
out, “Go away, monster!” In an instant, the monster curled up into a ball, shrieked,
and plummeted into the place that all of their kind fear: the monster pit.
I wish my kids were so empowered. As it is, my three-year-old, Anna, occasionally

runs from the “Big Red Monster” that drops by our house. In such times, we’re
happy we have a copy of Gamewright’s Go Away Monster!
Go Away Monster! is a game for up to four players, ages three and up. Set-up
is simple: each player receives a brightly colored board depicting a bedroom. A
collection of cardboard items — lamps, beds, pictures, and teddy bears — gets
mixed into a cloth bag along with a set of goofy-looking monsters. Once the
starting player has the bag, you’re ready to go.
Each player reaches into the bag on her turn and (no peeking!) pokes around,
feeling for something that will complete her bedroom. If she’s lucky, she’ll pull out
Go Away Monster! O 137
a lamp, bed, picture, or teddy bear that she can add to her room. If she’s unlucky
and pulls out a monster, she’ll have to deal with it. The rules suggest a number
of ways to do that: players can yell “Go away, monster!” or chuck the critter out
the door, or smack the thing face down into an imaginary “monster pit,” or any
combination of the above. The important thing — and the core of the game — is
that the kids get to practice taking charge over the monsters. Once a monster is
dispatched or the player adds something to her bedroom, the next player takes his
turn. And once all the players have completed their rooms with their needed items,
the game is over and all the players win!
While the ability to take charge over the monsters is what really sets the game
apart, it also has a lot of other things going for it that help make it an excellent
family design. To begin with, the rules encourage players to cooperate, share, and
take turns. While there are alternate rules that lets players race to complete their
rooms first, the standard rules instruct players to hand an item to a fellow player
if they already have one. This makes for a good socialization exercise: Take an
item from the bag. If it’s a monster, deal with it — often with encouragement from
friends and family. If it’s something useful, take advantage of it. If you’ve already
got the item, share it with someone who needs it. When you’re finished, pass the
turn to the next player. Keep playing until everyone has what they need. Like any
other game, the values its authors seek to teach are baked into the rules. Compare
the above with a game like Sorry! for example: roll high to advance the farthest;
squash anyone you land on and force them to start over; first to the finish wins.
I’ll let the reader decide which game is more appropriate for a three-year-old.
In addition to the social skills Go Away Monster! teaches, the boards and
pieces are first rate. If your kids fight over who gets to have the “purple piece” fear
not — the game neatly handles this issue by including multiple bright colors on
each bedroom board. For example, those who can’t live without the purple board
have two different boards to choose from. Kids can also choose a bedroom based
on theme. Themes include kittens, puppies, boats, or ducks that are integrated into
the wallpaper, rugs, and bedroom slippers. The colors of the items drawn from
the bag also complement the colors in each bedroom. The result of this insightful
design decision is that kids usually feel that whatever they draw from the bag fits
their room. A different approach would have resulted in a lot of arguments (and
downtime) over who is the rightful owner of each item. The silhouettes on the
bedroom boards of each item are another nice touch. In addition to letting the
players know at a glance what’s left to collect, the outlines of each silhouette are
slightly smaller than the corresponding pieces with the result that kids have less
trouble lining things up. This is a welcome addition given how many of the game’s
typical players are developing their motor skills.
Go Away Monster! also stimulates more than one sense. In addition to the
lively visuals, the game requires that players reach into a cloth bag and interpret
shapes using only their hands. While this may seem like a simple task, the design-
ers have cleverly made many of the monsters mimic the items players need to
complete their bedrooms. For example, one monster would feel exactly like the
oval picture item if it weren’t for his triangular horns poking out. This only adds
to the game’s appropriately suspenseful tone. I really enjoy watching the looks on
my girls’ faces as they work out their selection each turn and the surprise on their
faces when they pull out a monster — or their delight when they get the teddy
needed to complete their room.
Both kids and parents will appreciate the fact that the game plays quickly —
usually in 10 to 15 minutes. Downtime is minimal as players are engaged both
when things are drawn from the bag (who knows what might come out!) and
afterward, as they may be recipients of a goodie even when it’s not their turn.
I expect these challenges and interactions to remain fresh for as long as my
kids grapple with their nighttime fears of the unknown. With its sturdy, colorful
pieces, well-written rules, and imaginary “monster pit,” it’s tough to beat Go Away
Monster! for encouraging children three to six to take charge of their fears, work
together, take turns, share, engage their senses, all while having fun.
O O O
Matt Leacock is a user experience designer and game designer working

in Mountain View, California. His first widely published game, Pandemic,
won Games magazine’s Family Game of the Year in 2008 and was nomi-
nated for the Spiel des Jahres in 2009. He’s currently working on a line
of dice games including Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age. When
not designing games, Matt heads User Experience at Sococo, where he’s
designing software to help remote teams collaborate. Prior to that he was
a principal user experience designer at Yahoo! and AOL, and a designer
at Netscape and Apple.
Steve Jackson on
The Great Dalmuti

Key Designer: Richard Garfield
Wizards of the Coast (1995)
Every seasoned gamer will appreciate the value of a game that is “just
perfect” to play with non-gaming friends. Perhaps you’re on a skiing holiday. Or
perhaps the after-dinner conversation has dried up. “So you’re into games, Steve,”
someone will say. “You must have something we can play. . . .”
In this situation it’s no use bringing out Scrabble or Pictionary. They know
these games and were expecting something a little more inspired. Neither would
El Grande be a good choice. Some would get right into it, but others would fall
asleep. No, the ideal candidate is a game that will be new to them and simple to
play. And one they will talk about afterward. This selection is something to be
considered very carefully. Your reputation as a games buff is at stake.
For me the perfect choice has always been The Great Dalmuti. It’s a card game,
so it’s easy to pack for travel. It can be played by four to eight players; we’ve
played it with as few as three and as many as 10. The rules are simple and can be
explained in two minutes, maximum. And it’s suitable for both children as young
as six and adults. On top of that, the mechanic that supports the game’s maxim
that “Life Isn’t Fair” generates genuine emotional outbursts amongst the players.
Whenever I play The Great Dalmuti with a non-gaming group, it’s a topic of con-
versation for days afterward.
If you’ve not come across Dalmuti before, get hold of a copy. The first Wizards
of the Coast edition fell out of print for a time, but the game was re-released in
2005. It is not a strictly original creation. Designer Richard Garfield admits it is
based on a medieval game. Indeed, similar designs can be found in books of classic
card games. But Richard nevertheless deserves credit for bringing it back to life.
How does it work? The Dalmuti deck comprises 80 cards, numbered from 1 to
12 and beautifully illustrated to depict the strata of medieval society, from lowly
peasants to the king-like Great Dalmuti. Commensurate with their social standing,
there are 12 Peasant (No. 12) cards, 11 Stonecutter (No. 11) cards, 10 Shepherdess
(No. 10) cards, and so on, down to just one Great Dalmuti (No. 1) card. The
names on the cards and the illustrations make the game more presentable, but they
are actually irrelevant. Only the numbers mean anything.
So the deck is shuffled and dealt out amongst the players. The object is to
get rid of your cards ASAP. Someone starts by laying down a group of matching
cards and declaring, for example, “Four elevens.” Going round the table in turn,
the others also lay down similar groups of cards. The quantity of cards laid down
must always be the same as the quantity laid down by the turn leader. They must
all carry the same number. And they must be of a lower number than the previ-
ous group. So, after “four elevens” the next player might play four 10s or perhaps
four 8s. The next player must go lower still — four 7s and so on. The quantity
is fixed at four; the number on the cards must always be lower than on the ones
previously laid down.
And that’s it! Inevitably you reach a play — perhaps four 6s — which no one
can beat. In that instance, whoever laid down the 6s gets to start another sequence
off, starting as high as he likes (e.g., three 12s) and the whole procedure is repeated.
Whoever is first out is awarded the privilege of being “the Great Dalmuti” for
the next hand. And believe me this is a great privilege. Meanwhile the current hand
continues until there is only one poor Muggins with any cards left. This person
becomes “the Greater Peon.” Firstly this unfortunate wretch is charged with the
chore of collecting the cards together and dealing out the next hand. But during the
next hand, the Greater Peon must serve as the personal slave of the Great Dalmuti.
This can mean the Peon will be told anything from “My glass is empty. Go get me
a drink,” to, perhaps, “Stand outside in your underwear and sing ‘Silent Night.’”
The only thing that will restrain a sadistically minded Dalmuti is knowing that, at
some time later, he may become the Greater Peon himself.
Neither is that an end to the Greater Peon’s woes. As the game says: “Life
isn’t fair.” When the long-suffering Peon receives his cards for the next hand, he is
obliged to hand the best two of them to his new master. And in return he receives
the Dalmuti’s dross — any two cards his master wants to rid himself of. No doubt
you’re beginning to see how, once you’re down, it’s very difficult to climb back up
again. But then, life isn’t fair. . . .
There are other rules, concerning a Lesser Dalmuti and a Lesser Peon,
Revolution, and a couple of Joker cards, but no need to concern ourselves with
them just here. Though fortune may play a big part in the game via the cards you
The Great Dalmuti O 141
are dealt, players soon come to appreciate the fact that there are strategic decisions
to be made. This is no game of pure luck. When should you declare a group of
low-numbered cards? Should you break up a set of, for example, six 10s? If you
count the number of low cards played, you will know whether your two 4s can be
beat or not. There’s plenty to think about.
My old friend Ian Livingstone, a Dalmuti veteran, used principles similar to
Dalmuti’s in a card game that was given away with the Deathtrap Dungeon com-
puter game in the mid-1990s. Though he was teased mercilessly by our Games
Night group for plagiarism, he did introduce a couple of neat additions, like one
card (the Exploding Pig, I think) which determined who would start the hand off
and therefore reduced some of the Dalmuti’s power.
And finally I can’t sign off this piece on Dalmuti without mentioning another
good friend and member of our Games Night group. Skye Quin is the only person
I know who has been dealt — and played out — a “perfect” Dalmuti hand. By this
I mean he has managed to play his entire hand out without anyone else around
the table being able to lay a single card down. Being dealt such a perfect hand is
a one-in-a-million chance. But then going on to play it perfectly is a testament to
one’s card skills. But Skye hasn’t just done this once. Oh no. In the 20-odd years
I’ve been playing games with Skye I’ve seen him do it three times!
He is the Great Dalmuti.
O O O
Steve Jackson began his career in games in London as a freelance jour-

nalist with Games & Puzzles magazine. In 1975 he and school friend
Ian Livingstone founded Games Workshop. The company established a
chain of shops and went on to manufacture Citadel Miniatures. GW also
published White Dwarf magazine and its own range of games including
Warhammer. Jackson and Livingstone also collaborated on the highly
successful Fighting Fantasy gamebook series (1982 Puffin Books, 2002
Icon Books), which has sold over 15 million copies to date. In 1989 he
designed F.I.S.T., the world’s first interactive telephone adventure game.
In 1993 he was awarded the prestigious title of European Individual
Games Champion at Intergame, the International Games Fair held in
Essen, Germany. In the mid-1990s he spent two and a half years as a
games columnist with the London Daily Telegraph before co-founding

computer games developer Lionhead Studios (Black & White, Fable)
with industry legend Peter Molyneux. Currently he is Professor of Games
Design at Brunel University, West London.
David “Zeb” Cook on
Guillotine
Key Designer: Paul Peterson
Wizards of the Coast (1998)
Guillotine is a very good game. Funny, fast to play, and thoroughly

engaging. Every bit worth having in any well-stocked collection. There you go.
’Nuff said.
Wait a minute, you say. Brave words, but anyone can say a game is great.
Marketing departments do it all the time and they don’t even have to play the
game. But, no sir, this book has standards. Before you go making claims about
quality, you’ve got to say what you mean by that.
The thing is, everybody has his or her own theory about what makes a game
good. Some theories are serious, positively academic, as in whenever you see
the word ludic pop up in the discussion of a game. Too far down that path and
you get “The Significance of Player for the Reception and Further Development
of a Contemporary Game: The Settlers of Catan” or “Visual Rhetoric and The
Game of Life.” There are other yardsticks popular with old saw designers like
me — interactivity, deep strategies, and balance. Then there are purely functional
approaches such as “The game can accommodate three people and we can finish
in less than an hour.” Much the same could be said of dental surgery, so maybe this
approach doesn’t say very much about fun. There’s even the Always Win theory,
where any game you never lose is a very good game. This last one is particularly
popular with five-year-olds. Fun for him, not so fun for you.
Mathematicians might put together a theorem that reduces the whole discus-
sion down to something like this: If g = Number of Pages, D = Scope of Game, and
h = Enjoyment of Game then you get the following:
(1 / g) * D = h
There you have it — fun quantified!

Tragically, few of us are mathematicians, so it is time to add to the theories of

what makes a game fun. Therefore, I offer the following sure-fire tools for testing
the fun of any game:
O The Length of Rules Yardstick
O The Topsy-Turvy Method
O The Weasel Factor
O That’s a Bad Idea!
The first of these is the Length of Rules theorem. Quite simply, the shorter
the rules, the better the game. Next comes the Topsy-Turvy theorem, where some
conventions are turned upside-down. The third yardstick is the Weasel Factor, the
measure of how much players get to mess with each other as the game progresses.
And finally, there is the Bad Idea, beloved by designers, where there is no idea that
is too dumb or bad not to be good.
But before getting into that, a quick background on Guillotine, the game, is in
order. Guillotine is a card game released on Bastille Day in 1998, unlike the other
guillotine, which was released was during the French Revolution as an efficient
way to ensure the executed got executed as opposed to making a botched job of
the whole thing. (Contrary to popular belief, painless and humane didn’t really
enter into the planning, although the notion that those things were considered
made for better PR.) Guillotine was bravely released, one should add, because it
was sent into the marketplace in the heart of the collectible card game craze even
though it was a simple, old-fashioned, non-collectible card game. Accommodating
two to five players, it was designed by Paul Peterson and illustrated by Quinton
Hoover and Mike Raabe, who filled it with cheerful illustrations, though it is
unclear if the illustrators themselves were cheerful.
The game’s premise is simple: it’s the French Revolution, there’s a guillotine,
and there are a whole lot of nobility out there — doomed nobility. The cards are
divided into two decks, a nobles deck and an action deck. A row of nobles is dealt
on the table and a marker is placed at one end. The game conveniently provides a
fold-up guillotine for this. Each noble has a point value from 5 (the King!) to –3
(Hero of the People) and are helpfully assigned to their appropriate estate: nobility,
clergy, bureaucracy, and military. One last group, those cards that give negative
Guillotine O 145
points — such as the Martyr and the Innocent Victim — can be imagined as the
people. Each player is dealt a hand of cards from the action deck. Turns are simple:
play a card, follow the instructions on the card, add the noble in front of the guil-
lotine to your score pile. Chopping sounds are optional. After the three rows of
nobles have been relieved of their heads, the game is over. The player who collects
the best heads wins — i.e. the player with the greatest number of points, generally
the one who has collected the most and highest value nobles.
I can only imagine the pitch session for this game. “It’s a card game. . . . No, it’s
not collectible. And it’s about the French Revolution. . . . No, don’t worry, it’s not
a historical game. And you win by chopping off people’s heads. . . . No, not real
people. And it will be funny. . . ! Uh, no, it doesn’t have zombies in it.”
The designer, Paul Peterson, clearly could sell refrigerators to penguins.
Congratulations! We’ve covered the heart of the game, which brings us back
the Length of Rules theorem. Guillotine’s rules are mercifully short, barely more
than a page and with lots of pictures. Aside from what has already been explained,
the rest of the rules cover the fiddly bits, such as how many cards to deal out and
how some of the special cards work. Not much more needs to be said.
Of course, short rules don’t guarantee a good game; just look at tic-tac-toe.
There still needs to be something else. The mechanics of Guillotine are simple, but
the game really lies in the action cards. Each has specific instructions that go into
effect when the card is played. This is where the second yardstick, the Topsy-Turvy
theorem, comes in.
In most games, the cards on the table are either immutable or accessories to
the cards in hand. The flop in hold ’em is the same for everyone. But imagine Doc
Holliday’s reaction if someone decided to change the cards in the flop. It’s ugly —
you don’t mess with a gunslinger’s poker game. The card Grandma snagged in a
fierce game of gin rummy improves her hand. It’s the trick, the set of cards played
out of the hand, that win or lose the game. Guillotine inverts that relationship.
Following the Topsy-Turvy theorem, it’s the cards on the table that matter in
Guillotine. Taking the trick, the card added to your pile at the end of the turn,
is forced, so what matters is getting the right victim to the front of the line. The
action cards do things like “Move a Blue Noble to the front of the line” or “Move
any card back 3 places in line.” Therein lies the bit of game design cleverness that
is the heart of Guillotine. Everyone can see the objectives. They can even count
out who will get what head if nothing changes. “Damn, Sid’s going to get Marie
Antoinette unless I do something.” (No doubt similar thoughts went through

Robespierre’s mind back in 1793.) What is hidden from others are the tools each
player has to change the line up. It’s a great combination of perfect and imperfect
knowledge that makes for great play. Oops, that was serious game designer speak.
But just as with short rules, a good mechanic doesn’t guarantee a fun game. So
it’s time to consider the next measure — the Weasel Factor. The Weasel Factor is
simple: some games are fun because players work cooperatively and in harmony,
but most games are fun because players get to mess with each other. It’s like knock-
ing the other guy’s ball to the hills in croquet; it’s just a lot of fun to derail the other
player’s plans. (Don’t ever mistake croquet for a kids’ game. It’s a cutthroat sport
played by men with clubs.) Plus, being a weasel, the one messing up the plans, is
enjoyable. This sort of interaction keeps players involved and it gives those in the
rear a chance to catch up. And Guillotine’s action cards afford players plenty of
opportunities to mess with each other.
Even with all this, Guillotine is still a game about execution in the French
Revolution. How can this be fun? Isn’t this a bad idea? Of course. It’s absurd! In
fact, it’s a Bad Idea. Voilà, the fourth yardstick.
If Guillotine were serious at all about its subject it wouldn’t be much of a fam-
ily game. So it does the only thing possible when faced with a heartless and grim
backdrop — run with it. It’s an untapped market, after all, French Revolution
comedy! (Though there might have been French Revolutionary comedians, history
has sadly failed to note their impact.) With cartoon portraits of characters like the
Master Spy, the Fast Noble, the Unpopular Judge, and the hapless Piss Boy it’s a
little hard to take things seriously, although it does remind us all of the Piss Boy’s
vital role in days before indoor plumbing. The action cards add to the mayhem
with titles like Pushed, Ignoble Noble, and, of course, Let Them Eat Cake! In fact
it is rather hard to take it all seriously — as history, at least. As a game, however,
Guillotine gleefully embraces its dark subject and uses it as an excuse for fine
gameplay mayhem. No knowledge of history is needed, only the willingness to
enjoy a fast-paced and entertainingly balanced design.
So it’s clear, by the measurements for those theorems of game worthiness, that
Guillotine is a solid success. Seriously, try applying those standards on any other
family game you own and see how well the system works. Short rules? Check.
Unexpected play? Check. Weaselness? Check. Wrong-headed concept? Check.
Notice that good games pass this muster.
Guillotine O 147
Using the infallible yardsticks we’ve laid out so carefully in the preceding
pages, Guillotine’s measures up this way:
O Length of Rules: 0.5
O Topsy-Turviness: –1
O Weasel Factor: Yes
O Bad Idea: 1,003,287
There it is — definitive proof that Guillotine is a brilliant game worthy of any

family game collection.
Besides, in what other game can you say, “Let them eat cake” so appropriately?
The revolution will be tongue in cheek.
O O O
David “Zeb” Cook has been designing games and writing since 1979,
which by other peoples’ definition makes him a lucky bum. Over the years
he has worked on most every type of game from paper RPGs to complex
massively multi-player games. Some of the things he has designed include
the AD&D second edition, Planescape, City of Villains MMORPG, the
Conan and Indiana Jones RPGs, and a bunch of stuff that will never see
the light of day. He has also written novels and short stories and is now
firmly entrenched in the wonders of the videogaming world.
Jason Matthews on
Gulo Gulo
Key Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Jürgen P. Grunau, Hans Raggan
Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Physics have a lot of street cred these days.
People all over the world take the laws for granted as they drive their cars, go
ice skating, or simply open a door. Even people who are clueless about physics,
like myself, can prattle off the basics: bodies at rest tend to stay at rest; force is
equal to mass times acceleration; for every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction. You know the drill. These simple laws of movement help explain how
the universe works.
Or so it would seem. You see, in my observation, Newton’s Laws of Physics
apply everywhere except in one nine-inch by nine-inch box on a shelf in my base-
ment. Within that bit of cardboard rests a board game called Gulo Gulo. What
is a Gulo gulo you might well ask? Is it some kind of sub-atomic, nano particle
that defies Newton’s 400-year-old observations? No, not exactly. Gulo gulo is
another term for a wolverine. Try and stay with me here. It would appear that our
European cousins coined the term Gulo gulo to refer to the largest member of the
weasel family. The word gulo itself is derived from the same root as gluttonous.
And believe it or not, that all comes full circle to the theme of this game.
In Europe, the wolverine is not perceived a fierce, hole-dwelling creature
ready to defend its lair with tooth and claw. It may be that the film Red Dawn’s
immortal rallying cry loses something in the translation to “Gulo gulo!” Rather,
the animal carries a reputation not unlike its weasel brethren in the United States:
greedy, sneaky, and most of all, egg-stealing. That brings us to the meat of this
superb family game by Zoch of Germany and reprinted here in the United States
by Rio Grande Games. The object is simple: steal the right egg at the right time
and get to the final scoring first. Of course, there is some sort of crazy backstory
to the game. The Germans love backstories. This one has something to do with
a lost baby wolverine, vultures, and swamp eggs. Relating the story without the
Gulo Gulo O 149
benefit of mind-altering pharmaceuticals would probably be counterproductive,

so let’s just gloss over it.
It may be better to think of the whole thing as a sort of egg quest (which, inci-
dentally, would make an excellent name for a new massively multi-player online
game). The first part of any quest is defining the path. To add to Gulo Gulo’s
replayability, the “board” is really a series of 24 nice, meaty tiles. They may be a
touch smaller than the tiles in The Settlers of Catan, but about that scale. All the
components are of very high caliber. When playing a game with kids, you really
want pieces that are easy to manipulate, colorful, and durable. Gulo Gulo checks
all those boxes nicely. You place the hex tiles face down in a meandering path
to a final stack of tiles — that final stack being the destination that triggers the
endgame.
Your turn is a relatively straightforward affair. Charmingly, the hungriest
player goes first. Ordinarily, that is always me, but now, with my three-year-old
son around, I am not so sure. Players begin by choosing a tile. They can elect to go
for a tile that is in front of them but already revealed, or they can choose a mystery
tile. In any case, the tile chosen determines what color of egg you need to steal
in order to advance your Gulo gulo that round. There are 22 eggs in five colors.
Two of them are smallish, purple eggs you will need to win. When you see these
wooden eggs, your mind will inevitably wander to Easter baskets long past. When
all piled into the wooden “nest,” the eggs really resemble the pile of petrified jelly
beans that could substitute for gold with children at Easter.
The vulture’s nest is the wooden bowl that holds the eggs to the brink of
overflowing. However, the nest is also the resting place of game’s central gimmick.
Perched upon a narrow wooden stick is another small egg, whimsically named the
“egg alarm.” The egg alarm is placed in the nest with all the other eggs. So each
player’s task is to retrieve an egg from the nest without allowing the “egg alarm”
to trigger by touching the table.
Now, if you have managed to follow the tortured path of my description thus
far, you will finally see how Sir Isaac Newton comes in again.
If you are an adult and you are trying to manipulate slippery little wooden
eggs with your fat, swollen digits, Sir Isaac Newton works just fine. You grab for
an egg, trigger the egg alarm, next player — wash, rinse, repeat. However, if you
are a child, something magical happens in that bowl. I have seen my daughter dive
into the vulture nest, swirl eggs around to her heart’s content, pull an egg out of
the bottom of the pile, and the egg alarm will barely stir. Now, were it only my
children, I would chalk it up to the long-expected mutations stemming from their
weak genetic material. But it is not. All children seem to have this magical ability
to defy gravity and all other laws of nature when on a quest for a little wooden
egg. It is hard to believe that the same children who cannot resist spilling their
milk at the dinner table, or who frequently collide with stationary objects, have
this miraculous gift. But there it is; I am here to testify to it with the certainty of
a UFO abductee.
Players continue to flip over tiles and dig for eggs. The game incorporates a
dash of tactical decision making about what egg to grab and when. Additionally, if
you are an adult, you will quickly become familiar with the cost of failure — going
back to the last hex with an egg of that color. As they say, if you want to bake a
vulture, you have to crack a few eggs. But even when you are losing Gulo Gulo,
it’s a ton of fun. Furthermore, no one is ever really out of contention because the
right combination of egg grabs can advance a player from the back of the pack
to the front surprisingly quickly. That helps keep everyone engaged, regardless of
dexterity. Finally, at the end of the hex path, there is a stack of five tiles. If you suc-
cessfully grab eggs during the last step, you keep playing until you find the purple
tile. Then you have to grab one of the two purple eggs to win.
There are also a few optional rules to shorten the game; I think these are handy
if you are playing with really young players or have limited time, but in general
the full game works perfectly well.
Truthfully, the inapplicability of the laws of physics to children in Gulo Gulo is
why it is such an amazing family game. In so many other gaming contexts, adults
are compelled to handicap a competition for their children’s benefit. Here the shoe
is on the other foot. It is you who will get the “Aww, Dad, its okay; you played
your best” or “It’s not about winning, Dad, it’s about having fun.” Of course, while
your children are repeating these platitudes they will be grinning from ear to ear.
The game is fun with adults alone, or for kids by themselves, but Gulo Gulo truly
shines with a mixture of both.
In many respects, the success of Gulo Gulo as a game comes as no surprise. It
has an amazing pedigree of designers behind it. There are three very accomplished
gentlemen associated with the game, including Wolfgang Kramer, the five-time Spiel
des Jahres award winner. Notably, he also won Children’s Game of the Year in
1991 for Corsaro. Hans Raggan and Jürgen Grunau are both very accomplished,
Gulo Gulo O 151
as well, with a long background in children’s games. So, perhaps the magic in this
box is not purely coincidental.
In short, Gulo Gulo is just about everything you could ask from a family game.
There is a dash of strategy, it’s playful, adults and kids can compete, and everyone
has a good time. The pieces are fun to look at and fun to play with. By way of
propagating the gaming hobby, I occasionally host an open “kids’ games day” at
our local library. I probably have taught this game to 50 different kids; I have yet
to meet one that did not have a good time, and I have enjoyed every experience.
It does not get much better than that in gaming.
If you are a family gamer, the whole Zoch line of children’s games deserves
your attention, but Gulo Gulo will always have a special place in my collection. If
you like family games, but do not have it already, run out and grab it. If you think
wolverines are cuddly, this is the game for you. If the laws of physics are in conflict
with your moral canon, here is the path to salvation. In the story that we heard
as children, Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when and apple fell
and hit him on the head. From that experience, he discovered gravity. But I will
let you in on a little secret — it was no apple, it was a vulture egg, and little Isaac
just triggered the egg alarm.
O O O
Jason Matthews is the co-designer of such non family-friendly games

as Twilight Struggle, which won several awards and was honored by
inclusion in Hobby Games: The 100 Best. He also co-designed 1960:
The Making of the President, about which you’ll find an essay elsewhere
in this volume. Jason has made a habit of designing games about the
intersection between politics and conflict. He loves nearly all forms of
gaming, and has enough children’s games to host a brood of octuplets.
He’s devoted himself to raising two gaming larvae of his own and has
also dragged his wife into the hobby. He resides in the DC suburbs, and
when not sneaking games into the house, earns a living as an aide for a
U.S. Senator.
Joshua Howard on
Halli Galli
Key Designer: Haim Shafir
It’s my job to bring a new game to one particular group of friends’ games night.
This is no easy task, as I am one of the older and less hip folks who attend — this is
a group that has featured live bands, right in the house, as part of festivities. Some
nights I am more successful than others at tearing people away from the live music
in the room next door or from the latest Rock Hero video game on the 1080p
screen with 7.1 surround sound. After years of game nights and dozens and doz-
ens of games, the one title that I get asked again and again to bring is Halli Galli.
The ideal game in my opinion is one that: 1) can be taught and played, ideally
several times, inside an hour; 2) is portable enough to take with you just about
anywhere; and 3) begs to be played “just one more time” by players of all sorts.
In all those things, Halli Galli delivers wonderfully.
Halli Galli is a deviously simple and frenetic game for between two and six
people, featuring a deck of 56 cards and a bell. Each card is illustrated with one of
four kinds of fruit — bananas, strawberries, limes, and plums — showing between
one and five of each. The whole deck is dealt out face down as evenly as possible
to the players and the bell is placed in the center of the table. In turn, players flip
over their top card. As soon as any fruit is represented exactly five — not more
than five; exactly five — times any player may ring the bell and claim all the cards
in the current stack. Players who are successful will collect more cards, and as
people run out of cards they are eliminated. Once there are two players left and
the bell has been rung, the one who ends up with the most cards wins.
Having just explained the entire game, it’s easy to see how it meets condition
#1. Halli Galli meets condition #2 by coming in a small box consisting of a deck
of cards and a bell. It can be further reduced in size by carrying the cards and bell
without the box; I have put the whole game in a coat pocket without concern. But
as you might suspect, it’s condition #3 that so many games fail to meet. But like
Halli Galli O 153
they say about the best snack foods, you can’t play just one game of Halli Galli.
Why is that?
Different games have different “magic moments,” instances and incidents that
deliver a sense of unexpected wonder to the players. People of all sorts find a sense
of wonder intoxicating, something to seek out. Wonder is a mysterious thing. By
its very nature it can’t be delivered on schedule and predictably; conjuring a sense
of wonder is more art than science. And designs that can create a sense of wonder
frequently enough to be tantalizing are those that best meet condition #3.
Halli Galli delivers many magic moments. One of the first that a new player
experiences is the joy of ringing the bell. It’s hard to say why, but the bell really
matters. I had a long conversation about this very subject with the designer of
Halli Galli, Haim Shafir. My original perspective, before I had actually played the
game, was that without the bell it would play the same, but be cheaper to produce
and sell, and even more portable. But Haim insisted that the bell was important. I
wish I had a more rational explanation, but once I experienced the game, with the
bell, I understood what Haim had tried to tell me. Perhaps it’s because the bell is
an unfamiliar game prop. Perhaps it’s because of the surprisingly loud ding that it
generates. For whatever reason, Halli Galli is a better game because players get to
ring a bell. In fact, it just wouldn’t be Halli Galli without that facet.
Another of my favorite moments of wonder in Halli Galli comes when a set of
five matching fruit sneaks up on you in a way you haven’t seen before. Normally
players will easily spot a set of five through a single card with the five fruit on it,
or an obvious combination of matching fruit that add up to five. But once in a
while, a certain fruit is shown more than five times and then a card is played that
removes just enough of them, by covering an existing card, to leave exactly five.
The first time this happens some players are slow to react; you get used to scan-
ning the table for the obvious five fruit arrays, and when an unexpected situation
pops up, you’re shocked. And all it takes is a moment of hesitation for some other
player to hit that wonderful bell before you.
The rules officially call for between two and six, and set the game’s end when
it’s down to just two players. I’ve played with more people though, and even
played where anyone can get into the action by ringing the bell when there is
exactly five of a given fruit in play, taking the cards they’ve won and joining the
in-progress game. In a big group this really keeps the action moving, with folks
jumping in and out as their interest level prompts. For those occasions where even
a 15-minute game may be too long for some at the table, this very flexible format
demonstrates how the core simplicity of Halli Galli can consistently deliver an
enjoyable experience.
The game’s central concepts can be taught to little kids just learning math, but
also works for adults of all ages. It’s quick and simple enough to entice even the
non-gamer, but delivers enough raw fun to appeal to even the hardest of hardcore
hobby gamers. Whether you’re playing with a group of kids or your relatives,
Halli Galli is sure-fire fun.
As if Halli Galli weren’t enough, Haim Shafir found a way to deliver an even
more devious Halli Galli-like experience with Halli Galli Extreme. When you feel
like an old pro at Halli Galli, you’ll want to give this new version a try.
As in most games, there’s a winner declared in Halli Galli, though as far as I’m
concerned, that’s a formality. The fact that everyone will want to play the game
again — and one session is never enough — means that everybody won just by
joining in the fun. If you’re a bit more competitive, just make certain that you’re
the one to introduce Halli Galli to your game table; that will surely earn you the
title of life of the party.
O O O
Joshua Howard’s father introduced him to a game called Black Box

when he was very young. While he enjoyed it, and now plays it with his
children, he was most intrigued by the idea that someone actually created
new games, that they weren’t all like chess or checkers — designs that had
existed essentially forever. He decided that some day he, too, would cre-
ate new games. Joshua, along with his oldest friend Bruce Biskup, started
BoneGames, a pioneer in the digitally distributed print-and-play game
space. He liked working on games so much he decided to enter the world
of computer gaming, where he has professionally designed, produced, and
directed dozens and dozens of titles.
Bruce Nesmith on
Hare & Tortoise

Key Designer: David Parlett
Intellect Games (1974)
“The tortoise and the Hare? Seriously?”

“It’s Hare and Tortoise, and it’s a great game. Really.”
“It looks like a kids’ game.”
“Trust me, it’s a lot more than a kids’ game.”
Boy was he ever right. Thank you, Mike Gray, for introducing me to this gem.
Looks can be deceiving. Hare & Tortoise looks like it’s one step removed from
Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders. While those are both great games for kin-
dergartners, I wasn’t interested in playing a little kids’ game. Let me set the record
straight. This is not a game for kindergartners. However, it is a great game for
older kids and adults, and definitely one of the best family games I know.
Strangely enough, I first learned the German version of the game, Hase und
Igel. Literally translated it means “hare and hedgehog.” Yes, hedgehog. You can
see it right there on the box cover. The Brothers Grimm took Aesop’s fable of
the Tortoise and the Hare and gave it a local twist by changing the tortoise to a
hedgehog. Don’t ask me why.
A friend of my wife’s was traveling in Germany and found a Ravensburger
edition of the game, printed in German. She bought it for us and provided a
handwritten translation of the rules and cards. I have steadfastly refused to buy
an English version. Although I prefer the Ravensburger editions, which can be
found in a variety of languages, Hare & Tortoise was originally developed in 1973
and first published the following year by Intellect Games. Other printings include
Waddingtons, 1980; Gibsons, 1987; and Rio Grande Games/Abacus, 2000. A
promotional version of the game, retitled Strategy, was published in 1983; in it,
the game’s carrots were replaced by glasses of Britvic fruit juice. A new edition of
the game is planned by Gibsons for 2010.
A great family game has to appeal to a wide range of ages. Sure, Mom and
Dad will play children’s games with the kids. But if you give them a game that the
kids enjoy and that they can enjoy, too, they’ll all play it over and over. Hare &
Tortoise has this multi-generational appeal in spades. Throw in educational value,
and you have a true winner. More on those educational benefits in a minute.
The key to Hare & Tortoise’s success and appeal is the amazing mechanic used
for moving along the board. Very simply, to move forward you spend carrots.
However, you can earn carrots by moving backward. There are no dice involved.
No drawing of cards. You just decide how far you want to move and pay for it.
Again, looks can be deceiving. David Parlett very cleverly used two different
formulas for how many carrots you get by moving backward and how many you
need to move forward. Each square backward earns you 10 carrots. Each square
forward . . . well, you have to look it up on a card. Moving a single square forward
costs one carrot. Two squares costs three carrots, and three costs six.
Wait a minute! You know this series, right? These are the triangular numbers
from Pascal’s triangle! Parlett actually snuck a higher level math concept into a
family board game. It’s never identified as such, but nevertheless, that’s what it is.
For those of you who aren’t math geeks like me, just add up the numbers of the
squares. For example, to move four squares, add 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 to get 10. Aren’t
you glad they give a card for this?
spaces 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
carrots 1 3 6 10 15 21 28 36 45 55
What’s clever here is that moving a few squares at a time is cheap. Moving a
lot at once is hideously expensive. For example, to move 12 squares in one turn
costs 78 carrots. So the cautious player moves four to six squares forward, then
one or two back on the next turn. In this way you can walk your way to the end
of the board.
Okay, so the game has an unusual and innovative movement mechanic, but
that alone isn’t what makes it fun. What makes it fun is juggling the number of
carrots you have. Your opponents have ample opportunity to deprive you of your
precious carrots, or to overload you with them. Every square on the track has a
rule that may give you extra carrots or take them away. The best example is the
number squares, which are central to one of the game’s prime strategies. When
it’s your turn, if your place relative to your opponents matches the number of the
Hare & Tortoise O 157
square you’re on, you get extra carrots. For example, if you are second and sitting
on a number two square, you get 20 carrots.
In one of the great catch-up features of all time, the number squares give more
carrots the farther behind you are. When you are coming in last in a four-player
game, just move to the nearest square with a four on it. On your next turn, you’ll
get 40 carrots and be able to zoom ahead. The only way your opponents can
prevent it is to move backward to take over last place! All told, this means that
it’s almost impossible for you to be eliminated from contention to win the game.
It’s great fun to watch your opponent get to the finish line, only to have too
many carrots because of your brilliant strategy. Oh, wait. Did I forget to mention
that you can’t have too many carrots when you cross the finish line? It turns out
that getting rid of carrots is almost harder than acquiring them. The game keeps
finding ways to give you more and more carrots. So there you sit, almost at the fin-
ish, with too many. Your only choice is to move backward. But moving backward
means you get even more carrots. So you have to move really far back — so far
that the cost of moving forward next turn eats up more carrots than you got by
moving back. In the meantime, if you opponents have managed their carrots better
than you did, they might be able to cross the finish line first.
If the game seems too mathematical, it’s not. I’ve watched 13-year-olds beat
40-year-old math geeks. Yeah, that would be my daughter trouncing me. And I
was trying! You can always adopt my wife’s strategy, called “riding the bunnies.”
The bunny squares allow you to draw cards that have wild, unpredictable results,
such as trading places with another player or getting a free turn. The wide variety
of possible strategies is one of the things that make this game so appealing.
When you have a game that is entertaining on many levels, has lots of different
strategies for winning, is themed for children and adults, and teaches your kids
number theory and strategy, it makes a great family game. I can give it no higher
praise than telling you we play Hare & Tortoise all the time, even though it’s in
German and we have to sift through handwritten notes to read the cards.
O O O
In 1981 Bruce Nesmith was hired by TSR, Inc. to design computer

games on the Apple II+. He soon moved on to be a writer of Dungeons &
Dragons paper games. Within a decade, he had dozens of AD&D accesso-
ries to his credit, including the popular Ravenloft boxed set. While at TSR,
he also developed a love for board games of all kinds. He is the author
of the Dragon Strike family board game and worked on the Spellfire col-
lectible card game. In 1995 Bruce joined Bethesda Game Studios to make
video games. Most recently he worked on Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and
Fallout 3. Bruce is currently the director of design for Bethesda. He’d tell
you what he’s working on now, but then he’d have to kill you.
Mike Pondsmith on
HeroClix
Key Designers: Jordan Weisman, Monte Cook, Mike Mulvihill,
Jeff Quick, Matt Robinson, Jim Long
WizKids (2002)
I’m going to start this with a story. It’s several years ago, and I’m sitting in
a small restaurant with my friend Jordan Weisman. He’s in San Francisco for the
day on one of the innumerable projects he’s always waist deep in, and we’re trying
to catch up over dinner. He’s showing me this brainstorm he’s had. “It’s a figure,
mounted on a base.” he explains, sketching out the idea on a paper drink napkin.
“The base is flat, so you can see all the information about the figure, but it also
changes when you rotate it, so the information also changes.” I mostly smile and
nod — I’d been trying to come up with something along the miniature-with-built-
in-information idea for a year, and I sure hadn’t had any luck with it. Which, as I
recall, is what I told him at the time.
As usual, I underestimated the brilliantly twisted mind of Jordan. And I wish
to heck I had that drink napkin today. Ah, well.
The result of this conversation was, of course, Mage Knight, a game that revo-
lutionized the very fabric of miniature gaming. Until Mage Knight, all miniatures
games had required players to laboriously assemble and paint the figures they used
in play. In addition, miniature rules were usually complex and required constant
reference to tables and charts to determine the outcome of combat and so on.
Mage Knight figures came painted and assembled, and their unique combat-wheel
bases contained all the information, right there on a figure, that normally would
be found on a chart somewhere. In short, the miniatures hobby became something
so simple you could almost convince your aged granny to play. (Well, I tried,
anyway.)
With Mage Knight in hand, Jordan went on to found WizKids, kick serious
butt in the industry, and make more money than the Almighty Himself. But Mage
Knight, as powerful as it was, wasn’t the most important aspect of this revolution.
Mage Knight changed how we play miniature games and ushered in a cool new
collectible aspect to a previously pretty moribund hobby. Yet it was only a gaming
equivalent of John the Baptist, something that would lead to a greater, more glori-
ous creation that would, in turn, take us to a Promised Land.
HeroClix.
See, HeroClix changed the face of miniature gaming in a way that Mage
Knight could only hint at. First of all, it solved the perennial problem faced by
all superhero games that preceded it. In the old days, you needed to hold all the
information on a particular superhero on a complex character sheet. Statistics
were complex, papers got lost, bookkeeping was a pain. But with the dial system,
everything you needed was in one place and that data even reflected the changes
that the hero encountered in the flow of combat.
Let’s make a few moments to marvel at what this means in a superheroic
genre. Like Mage Knight, HeroClix is based on a small wheel that rotates on top
of a smaller, inner wheel. This inner wheel contains a series of numbers, symbols,
and letters that represents the state and abilities of the character depicted as a
pre-painted 25-mm figure on the top of the base. These values represent the char-
acter’s speed (how far he or she can move in a turn), attack value, and defense
value. There is a second value to the right of defense that represents the damage
value; how much “life” the character has remaining. The outer wheel has a narrow
window cut into it so that only one column of numbers/symbols is revealed at any
one time. When a figure takes damage or is otherwise affected by some change of
status, the wheel is rotated — with a characteristic click that lets you know it is
lined up properly — so that new values are revealed.
Let’s look at this in action. Say Superman gets into a fight with the Hulk. No
problem — the Hulk probably can’t hurt him much. Maybe Supes’s dial just gets
moved down one click when the Hulk tags him. But Hulk’s dial is set up so that
when Supes hits him, he actually gets more powerful. Now the Hulk does a lot
more damage than he did before, reflecting the idea that when you get Hulk mad,
he just gets stronger — just like in the comics. By juggling values and revealing
them as the combat dial revolves, you can actually simulate many of the most
important tropes of your favorite superheroes, from Hulk getting more powerful
when mad to another character being weaker in certain situations. There are even
more options inherent in this. Superman may have a lot of power to play with.
But expose him to a Kryptonite effect token that forces him to click his dial a few
notches down and even Jimmy Olsen can kick a chuckhole in Supes’s back.
HeroClix O 161
The combat dial has a couple other great aspects. First of all, it conveniently
labels the figure as part of a group — an icon lets you know instantly who will
typically side with whom in a showdown. It also rates the figure with a colored
ring around the outside, identifying the character as a rookie, experienced, vet-
eran, or just a plain badass (usually silver and gold rings). The dial also tells you
how rare the figure is, its collectors number, and even a point value. That last is
important so you can make sure that the strength of battling sides will be relatively
balanced.
Besides making superhero games more playable, HeroClix also created an
overall unified field theory of superheroes. Before HeroClix, if you wanted to have
Superman unload a can of whupass on the Hulk, you had to design some kind of
way to cross-port between two or more game systems. See, Marvel and DC tended
to license their worlds to different companies, resulting in incompatible sets of
rules and statistics for the competing superhero universes. Before the heroes could
face off, you had to bridge those different systems — or you could create your own
stats by using a universal “generic” system like the ones found in Champions or
Mutants & Masterminds. Possible, but a lot of work and the results would inevita-
bly be argued over at the gaming table. Since the HeroClix system officially covered
both Marvel and DC, as well as many of the major indy comics titles, none of that
was necessary. In fact, the power scale was such that it could be applied to almost
every superhero you could find at your local comic shop.
HeroClix also brought another very important aspect to the superhero gaming
arena: true collectibility. See, if you were a collector of a typical CCG, playing the
game was almost a requirement. After all, only a hardcore Magic player really knew
(or cared) about the powers of a Shivan Dragon; what really mattered was how
that card impacted the game. But HeroClix changed all that. Now all you had to
be was a fan of comics to enjoy the game. It didn’t matter whether you played
or not — not when you were bound and determined to own your own two-inch-
tall representation of the pre-Crisis Superman or a complete set of Batman and
his rogues gallery. In a single stroke, HeroClix gave people who wouldn’t have
cared less about gaming miniatures a reason to buy gaming miniatures. Rules be
damned — what comic fan could possibly resist setting up a mini-superhero slug-
fest between Green Lantern and Sinestro on the top of their computer monitor?
I was an early victim of this effect. I didn’t have time to play HeroClix very
often — not even with Jordan cheerfully shoveling boxes of freebies my way. But
I decided I wanted to put together my own itty-bitty tableau of the Fantastic Four
fighting their arch-nemesis Doc Doom. Next thing I knew, the random luck of
the booster pack gave me a couple X-Men, which meant I really needed to get a
Magneto and a Rogue. And that meant I probably needed Iron Man and Captain
America. . . .
You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
More than anything else, HeroClix broke down the barrier between gamers
and non-gamers by giving both sides what they wanted; anyone who had ever
encountered superheroes in the pages of a comic or on the screen at the local
movie theater could have cool stuff they could hold in their hands. It provided an
entry into the miniature gaming world that no other product ever had, crossing the
line between toy and game in a format that didn’t require any arcane knowledge
or even the need to learn the rules, all in a form instantly recognizable to anyone
who’d ever played with little plastic soldiers or dinosaurs or animals.
So the next time you’re slugging it out with your HeroClix legions, take a
moment to visualize a small moment in a busy restaurant many years ago — a
moment when a scrawled bunch of notes on a napkin made it possible for even
your aged granny to go toe-to-toe with the Amazing Spider-Man. Excelsior!
O O O
The son of a psychologist and an Air Force officer, Mike Pondsmith has
somehow managed to make a pretty good living since the 1980s as a game
designer, even though his mother didn’t originally think he could. He is
usually blamed for creating the hit games Cyberpunk, Mekton, Teenagers
From Outer Space, and the Origins Award-winning Castle Falkenstein, as
well serving a far-too-long stint as a design manager at Microsoft Game
Studios. More recently, Mike has also been serving as a professor of video
game design at Digipen Institute in Redmond, Washington. Although
insanely busy doing the stuff he loves, he still finds time to kick his son’s
butt in the occasional Mekton game.
Anthony J. Gallela on
HeroQuest
Key Designer: Stephen Baker
The 1980s were awash in board games that simulated fantasy roleplaying,
a new genre of game that had been pioneered the previous decade by Gary Gygax
and Dave Arneson with Dungeons & Dragons. Dozens of designs tried to capture
the essence of the fantasy RPG, but few succeeded in presenting the core experi-
ence, particularly for young players, as well as HeroQuest.
The most common roleplaying adventure plotline is known as the “dungeon
crawl.” This is a story where some big bad guy takes up residence in the ruins
of an abandoned castle — in its dungeon, typically — and the heroes must enter
this danger-filled maze in order to find and destroy the villain and his minions.
Along the way they collect any treasure the bad guys happen to have and use the
experience of the adventure to improve their prowess — in game terms, to level up.
In a dungeon crawl-style RPG, the “game master” is the player who comes up
with the adventure, creates the maps, stocks the dungeon with monsters, sets the
goals for each session, and makes decisions for the bad guys, the monsters, and
everyone else in the story not controlled by another player. This is a lot of work
for one person to do, just to get a game ready for his friends. Adventure fantasy
board games seek to reduce this work, with the goal of allowing all the players to
spend more time on what many of them like best about RPG adventures — killing
monsters, collecting treasure, and improving their characters.
Simple design is the hardest thing to do right. Adding extra rules to a game
to engage a player is actually easier than taking them away. Make it too simple,
though, and a player loses interest. So designers hoping to mirror the fantasy RPG
experience face a sizeable problem. Just killing monsters, collecting treasure, and
improving your character is not enough to make a compelling game. There has
to be something else to ignite the players’ imagination and passion. HeroQuest’s
designer, Stephen Baker, solved the problem by adding many of the other trappings
of roleplaying games, while deftly avoiding their complexity.
In HeroQuest, one player serves as game master, called “Zargon” in the rules,
and the other players take on the roles of the heroes: a barbarian fighter, a dwarf
rogue, an elf druid, and a human wizard. How they divide up the heroes is left
to the players, but they need to use them all. This doesn’t just introduce the fun
of varied character choice, it simplifies the set-up. Each of the game’s pre-made
adventures is balanced to work with the four heroes. By including all of them in
every session, the adventures never have to take into account weaker teams or
ones missing important skill sets. Thus the designer could eliminate all the prep
work of an RPG, even while including what’s cool about fantasy roleplaying — in
this case an adventuring party made up of different types of characters.
The game comes with two booklets — the rulebook and an adventure book.
The adventure book outlines quests for the Zargon player to run for the heroes.
In these, they might be tasked with finding a specific item, rescuing someone, or
defeating an evil opponent. The heroes take to the dungeon to accomplish their
quest. Unlike many games of the era, though, HeroQuest includes a board where
the arrangement of rooms can be different each time you play. When the game
begins, the Zargon player knows what the dungeon will look like when fully
revealed — he has the pregenerated layout in front of him — but the other players
do not. As the heroes explore the mysterious maze, more and more of the rooms
are turned over. This lends the adventure an air of suspense, but once again saves
the game master from all the work of creating a dungeon from scratch.
As they direct their characters through the dungeon, the hero players roll dice
to determine how far they can move and if they are successful in the other actions
they might take: searching an area, casting spells, dealing with traps, and, of
course, attacking monsters. To fight a monster, a player rolls a number of combat
dice equal to his hero’s combat statistic. The dice have white shields on two sides
for defense, skulls on three sides for damage to monsters, and a black shield on
one side for damage to heroes. The monsters have a combat value, as well, and
they roll dice against the heroes when it is their turn to attack.
The components for HeroQuest are first rate. In addition to the cleverly
designed board, the game boasts miniatures, not standing cardstock or tokens, to
represent the heroes and monsters. There are also 3-D chests, weapon racks, and
more — props with which to stock the rooms. In all, the game looks great and
really conveys the fantasy theme whenever you set it up.
The number of pregenerated adventures in HeroQuest are limited in number,
HeroQuest O 165
and dedicated groups can plow through all of them quickly with aggressive play.
Fortunately, the rules also include easy-to-follow guides for the Zargon player to
create his own adventures. While the game was still in production, Milton Bradley
also offered several expansion packs with new adventures. These can be hard to
come by now, but show up from time to time on eBay and in used game stores.
HeroQuest was designed and developed for Milton Bradley by Games
Workshop, who, by the late 1980s, had become masters of the fantasy adventure
genre. They had previously published an impressive series of fantasy board games
starting with Talisman: The Magical Quest Game (1983) by Robert (Bob) Harris,
and continuing with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1986) by Steve Jackson
and, finally, Dungeonquest (1987) by Dan Glimne and Jakob Bonds. Each of these
was an important step toward the simple and effective design of HeroQuest.
Games Workshop published an expanded and revised version of HeroQuest,
titled Advanced Heroquest, in 1989, then released expansions for the advanced
version even while designing supplements for the HeroQuest game for Milton
Bradley to sell. And they were not done after Advanced Heroquest. In 1995,
Games Workshop went on to publish Warhammer Quest by Andy Jones.
Warhammer Quest is a fantastic game, but better suited for hobbyists rather than
more casual family gamers.
Once you’ve mastered HeroQuest, though, it’s a relatively easy step to
Warhammer Quest and other advanced fantasy titles. One of the most impressive
things about HeroQuest is the way in which it takes a potentially daunting game
experience — one very different from the “track games” that many families are
used to — and makes it accessible. This starts with the rules, which are arranged
to be easy to grasp, even for a novice. But the concepts the rules impart carry over
to Advanced Heroquest and even to traditional fantasy roleplaying games such as
Dungeons & Dragons.
The place to start, though, is with HeroQuest. The game boasts an impres-
sive mixture of elegant mechanics, high-quality components, and simple player
interfaces. It perfectly melds the suspense and excitement of a dungeon crawl-style
roleplaying adventure — all the monster slaying and treasure collecting you could
want — with the simplicity of a mass market board game. HeroQuest is, in short,
one of the best family games ever.
O O O
Anthony J. Gallela is the president of Bucephalus Games, a board and

card game company founded in 2008. Prior to moving to Bucephalus,
Gallela was the executive director of the Game Manufacturers Association,
the game industry’s main trade organization since 1977. In the years before
signing on at GAMA, Gallela was a co-producer for the famed ManaFest
and KublaCon game conventions; a freelance writer for various industry
publications; a game store manager; a consultant and broker for several
award-winning games; a co-developer of the Theatrix roleplaying game
(Backstage Press); and the co-designer (with Japji Khalsa) of the adven-
ture board game Dwarven Dig! (Kenzer & Co.), for which he was nomi-
nated for an Origins Award. A new edition of Dwarven Dig! was released
by Bucephalus Games in 2009.
Chris Pramas on
HeroScape
Key Designers: Craig Van Ness, Rob Daviau, Stephen Baker
While children have been playing with toy soldiers for ages, the modern
miniatures game traces its origin to the book Little Wars by science fiction pioneer
H.G. Wells. Its full title is Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age
to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’
games and books. It provided some simple rules for using toy soldiers to fight out
battles on the tabletop. From these roots grew a whole category of hobby gaming.
Originally, miniatures games were strictly historical but later fantasy and science
fiction subgenres developed. Hobby Games: The 100 Best includes essays on many
well-known miniatures games, from Johnny Reb and The Sword and the Flame to
Warhammer 40,000 and Flames of War.
Miniatures games have much to recommend them, but they traditionally have
a high barrier to entry. While they are visually stunning, they’ve tended to have
two key features that have made them of interest strictly to dedicated hobbyists,
at least until recently. First, collecting, organizing, and painting armies of miniature
figures is time consuming and often expensive. Second, the rules are frequently
complicated, particularly for historical games. Wargamers place a high priority on
simulation and this often leads to rule sets that are completely unapproachable by
those outside the hobby. One popular set of Napoleonic rules, for example, has
over 40 different troops types just for the French army, each of which can have up
to 17 separate statistics to rate its abilities.
All this was firmly in the minds of the designers of HeroScape — Craig Van
Ness, Rob Daviau, and Stephen Baker. Their goal was to create a miniatures game
for the mass market, an introduction to the category that was accessible and fun.
Milton Bradley, a subsidiary of Hasbro by the time of HeroScape’s release, already
had some experience in the area. In 1989 they had published the game’s worthy
predecessor, HeroQuest (about which you can read more a few pages back).
It is no coincidence that HeroQuest’s designer, Stephen Baker, was also on the

HeroScape design team.
HeroScape’s first master set, Rise of the Valkyrie, was released in 2004. It
includes 30 miniature figures, 85 terrain tiles, 21 dice, 16 army cards, and rules of
play. The game’s backstory is brief and aimed squarely at 10- to 12-year-olds. On
the alien planet of Valhalla eons of peace ended with the discovery of wellsprings,
“mysterious fountains of youth, power and immortality.” They enabled the winged
humanoids native to Valhalla to summon warriors from across time and space
to fight for the “ultimate plunder in the battle of all time.” This story allows
HeroScape to take a kitchen-sink approach to its warriors, including anything
and everything kids like. Samurai and Vikings fight side by side with robots and
dragons. It does not have the rich history of a WWII game or the deep backstory
of Warhammer 40,000, but it isn’t meant to. HeroScape is like a kid dumping his
toy box and combining everything that comes out.
Rise of the Valkyrie can be played right out of the box. The miniatures are pre-
painted. The terrain tiles can be used to build out an endless variety of battlefields.
They are divided into hexes and can be layered to construct a 3-D play area with
features such as hills and rivers. This obviates the need to paint miniatures and
create terrain, tasks that can take months in a traditional miniatures game.
The rules, too, are designed for ease of play. The master set comes with two
rulebooks, the Basic Game Guide and the Master Game Guide. The basic game is
the starting point and at three pages its rules are simple to grasp. Each figure has
four statistics: move, range, attack, and defense. A miniature can travel up to a
number of hexes equal to its move, then battle an enemy within its range in hexes.
It rolls a number of dice equal to its attack, while the enemy rolls a number of dice
equal to its defense. For each skull rolled on the attack dice, a hit is scored. For
each shield rolled on the defense dice, a hit is negated. If the attacker rolls more
skulls than the defender rolls shields, the defender is slain and knocked out of the
game. A simulation of Waterloo it’s not, but it’s fast and easy to learn.
After a game or two using the basic rules, players should be ready for the
Master Game Guide. These rules add some depth to the competition. Each minia-
ture gets a fifth statistic called life. This is how many hits it takes to kill the figure.
So whereas in the basic game, each miniature can be taken out with one successful
hit, in the master game heroes and big creatures such as dragons take many hits
to destroy. Figures in the master game also have special abilities that allow them
HeroScape O 169
to break the rules in different ways. The elven hero Syvarris, for example, has
the double attack ability, which means he can attack twice on his turn. The army
cards, which hold the stats for the miniatures, have the basic game stats on one
side and the master game stats on the other.
The Battlefield and Game Scenarios section shows how to create five battle-
fields using the terrain tiles. Basic and master game scenarios are provided for each
battlefield. The basic game scenarios show what figures to use and where they
begin play. The master game scenarios allow players to choose their own forces.
If HeroScape has a downside, it’s the amount of time it can take to construct the
battlefields, since each requires the assembly of many pieces in multiple levels. The
ability to fight over ever-changing 3-D environments makes it worthwhile, though,
particularly with the addition of such terrain expansions as Thealenk Tundra and
Fortress of the Archkyrie.
Since the release of Rise of the Valkyrie, Milton Bradley has supported
HeroScape with many additional sets of miniatures and terrain. They have added
historical warriors like Roman legionnaires, Shaolin monks, and Templar knights,
as well science fiction and fantasy creations like Blastatron soulborgs and shades
of Bleakwoode. With so many special abilities now in the mix, a HeroScape player
has a plethora of tactics to choose from. Learning which heroes and troopers work
well together is a rewarding part of the play experience. The variety of forces also
allows players to create theme armies — all undead or all samurai forces, for
example. Milton Bradley released a new master set, Swarm of the Marro, in 2007,
which provides another starting point for the game.
Craig Van Ness, Rob Daviau, and Stephen Baker attempted to make minia-
tures gaming more approachable and in that they succeeded admirably. HeroScape
gives players everything they need to get started, the core components have great
replay value, and the expansions make the game richer but not overcomplicated.
The miniatures gaming hobby has never had a better entry point than HeroScape.
O O O
Chris Pramas is an award-winning game designer, writer, and publisher.

He is best known as the designer of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, second
edition, and the creator of Freeport: The City of Adventure. He is also the
founder and president of Green Ronin Publishing. Pramas got his start
as a freelancer, writing for such games as Over the Edge, Feng Shui, and
Underground. He later spent four years as a staff designer at Wizards of
the Coast, ending his tenure there as a creative director. More recently, he
served as creative director of the Pirates of the Burning Sea MMORPG at
Flying Lab Software and the designer for the Dragon Age RPG, a game
he hopes will bring new blood into the roleplaying hobby.
Ed Greenwood on
Hey! That’s My Fish!

Key Designers: Alvydas Jakeliunas, Günter Cornett
Phalanx Games/Mayfair Games (English edition, 2005)
Some games are played by experts.

Or rather, some games are best played and enjoyed by experts, people who
know a lot about Napoleonic warfare or the tank battle of Kursk or that last
stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Other games are best mastered by abstract
thinkers, people who sometimes, to pick a frequent example, spend decades getting
to be “fairly good” at chess.
A good family game, however, must appeal to novices — often very young
novices — but not bore much older or more experienced novices, either. It also
has to entertain players who have played it many times, even when they’re play-
ing against first-timers. Moreover, from beginning to end a family game should be
fairly short, so young players don’t get confused by the rules or overwhelmed and
discouraged. Quick, with simple rules, yet not boring.
Designing a game that accomplishes all those things is a tall order. Managing it,
a rare feat. Short enough to be played in a lunch break at school or work, or by a
tired parent getting in a little family time with a kid who has far more energy, this
sort of game can become a beloved standard. Also known as a classic.
Hey! That’s My Fish! is indeed a classic. It started life as a German game
from the firm of Bambus Spieleverlag, Pingvinas (Lithuanian for Penguins), and
is known by variations on a Penguins title across Europe. The North American
game is essentially identical. It takes two to four players 10 to 20 minutes to play.
Some gamers believe a three-player contest yields the best results, but those who
dislike “cutthroat” games where two players can gang up on a third may want to
stick with two. It’s intended for eight-year-olds and up, but some six-year-olds will
enjoy it just fine. Play is quick, so no “early losers” feel left out while others battle
to determine a winner.
Yes, Hey! That’s My Fish! takes a mere 20 minutes to play — tops. Must be
simple as pie, right? Well, like tennis or golf or competitive downhill slalom skiing,
the general idea is simple. Doing it, though. . . .
A game of Hey! That’s My Fish! can be as simple or as hard as the players
make it; that’s the genius of this design. Experienced players trying to follow
winning strategies can make your hundredth game as interesting as your first.
A central tabletop is needed. The 60 hex-shaped “ice floe” tiles are laid on it in
eight rows, face up. If you have a cramped playing surface, any cluster can replace
the rows. Make sure there’s enough space between tiles to take any tile away dur-
ing play without disturbing the ones around it. The tiles have one, two, or three
fish depicted on them and should be distributed randomly.
Once the “board” is arranged, players set out their colored teams of penguins.
Each player has two to four penguins, depending on the number of people at the
table, and each penguin starts on a one-fish floe.
Then play begins. Each turn, a player moves just one of his or her penguins. It
must move in a straight line, from a single floe up to as far as it can go, though it
can’t jump over anything. It must stop when it reaches the edge of the array of tiles
or a break in the hexes (open water), or bumps into another penguin. So if there’s
nothing in the way, you can move across tiles as much or as little as you want, so
long as you don’t change direction during your move. Then the player takes the
tile from which his penguin started and keeps it. His turn ends.
The next player then takes a turn. So the sequence continues, the board grow-
ing ever smaller, until no one can move. When you can’t move your last penguin,
you take the tiles your penguins are standing on and play ends for you. A player
who can go on shifting around his penguins is free to do so. When that last player
finishes moving, fish are tallied and the person with the most fish wins.
That’s it. Boringly simple? Not at all. Anyone who tries to play Hey! That’s
My Fish! as a race for the three-fish tiles will probably lose to someone who
wisely carves up the board into little “islands” of floes an opponent can’t reach —
because all the fish on their island will eventually end up in their tally. The fun lies
in the fact, heralded by the game’s English title, that no player has enough penguins
to block all the threats to “his” fish. That leaves players guessing at what their
opponents will do and shifting strategies often.
The game’s designers have even come up with an official variant they call
Pushing Penguins! It’s the same as the original game, with one exception: when
you can move your penguin next to an opponent’s penguin and there is “open
Hey! That’s My Fish! O 173
water” (an edge of the tile array, or a gap where a tile has already been removed)
directly beyond that opposing penguin, you can “push” the unfortunate flightless
fowl into the water — and out of the game! Instead of stopping on the tile beside
the other penguin, as you do in the original game, you end your move on the tile
you pushed him off. However, when you accomplish a push, you don’t get to
remove the tile you started from or count its fish in your score. This variant is a
little nastier, so it’s fun for some grownups, but can reduce young children to tears.
Hey! That’s My Fish! is one of the easiest games in existence to learn, mak-
ing it an ideal design to teach youngsters and non-gamers. Yet it can be exciting
for everyone — compelling for experienced strategy game aficionados, or a hit at
birthday parties and family get-togethers where grandparents want to play a quick
game with the grandchildren that they’ll all find fun and engrossing.
In short, this is a brilliant little gem. Designs can be better simulations of a
real-life battle or a deeper contest of intellects than this, and they can be far more
complex — but they can’t be better games than this.
There are good reasons true classics are rare, and those same reasons are why
Hey! That’s My Fish! is a true classic.
O O O
Ed Greenwood is a Canadian librarian, New York Times-bestselling

fiction writer, editor, columnist, and game designer who has written
over 170 books, created the Forgotten Realms and Castlemourn fantasy
worlds, and won multiple Origins, Gamers’ Choice, and other awards.
In 2003 he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts
& Design hall of fame. Ed’s most recent fantasy novels include the
Knights of Myth Drannor Trilogy from Wizards of the Coast (Swords
of Eveningstar, Swords of Dragonfire, and The Sword Never Sleeps),
the Falconfar Trilogy from Solaris Books (Dark Lord, Arch Wizard, and
Falconfar), and the Niflheim Saga from Tor Books (Dark Warrior Rising
and Dark Vengeance).
Colin McComb on
Hive
Key Designer: John Yianni
Smart Zone Games/Gen Four Two Games (third edition, 2007)
So there’s this game about bugs. A queen bee takes command of ants,
grasshoppers, beetles, spiders, and occasionally mosquitoes, and sends them out
to surround and destroy opposing queens in order to dominate their hive, and . . .
You know what? Forget the bugs. It’s not really about bugs. The bugs make
about as much entomological sense as A Bug’s Life. That’s all immaterial. This is
a strategy game, not a classroom. The insects are a conceit, a way of making the
abstract concrete and drawing players into the game. The bugs also make a handy
excuse to use hexagonal tiles — because, see, this is a game about a hive.
Hive was originally published in 2001. The game’s first and second editions
had wooden hex tiles with stickers on the top, while the third edition offers thick
resin tiles with the images of the bugs etched (in color!) into the surface. These
third edition tiles are extremely durable, easy to clean, and they just feel good in
your fingers. They’re heavy, smooth, and reassuringly material. Their heft gives
you the sense that this game has been designed with care, and the gameplay bears
that out. Half of these tiles are white, half are black, and each player controls 11 of
them. Make that 12, if you’re playing with the optional expansion, The Mosquito.
You have three ants, three grasshoppers, two spiders, two beetles, and one queen
bee. There’s no board — you can play anywhere you can find a flat surface. Players
create the shape of the board with the way they place their tiles, setting them
against the hexagonal faces of other tiles.
Hive is extraordinarily accessible, easy for gamers and non-gamers alike to
learn. I’ve played it with young children and older people alike. It’s a great ice-
breaker; you can teach it and play it in under 20 minutes. In fact, Hive’s elegance
makes it a wonderfully clear example to present when teaching college students
about various facets of game design.
Of Hive’s few rules, the most important is the One Hive Rule. This states that
you can’t place or move a piece so that it doesn’t touch at least one other piece —
Hive O 175
that is, all tiles must touch at least one other tile. No rogue colonies can exist. (You
can use this rule to trap your opponent’s pieces, nullifying his or her movement. If
you dangle one of your pieces off your opponent’s, you trap that opposing piece
until supporting forces are brought to bear.) The remaining rules are primarily
concerned with movement or placement, and that’s about it. The object of Hive is
to capture the enemy queen bee, and the game ends when one queen is boxed in on
all six sides, even if all those pieces are her color. Once she’s surrounded, that’s it.
A game of Hive starts with each player placing a tile. This is the only time you
can introduce a tile that touches one of your adversary’s (as opposed to moving
one that’s already in play so that it abuts an enemy). You can’t shift any tiles in
play until you’ve placed your queen bee, though you must place her on or before
the fourth turn. Keep in mind that you don’t have to put all your pieces down at
once. You can hold forces in reserve, introducing them at any time to cause the
maximum possible havoc to your opponent’s plans.
Now, movement: this part is so simple that my five-year-old can tell me what
each piece does. The insect theme really helps here; it’s a great mnemonic anchor.
By identifying each piece with an insect, you really get a sense of how they should
move, in keeping with their real-life counterparts. Specifically, ants scout around
the outer edges of the board. Grasshoppers jump in straight lines from one edge
to another. Beetles trundle one space, climbing over other bugs and neutralizing
them for as long as the beetle hunkers down on top. Spiders skip three spaces,
skittering around the edges of the other tiles. Bees, like the stately kings in chess,
move only one space. If you decide to add the mosquito, then you’ve got a piece
that takes one power from any piece it touches, mimicking that power until it
moves to touch a different piece.
The basic strategy is to lay down a sacrificial bug — I mean tile — as the first
piece, since that’s the one that anchors your hive to your opponent’s, but which
piece, exactly, do you want to sacrifice? Not an ant, because you need those to
get around the board quickly as the hive grows. Not a grasshopper, because their
incredible hops cover the entire battlefield. Definitely not your queen! That’s a
recipe for speedy defeat. Or is it? With the queen down, you can start moving your
pieces immediately and trapping your opponents. Most people go with the spider
and anchor it on either side with a grasshopper or a beetle. But then what’s the
second piece? Your second and later pieces can only come down in contact with
pieces from your side. You can’t just set your pieces down around your opponent’s
queen and expect to win that way, though you can trap her with a beetle and set
pieces down around your beetle, but that’s another strategy.
Since the goal of the game is to trap the enemy queen while protecting your
own monarch, you must think ahead several moves. You need to keep plans open
for offense and defense, keeping an eye on your reserves and on your adversary’s,
because your strategy can change in an instant with the introduction of a single
piece. Watch your opponent’s next placement. Can you figure out where that piece
might go in the next three turns? Is that a defensive move or is he gearing up for
an assault? Maybe it’s time to use the One Hive Rule to your advantage, running
or jumping a bug onto one of his pieces. Because he can’t break the hive, he’ll
need to find a way either to create a path to free up the bug you’ve just trapped,
or else he’ll have to give up on using it for now and bring another insect to bear.
Remember, the pieces don’t disappear from play. They’re just trapped until the
hive shifts. Every piece you put on the board stays on the board.
I’ve said that Hive is a simple game to pick up. It is. It also invites profound
tactics and strategies. There’s no luck to Hive. It’s a pure mental exercise. The first
few times you play, you’re getting your feet under you, finding out how to place
and move. After that, you’re traveling along an individual learning curve. The
more you play, the more you’ll come to understand the game’s complexities. Once
you begin to develop your own play style, you’ll want to test the moves that work
best for you against a variety of opponents. What succeeds against one might fail
miserably against another. Discovering how to use the pieces as a complex system,
plotting several moves ahead, countering emerging strategies, and figuring possible
outcomes to different plays with different bugs is both fun and challenging.
The flexibility of the design, its ability to accommodate radically different
styles and levels of play is another of its strong suits. Part of the joy of Hive as a
family game is watching that flexibility in action — teaching a move to your child
and watching him personalize it and adapt it to your spouse’s tactics, who then
turns it against you in a novel fashion.
If you’re an adult, admittedly, there’s not much challenge in beating a kid in
Hive, though you can find great delight in watching them learn how to plan ahead
to counter your moves. If you need to find an adult to play with — well, just start
with this: “So there’s this game about bugs. . . .”
O O O
Hive O 177
Colin McComb started playing games early — and started “improv-

ing” rules for his family soon thereafter. He managed to land a job as a
designer at TSR, Inc., writing Dungeons & Dragons straight out of college
and winning two Origins Awards while doing it. He left TSR to work
at Black Isle Studios, where he helped design the cult classic computer
RPG, Planescape: Torment. He’s kept his hand in publishing here and
there, working with Malhavoc Press and Paizo Publishing. When he’s
not teaching game design at a local college, he is hard at work launching
a studio called 3lb Games with his wife.
Alan R. Moon on
Hoity Toity
Key Designer: Klaus Teuber
Überplay (revised edition, 2004)
All game designers strive to create the perfect game. With 1990’s Adel
Verpflichtet, known more recently in the English-speaking parts of the globe by
the rather regrettable name Hoity Toity, Klaus Teuber achieved just that. I’ve been
playing Adel for 19 years, and I’ve never heard any suggestion on how to change
the rules that I thought would improve the play.
Adel Verpflichtet is sometimes compared to rock, paper, scissors. If you hear
people say this, please just ignore them. It’s like calling a whale a fish. In the game,
you collect objects of art, exhibit them in order to move around the board, and
try to steal other player’s objects, while keeping an eye open to catch everyone
else trying to steal other players’ art objects. The mechanics of play are incredibly
simple, but the choices are exquisite.
The sparse components are a game board with a track around the edge, a deck
of art objects, plus a deck of action cards and a movement marker for each player.
The art deck consists of objects divided into groups labeled A through F. A col-
lection is considered to be any group of three or more identical or consecutively
lettered objects, or a combination of the two. So a group of cards marked, for
example, AAA, AAB, or ABCD would be a valid collection, but ABDE would not.
Each player begins the game with four cards, which may or may not give him a
collection right at the start. Each player also has a hand of action cards, two cards
of which are labeled 1 and the rest labeled 2.
At the start of a turn, each player secretly selects one of his #1 action cards,
which will announce whether he is going to the auction house or the castle. The
players who choose to go to the auction house compete in, as you might expect,
an auction to add an object to their collection. To do this, they secretly select a #2
action card, with the possibilities being a check, which come in different amounts,
or a thief. When all the auction house players have made their decisions, the cards
are revealed. The person with the highest value check exchanges it for the object.
Hoity Toity O 179
The losing bidders take their checks back. If one person plays a thief, he gets the
check that won the auction. If two or more players attempt a theft, they bungle
the job and no one intercepts the check.
It’s then time to shift the attention to the castle. The players there also go
through an action card phase, but they have three possibilities: They can play an
exhibition card, which means they will show all or part of their collection and
probably move forward on the board. They can play a thief, which means they
will steal a card from every exhibited collection. Or they can play a detective,
which means they will catch every thief that is revealed that turn. In addition, if
his detective catches a thief, a player moves forward on the board a number of
spaces equal to his position: one space if he’s in first place, two spaces if he’s in
second place, and so on. Thieves that are caught go to jail and are only released
when more thieves are nabbed.
When exhibiting, how far you move forward depends on what space the
leader is on. It’s possible for two players who exhibit to move forward during
each exhibition, so the player who shows the biggest collection goes the farthest. If
there is a tie for the biggest collection, the player with the oldest objet d’art in his
collection wins. It doesn’t happen very often but if three or more players exhibit,
only two of them will get to move.
The game continues until one player reaches the dining room at the end of the
track. There is then one final exhibition, with all the players involved. After the
final exhibition, the player who is farthest along the track wins.
As I mentioned earlier, some critics see Adel Verpflichtet as little more than a
multi-player version of rock, paper, scissors. In fact, Adel is a game of psychology
centered around a complex system of risk versus reward. There are three basic
strategies. You can “rabbit” by exhibiting your collection as often as possible,
thus moving quickly around the board; quickly enough, you hope, that you don’t
need to worry about your opponents stealing cards from you. You can hang back,
going to the auction house or playing a thief at the castle to increase the size of
your collection. Then, when you have a big collection, you can move ahead mainly
by playing a detective. Or you can be a bit more cautious and do some of both.
Adel Verpflichtet is a game full of wonderful tension. Every time you visit the
castle, you’ll find yourself wondering if it’s the right time to exhibit your collec-
tion. If you do so and everyone else plays a detective, you’ll get to move forward
and not lose any cards. Plus, everyone else will have wasted a turn. But if a player
reveals a thief, you’ll lose a card. Worse yet, if multiple players play thieves, your
collection could be ruined. Of course, everyone faces the same choices, so it all
comes down to knowing (or guessing) the other players’ tendencies and gaming
styles. If they’re conservative, they’ll avoid losing cards as much as possible. If they
are risk takers, they may try to exhibit more often. It’s hard for most people to
change their style and act against their natural tendencies, so the more you play
Adel with the same players, the more you get to know them, the better the com-
petition gets. There are other factors involved in the decisions, such as the players’
positions on the track and the sizes of their collections, but it’s the poker-type
psychological elements of posture and bluff that makes the game work.
As a designer, I am a firm believer in the elegance of simplicity. One of my
basic philosophies is that you should only give players two or three choices, but
all the choices should look like good choices. The trick, then, becomes finding
the best choice as often as possible. No game accomplishes this better than Adel
Verpflichtet and no game exemplifies the elegance of simplicity better.
Adel Verpflichtet won the coveted Spiel des Jahres in 1990, one of four such
awards presented to designer Klaus Teuber, best known for the megaseller The
Settlers of Catan. There have been many versions of the game. All of them have the
same theme and rules except for Spionage from the Swedish company G&RRR.
In Spionage, the players are spies trying to acquire secrets. The Hoity Toity ver-
sion does have one significant change: cards for a sixth player. Since more is better
when playing Adel, this is a welcome addition.
I still remember the first time I played Adel Verpflichtet. All I could think about
was how I wished I’d designed it. And to me, that is the ultimate compliment one
designer can give another. If you are looking for a game that is easy to teach and
understand, plays in less than an hour, is different every time you play it, and
gives you that good knot of tension in your stomach, Adel Verpflichtet is for you.
There’s really only one word for it: perfect.
O O O
When Alan Moon was a kid, every Sunday was family day. Along with
his father, mother, and brother, Alan would spend the day bowling, play-
ing miniature golf, going to the movies, and then end the day at home
playing games. So it wasn’t too surprising when he wound up with a
Hoity Toity O 181
career in the hobby game industry. Alan has worked at various times for
Avalon Hill, Parker Brothers, and Ravensburger F.X. Schimd USA. He
also ran his own company, White Wind, from 1990 to 1997. Since 2000,
Alan has been a full-time freelance game designer, with almost 70 games
to his credit. His first published game was Black Spy (Avalon Hill, 1981),
inspired by the classic card game, Hearts. But his first game that seemed
to get any real attention was Airlines, published by the German company
Abacus in 1990. Alan has won the Spiel des Jahres award (Game of the
Year in Germany) twice, for Elfenland in 1998 and for Ticket to Ride
in 2004. Ticket to Ride has won over 20 different awards worldwide.
His favorite games are poker, Twilight Struggle, Descent, Tichu, Cosmic
Eidex, spades, Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, Crokinole, Hunters &
Gatherers, and Liar’s Dice.
Jon Leitheusser on
Ingenious
Key Designer: Reiner Knizia
Fantasy Flight Games (2004)
It’s easy to design games. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
It’s designing elegant games that’s tricky.
And when you find an elegant game, it’s always good to make note of the
designer. That’s how I found Ingenious. I’d played and seen a number of games by
Reiner Knizia and always admired their creativity and playability. In short order I
also came to respect Knizia’s impressive output. He’s designed dozens, maybe even
thousands of games. In fact, if you play games, you’ve likely played one or more
of his. Tic-tac-toe? His. Seriously, look it up.
I’ve worked in and around the adventure gaming industry for a number of
years now, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of board games come out and few
of them interest me enough to buy them. Considering how many games release
in a given year, that’s probably a good thing. Ingenious was one of the games
that caught my attention. Even before it came out I saw it in a catalog or flyer
handed out by Fantasy Flight Games. The eye-catching cover, the bright colors,
the deceptively simple board and pieces — I knew I’d have to check out. Plus, it
was by that Knizia fella.
The day comes. I pick up my copy, crack it open, and think, This seems simple
enough. And it was. Simple, quick to learn, attractive, and it didn’t demand too
much of your attention, which made it the perfect game for people who want
something heartier than Uno, but not as involving as Monopoly. In a word, elegant.
See, elegant is what game designers look for because it makes games easy to
grasp, remember, play, have fun with, and most importantly replay! The game’s
strategies may not be clear to a first-time player, but when the player “gets” it, she
can play on a whole new level. The player understands how her choices this turn
influence her own future turns and more. Placing a single tile can either open up or
close off sections of the board — and therefore open or close options for everyone
sitting around the table.
Ingenious O 183
I shouldn’t get too far into talking about strategy and tactics before I tell you
about the game itself, so here goes. Ingenious is a board game on which the players
place plastic tiles, one each turn. The tiles are shaped like two hexagons attached
to one another. On each half of the tile are one of six different shapes and colors.
So you might have a tile with a purple outline of a circle on one half and a blue
star on the other, or a red spiky sunburst and an orange hexagon, or a green circle
and a yellow sunburst, or a tile with any two of those. All 120 of those tiles start
the game in a bag and each player randomly draws six and puts them on a little
stand so only she can see her pieces.
Players take turns placing tiles with the goal of linking them up by matching
symbols. The next step is to count out how many hexes radiate out from your
tile. If, for example, there’s a line of six blue stars on the board, I could place a
tile with a blue star at the end of that line and I’d score six points. If a yellow
sunburst were on the other half of that tile, I might be lucky enough to line that
up with some other yellow sunbursts and score some points for that, too. As for
scoring, each player has a scorecard on which she tracks the point total for each
color/shape tile. When I score six points for the aforementioned blue star, I move
my blue token ahead six and so on.
There are two clever bits going on with the scoring. First, each color has a
maximum score of 18; if you get to that score during the course of play, you yell
out “Ingenious!” and place another tile. If you plan things well, you may be able
to wrangle a couple of “ingeniouses” in a single turn. Fun. The second interesting
thing about scoring is that at the end of the game, your lowest score is what you
look at to determine the winner. Trying to get as many “ingeniouses” as possible is
great, but you still need to be aware of your lowest scoring color and try to bump
that as high as possible. It’s a nice balance and I’ve seen more than a few players
suddenly feel very bummed when they realized they weren’t doing quite as well as
they thought — and, on the flip side, I’ve seen players who felt that they weren’t
doing so well because they hadn’t scored any “ingeniouses” win the game because
all their values were generally strong. Surprising endgames are always good fun.
Since I purchased the game I’ve played it with two, three, and four players,
and it’s fun and interesting for different reasons with each. The two-player game
has a bit more strategy, whereas the four-player game is a bit more tactical; the
board can change significantly before your turn comes around again, which might
make your planned move obsolete. That factor is mitigated a bit because you’re
using more of the board when there are more of you at the table, but the game
still plays differently.
Ingenious has won a number of awards — just a few of the multitude earned
by its creator. But even among Reiner Knizia’s many legendary designs, Ingenious
remains one of his very best. It’s fun, fast, easy to learn, attractive, and a perfect
example of what a good family game can and should be. The fact that it’s also
a great example of elegant game design is a nice bonus, because when someone
asks me what I mean when I say a game is “elegant,” I can pull out Ingenious and
teach by example. Whether you’re interested in game design or in experiencing a
classic, well-designed game, I recommend playing Ingenious and learning from a
master of the art.
O O O
Jon Leitheusser has been playing games for a few decades now and has
worked in the gaming business as a clerk, distributor, marketer, publisher,
writer, and designer since the early 1990s. In that time he’s published the
Dork Tower comic book, been a game designer for HeroClix and a num-
ber of other “Clix” games, written and edited products for Green Ronin’s
Mutants & Masterminds and A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying games,
and produced the board game Battue: Storm of the Horselords for Red
Juggernaut. He splits his time between his home in Renton, Washington
and his job in Los Gatos, California, where he works at Cryptic Studios
as a systems designer. He and his fiancée Julia aren’t married, but they
will be by the time you read this.
Uli Blennemann on
Java
Key Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Michael Kiesling
The Kramer/Kiesling design team is one of the most prolific author

combos in the board gaming field. Together, they have designed 26 different titles
since 1997. Not only is their output extensive, but the quality of their releases is
outstanding as well.
Narrowing it down a bit, the Kramer/Kiesling team is responsible for nine
games in the strategy gaming field. Because these designs take 90 or more minutes
to play and feature relatively complex rules that run more than four pages, they
are not generally seen as family-type games in Germany. However, in the Anglo-
American market, where gamers are used to a greater level of complexity, the nine
easily fit the bill as family games.
I have to admit that I like almost all the Kramer/Kiesling strategy releases and
was very pleased to be involved with the publication of Maharaja in 2004. Of the
Kramer/Kiesling games I didn’t have a hand in publishing, I like Java most. Before
I tell you the reasons for this love affair, I’d like to briefly touch upon Java’s origins.
The game, along with Tikal (1999) and Mexica (2002), is sometimes identified
as part of the Mask Trilogy, so called because of their similar box cover designs.
I consider it part of a quintet that also includes Torres (1999) and the previously
mentioned Maharaja. Yes, I know — all are quite different in setting and in some
of their mechanics. However, they all use a similar action point system as the
engine to drive the gameplay.
In Java, each of the two to four players tries to forge his own empire on the
namesake island. The players build rice terraces, villages, cities, and (cardboard)
palaces. They earn points for the largest cities, for the most valuable palaces, and
for connecting terrain to water.
So how does Java play?
In each turn, a player has six points that he may spend for various actions. A
player aid card summarizes the various actions and their costs neatly. It costs one
point to place a terrain tile on the large game board. Terrain tiles cover either one,
two, or three hexes and feature water, rice terraces, or villages. Moving one of your
own wooden people tokens costs, depending on terrain, between zero and two
action points. When villages connect to a city, a player may build a palace, costing
an action point. Later, when the city has grown, the palace may be enlarged, cost-
ing another action point. Of course cities and rice need water; therefore it is also
possible to place water tiles, which cost — you guessed it — an action point. The
players start with three palace cards in their hands; purchasing additional ones
costs a point. By playing palace cards a player may host a “palace festivity” once
a turn. This, surprisingly, is done for free.
So what is special in all this?
Java is an excellent mixture of American-German design work. Historically,
games from American authors, especially in the hobby field, have been very
process orientated — that is, players take their turns in a strict sequence, one
phase or segment after the other. Take the popular and highly regarded Advanced
Civilization, published by Avalon Hill in 1991. Each turn contains 13 different
phases, all executed in strict order. During the various phases there is hardly any
interaction between players.
A lot of German games are much more freewheeling, allowing players to do
things at various times within a turn and connecting the different phases of a
player’s turn non-linearly. In Java, Kramer/Kiesling combine the more American
idea of action points (“doing this costs that”) with the “open” turn sequencing
of German-style designs. This means that a player does not have to first move his
people, then play terrain tiles, then build palaces. No, he may conduct these actions
in the sequence he determines, even doing most of the possible actions more than
once. A lot of the challenge of playing Java well does not rest in mastering the
individual game mechanics but in figuring out how to achieve the best sequence
of actions given the spending limit of six points.
Another outstanding feature in Java is its use of the third dimension. During
play you’re allowed to stack, within certain limits, terrain tiles on top of already
existing tiles, thereby connecting or dividing cities. In addition, only the player
currently occupying a city’s highest spot is allowed to build a palace or to enlarge
it. This mechanic adds a totally new dimension, in the true sense of the word, to
the competition. As players maneuver for the highest positions on the tiles, plans
must change rapidly, making for truly dynamic interaction.
Java O 187
Players receive victory points for connecting terrain to water, for building and
enlarging palaces, and for hosting palace festivities. A typical game of Java lasts
between 90 and 150 minutes, depending on the gaming group.
So, is there anything I don’t recommended about the game? Well, there are a
few rough spots, but they’re mostly minor. The graphics are okay but certainly not
spectacular. The palace cards are small and flimsy. The rest of the components are
of very good physical quality, though, in particular the extra-thick terrain tiles.
These are crucial for the three-dimensional aspect of the gameplay.
More significantly, there can be a noticeable amount of “downtime” in Java,
especially when you have someone in your group who likes to carefully weigh all
the possible consequences of his actions and does not “shoot from the hip.” That
caution is understandable; it’s not always easy to decide which action to take. But
impatient or younger players can find this an issue, particularly with a full table
of four. Still, downtime isn’t a concern with a two-player game of Java, and for
groups that want to keep things moving, a timer is always an option. So by no
means is this a problem that should keep you away from this gem.
In fact, if your experiences with this outstanding Kramer/Kiesling game are
at all like mine, playing Java will certainly inspire you to try their other strategy
designs — and you’ll find those well worth exploring, too. Enjoy!
O O O
Uli Blennemann is brand manager for Phalanx Games b.v., a leading

Dutch publisher of board- and card games since 2001. A historian by
profession, he founded Moments in History in 1993, selling it in early
1999. Besides testing and a little bit of design work, he has developed
more than 45 different games. Uli was born in 1965 and lives in Duelmen,
Germany with his wife Marion. Besides playing all kind of games he likes
reading, listening to punk music, and coaching a soccer team.
Luke Crane on
Jungle Speed
Key Designers: Thomas Vuarchex, Pierric Yakovenko
Asmodée Éditions (English edition, 2003)
I stood behind my friend Jared in a nondescript hotel bar in Indianapolis.

He sat at small cafe table with two other friends: a long-haired German industrial
musician and a rollergirl from Chicago. Ostensibly, the three of them were playing
a game. There was a six-inch dowel standing in the center of the table, seemingly
grooved to be easier to grip. The three of them were flipping bright, square cards
from their individual piles. The cards had colors and shapes on one face, a logo
on the other. Sometimes Jared would shout and then they would all fight for the
wooden dowel. I couldn’t figure out the rhyme or reason for the grabs or shouts.
Were they matching shapes? No, just then the German grabbed when matching
colors. So was that it — colors? No, now the rollergirl grabbed when her shape
matched Jared’s! Now they’re all grabbing it! I was flummoxed, but intrigued.
There was an infectious energy radiating from this game.
The round ended. I don’t remember who won. Jared invited me to play.
Fascinated, though still skeptical, I joined them at the table. My life hasn’t been
the same since.
Jungle Speed is played with two to eight players. Typically, we play with a
group of four to eight. The game consists of one deck of 80 cards and a wooden
dowel, affectionately referred to as the “totem.” Most cards are marked with a
series of abstract colored shapes — circles, squares, squiggles, and stars. A handful
of cards in the deck are “special.” These cards have arrows on them that indicate
a change in the mode of play. The entire deck of 80 cards is dealt evenly, face
down, among all the players. Each player in turn flips one card from his stack in
front of him. When the shapes on two or more face-up cards match, the players
who flipped them up all grab for the totem in the table’s center. The player who
grabs the totem first gives his face-up cards to the loser of that contest. The object
is to get rid of all your cards. The special cards can do different things — change
Jungle Speed O 189
the game to color matching instead of shape; allow all the players to grab for the
totem at once; or have all players flip a card at once.
Since that fateful night in Indianapolis, Jungle Speed has spread like a deli-
cious fever through my social circles and beyond. I have played with my family,
other people’s family, friends, and strangers. I have played in bars, coffee shops,
restaurants, hotels, and even a wedding. I’ve played on the East Coast and the
West Coast, in the Midwest and the Plains States. Nearly every party I’ve attended
since 2004 has been populated with at least one table of screaming, laughing
Jungle Speed addicts.
Jungle Speed is a killer app. Its main vector of infection is its simplicity. Anyone
can sit down and understand this game: match your card’s shape to another per-
son’s and then try to grab that tantalizingly shaped piece of wood. Okay. Simple,
right? What’s the catch? What makes that so exciting? The design of the cards
themselves is exceedingly clever. There are about a half-dozen series of cards in the
set: circles, stars, dots, squiggles, and two circle/square combinations. These series
are obviously different from one another, but within each series are a number of
slightly different variations — a four loop squiggle versus a three-loop squiggle,
for example. When these close-but-not-quite matches appear, you can see hands
jerking spasmodically as the players’ brains try to process the details. (Match?
Grab! No? Wait!) Players new to the game all go through this learning process.
We witness them physically learning the game. (When do I grab? Colors? Shapes?
Is that a match? What do those arrows mean?) Jungle Speed etches itself in the
nerves.
Best of all is the beautiful negative feedback that occurs when you do some-
thing wrong, when you knock over the totem or grab when you’re not supposed
to. In these instances, punishment is clear. The offending player gets all of the
other players’ face-up cards. Remember, the object is to get rid of all your cards,
so you have to all but literally eat crow. Everyone gets to push their cards at you
and laugh, while your cheeks blush and you groan with embarrassment. It’s such
an elegant mechanic! It’s not only deliciously humiliating, but it spurs the desire
for revenge. I know I burn to get my cards out of my hand so that I can return the
favor to my hapless opponents.
Combine the very clear system of play — grab the wooden totem when colors
or shapes match — and a neat negative feedback mechanism — when you make a
mistake, you have to eat all the cards on the table — with fast play and a simple
form factor, and you have an excellent game for quickly teaching to friends, rela-
tives, and enemies alike. It’s a classic example of a design that’s fast to learn, but
very difficult to master. Even better, to uninformed observers standing around the
table, Jungle Speed is all but incomprehensible. However, once it’s explained, it’s
grasped in an instant.
Bring Jungle Speed to your next boring old family outing. Get the relatives —
young and old! — together around a table and within 15 minutes, you’ll have a
group of flushed, chuckling, frustrated, and victorious folks. The winner will think
he’s mastered the game, and the losers will want revenge. Better deal out those
cards again. In our house, loser shuffles and deals. Winner goes first.
Ready? Flip. Colors!
O O O
Luke Crane is an award-winning gamer designer living in New York City.

He spends much of his time playing his games, Burning Wheel, Burning
Empires, Mouse Guard, and FreeMarket. When he’s not playing, he’s
researching his next project, managing the Manhattan Mayhem women’s
roller derby team, or barking up the wrong tree.
Monte Cook on
Kill Doctor Lucky

Key Designer: James Ernest
Cheapass Games (first edition, 1996)
The most difficult aspect of introducing a brand new game to players

lies within those first few moments, as you explain how to play. Even the simplest
designs can be daunting to describe to people ready and eager to enjoy themselves,
not absorb a lot of concepts and rules. You’ve got to get across the game’s gist —
how to win and what gameplay is like — quickly and clearly, or they’ll lose interest.
For many people, hardcore gamers or casual players alike, learning how to play
exists as a necessary evil to get to the fun, like eating your vegetables so you can
have dessert.
How wonderful, then, to present your friends with a brand new game that they
practically already know how to play. This was the hook that has allowed me to
introduce dozens — if not hundreds — of friends, acquaintances, and random
people at game conventions to Kill Doctor Lucky. “You know the game Clue, of
course,” I say to them. “This game is like its prequel, and you want to be the one
who kills the victim in the drawing room with the candlestick.”
And with that, they’re hooked. From a couple of sentences, they understand
the game’s concept, goal, and more or less know how to play. They only need to
learn the fine details at that point, which seems hardly daunting at all. You can
practically teach those as you go along.
What’s more, when they hear the premise of the game, they’re both amused
and intrigued. Surely committing a murder — at least in a fictional sense — is more
interesting than solving one. As the text on the envelope that the game comes in
says, “Why do all mystery games start just after all the fun is over?”
Envelope? Not box? That’s right. Because Kill Doctor Lucky is a Cheapass
Game.
Cheapass Games, as a concept, presumes that you’ve already got a lot of
games. They provide the rules and anything specific you need — such as the
cards and inexpensive paper tiles to make the game board — and you provide
the pawns, the dice, the money, or anything else commonly found in the board
games everyone’s got crammed into their closets. Cheapass sells game rules, not
manufactured pieces and expensive boards, thus keeping their prices very low.
Ironically, among the various spinoffs, sequels, and expansions of Kill Doctor
Lucky is a deluxe version from Titanic Games that includes pawns, pieces, tokens,
mounted game board, and more in a beautiful box.
James Ernest wrote many of Cheapass Games’ offerings with cleverness and
a certain sort of dark, macabre wit. Kill Doctor Lucky is certainly no exception.
It is, after all, a game about murdering an old man in his house. The very limited
“flavor” text assures you that you have a very good reason for doing in Dr. Lucky,
to alleviate any qualms you might have about the dirty deed, so don’t worry.
Murder weapons range from what you’d expect, like the revolver and the sharp
knife, to the slightly odd pinking shears or crepe pan, to the particularly absurd
tight hat or bad cream.
Just as in the aforementioned Clue, players move through a large house with
a variety of named rooms, such as the Sitting Room, the Green House, and the
Billiard Room. However, in this game, they follow Dr. Lucky around, waiting
for a time when no one’s looking so they can off the old coot. Thus, gameplay
involves collecting weapons in the form of cards and moving into position (either
by moving yourself or the doctor), also using cards, and foiling your opponents’
own murder attempts, again using — you guessed it — cards.
Resolving the success or failure of the murder attempts uses a mechanic based
loosely on the classic “Prisoner’s Dilemma” problem, in which two prisoners
are given the choice to testify against the other, potentially saving themselves
and dooming the other, but also potentially dooming themselves. When a player
attempts to murder Dr. Lucky, the other players can try to stop him by revealing
failure cards. However, it’s to each player’s advantage to force everyone else at the
table to use their failure cards first, thus weakening potential opposition for their
own attempts to kill the doctor later on.
It’s this gameplay aspect that truly puts Kill Doctor Lucky on a bit of a ped-
estal. Winning the game is not just a simple matter of drawing the right cards.
Instead, a player must master the bluff as he pretends that he doesn’t have enough
failure cards to stop the current murder attempt, forcing his fellow players to
burns through their cards to stop it instead. The risk, of course, is that the other
players don’t have the necessary failure cards or also refuse to use them, thus
Kill Doctor Lucky O 193
allowing the murder to succeed. But if a would-be murderer gambles correctly, he

drains everyone else of failure cards so that when he makes his own attempt to
knock off the old man, no one can stop him.
The game also allows for different strategies for murder attempts. Some try
to bump off Dr. Lucky every chance they get, while others bide their time and
maneuver the good doctor into position, employing a particular weapon and room
combination that is almost impossible to stop. Almost. The good doctor is, as
his name implies, very lucky. Actuarial tables need not be rewritten, however, for
Dr. Lucky’s eventual demise is guaranteed, thanks to another simple but brilliant
mechanic — all the used or discarded cards are reshuffled back into the deck . .
. except for failure cards. Eventually, the deck will run out of this resource, and
some craven murderer will put an end to Dr. Lucky once and for all.
Despite the multifarious aspects of gameplay, the mechanics of Kill Doctor
Lucky remain clear and straightforward. The actual rules consist of a bit more
than two pages. Very likely fewer words than this essay, in fact.
It seems almost natural with Kill Doctor Lucky’s set-up — being part of a
group scheming to murder an almost supernaturally fortunate old codger with a
chain saw or a shoe horn — that the players get into the wryly sinister spirit of the
game and begin saying things such as, “Why Dr. Lucky, would you mind looking
down the barrel of this old Civil War cannon here in the Armory?” to describe
their play for the turn. With everyone focused on the same, rather simple (albeit
dastardly) goal, the game provides plenty of room for silliness. In fact, it clearly
encourages it.
Kill Doctor Lucky won an Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game in
1998. Various expansions provide alternate boards, optional rules — a favorite
involves a dog that you must eliminate before you can kill the old man — and
a “prequel” called Save Doctor Lucky that puts him on a sinking ocean liner, a
la the Titanic. But in all honesty, the game doesn’t need a lot of additional rules,
boards, or variants. The original edition, in all its simplistic glory, deserves par-
ticular attention. The mixture of dark humor, ingenious but simple mechanics, and
a premise that is immediately understandable — and compelling — makes Kill
Doctor Lucky a great game.
O O O
Monte Cook has been working on games professionally since the late
1980s. In that time, he has published material for a variety of games,
including Dungeons & Dragons, Rolemaster, Champions, Call of
Cthulhu, and Alternity. He designed HeroClix, and co-designed the third
edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Under his own Malhavoc Press banner,
he published such titles as The Book of Eldritch Might, Monte Cook’s
Arcana Evolved, and Ptolus: Monte Cook’s City by the Spire. Monte has
also published two novels and numerous short stories, as well as a non-
fictional but humorous work called The Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracies.
Emiliano Sciarra on
Knightmare Chess
Key Designers: Pierre Cléquin, Bruno Faidutti
Steve Jackson Games (English edition, 1996)
The rules for chess are part of everyone’s culture — at least, they should
be. Most people are familiar with the basics of this unparalleled classic, which is
easily one of the world’s most celebrated games. Notwithstanding this, you may be
surprised to learn that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of variations on this
well-known game, some dating back to the 13th century. These variants, known
collectively as “fairy chess,” include everything you might imagine and then some
— larger and oddly shaped chessboards, strange pieces with exotic movements
and capturing skills, unique winning conditions, unorthodox starting positions. . .
. I know about all of them because I love chess as much as I do games in general,
to the point of founding my local chess club. And even if I think of chess as the
best game ever made, I have always been enthralled by these oddities, maybe just
to see how brilliant minds through the centuries have tried to improve this ever-
lasting masterwork.
The chess variant I prefer above all is the one created by Bruno Faidutti and
Pierre Cléquin, the former being probably the greatest and most famous modern
French game designer. Their game was originally titled Tempête sur l’échiquier,
roughly translated as “storm on the chessboard,” and was published by Ludodélire
in 1991; however, it enjoyed a worldwide success when Steve Jackson Games
printed an English version titled Knightmare Chess. So you won’t even have to
learn French to play this dazzling and amusing game.
The rules of Knightmare Chess are very simple and straightforward, provided
you already know the rules of chess. The game adds the use of a deck of cards to
a regular chess set. Both players have hands of five of these cards, and each time a
player moves a piece, he may also play a card from his hand. Some cards must be
revealed before a move and not after. Certain cards replace a regular move. Some
have one-shot effects, while others introduce effects that last much longer. After
you play a card, you draw another one from the deck. There is just one essential
rule to pay attention to: no card can directly cause the capture of a king. That is,
you must reach the final checkmate through regular means, no card tricks allowed.
And that’s the heart of the rules. Of course, the real fun lies in what the cards
do, and you will find that they unleash some of the most hilarious, captivating,
and confounding effects you can imagine. You may swap the positions of two
pieces, or relocate your king to any unoccupied square — or even hide your king
outside the board for a turn. Some cards permit you to block an opponent’s piece
halfway through a move, return captured pieces to play, or destroy a piece just by
threatening it. Others allow you to set deadly traps on certain squares or build
impassable fortifications on them. Curses make pieces weaker, but there are also
special powers that can make a piece stronger. Then there’s Fireball — one of your
pieces explodes, removing all the unfortunate inhabitants of the eight adjacent
squares, regardless of color.
Certain card effects can have you literally shaking up the board, as well as the
situation on it. These are, of course, among my favorites. Take Earthquake, for
example. Play that and you turn the board 90 degrees clockwise or counterclock-
wise. Pawns still move away from their owner, however, so the shift means that
you can immediately promote all the pawns on one side of the board!
I could go on, but you get the idea.
There are 80 different cards in the basic set, plus 78 additional ones in the
expansion, dubbed Knightmare Chess 2, so you can run through many games
before seeing the same effects in play. The Steve Jackson edition of Tempête intro-
duces some changes from the French version. Most are fine, though I must admit
that I prefer the original edition’s use of a common deck for both players.
One of the best things about Knightmare Chess is that it allows you to play a
competitive game of chess — or, at least, something using the general strategy of
chess — with players a lot stronger or weaker than you, while still having a great
time. Of course, if you are an overly serious chess player, someone who spends
countless hours studying the most obscure branches of the Najdorf Sicilian, and
are eager to beat your opponents with your knowledge of openings, your precision
in the middlegame, and your ability in the endgame, you are in the wrong place.
But this holds true for any fairy chess variation.
Even if you’re serious about chess, don’t dismiss the game out of hand. Expert
players will recognize all the irony and the twists that Knightmare Chess offers
over classical chess: unavoidable checkmates repeatedly foiled, hopeless pieces
Knightmare Chess O 197
surviving while their attackers are captured, one or two moves turning perfect
arrangements into catastrophically weak positions. You will quickly learn to be
wary of the so-called “winning positions,” even when you see a mate in one for
your color. Checkmates are especially hard to achieve in Knightmare Chess, and
when you manage to reach them it is only after countless jumps, escapes, counter-
moves, masquerades, and all sorts of unexpected events. However, don’t think the
game is entirely random: real strategy is required to effectively play your cards,
and no luck of the draw can save you indefinitely if you play haphazardly.
Knightmare Chess strikes a terrific balance between the chaos of luck — which
would have made the game unplayable or at least uninteresting — and the precise,
irrefutable logic typical of chess. As a matter of fact, chess is a game where you
know everything and there is no luck at all. If you lose, your opponent played
better than you, even by a little bit; that’s one of the most beautiful, fascinating,
and merciless aspects of chess.
Through the addition of the cards, Knightmare Chess introduces just the right
amount of both hidden information and luck to chess. The ultimate effect of these
modifications is to make the game faster and less serious. There’s no point in
spending long minutes computing your next five moves in advance if all your care-
ful estimates may be sudden overridden by an obscure card nonchalantly played
by your opponent five seconds later.
Knightmare Chess may be not a triumph of logic. It is, however, most certainly
a triumph of fun.
O O O
Emiliano Sciarra is a game designer, video game designer, and game

scholar born in 1971 in the Roman port of Civitavecchia. His most
renowned game is the Wild West-themed Bang!, published by daVinci in
2002, followed by its expansions: High Noon, Dodge City, and A Fistful
of Cards. Apart from his game design career, he has a degree in computer
science and works as freelance programmer and graphic designer. He is
also interested in a wide range of subjects — from ancient traditions to
history, music, and mathematics — about which he has presented public
lectures and written books and essays.
Todd A. Breitenstein on
Liar’s Dice
Key Designer: Richard Borg
Liar’s Dice is, without a doubt, the greatest family game ever created.
Unless I’m lying. . . .
Of course, I don’t believe the above statement is a lie. At worst, it’s an exag-
geration, a slightly tall tale. But that gets to the heart of what is the great thing
about Liar’s Dice. At its core, it’s a very simple storytelling game. Admittedly, the
stories are very short and virtually all the same. Still, one can almost think of the
game as an exercise in focused “creative” thinking.
My first memory of playing Liar’s Dice originates from when I was 10 or 11
years old. My father taught us kids to play liar’s poker using the serial numbers
on dollar bills. Dad played for keeps and since he was a much more accomplished
“storyteller” than me, I lost a lot. It was an expensive lesson and we didn’t play
too often. On the up side, the experience certainly taught me the value of money
and gave me a tradition to pass on to my own kids.
I became aware of Liar’s Dice a little later in life, perhaps when I was in high
school or early on in college. When someone showed me, I recognized it immedi-
ately. It was basically the same game my dad showed me. Sure, you played with
dice, and when you lost you only lost one of your dice, but it was the same deal.
Better yet, I didn’t have to hand out a dollar every time someone called my bluff.
As it turns out, the game we were playing is far older than I had ever imagined.
It seems that humans by their very nature enjoy lying to each other and have for
a long time. It’s believed that the game, then called Perudo, was developed in South
America and was brought to Spain by the explorer Pizarro in the 16th century. Not
surprisingly, it found favor among pirates. The rules were finally standardized by
Richard Borg and published by Milton Bradley in 1977. In 1993, a version of
Liar’s Dice won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres in Germany. I think you will agree
that you won’t find a design with a better pedigree!
The biggest reason Liar’s Dice is my favorite family game is the ease with which
Liar’s Dice O 199
it can be taught. The game involves secretly rolling a number of dice, usually five,
and then trying to beat the hand of the people playing against you.
Generally there are two versions of the game: individual hand and common
hand. Individual hand means that each player has his or her own set of dice and
bids are based on what you can see in your hand versus the hidden dice from all
other players. This version is my favorite. Common hand only uses one set of five
dice that is passed to the next person as play progresses. Both versions are, as you
might imagine, easily modified to become a drinking game.
In the individual hand version, all players roll their dice. The first player starts
by claiming to have a particular poker hand. This is generally called a “bid.” It is
important to keep in mind that it is perfectly acceptable to lie in this game, as the
name suggests. Players are also encouraged to use whatever dice might be hidden
in their opponents’ hands, as well.
Let’s say the first player bids two 3s. It is up to the next player to beat that
hand by claiming to have either more 3s or the same quantity of a higher number.
For example, a bid of three 3s will beat the bid of two 3s, as will a bid of two
4s. Conversely, two 2s will not work. Players will start running out of options by
the fourth or fifth bid. This is when the liar part of Liar’s Dice really comes into
play. Once someone bids five of any number, chances are, they don’t have it. Then
again, they just might. . . .
Since you can use your opponents’ hidden dice to form your hand, five-of-a-
kind isn’t really out of the question. Let’s say I bid three 1s. The next player can
build on my bid using his own dice, bidding five 1s. Whether he has that number
or not isn’t really important. He just needs to convince everyone else that he does!
But because of the ability to pool your dice with those you can’t see, six-, seven-,
and even eight-of-a-kind hands are possible, depending on the number of players
at the table and, of course, their bluffing skill.
The challenge on your turn quickly becomes figuring out if the previous player
is lying. Or, if you believe his bid, trying to find a hand that is both plausible and
sufficient to beat it. And that’s often where the bluff comes in. You see, in this
game lying is not only fair play, it’s encouraged! In fact, if you don’t lie or are a
bad liar, you really won’t have much of a chance of winning.
A turn ends when a player calls the previous player’s bluff. Everyone reveals
their dice. If the bidder was indeed lying, he loses one of his dice. If the bidder
wasn’t lying, the player who called him on it loses her die. Run out of dice and
you’re out of the game. The last player with dice wins.
The common hand version is played much the same way, save that all players
use the same five dice. Each player rolls on his turn and has to beat the bid of the
previous player. Instead of losing dice a player loses tokens — generally three —
when he loses a round. This version is much quicker, as there are fewer options.
Let’s face it, if you bid five-of-a-kind in common hand, you’re probably lying.
There are lots of Internet resources with tips and techniques on how to play
Liar’s Dice. If you are especially motivated, you can even find magnificent math-
ematic formulas for determining the chances of a player holding a particular
hand. In fact, Liar’s Dice is a perfect way to introduce people to probability and
statistics. Personally, I’m not that ambitious or that good at math. Besides, in my
mind, knowing the odds completely robs the game of the fun, and fun is what
Liar’s Dice is all about!
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that a pastime that encour-
ages lying is probably not suitable for families. You may be right. My family might
be the exception. But if you are like us, you’ll have a blast with this game. I defy
anyone to sit around a table playing Liar’s Dice and not laugh hysterically. It can’t
be done!
Of course, I might be lying. . . .
O O O
Like many before him, Todd A. Breitenstein started gaming in high

school. In college Todd moved from roleplaying games into more tradi-
tional card games. He was brought back into hobby gaming when friends
gave him a Magic: The Gathering starter set for his 30th birthday. His
career in the hobby gaming industry started in 2000, at the United States
Playing Card Company. There he helped create several popular games,
including the Scooby Doo CCG and Zombies!!! When the hobby division
of USPC was dissolved in 2002, Todd and his wife Kerry started Twilight
Creations, Inc. Twilight Creations has continued the popular Zombies!!!
line and introduced many more well-received titles, such as MidEvil and
Humans!!!, that feature the work of both well-known and budding game
designers.
Marc Gascoigne on
Loopin’ Louie
Key Designer: Carol Wisely
I’ve always tried to be a champion of simple but intriguing board and card
games as recruiters of non-gamers, young or old, into the delights of those many
games that exist just a short step beyond the usual canon of Monopoly, Clue(do),
and all the other members of the same-old same-old club. But now it’s personal.
I have two small children, aged (at time of writing) five and two. They will have
little option but to come to love board games as they grow up with me as their
dad. Right now, though, the choices for things to play have proved pretty limited.
There’s a swathe of poor action toys where the kids get to smash things with little
weapons — in a caring, right-on way, you understand. There are plenty of don’t-
trigger-the-spring games, but a two-year-old definitely doesn’t have a safe-cracker’s
skill at avoiding making things pop up all the time.
In our house we all agree, Loopin’ Louie is the business.
It looks, well, like every other child-friendly game: all garish, cartoony graph-
ics and lots of white plastic bits that dad has to snap together then cover in the
appropriate stickers. But hidden behind its gauche construction is a cracking little
game of skill that transcends its young target audience.
Gameplay is apparently simple. Louie is a crazy-looking barnstormer, sitting in
his elderly airplane. This is mounted on the end of a counter-weighted boom and
rotates around a battery-operated column. In his path are chickens, or rather discs
marked with chicken stickers, four per player, to all intents and purposes sitting
on farmyard walls. On his normal trajectory, each turn around Louie will clip one
of your chickens and knock it off the wall. Lose four and you cannot win, because
the winner is the last one with chickens left on the wall. Luckily, each player has
a handy defense against Louie’s strafing: a small paddle that, when flicked at just
the right moment, can send Louie hopping harmlessly over one’s chickens — and,
if one is very, very skilled, crashing into the next player’s birds.
Yes, I did say “very, very skilled.” Because this deceptively packaged game can
be a furious battleground for four clenched-teeth grown-ups as they try to keep

exuberance properly in check and pull off a perfectly controlled Immelmann turn
to catch the next guy around off his guard. This is real-time, too — just because
you survived this turn around, look lively, because four seconds later he’s back
again . . . unless your kid has once again managed to pull off a lovely one-eighty
straight up and over the top, and dropped that plane directly onto your wall. It’s
this barely glimpsed impression that just a little more concentration, a soupçon
more skill, will bring control over Louie and ultimate victory, that elicits a power-
ful “just one more game!” feeling in adults . . . and also in even the smallest kids.
Since each game takes barely 10 minutes to play, you aren’t ever going to stop at
just one.
For the littlest players, there is also the added factor that you press a switch
and this little guy in a plane goes around and around. And he is pretty mesmer-
izing. But it doesn’t take much to bat Louie over your chickens in a basic fashion,
and watch the counterweight bounce him straight into your dad’s own wall of
birds. Unlike all those whack-the-creature challenges, this is one game where being
a little soft on the paddle is actually a far better tactic than belting the thing. Too
hard, as little ones learn quicker than old timers, it seems, and your own chickens
will fall off. You also run the risk of flipping Louie straight up into a circular loop
that will bring him flying immediately back at you again. Learning the self-control
to flick him gently enough and just right, and the consistency to do it over and over
again — well, let’s just say it’s been a delight to watch my two on that journey.
And what about that other prerequisite for any really good development as a
potential gamer: really sneaky behavior? Oh yes. Apart from all that skilful plane
flipping, what sets Loopin’ Louie aside from most other games and helps keep
even the most easily distracted nipper focused is the rule that, even if you lose all
your chickens, you can and must still flip Louie. Very smart. There’s also a simple
handicap system, by the way, for games with players of mixed abilities — turn
the paddle sideways by 90 degrees and it’s half the width, and thus harder to use.
Despite the age recommendation of four-plus, my kids were playing Loopin’
Louie at two. However, in my limited experience outside my family, the most
naturally skilled players, i.e. the ones you really got to watch out for, are the
nine- and 10-year-olds. They just seem to get it. Us older players — well, we have
to work far harder to perfect a consistent tail-flick that will send Louie spiraling
madly around the circle, or that delirious tap when one just skims that plane into
Loopin’ Louie O 203
exactly the right drop where you know there’s nothing the next guy can do to hit
him. There’s always more to be learned, most especially about control, lightness of
touch, and consistency. Try doing any of those things when you have three gamer
friends all hammering away at their paddles like crazed maniacs, or worse, when
you’re up against a pair of demonic children who know just how to send Louie
skimming straight at you time and time again, though, and you’re a better player
than me.
The august online members of BoardGameGeek review and rate pretty much
every board game ever made. Loopin’ Louie has long attracted attention and
debate in those rarefied circles, because it is their best-rated children’s game. But
those experts know that a game which can be played by parents and their young
kids, or bring four gamers with decades of pursuing their hobby to the brink of
delighted but thwarted screaming, is very special. So ignore the toothpaste-bright
packaging and the crazy concept and track this one down. Because when Louie’s
been flicked straight up so his plane’s hovering perfectly vertically, and time seems
to slow, and the seconds tick by, one . . . two . . . and he slooowly starts to tilt,
caught in gravity’s grasp once more, readying himself to smash full tilt into your
chickens, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and your kid has a supremely
confident look on his face that you’ve never seen before . . . well, you should find
out what that feels like. And if not, Loopin’ Louie is still a splendid family game
that you should keep pulling off the shelf for years.
O O O
In his time, Marc Gascoigne has worked as a writer, editor, designer, or

manager for Games Workshop, FASA, Chaosium, Penguin Books, Virgin,
and many others. He is currently administering a sound beating to science
fiction and fantasy publishing as publishing director for HarperCollins’
new worldwide genre novels imprint, the wonderfully named Angry
Robot.
Andrew Parks on
Lord of the Rings:

The Confrontation
Fantasy Flight Games (English edition, 2002)
J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series, The Lord of the Rings, has inspired the
imaginations of readers for over 70 years. But it was the success of the recent film
trilogy from Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema that launched the rich world
of Middle-earth to the forefront of popular culture. As a result, there has been an
astounding selection of recent games devoted to the Tolkien license, much to the
delight of Tolkien fans everywhere, myself included!
With so many intriguing Tolkien games to choose from, you may think it dif-
ficult to pinpoint the perfect family game based on Middle-earth, but renowned
game designer Reiner Knizia has provided us with just such a gem. Lord of the
Rings: The Confrontation is a fast-playing strategic board game for two players.
It plays in about 20 to 30 minutes, but you will want to reserve a lot of time to
explore this extremely addictive game. You may find yourself embroiled in the
struggles of the One Ring for hours at a time if you do not have the will to resist
playing it “one more time.”
At a glance, you may find yourself drawing parallels between The Confrontation
and the more famous Jacques Johan Mogendorff design, Stratego. In both, play-
ers secretly set up their armies on the board using plastic stands that shield their
pieces’ identities from their opponent. In The Confrontation, one side plays the
forces of Good, embodied by the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring,
including Frodo, Sam, and Gandalf. The other side plays the Dark, represented
by nine of Sauron’s fiercest champions, including such heavy hitters as the Witch
King, Balrog, and Shelob. Each turn, a player moves one of her pieces forward
one space on the board. If an opponent’s piece occupies that space, a battle ensues.
Both character markers are revealed and the conflict is resolved based upon their
relative strengths.
Lord of the Rings O 205
But that is where the comparison to Stratego ends. First of all, the board itself,
beautifully illustrated by famed Tolkien artist John Howe, is remarkably different.
The Confrontation features a smaller board without the grid-like pattern used in
Stratego and similar strategy games. There are only 16 spaces of various shapes
and sizes on the square board, which is oriented so that each player faces a corner;
thus, each of the two territories more closely resembles a pyramid, with the apex
closest to the player and the base toward her adversary.
Each character possesses a unique special ability that reflects his or her role in
the original story. The free-ranging Aragorn, for example, can move in any direc-
tion to battle the forces of the Dark, while most other characters are only allowed
to move forward into a region. The hobbit Merry, although humble in strength
against most foes, can reprise his greatest moment of glory in the novels by
instantly defeating the Witch King. These special abilities create dramatic tension
in the game. Even the mightiest forces of Sauron must give pause when trudging
forward, since they are weak against certain enemies.
When two opposing characters face off, each player selects a card from her
hand. Most cards simply add strength to the character, augmenting the number
value on the marker itself, while others represent surprise maneuvers that can
really turn the tables during a battle. For example, the members of the Fellowship
can employ the card Noble Sacrifice, which causes both characters in a battle to
be immediately destroyed and removed from play. In all, the gameplay is fast and
exciting, as players snap their character tokens forward in anticipation of their
opponent’s swift response.
The object of the game is simple. For the Good player, Frodo must enter
Mordor, the region closest to the Dark player, in order to destroy the One Ring.
The Dark wins if Frodo is destroyed or three of its minions move into the Shire,
the region closest to the Good player.
One of the game’s most clever mechanics involves the mountain regions that
stretch across the board’s neutral center. Most regions can hold up to two allied
characters, making it possible for certain combinations, such as Frodo and Sam,
to survive a battle against a powerful foe. But the mountain regions allow only
one character at a time. This complicates movement for Frodo, in particular. Since
the Dark’s minions are always eager to catch Frodo alone, the Good player must
employ a bit of bluff-work and misdirection to successfully move him across the
mountains, or perhaps send a stronger ally to clear the way for the Ring-bearer.
The Confrontation displays its thematic brilliance at every turn. The game’s
author, Reiner Knizia, is one of the most famed and prolific designers in the world.
Yet this doctor of mathematics is often known for creating titles for which mechan-
ics are central, theme ancillary. But this is not the case with The Confrontation. The
spirit of Middle-earth comes alive in the game. You really get the sense that each
character has a specific destiny to fulfill, and you must do your best to help him or
her reach that potential. Will the Balrog be waiting to destroy anyone adventurous
enough to sneak through the Tunnel of Moria? Will Boromir go out in a blaze of
glory, taking down one of the enemy’s mightiest agents?
Yet the game’s strongly realized theme does not make it inaccessible to those
who don’t know Tolkien’s writings; the characters’ special abilities are easy to
understand and do not require deep knowledge of the story. The game can, in
fact, serve as a fun introduction into Tolkien’s rich world of hobbits, elves, and
wizards, and may even inspire players to pick up the novels to learn more about
the characters and story.
Perhaps the greatest feature of The Confrontation is its replay value. Since each
side can set up its characters differently every game, there are endless combina-
tions of strategies to pursue. Sometimes the Fellowship can try to play it safe by
keeping Frodo and Sam back while the big folk clear out a few enemies for them.
Other times the Fellowship can surprise Sauron’s agents by sneaking Frodo across
the mountains while the enemy is focused elsewhere, and then use the Shadowfax
card, representing Gandalf’s famous horse, to charge forward two spaces into
Mordor and seize the game. For the Dark player, a key strategy may involve
sending some weaker minions forward to scout out the Ring. Other times, the
Dark may seek to overwhelm the heroes by directing its mightiest warriors across
the mountains right at the start.
In 2006, Fantasy Flight Games released a deluxe edition of The Confrontation.
It includes alternate versions of the first edition characters with different powers,
as well as new recruits such as Treebeard and Gollum. Whether you play this
expanded edition or the original, though, do yourself a favor and give the game a
try. After a few perilous treks through the Misty Mountains or the Gap of Rohan,
you’re certain to agree that Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation is one of the
greatest two-player games ever made.
O O O
Lord of the Rings O 207
Andrew Parks has been designing board and card games since 2003.
His first design, Ideology: The War of Ideas, was re-released in 2009 in
an updated edition by Z-Man Games. His other designs include Camelot
Legends (2004) and Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean (2005) (co-designed
by Jason Hawkins), which won the Origins Award for Board Game of
the Year. He’s also created games based on movie licenses, including The
Nightmare Before Christmas TCG (2005) (co-designed by Zev Shlasinger),
300: The Board Game (2007), The Office Space Party Game (2008),
and Hogwarts: House Cup Challenge (2008). In 2005, Andrew formed
Quixotic Games, a design studio devoted to creating innovative games
for a variety of publishers. His designs have been nominated for many
industry awards and have earned distinction in such indexes as Games
magazine’s Games 100 and Austria’s Wiener Spiele Mischung Selektion.
Seth Johnson on
Lost Cities
Let me tell you a tale of adventure, a tale of a young man in love: your
first date over sushi, your first kiss, your first realization that the stakes — and
rewards — of every move you make might be much higher than you first expected.
On an early date she even talks about how much she loves games, and a few dates
later she brings along one of her favorites. That’s when she seals the deal by pulling
out a copy of Lost Cities.
See, if you’re in search of adventure, Lost Cities is a two-player game with
adventure at its heart — as well as all the turmoil you’ll find on the greatest
journeys. In Lost Cities you become an explorer setting out on five expeditions
into the blank spots on the map, each with its own destination and its own color:
pyramids in the desert (yellow), ruins far beneath the waves (blue), a city high in
the Himalayas (white), a temple deep in the Brazilian rain forest (green), and a
mysterious circle of stones at the heart of a volcano (red). Each expedition has
cards valued from 1 to 10 points, and you receive eight random cards from the
deck at the beginning of a round.
Your opponent in the game is a rival explorer, and as you take turns play-
ing cards, you both launch missions to each destination, journeying out onto
the desert sands or taking your first steps up an icy mountain path. Your initial
hand may look like a wealth of colors and possibilities, but expeditions are costly
things. As soon as you play your first colored card you’re 20 points in the hole
for that color’s expedition, and if the sum of all the cards you play of that color
doesn’t exceed 20 before the last card is drawn off the deck and the round ends,
you’ll actually score negative points for that mission. Perhaps your submersible
was lost to the depths or your scouting party went native and never returned from
the heart of darkness!
Even the most reckless of explorers will soon come to realize that playing each
and every card in your hand at the best possible moment is critical to your success
Lost Cities O 209
in Lost Cities. Once you play a card to begin an expedition, you can’t thereafter
play a card of a lower value for that same mission. Launch an expedition with too
high a card and you might find your opponent playing the even higher-value cards
you were hoping for, leaving you unable to muster the ones needed to pull your
expedition into successful territory. Rather than being forced to play a card on
your turn and lock an expedition into an untenable state, you may discard . . . but
discarded cards can be drawn again, and you risk giving your opponent exactly
the cards she needs for her own expeditions. Then, just when you think you’re
getting a handle on adventure finance, you’ll find an investment card in your
hand: play one of those into your expedition before any numbered card and you
can double your success. Of course, you could also end up doubling your failure,
should your expedition come up short.
If you’re setting out on your first journeys in Lost Cities, you’ll find that your
biggest challenge will be mastering your own instincts. Give in to the temptation
to hold cards in your hand until you’re certain to score points and you may sud-
denly find yourself with insufficient turns left to get all your funding into play.
Launch an expedition too soon and you betray your plans early enough for your
opponent to hang onto the critical cards you may be hoping to use. Throw in
the luck of the draw and a skilled opponent sitting across the table, and that
flush of possibility you feel as you scan your initial hand of promising cards can
prove fleeting, particularly when you realize that your opponent is playing — or,
worse, holding and hiding! — the cards you need for your plans to come together.
Conversely, bold plays with a rough draw can lead to incredible rewards, thanks
to a bit of luck and smart guesses about your opponent’s strategy. Nearly every
round is packed with unexpected twists and outcomes — so the rules recommend
playing multiple rounds and then adding up the total to determine a final winner.
All in all, Lost Cities brings simple interactions of simple components into per-
fect balance, a wonderful complexity born of five colors and 60 cards. But you’ll
hardly be surprised by that once you read the name of the game’s designer on the
box: Reiner Knizia. If you manage to make it past the awe-inspiring list of games
Knizia has designed and the awards they’ve garnered, including an International
Gamers Award for Best Strategy Game for Lost Cities, you’ll find that Knizia once
worked in the finance industry. Since my first game of Lost Cities it’s always
been easy for me to imagine him in those earlier days, when he may have dreamed
of pushing aside the terribly mundane financial documents and taking a chance,
of risking everything for a more exotic, adventurous life. With Lost Cities, he gave
us all a chance to play out that dream.
There are never enough great two-player games, so the depth and drama
Knizia brought to Lost Cities is beloved by players around the world. Thanks to
the game’s release on Xbox Live Arcade, you can now even play online against
people far away from your game table. Since its release, Lost Cities has become
such a well-known name that when Knizia’s board game Keltis was brought to the
U.S. it was rebranded as Lost Cities: The Board Game; as proven by its own Spiel
des Jahres award, it, too, remains well worth exploring.
As we play them, good games teach us something about the other players
around the table — and the best ones teach us something about ourselves. I could
go on about why Lost Cities is about much more to me than planning expeditions
and scoring points, but it may suffice to say that sitting across from a girl playing
Lost Cities I found what I’d been searching for. From then on, whenever I set out
on expeditions, I knew who’d be at my side . . . when she wasn’t on the other side
of the game table.
Who knows what you’ll discover in life and games alike when you make your
own journeys into the blank spots on the map?
O O O
Seth Johnson has been a writer and game designer since the early
1990s, creating board games, computer games, card games, miniature
games, roleplaying games, and console games, while writing for doz-
ens of books and magazines. His design credits include work on Mage
Knight, HeroClix, the World of Warcraft RPG, and, most recently,
Nanovor. He, his wife, and their merged game collections (including that
copy of Lost Cities) live outside Seattle.
John Yianni on
Magi-Nation
Key Designers: Philip Tavel, Dan Tibbles, Josh Lytle
Interactive Imagination Corporation (2000)
The Moonlands seem eerily quiet since Interactive Imagination put an

end to one of the best collectible card games to hit the gaming tables in a long
time. The snorting of the cave rudwot has been silenced and the monstrous bulk
of the giant parathin is nowhere to be seen. Gone, too, are the echoing squawks of
the flying darbok with its twin heads, and even the spectacular electric storms of
the lightning hyren no longer fill the night sky. I can still hear the cracking sound
in the aftermath of a thermal blast spell as it singes the wings off of an n’kala
dream creature and drives it out of sight. But the sound is born of nostalgia, a
replay of the scene in my head like a dream vividly remembered.
The game, however, remains alive, even though no publisher may ever pres-
ent the promised Traitor’s Reach and Daybreak expansions, and I doubt that the
rumored subset featuring the guardians, a race of magi who remove energy when
attacked, will ever see the light of day. Even so, my family and I will still bring the
Moonlands alive every time we take out our carefully built decks and lay down a
stack representing a trio of magi ready for a duel.
Magi-Nation is a collectible card game where players take on the role of magi,
powerful magicians who join forces to battle for control of the Moonlands. There
are four different types of cards in the deck:
O Magi: The various characters you control. Each has individual

strengths and weaknesses, lending a different flavor to every deck
and requiring a unique strategy;
O Dream Creatures: Entities the magi must summon to fight on their

behalf;
O Spells: Magic the combatants can unleash with devastating effect;
O Relics: Ancient artifacts with their own magical properties.

Each of your three magi has a starting energy level that is replenished at the
beginning of your turn. With that energy they can cast spells, summon creatures,
or bring out relics, all of which are employed in their conflict with the other magi
triads participating in the duel. This idea of self-contained energy is one of the
most beautiful concepts in Magi-Nation. There are no resource cards — cards you
must have in your hand in order to power a spell or summon a creature — so
you’re not doomed ever to start the game without energy. Neither do you have
to give over a quarter of your deck to uninspiring, but functional resource items.
So, as the turn begins, we take some blue and clear glass beads to energize our
first magi, adding them to his base energy level. (Though the game’s starter packs
include little hex card counters for this purpose, we decided that tactile glass beads
were much nicer.) Your magi’s energy is used first to activate powers, spells, and
relics. Then it can be utilized in the attacks from any dream creatures you have
on the field. Dream creatures attack by removing energy simultaneously from
another dream creature and themselves; any beast completely drained of energy is
defeated. You can also summon new creatures to the field by spending more of
your magi’s energy and giving it to your newly arrived minion. You end your turn
by once again activating powers, spells, or relics, before replenishing your hand
with new cards.
Keeping a strong array of dream creatures between your three magi and their
enemies is crucial. Once the dream creatures defending a magi are removed, the
wizard himself can be targeted. If a magi’s energy is brought to zero with an attack
or if he’s attacked when he has no energy, he is defeated. Because your magi is
only re-energized at the start of your next turn, he must count on the protection of
dream creatures and relics until then. Once all three magi of any one player have
fallen, the duel is over.
One of the things I love most about the game is its compelling artwork.
American artists including Tim Gillette, Chana Goodman, Ryan Shreve, and Rich
Werner all contributed to the cards, but the look of Magi-Nation is based largely
on the original creations of Matt Holmberg. His distinctive, manga-inspired style,
with its strong, sweeping lines, makes for a very pleasing visual experience. The
artwork also helps players visualize the game’s action and fantastic setting.
With sorcerers conjuring up strange beasts from the depths of exotic locales,
casting spectacular spells, and unleashing an arsenal of formidable artifacts, the
world of Magi-Nation is an amazing place to visit.
Magi-Nation O 213
The game is set in the Moonlands, a world divided — initially, at least — into
five regions: Arderial, a sky-realm of clouds and the keepers of wind magic; Cald,
a fiery land of active volcanoes and lava lakes; Naroom, a vast area of plains and
forests; Orothe, the underwater city populated by mermaid-like magi; and the
Underneath, a realm of dark-shrouded caves and shadowy creatures. Against this
backdrop is painted an enchanting storyline, one made all the more dynamic by
Interactive Imagination’s decision to allow the game’s fans to shape the saga of the
Moonlands. The publisher factored in the outcomes of various fan tournaments
to the storyline, resulting in some very interesting twists and turns in the card sets
and short stories created to expand the world.
The central narrative for the Magi-Nation base set encompasses what’s known
as the “Shadow Geyser” plotline, which chronicles the efforts of the evil sorcerer
Agram to conquer the Moonlands. Centuries earlier, Agram had been banished to
a prison in the Core, and his machinations set up the conflict that propels the story
along, as characters are given the choice of siding with or against the shadow magi
and the Core’s dark inhabitants. This good versus evil struggle continues and the
Core region is introduced into play with Awakenings, the game’s first expansion,
in 2001. Awakenings was followed quickly by Dream’s End, which takes things
down an interesting path with dual region cards, powerful shadow geyser spells,
and the revelation of two new regions: the mountainous Kybar’s Teeth and the
grasslands known as the Weave.
Two more releases further expanded the Moonlands. Nightmare’s Dawn, pub-
lished in 2002, introduces the swamp region of Bograth and the jungle region of
Paradwyn. Nightmare’s Dawn also previews two additional areas: the deserts of
d’Resh and the icy wastes of Nar. The final Magi-Nation expansion, Voice of the
Storms, proved the game’s swan song. Released late in 2002, it fully reveals the
regions previewed earlier in the year and adds 300 new cards to the mix, making
it one of the largest expansions.
And then, alas, a pall settled over the Moonlands.
With the recent Magi-Nation cartoon series and online game have come mur-
murings that a new card game could be in the making. But I, for one, will not
take any steps into that unfamiliar land without my trusty firefly amulet and a
backpack full of syphon vortex spells.
That does not mean the situation is entirely hopeless, though. No, it may be
that Magi-Nation is finished, its innovative spark left behind in some carnivorous
cave a long time ago. But as long as some of us continue to play this wonderful
game, it will never truly be lost.
Perhaps you’d like to join us, this loyal circle of guardians for a beautiful world
not so completely forgotten. The Moonlands need not stay so quiet forever. . . .
O O O
John Yianni has been a game designer for only a small number of years,
but in that time he has created the award-winning title Hive and two
other critically acclaimed abstract games: Army of Frogs and Logan
Stones. He’s proudest of the addictive nature of his designs and their
beautifully produced, high-quality pieces. His company Gen 42 Games
(gen42.com) is based in the U.K., where he lives with his wife and three
children.
Bill Bodden on
Master Labyrinth
Key Designer: Max J. Kobbert
Ravensburger (first edition, 1991)
I first discovered the Labyrinth series of games in the early 1990s while
managing Pegasus Games in Madison, Wisconsin. Produced by German company
Ravensburger, Labyrinth was one of the better-selling titles in the store at that
time, particularly at Christmas, and I regularly encountered buyers who came
back to pick up additional copies as gifts for friends and family.
The premise is simple enough: Players move their pawns through a shifting
maze of musty corridors to acquire rare and unusual treasures. The board is a
square grid of 49 spaces. It has fixed tiles at the corners and in a number of spots
alternating across the rest of the board, creating open rows and columns within
which the movable tiles can slide back and forth. Each tile displays a corridor
section — from L-shaped turns to straight sections and T-shaped intersections —
and there is one tile more than the number of open spaces. Some of the tiles also
contain those sought-after treasures. At the start of a turn, the player gets to choose
where to insert the spare tile — which row or column — as well as its orientation.
The piece that gets bumped out becomes the new spare for the next turn.
The fun in Labyrinth comes from the consequences, expected and unexpected,
of placing a new tile. Each player in turn takes the extra tile and slides it into the
board from an outside edge to rearrange the passageways. In so doing, intersec-
tions and corridors move around, changing the configuration and altering access
points. The player then moves her pawn as far along an open corridor as desired,
the goal being to reach the treasure tile that matches the one on the treasure card
currently face up in front of her. Upon reaching the treasure tile, the player flips
that goal card face down to claim its points, and turns up the next goal card for
use the following turn. Because of the board’s changing layout, it may take one
or more turns to reach a treasure. The first to reach all her goals during the game
and return to her starting point — marked on the board with a large dot matching
the color of the pawn — is the winner.
No small amount of strategy is involved in placing each new tile; by closing off
a corridor, a player may foil an opponent in the short term, but may also prevent
her own move on a subsequent turn. If a pawn is shifted off the board, riding
along on a displaced piece, it’s set back on the newly inserted tile, which can lead
to some interesting situations, too. Adjusting to the changes in the board from
turn to turn is the game’s main challenge, and players must develop the skills of
visualization and patience to pursue their goals in the ever-changing environment.
The flagship of the Labyrinth line, formerly titled The aMAZEing Labyrinth
but now simply as Labyrinth, was created by German art and psychology pro-
fessor Max J. Kobbert, capitalizing on his boyhood fascination with mazes. The
aMAZEing Labyrinth was first published by Ravensburger in 1986. Since then it
has been spawned no less than six variations, including Labyrinth Treasure Hunt
(a card game), Master Labyrinth, Junior Labyrinth, and 3-D Labyrinth.
The Junior and 3-D Labyrinth games are aimed squarely at early readers.
Junior still has the shifting maze board, but the playing field is less extensive and
the overall labyrinth is less complex. Players move around the board collecting
treasure tokens; the one who collects the most wins. 3-D Labyrinth, recommended
for ages four and up, is an even simpler maze with raised plastic “walls” separating
the tile spaces.
My favorite entry in the series is the first edition of Master Labyrinth, released
in 1991. My wife and I have introduced the game to other families and couples,
a good many of whom now have it in their collections. The conceit of Master
Labyrinth has a group of medieval alchemists racing through the catacombs
beneath an ancient, crumbling castle. Each is collecting arcane ingredients — such
as mandrake root, quartz crystals, or the ever-popular toad — for a magic potion.
Players each draw a card at the start of the game and keep it hidden. On the card
are the three different alchemical ingredients needed to complete a particular
potion; each of the three ingredients is worth bonus points to that player.
The ingredients are colorfully depicted on tokens that are randomly placed
face down around the board on the movable tiles. Each of the 21 ingredients has
a number on it, from 1 to 25 (numbers 21 to 24 are skipped), which indicates the
piece’s point value. As a pawn lands on the same space as a token, the player flips
it over to reveal the number. Once flipped, the tokens stay face up, and that’s when
the real competition begins.
The tokens must be taken in ascending numerical order; if you need ingredient
Master Labyrinth O 217
#4, you can’t grab it until #1, 2, and 3 have been claimed. This makes securing
consecutively numbered ingredients a special challenge. To that end, each player
also starts the game with three magic wands. When spent, a wand allows you to
take another turn, giving you at least a chance to obtain the ingredients you need.
Unused wands are worth a few bonus points at the end of the game. When all the
tokens have been collected, everyone adds up their points and scores are compared
to determine who has earned the title of master magician.
Master Labyrinth allows for more strategy and cunning than the original
Labyrinth. Frequently players find themselves hunting for the same ingredients;
the struggle to keep other alchemists away from a hotly contested token takes
on a life of its own and adds to the tension. This means that Master Labyrinth
is more likely to keep adults engaged for repeated playings, but it also makes the
game more appropriate for slightly older kids. It’s recommended for ages 10 and
up, where the original Labyrinth is comfortable for children seven and up. Master
Labyrinth also boasts a nice educational component that can appeal to slightly
older kids: The last few pages of the rulebook provide fascinating reading, iden-
tifying each of the ingredients depicted and explaining the purposes for which
medieval alchemists thought they could be used.
In 2006, several years after the first edition of Master Labyrinth fell out of
print, Ravensburger re-launched the game with significant changes, possibly to
take advantage of the runaway popularity of the Lord of the Rings franchise at
the time. This incarnation of Master Labyrinth harkens back to the original, basic
Labyrinth game and layers on classic fantasy themes; players collect treasure from
a dragon’s horde instead of meddling with pseudo-science and alchemical potions.
The dragon sits ensconced atop his rocky lair in the center of the board. The
numerical order requirement for collecting tokens is still active, but now players
must avoid the dragon’s fiery breath and make off with jewelry, coins, and other
bits of plunder. Direct player competition is slightly less of a factor in the second
edition, though there is ample opportunity to trip up the other adventurers simply
from the way in which the tiles are shifted each turn. Overall, this re-imagining is
a solid design, but I still prefer the 1991 edition.
Specific versions aside, all the entries in the Labyrinth series boast many of the
same strengths and offer the same welcome challenges in strategy and analytical
thinking. The lack of text on the game board and pieces speaks not only to its sim-
plicity, but also the elegance of its design. Labyrinth in all its forms can be easily
translated by the replacement of its short rulebook. It should be no surprise, then,

that millions of copies of the game’s different versions have been sold around the
world. And it all leads back to 1986 and that bit of alchemical wizardry by Max
J. Kobbert, combining a clever board mechanic with a simple, yet sophisticated
set of rules, for a remarkable, even magical result — one of the best family game
series of all time.
O O O
Bill Bodden has been part of the hobby game industry since the mid-
1980s, including stints as a retailer, a wholesale buyer, and manufacturer’s
rep. A writer, game reviewer, and columnist since 2002, Bill has been
involved in writing projects with Fantasy Flight Games, Green Ronin
Publishing, Black Library/Games Workshop, and Mongoose Publishing.
In 2004, Bill was nominated for an Origins Award for short fiction. He
lives in Wisconsin with his wife Tracy, their four cats, and a huge pile of
games and books, and is currently the sales manager for Green Ronin
Publishing.
Andrew Greenberg on
Mastermind
Key Designer: Mordecai Meirowitz
Invicta (1971)
Appropriately enough, Mastermind first reared its head in my ele-

mentary school gifted program. I’ve never doubted that part of the game’s success
there derived from that overly dramatic title. It certainly appealed to our pre-teen
egos as each of us strove to prove ourselves real masterminds. While we were
smart enough to quickly realize the game’s promise of determining our intellectual
superiority was as overblown as the title itself, we still found ourselves drawn into
the design. It continued to suck us in, even after the promise of conclusively estab-
lishing ourselves as masterminds faded. This is due to the many things the game,
its publisher, and its designer did right.
As I already mentioned, the title itself — Master Mind originally, Mastermind
in subsequent editions — is the first of these successes. The game’s original box art
is the second. That classic image of a beautiful Asian woman standing behind the
smug, elegant man worthy of being James Bond’s archnemesis fires the imagination
at once and provides the first intellectual test. Which of the figures connected to
the game is the true mastermind? The title suggests at first that it might be you, the
player, but that notion quickly fades as confrontation after confrontation proves
that everyone is a mastermind at least once, and everyone fails sometimes.
Many players fall into the trap of believing the mastermind to be the dignified
illuminati pictured in the box, plotting and scheming, but any good aficionado of
comics and pulps knew better. The woman behind the seated gentleman had to be
the true mastermind, stationing her puppet in the vanguard to battle the heroes
while she controlled his strings from behind. The mastermind is always the one
you least expect, and the obvious choice is never the true archvillain.
Then, after dozens and dozens of matches, the truth slowly dawned on us,
confirming that none of us was as quick or as smart as we would have liked. The
true mastermind was the game’s designer, the one who had gotten us, our school,
our friends, and millions of others to pay him money for this simple, satisfying,
and often compelling creation. He had brilliantly crafted an experience that both
challenged and fulfilled our egos, ensured quick games that left us wanting more,
and reached well beyond the simple board and pieces.
Mastermind was an early experience for me in how the dimensions of a good
game stretch past its official boundaries. Video games do this well, turning the
entire space around the player into part of the experience. This is why someone
unexpectedly walking by a player frantically battling virtual zombies can practi-
cally cause heart palpitations. Monopoly also takes advantage of this area of play.
It reaches beyond the board to where you keep your money, your cards, and even
to the secret place where you stash your hidden reserves so no one knows just how
wealthy you are (or how much you have stolen from the bank).
Mastermind creates this effect without video game graphics or Monopoly’s
material components. It does this with the atmosphere and story of codebreaking,
of espionage, of secrets that must be hidden or revealed. One player (the code-
maker) secretly arranges four colored pegs in a board. Her foe (the codebreaker)
then makes guesses, and the codemaker indicates how many were right and wrong
with black and white pegs.
Four colored pegs in a simple arrangement can conceal anything — the location
of stolen diamonds, the name of an assassin, the plans for a nuclear attack, or even
the secrets of another’s heart. The game quickly reaches beyond the board. It first
plays out as you try to get into the head of your nemesis. If you’re the codemaker,
you need to know your enemy’s patterns. When I’m in that role, I find myself
wondering if Paul likes to start the match by testing four pawns of a single color.
Does Kathryn start with four individually colored pegs and then look for patterns?
Does Teresa start with a random scattering and go from there?
At the same time, the codebreaker is trying to get into my head. She’s wonder-
ing if I’m the sort to deploy all different colors. In the last match, did I start with
two of the same color? Did I put them next to each other or far apart? What is
the likelihood I just reached a hand in, pulled out four pegs at random, and then
placed them just as randomly? (That last is a cheater’s way to play, and deserves
to lose.) Back at my elementary school we may have been too young to play poker
for money, but we still tried to read each other’s faces like a Monte Carlo high
roller. Does that smile mean the codebreaker is close or far off? Does the code-
maker react as the codebreaker plays out a guess? Is there a tell to be read, or is
Mastermind O 221
that flinch a bluff? We were never much for trash talking, but tried our best to be
amateur Freuds.
But the game’s designer is the mastermind in other ways, as well. Even if trying
to analyze each other proved a losing proposition, we quickly got the idea that
trying to analyze the game was not. We all searched for a system to crack the code
that took us beyond desperate attempts at telepathy. Almost every codebreaker
tried starting with four of the same color at some point, but it quickly became
obvious that such a brute force approach would take far too long to succeed.
The mastermind demanded finesse, so we tried more cerebral approaches. Maybe
you played all unique colors. But what did that really prove? Usually at least one
of those would match by color, but which? Many of us would immediately start
guessing from there, but others learned to be patient, trying different combinations
of other colors in order to gather data. By the time three or four rows had been
established, we could begin creating and testing viable hypotheses. Without our
even knowing, the mastermind had given us hands-on experience in the scientific
method. Gather data, create a hypothesis, test it, reject or accept the hypothesis,
and develop a new one if you are wrong. And so the hunt for a system began.
When I told a friend I was writing this essay, she informed me that comput-
ers had established a four-to-five step system for breaking the Mastermind code.
(Trust an MIT grad to be fascinated by the machine approach.) None of us back
at my old school ever developed such a system. Ours usually did not start paying
dividends until the fourth or fifth play, and we still considered ourselves fortunate
if we won by the eighth. But nonetheless we tried, still striving to be masterminds,
even if only in our own minds.
O O O
Andrew Greenberg, best known for designing computer games and role-
playing games, co-created Holistic Design’s Fading Suns roleplaying and
computer games and was the original developer of White Wolf’s Vampire:
The Masquerade. He has credits on more than 50 White Wolf products
and more than 20 Holistic Design books. He has also worked with other
roleplaying game companies on such properties as Star Trek: The Next
Generation and Deep Space Nine. His computer game credits include
Dracula Unleashed, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Merchant Prince II,
Emperor of the Fading Suns, Warhammer 40K: Final Liberation, Mall

Tycoon, Dungeon Lords, Railroad Tycoon Mobile, The Virtual World of
Kaneva, Global Agenda, and more. A fellow with the Mythic Imagination
Institute, Andrew regularly writes about games and the game industry
for a variety of publications. He is also on the board of the Georgia
Game Developers Association and director of the Southern Interactive
Entertainment and Games Expo (SIEGE).
Ken Levine on
Memoir ’44
Key Designer: Richard Borg
Days of Wonder (2004)
It all started for me with the little green men.

In 1977, my confrontations were truly epic. My brother Stu and I would line
up legions of army men across the basement floor. The battlefield, where possible,
would be defined by “realistic” molded plastic elements like sandbags, barbed
wire, fences, and bunkers. When those ran out, we’d turn to a hodgepodge of
shoeboxes, wooden blocks, and jarringly out of canon Fisher Price and Playmobil
military imposters. If the legions’ stiff but noble plastic army men felt any dis-
comfort about the Little People Garage standing in for the Dzerzhinsky tractor
factory at Stalingrad, they kept it to themselves. The rules for these battles were
ill-defined, but somehow coherent to my brother and me. They went on for hours.
By the end hundreds of plastic men were toppled off their bases, victims of artil-
lery shells (generally, a violently flung SuperBall) or enemy small arms fire (a flick
of an index finger).
As we grew older Stu moved on, leaving me alone in the basement. But before
long I discovered that he had not abandoned recreating epic battles. He had
simply moved onto a new venue. Where once there were plastic little men, there
were now cardboard counters. Where once there stood the Little People Garage,
there was now a reasonably realistic tractor factory painted over hexagons on a
mounted map. Squad Leader codified and structured our basement conflicts with
(relatively) clear rules and a clear ending point.
As my interest in gaming grew more sophisticated so did my interest in history.
Squad Leader scenarios provided starting points for my visits to the library. Games
and historical research became catalysts for each other. A Squad Leader scenario
would send me to a study of partisans, a study of partisans would send me to an
SPI game about Tito. The Tito game would send me into a study of the Cold War.
Geekery spawned geekery.
And so it went until life got in the way: girls, college, careers. All that stuff
that sits in violent opposition to learning and playing a board game with a 150-
page rulebook. For a guy working a zillion hours a week trying to run a video
game company, poor Advanced Squad Leader was overrun, broken, and eventu-
ally retired to the bookshelf. I missed my old friend, but Squad Leader defended
against reality with, at best, 1:6 odds.
But a few years ago something started to change in board games. Some bril-
liant designers began to notice that, just because basement dwellers and cardboard
counter pushers like me didn’t have the time to play the games of our youth any-
more, that didn’t mean we had lost interest in the core experiences they provided.
I remember picking up the Memoir ’44 box the first time, turning it over and
being utterly floored by what I saw on the back. Instead of dry text, there was
top- flight graphic design. Instead of counters with obscure numbers and military
symbols, there were what looked to me pretty much exactly like the toy soldiers
Stu and I used to SuperBall to death in our basement. And instead of braggadocio
about hundreds of pages of rules and unending realism, there was this little nugget:
Playing time: 30 – 60 minutes.
I don’t need to tell you that Memoir is beautiful. It appeals to the part of me
that never left the basement. Army men, toy tanks, toy barbed wire, colorful
playing cards right out Mille Bornes or the Monopoly Community Chest. Setting
up a scenario has more in common with the toy experience than the board game
experience; you build the map by laying out cardboard markers of forests, bridges,
houses. On it you place plastic molded tank obstructions and sandbags. The result-
ing battlefields are both gorgeous, flexible, and tactile. It gives you the best of the
basement army man battle while dismissing even the slightest hint of Fisher-Pricey
compromise.
But then comes the best part: the plastic army men, the legions of soldiers,
tanks, and artillery — tiny Shermans, pint-sized Panzers, and Lilliputian para-
troopers. These components (read: toys) are essentially identical to what I played
with as a kid, but placed on the bright yet rational playing board, structured
by cleverly written yet simple rules, and constrained to one-hour sessions, they
achieve the impossible. They provide the joys of the childhood army men experi-
ence in an adult-friendly package. Designer Richard Borg has given guys like me
license to revisit an experience that I had all but assumed had been relegated to
my past.
While Squad Leader and similar designs lean toward realism and simulation,
Memoir ’44 O 225
Memoir hews tirelessly to playability. Battles have relatively few units. Objectives
are clear and simple. Unlike more complex wargames, in Memoir you can gener-
ally only move a few of your units on each turn. This is brilliantly handled by the
division of the map into left, center, and right flanks and the innovation of com-
mand cards. Each turn begins with a would-be general playing one of these cards.
They control which of your units you can use. For example, a card may allow you
to move three units in the center section of the map. Another may allow you to
move two units on the left flank and two units on the right. This constraint, while
not entirely “realistic,” serves to keep the game moving and forces interesting
tactical choices on the player.
Some cards are more esoteric. For instance, the Air Power card lets you stage
immediate attacks on adjacent groups of units with a few roll of the dice. The
Allied player gets to roll two battle dice per hex, the Axis player only one.
This card is a great example of how Memoir has its cake and eats it too. Where
air power rules in the games of my youth would run hundreds of words and be
filled with charts and exceptions, Memoir abstracts and simplifies these classic
wargame elements so they can still be present, but remain eminently playable. The
card simulates an aerially dropped bomb with an explosive radius by stipulating
that the attack affects four units adjacent to each other. It simulates Allied air supe-
riority by giving that side an extra attack dice. Incredibly simplified? Yes. Would
my 12-year-old self have sneered at such “dumbing down.” Maybe.
But the core of the experience remains. Playing Memoir ’44 feels like playing
Squad Leader and, bless his wonderful heart, Borg delivers the experience in a
fraction of an evening.
Later expansions to Memoir may have slightly complicated things, but they
have also delivered miniature Soviet and Japanese soldiers; desert-, Baltic-, and
Pacific-flavored maps; and even tiny little P-38s and Me 109s. My bookshelf
is still packed with the games of my youth and it is with some sadness that I
acknowledge I may never play them again. But Richard Borg has leavened that
disappointment with his brilliance in giving us Memoir ’44. For me, though, the
memoir is less 1944 and more 1977, my brother and I huddled in the cold base-
ment planning our plastic attacks and ignoring my mom’s exhortations to come
up for dinner. And that’s more than worth the price of admission.
O O O
Ken Levine is the co-founder, president, and creative director of Irrational

Games/2K Boston. Along with such titles as System Shock 2 and Freedom
Force, he led the creation of the multi-million selling, multiple game-of-
the year award-winning title BioShock. He was named 2007 Person of the
Year by the 1Up Network and the number one game developer of 2007
by Next-Gen.biz.
Scott Haring on
Mille Bornes
Key Designer: Edmond Dujardin
2, 3, 4, or 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up
Mille Bornes combines two things kids love, counting games and cars
going fast, in a simple but endlessly fun design that children will play for years and
adults certainly won’t mind playing with them.
The phrase mille bornes is French for 1,000 milestones, which refers to the
small stone markers on French roads giving the distance to the next town. A
predecessor to the game, called Touring, was first published in 1906 by the Wallie
Dorr Company, and acquired by Parker Brothers in 1925. Touring has quite a few
similarities to Mille Bornes and can certainly be considered an inspiration, though
it is now forgotten by all but the game collector community. The last edition of
Touring I can find any mention of was published in 1947.
The object of Mille Bornes is to lay down exactly 1,000 miles of milestone
cards, which come in denominations of 25, 50, 75, 100, and 200. Each player
draws a card and plays a card in a turn, discarding if he or she has no legal action.
There’s more to it than simply laying down mileage, however.
Before you can start racking up the mileage, you first have to put a Roll! card
in play. Without the green light, you’re stuck at the starting line. There are plenty
of them in the deck, but it’s a rare game that doesn’t see somebody stuck at the
line, waiting for the light to turn green.
Once underway, you still face plenty of obstacles to rolling up the miles,
courtesy of your scheming opponents. In addition to playing mileage cards to
advance his or her own score, there are plenty of opportunities for a player to
throw the proverbial monkey wrench into someone else’s pleasant Sunday drive.
Hazard cards such as Flat Tire, Out of Gas, or Accident will keep a driver tied up
until the proper remedy card is played (Spare Tire, Gasoline, and Repairs, respec-
tively). The remedy card is only half the battle, though — after you’ve fixed your
problem, you have to come up with another green light Roll! card before you can
start laying down the miles again.
You can also put up a simple-yet-effective Stop! sign to bring a car to a halt,
or use one of the two Speed Limit cards to keep a particular adversary from going
any faster than 25 or 50, depending on the card. All these cards keep the game
from becoming a simple race. With a six-card hand limit, players must constantly
make choices about which cards to keep and which to play. It may make sense to
hoard remedy cards, but if you go too far, you’ll have no hazards available to slow
down the other players and not enough milestone cards to get to the finish line.
Four special cards can greatly alter the game when they enter play. This quartet
of safeties offer permanent protection from one class of hazard: Puncture-Proof
Tires, Extra Tank, and Driving Ace counter, in order, Flat Tire, Out of Gas, and
Accident, while Right of Way gives you immunity from Speed Limits, plus a per-
manent green light. In addition, a safety can be played in response to a hazard
when it is played on you in a maneuver called a Coup Fourré, both eliminating
the bad card and scoring a 300-point bonus. This can be the high point of a game,
as bad fortune is turned into triumph with a nifty bit of exceptional driving, or
maybe just an incredible stroke of luck.
There are other bonuses available in the scoring, but as a young child, my
sisters and I just played first to 1,000 miles wins and ignored all the other scoring.
The enjoyment came from playing every nasty card I could on them; when they
did the same to me, it was torturous fun trying to draw the remedy card — or
better yet, the safety! — I needed to get back on the road.
The hazards are a great catch-up feature, as players gang up on whichever
driver is in the lead. Figuring out just who is in the lead is also a great way to exer-
cise those math skills, but in a totally fun way. And the requirement to score exactly
1,000 miles also keeps everybody in the game. The closer you get to the goal, the
fewer milestone cards there are that can help you. Frequently, the game leader
sweats at the end trying to draw the 25 or 50 card he or she needs to hit 1,000
on the nose, drawing and drawing while the trailing cars get closer and closer. . . .
The fast pace of Mille Bornes makes it a very good game for youngsters — and
when the kids at the table are happy, the adults usually are, too. Each player’s turn
is over in seconds: you draw a card, and then play or discard a card. That’s it. Even
if nothing happens on one particular turn, you’ll be up again in no time, piling up
the milestones. Better still, since you can complete a full race in about 30 minutes,
even the most lopsided loss only has to be endured for a short time before you
roar into action again. And again.
Mille Bornes O 229
Mille Bornes has a certain exotic appeal, too. The Collector’s Edition of the
game published by Winning Moves brings back the vintage graphic look of the
early 1960s French editions. It also includes a cute little card tray in the shape of
a vintage race car. And the French original card names are preserved, along with
English translations of course. You’re not Out Of Gas, you’re Panne D’Essence! As
a kid, I loved this stuff. Plus, Mille Bornes is a game about cars going fast. How
can you beat that?
O O O
Scott Haring has been part of the adventure gaming business since the
mid-1980s, working for Steve Jackson Games and TSR, Inc., and writing
and editing for games including Ghostbusters, Dungeons & Dragons, Car
Wars, GURPS, Top Secret/S.I., and Marvel Super Heroes. He was the edi-
tor of Autoduel Quarterly, Pyramid, and The Gamer magazine, as well
as a game industry columnist for Comics & Games Retailer magazine for
nearly 20 years. He lives in central Texas with his wife, a stepson, and
several animals. He sings in his church choir and waits for the day his
Houston Astros will win the World Series, which is probably less likely
than three straight Coups Fourrés.
Steve Jackson on
Monopoly
Key Designers: Charles B. Darrow, Elizabeth J. Magie
Monopoly is the world’s most popular commercial board game. Millions

of copies are sold each year, in dozens of versions. According to the official
Monopoly website, the game is published in 27 languages, and over 200 million
copies — or 250 million, depending on which page of the site you believe — have
been sold since its initial mass market release by Parker Brothers in 1935.
Monopoly is notable for having one of the first official game supplements, add-
ing rules and mechanics to the basic design. The Stock Exchange set was published
by Parker Brothers in 1936; it introduces a stock exchange space that fits over Free
Parking and allows players to build a portfolio that can generate cash over the
course of the game. Monopoly broke new ground in the electronic age, too. 1982’s
Monopoly Playmaster, designed by Phil Orbanes and Rene Soriano, was the first
electronic accessory for a conventional board game.
For me, Monopoly means the 1961 edition, because that’s the one I know and
love. Its rules read as though they had been left unchanged since the 1930s, com-
plete with Egregious Capitalization, along with Profuse and seemingly RANDOM
use of ALL CAPS and boldface for Extra EMPHASIS. I also own the 1973 edition,
which features reworded rules — gaining clarity, losing charm — but no signifi-
cant changes in gameplay. And there are, of course, later editions. Lots of them.
One reason for Monopoly’s longevity is its successful balance of skill and
luck. You must invest your money appropriately, making strategic decisions about
which properties to buy and improve. Rarely can you assemble an effective posi-
tion without trading with another player . . . and unless your opponent is a very
poor negotiator indeed, whatever you trade to him will improve his position.
Yet there’s a healthy element of pure chance. You can develop your real estate
just right, but if your rivals roll well and jump past your properties — and if you
roll poorly and land on theirs — you’ll pay, and you’ll lose. Thus, luck can beat
skill often enough to make the game interesting for anyone just learning it.
Monopoly O 231
The rules of Monopoly are short and, even in modern editions, somewhat
fuzzy. That doesn’t matter, though, any more than it mattered for the original edi-
tion of Dungeons & Dragons. You learn the game from someone else. D&D is
taught by one geeky friend to another; Monopoly is passed from older siblings to
younger, or from uncles to nephews at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
The players represent real estate speculators. Their pawns move around a track
according to the roll of two dice. Twenty-eight of the 40 spaces represent proper-
ties, mostly named after streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A player who lands
on an unowned property may buy it. A player who lands on an already-owned
property must pay rent to the owner; the rent is higher if the owner has improved
the property by building houses or a hotel.
The board includes several spaces that are not properties, and these add vari-
ous twists to the gameplay. Chance and Community Chest let players draw cards.
Most of the cards either grant a bit of money, cost a bit of money, or move the
player around the board (e.g., Take a Walk on the Boardwalk). The Income Tax
and Luxury Tax spaces take their own bites out of a player’s funds. You can end
up in the Jail via a card or the Go to Jail space, but you’re “Just Visiting” if you
land on the Jail through a regular roll.
The Free Parking corner square has no effect of any kind. On a game board
where every other space is significant, it’s a bit unsettling to have one that does
nothing — a fact Parker Brothers seemed to realize, if you consider where they
located their add-on stock market back in 1936. There are countless house rules
that try to give meaning to Free Parking. These often involve money pooled in the
board’s center, whether from taxes collected or just $500 from the bank, which
is paid out to the lucky would-be tycoon who next lands on Free Parking. Many
players are certain that some form of Free Parking payout is an official rule, but
the rules variations are really just a manifestation of the way in which the game
is personalized among families and passed along from generation to generation.
In the official rules, each player starts with $1,500 and earns another $200 on
each trip around the board. The object of the game is to accumulate properties and
improve them in order to collect the highest possible rent from rivals who land
there. Players are eliminated as they run out of money; their assets are taken over
by the player to whom they owed the last, fatal, unpayable debt. The winner is the
speculator who has driven all rivals into bankruptcy.
In a way, Monopoly is roleplaying. You’re roleplaying a heartless, scheming
capitalist, and it’s fun. There are few classic games in which the emphasis is placed
so clearly on putting the screws to your friends, particularly through personal
interaction. You cannot win without negotiation, and a good negotiator offers
deals that will benefit both parties — just not equally. Everyone knows there will
be just one winner, and that person will win by eating the others alive, frequently
by convincing them to climb right up on the plate. We find the same charm in
Diplomacy . . . but Monopoly is just as mean, and it’s marketed to kids!
Monopoly, as a game design, is not without its critics. Part of the official folk-
lore surrounding the game notes that Parker Brothers rejected Charles Darrow’s
original submission in 1934, citing 52 fundamental errors in design. (Clearly, the
Parker Brothers reviewers had a great deal of time on their hands. History does
not record why they kept playing after they encountered the first half-dozen funda-
mental errors.) I would argue that the game has only two real flaws. The big one is
that it does, indeed, take a long time to finish — a trait that has earned the game
the nickname Monotony. Because each turn moves quickly, though, I don’t find
the game length painful. In the midgame, more time is spent in negotiation than
in movement, but a keen player will involve himself in every discussion, if only to
interfere with potentially damaging deals between others.
The second problem is that, in a game with more than five players (some
would say more than four), those who take the later turns are at a serious dis-
advantage, because the earlier players have a better chance to land on unowned
properties and buy them. The obvious solution is not to play with more than five.
If you must include more players, it’s house rule time. Give player #5 an extra
$100, player #6 an extra $200, and so on. In fact, no matter what shortcomings
you and your family might find with Monopoly’s official rules, there’s likely an
unofficial solution to be found on such Internet sites as BoardGameGeek.com or
in your cousin’s or your neighbor’s own list of house rules.
In the last few years, Hasbro and licensees have also attempted to improve
Monopoly by adding more player options. A stated intent was to speed play, but
now each turn takes longer as the player considers how best to use his die roll.
The game is also a bit harder to teach. The new versions are still recognizable as
Monopoly, just as the licensed editions are recognizable, whether they feature
NASCAR or SpongeBob SquarePants. For me, though, the classic rules are still
the best.
Monopoly O 233
No board game has sunk its roots more deeply into popular culture than
Monopoly. The game has given us a surprising number of catch phrases, including:
O “Monopoly money,” both as a synonym for “play money” and as a

derogatory term for worthless debt or inflated currency;
O “Playing Monopoly with real money.” The supposed pastime of

the very rich — and it appears that the bandits in the Great Train
Robbery of 1963 really did use their loot to play Monopoly;
O “Free parking” to indicate any sort of time-out;
O “Take a walk on the Boardwalk” and “Boardwalk and Park Place”

as references to luxury real estate;
O “Get out of jail free” to describe a privileged escape from trouble;
O And, of course, “Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do

not collect $200” as a reference to any sort of summary judgment.
At least three books have been published about winning at Monopoly. While
this pales beside the number of books written about, say, chess or poker, recall that
Monopoly is a mass market board game, and not, except perhaps by train robbers
and participants in the World Monopoly Championship, played for real money.
And it was the first board game culturally important enough to give rise to an
“answer” game — Professor Ralph Anspach’s Anti-Monopoly. Originally published
as Bust the Trust in 1973, Anti-Monopoly has players competing as lawyers to
break up oligopolies, trusts, and monopolies.
The plump, mustachioed tycoon who appears on the Monopoly cards is him-
self a widely recognized character. Originally named “Rich Uncle Pennybags,”
he has been officially rechristened “Mr. Monopoly.” Children are unlikely to be
familiar with either name, but if you refer to “the Monopoly man,” they’ll know
who you mean.
By any name, the little tycoon is a fitting symbol. Monopoly is a financial suc-
cess story. Yet the original designer profited little, and the game as now played is
a complete reversal of her intent. The publisher’s official Monopoly history credits
Charles Darrow as designer, and cites endearing trivia like the “52 fundamental
errors” rejection. There’s more to the story.
On January 5, 1904 , Lizzie J. Magie was granted U.S. Patent No. 748,626 for
a square game board that is clearly an early version of Monopoly: it had 40 spaces,
Go to Jail, and even four railroads. Her Landlord’s Game was intended to show
the evils of land speculation. Before and during the Depression, handmade sets of
her game were circulated widely, and copied and recopied by enthusiastic play-
ers. The game Charles Darrow submitted to Parker Brothers more than 30 years
later was, in the eyes of many game historians, a descendant of one of those sets.
Charles Darrow, who became a millionaire in real money, didn’t invent the game,
but he was certainly a successful game developer!
Elizabeth Magie, on the other hand, would no doubt be chagrined to see how
much fun we’re all having as we drive our friends into the poorhouse.
Despite the legal wranglings and the contested history, the fact remains that
Monopoly is great fun. Yes, it’s been translated to computers and consoles, but the
brightly colored money, the green plastic houses and big red hotels, and the unique
playing pieces (“I want the shoe! You got the shoe last time!”) will be mainstays
on family tabletops for a long time to come.
O O O
Steve Jackson has been designing games since 1976. His first professional
work was for Metagaming, which published his designs Ogre, G.E.V.,
Melee, Wizard, and other titles. In 1980, he went independent. Raid
on Iran was an immediate success. The next year, Steve Jackson Games
released Car Wars, followed shortly by Illuminati, and later by GURPS,
the “Generic Universal Roleplaying System.” In 1990 the Secret Service
invaded his office, confiscating equipment and manuscripts in a misguided
“hacker hunt.” With the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, SJ
Games took the government to court and won. His current big hit is
Munchkin, a very silly card game about killing monsters and taking their
stuff.
Sheri Graner Ray on
Mouse Trap
Key Designers: Marvin Glass, Harvey Kramer,
Gordon Barlow, Burt Meyer
Ideal (1963)
The accordion music began to thunder as the crowd gathered around a

cordoned-off area in the grassy space between the stock barn and the parking lot.
It was early morning at Maker Faire in Austin, Texas, October 2008. Even though
it was still cool, the sun reminded everyone it doesn’t truly get cold in central
Texas until late December. In the middle of the open area stood a bizarre assort-
ment of pipes, ladders, stairs, chutes, and tunnels, all in Crayola-bright colors.
The audience was stacked four deep around the edges, with children sitting on the
ground or perched on a parent’s shoulders. The accordion player stood on top of
one of the platforms, her head bobbing and swaying as she played.
As the music rose in volume, three young women dressed as mice came pranc-
ing out of a tent at the side of the clearing. The audience laughed and cheered as
the “mice” danced at the foot of the accordionist’s platform. Then the accordion
reached a frenetic crescendo and from the same tent emerged the ringmaster. The
crowd whooped and hollered with delight. He bowed to the crowd, doffing his top
hat, as the mice danced around him. He then motioned for the accordion to quiet.
Once he had the crowd’s attention, he asked them to yell, on the count of three,
“Mouse Trap!” When the shout rang out, he turned the crank that started a bowl-
ing ball on its crazy journey through a life-size version of the famous board game.
For those of you not familiar with Mouse Trap, it was first released in 1963
by Ideal. (“It’s a wonderful game; it’s Ideal!”) Its creators were designers Marvin
Glass, Gordon Barlow, Burt Meyer, and Harvey “Hank” Kramer. Marvin Glass
got his start in toys and gags in 1949 with the Yakity-Yak wind-up teeth and
the little chicken that you pressed down to make it “lay” a gumball egg. He was
known for wacky creations that were often more gimmick than substance, but he
and his studio developed a number of toys and games that went on to become
classics. Besides Mouse Trap, Marvin Glass and Associates were the primary force
behind such childhood favorites as Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, Mystery Date,
Operation, and Lite-Brite. Barlow and Meyer were the game’s primary design-
ers at MGA, while Harvey Kramer was Ideal’s head designer in the early 1960s.
In addition to Mouse Trap, Kramer had a hand in such unusual and memorable
games as Toss Across, Hands Down, and Kaboom.
Mouse Trap, however, is not like other board games. While it is one of the
most iconic designs of the past 40 years and is recognized on sight by just about
everyone over the age of 10, I doubt that many people can say they’ve actually
“played” Mouse Trap. Oh sure, it has rules, pieces, and a game board, but that’s
where the similarities between it and most other board games end.
To play Mouse Trap by its rules, players move their mice around the board,
stopping on squares that tell them what pieces to add to the mouse trap. Once the
trap is complete, players take turns operating the crank, which eventually releases
a small ball bearing. The ball rattles and clatters its way through the insanely
complex structure until it triggers a basket cage that is supposed to drop, catching
the other players’ hapless mice. The person with the last uncaptured mouse wins.
That is the way the game is supposed to be played. Once the box is opened,
though, it is the mouse trap itself that steals the show. A jumbled collection of
brightly colored plastic stairways, ramps, tunnels, ladders, and more wait to be put
together in a brilliant Rube Goldberg contraption no one can resist.
I first encountered Mouse Trap when my father brought it home from a garage
sale for my brothers and me. It was quite incomplete and had no rules. We were
mystified by the strange pieces that were left. We fought and fussed, sometimes
cooperated, and all studied the box cover for days trying to figure out what
exactly the game was supposed to “do.” Finally we asked our parents to get us a
new Mouse Trap — a complete one so we could make it work. Our begging paid
off; at the next birthday party we found a new and complete Mouse Trap waiting
for us under the brightly colored paper.
We pounced upon it, ripping it open and pulling all the pieces out of the box.
Our mother tried to read the directions, but we had no patience for that. We
immediately put the contraption together. “Oh, that’s what the bathtub is for!”
“Look! Here’s where the boot goes!” We would collapse into giggles when the
stand holding the washtub fell over and more times than I can recall we had to
get Mom to retrieve the ball bearing from some inconvenient place it had rolled.
As pieces broke or were lost, we came up with new ways to catch the mouse.
Mouse Trap O 237
And it wasn’t long before the pieces began to integrate themselves into other
toys and games. They became part of our Hot Wheels track set; the racers would
careen through the contraption sending everything, including the cars, flying. The
boot was ideal for stomping on unpurchased houses someone tried to sneak onto
the Monopoly board. The frenzied ladder and chutes joined our Haunted House
game, providing odd obstacles to avoid. You might say Mouse Trap moved from
its box into our imagination. It turned other games into brilliant excursions into
“Calvin Ball,” with ever-changing rules that incorporated those odd, colorful pieces.
This then, is the magic of Mouse Trap. It is only nominally a board game. In
truth, it is interactive art — a kinetic sculpture that begs to be put together, taken
apart, and put together again. It is a goal — make the cage drop — with a zillion
possible ways to make it work. It is imagination in action.
Back at the Maker Faire, I grinned as I watched the bowling ball careen through
the chutes, go up in the ball lifter, then down through the bathtub. As the accor-
dion music reached a crazed peak, the diver jumped into the washtub, sending
the two-ton bank safe crashing down on a small mocked-up robot that, in honor
of the fair’s D.I.Y. spirit, had taken the place of the traditional mouse. The crowd
went crazy, laughing, cheering, and hollering as the mice and the ringmaster took
their bows. There were others that deserved the applause, too, for the game that has
inspired so many imaginations. Thank you, Marvin Glass, Gordon Barlow, Burt
Meyer, and Hank Kramer, for the amazing lunacy that was, and is, Mouse Trap!
O O O
Sheri Graner Ray has been in the computer game industry since 1989.
She has worked for such companies as Electronic Arts, Origin Systems,
Sony Online Entertainment, CCP, Kraft Foods, and Cartoon Network, on
licenses including Star Wars, Ultima, and Nancy Drew. She is author of
the book Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market and is a
leading industry expert on gender and computer games. In 2005 she was
awarded the IGDA’s Game Developer’s Choice Award for her work on that
subject. She currently serves as the chair of Women in Games International,
an organization she co-founded, and as a senior designer with Schell
Games in Austin, Texas.
Kevin G. Nunn on
Mystery Rummy:
Murders in the Rue Morgue
Key Designer: Mike Fitzgerald
U.S. Games Systems (1999)
The quality of any work of art can be measured by the way in which it
both contributes to and expands upon its medium, the way in which it can be
accessible while still seeming fresh and new. The best art retains that sense of
originality by revealing new layers of itself long after its creation. Every great work
— the compositions of Beethoven, the plays of Tennessee Williams, the paintings
of Salvador Dali, the writings of Mark Twain, Einstein’s special theory of relativity
— is simultaneously familiar and innovative, offering timeless depth.
My first exposure to rummy games was in high school. Since then, they have
become friends, welcome at any family gathering. They are familiar. They all share
the same basic structure. At the beginning of your turn, draw a card. Attempt to
make combinations. End your turn by discarding a card. Continue until someone
has completed his or her hand. Score the hand.
There are many variations on the basic rummy mechanic — a Hello Kitty
rummy card game even inhabited my shelves once — but few have managed to
hold my attention for long. They satisfied the first criterion of art but not the sec-
ond; they were familiar but offered no lasting sense of newness. It seemed as if
rummy games were a dead end for game design, a terminus.
And then someone introduced me to the Mystery Rummy series, which proved
that my assumption about rummy games and their terminal state was entirely
wrong. Through an ingenious combination of rich theme, unusual suits, and
special action cards, each game in the series satisfied both criteria for art, simul-
taneously offering familiarity and lasting newness. Each is a design that you will
happily return to again and again.
Four of Mike Fitzgerald’s published games formally bear the title Mystery
Rummy — Case No. 1: Jack the Ripper (1998), Case No. 2: Murders in the Rue
Mystery Rummy O 239
Morgue (1999), Case No. 3: Jekyll & Hyde (2001), and Case No. 4: Al Capone and
the Chicago Underworld (2003). Three other games have been published that are
often considered part of the family, even if they lack the title — Wyatt Earp (2001),
History’s Mysteries (2003), and Bonnie and Clyde (2009). If you are looking for
one to try with your family, Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue should
be your choice. It contains all the classic elements of a rummy game — draw a
card, make combinations, discard. It plays well with two, three, or four players. It
offers individual or team play. It has the “gavel” cards that characterize the entire
Mystery Rummy series but not so many as to be overwhelming. Plus, it offers a
special pairing of suits and a unique kind of scoring that adds engaging wrinkles
to the base rummy mechanic.
All games in the Mystery Rummy series contain two types of cards: evidence
cards (marked with a magnifying glass) and gavel cards. Melds are made by uniting
three or more matching evidence cards. Gavel cards are special actions. In Murders
in the Rue Morgue, these gavel cards award bonus points or allow players to draw
extra cards.
In Rue Morgue, players work to solve the murders of two women — detailed in
the famous Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name — by melding sets of evidence
cards. The player or team that most effectively assembles the evidence will carry
the win.
Evidence cards come in 10 suits, each selected to remind the player of Mr. Poe’s
story. Eight of these suits are in associated and color-coded pairs: Madame and
Mademoiselle L’Espanaye were the victims. The Quartier St. Roche and 3:00 a.m.
give the place and time of the heinous crime. The Back Windows and Lightning
Rod give a clue to the escape route. The Sailor and Newspaper Ad provide keys
to the crime’s solution. There is a significant bonus any time you (or your team)
play melds in both suits of a pair. Two suits have no pair: Adolphe Le Bon is the
wrongly accused and Edgar Allan Poe is the author himself.
In the original Poe classic, the murders were committed by an orangutan.
Murders in the Rue Morgue represents this entity with a special orangutan card
which sits on the table alongside the deck. Each hand of Rue Morgue begins with
the deal — the number of cards dealt to each player or the orangutan depends
on the number of players. Each player then immediately slips one card under the
orangutan, face down, before drawing a replacement. The first card of the discard
pile is then drawn from the draw deck and the hand begins. Every time you begin
a new meld, you will also place a card under the orangutan. In this case, the card
will come either from the top of the draw deck (the player is allowed to peek) or
the top of the discard pile.
This orangutan is every bit as important to gameplay as its counterpart is to
the short story. If you manage to go out by melding your penultimate card and
discarding the last card in your hand before the draw deck exhausts, you add all
the cards under the orangutan to your melds — and add any melds belonging to
the orangutan that may be hiding under there, as well!
The special action gavel cards are also appropriately linked to the original
story. When both suits in a pair have been melded, Brilliant Deduction cards may
be played for a scoring bonus. The Prefect of Police card similarly adds a bonus if
a meld for Adolphe Le Bon is in play. It is the famous detective C. Auguste Dupin
who offers his assistance to the prefect in Poe’s story. His cards can be every bit as
helpful to you in the game. Dupin’s Help gets you extra cards (and lets you swap
cards with your partner) and Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin lets you look under the
orangutan and take a card from the hidden cache.
In every way, Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue is a great fam-
ily game and a great introduction for card players to the ideas of modern game
design. It’s accessible. It plays well with a range of players, even in partnerships.
And despite the gruesome premise of Mr. Poe’s story, with its razor-wielding ape,
the game feels quite safe — it’s hard to feel threatened by a deck of cards, isn’t it?
O O O
Kevin G. Nunn has spent most of his life slowly migrating westward
along I-10. This trek for him began at the age of two, when his parents
settled in New Orleans, and continued most recently when he and his
bride Debra resettled in Houston. His exposure to board games began as
a toddler, when his mother taught him the principles of chess. Sadly, his
exposure to European-style games didn’t happen until much later. (He’s
been trying to make up for lost time ever since.) His interest in game
design first manifested in 1980, with the creation of a roleplaying game
so astoundingly primitive that the less said of it, the better. On a happier
note, Kevin is more than ready to talk about his games Nobody But Us
Chickens; Duck! Duck! Go!; and Duck! Duck! Safari!
Dale Donovan on
The Omega Virus

Key Designer: Mike Gray
“Green is attacking red,” the computerized voice smirks from the small
black box at the center of the game board. “How amusing. Green, take your best
shot!”
The player controlling the red space commando looks down at the board,
where his heavily armed figure stands on the brink of saving the Earth by con-
fronting and — if luck is with him — defeating the homicidal computer virus that
has hijacked BattleSat 1. “No, wait a minute,” the red player sputters. His eyes,
full of disbelief, move to the treacherous green commando standing beside his
techsuited hero. “You’re attacking me?”
Then, shaking his head slowly, the red player glares at the green player and
whines, “You’re not playing it right. We’re supposed to be fighting the virus, not
each other. . . .”
That exchange, or one very much like it, has occurred countless times over
tables set up with The Omega Virus, an underappreciated family game gem from
award-winning designer Mike Gray. To elicit that sort of emotional response earns
high praise for any game. A vociferous accusation of betrayal, a plaintive call of
victimization, and you know you’re enjoying a rare delight. You’ve found a design
that’s so absorbing, so immersive, so well conceived that it gets right under a
player’s skin. That’s why I love The Omega Virus so much.
The game’s backstory is pure pulp science fiction. In 2051, the eponymous
Omega Virus infects BattleSat 1, an international military satellite designed to
protect Earth from incoming comets and meteors. The virus then announces to the
world that it will soon control the satellite’s withering array of plasma weapons,
with which it plans to bombard the planet. Four global powers choose their finest
warriors to rocket to the satellite and destroy the virus before it can complete its
apocalyptic agenda. But the commando who destroys the virus also gains total
control of BattleSat 1, placing its world-threatening weapons array under the com-
mand of his own less-than-altruistic government.
The backstory sets the stage for a gripping competition that nicely balances
shared goals and treachery. As they search for the virus, the commandos must
make their way through the station, divided on the game board into four color-
coded sectors, each with a docking bay and six rooms to explore. The play surface
resembles a circuit board, with your commando moving along the metallic silver
pathways that link the rooms.
The virus hides in one of these 24 chambers, settling into a fixed location
for the entire game. (According to designer Mike Gray, a code exists that, when
entered into the game’s computer, allows for the extra challenge of a mobile virus,
one that can shift from room to room. Alas, neither Mike nor the game’s original
programmer recall the method for unlocking this additional skill level.) Each
commando begins the hunt confined to the quarter of the board matching his
color. As a techsuited warrior explores an individual room, he might find the virus
or stumble across a trap or discover a useful item — an access card that allows
exploration of a different colored sector, one of a trio of weapons called anti-virus
devices (AVDs), or a robotic probe that can aid the commando in searching or
fighting. If your commando is lucky enough to gather one of each of the three
types of AVDs and then can determine in which room the virus is hiding, he can
attempt to destroy the rogue program and win the game.
At the game board’s heart lurks the literal centerpiece of The Omega Virus,
the electronic command center. While it is a bit primitive by today’s standards,
with its tinny sound and simple four-button keypad, this little computer was a real
innovation when The Omega Virus first hit store shelves in 1992. So, too, was the
way in which the device was integrated with the gameplay.
To begin the hunt for the virus, one player inputs a skill level into the com-
mand center. This sets a time limit for the challenge, giving the commandos from
10 to 35 minutes to locate their quarry. Each player then selects and enters a secret
code that will help him determine if he’s found the virus, even while keeping the
discovery hidden from everyone else at the table. Then the race against the clock
begins.
The command center handles all the game’s mechanics. Punching a few num-
ber keys is all a player needs to do. There are no dice to roll, no cards to deal,
and no extra rules to memorize about how to explore a room, fight the virus, or
The Omega Virus O 243
shoot a buddy in the back. And with its internal clock running steadily toward the
deadline, the computer keeps the game moving briskly.
The command center is not just a tool, though. It interacts with the players by
speaking in not one, but two voices. As BattleSat 1’s computer, it begs for help.
Those pleas are frequently mocked by the harsh voice of the virus, before the rogue
program turns its scorn onto the players themselves, calling them “human scum”
and daring them to “Try and stop me!” The virus also triumphantly announces the
ever-decreasing time remaining before it achieves control of the satellite’s weapons
and destroys Earth. This helps ratchet up the tension, particularly in the final few
minutes of play.
The clever design of the command center — in particular its virus persona —
lends several interesting facets to The Omega Virus. Just as the toy commandos
are moving frantically along the circuit-like game board, struggling against the
fictional virus, the players are locked in an intellectual contest with an actual
computer. In a way, battling the computerized adversary in The Omega Virus is a
bit like playing Monopoly with real money. This total synergy between the game’s
play experience and its theme is both rare and wonderful. The depth of immersion
makes The Omega Virus a more satisfying game experience, and even players who
never consciously note this trait will nevertheless enjoy what it brings to the game.
The acerbic virus personality also transforms what might otherwise be a simple
timer and combat-resolution device into a genuine adversary, a smack-talking
presence at the table that personalizes the challenge. The atmosphere of confron-
tation created by the virus persona is far from accidental. At first glance, it’s easy
to mistake The Omega Virus for a purely cooperative game, one where the heroic
humans should work together to defeat the evil program and save the world. But
that’s just not the case. While the secret code he entered at the start of the game
might allow a player to initially discover the whereabouts of the virus without
anyone else knowing, the virus itself will eventually alert everyone at the table that
someone knows its location by announcing a certain color “must be destroyed!”
This typically leads to attacks on the targeted commando by his rivals and, quite
often, the triumph of the virus as skirmishes between the would-be heroes eat up
the last precious moments on the clock.
If that’s not clear enough evidence that The Omega Virus is not intended to
be played cooperatively, you need only flip to page 15 of the cleanly written and
nicely illustrated rulebook. There, in glorious color, we see one commando shoot-
ing another in the back. So from the game’s design to the artwork in the rules, it’s
clear that the guy whining about his red commando being attacked by another
techsuited human, just as he’s about to confront the dreaded Omega Virus, is miss-
ing the point of the game, and much of the fun.
As for me, if enjoying this sort of chaos is indeed wrong — well, I don’t want
to be right.
O O O
Dale Donovan has toiled in the hobby game industry since 1989. He
enjoyed full-time employment with TSR, Inc./Wizards of the Coast for
more than 12 of those years. Since then, he’s freelanced for such companies
as Green Ronin, Upper Deck, White Wolf, Privateer Press, Steve Jackson
Games, Sovereign Press, and several others that no longer exist, though
he’s certain that’s nothing more than coincidental. He’s been a game
designer and editor, columnist, magazine editor, and managing editor,
among other things. He still enjoys games as often as he can, which,
regrettably, is not often enough. He’s also always on the lookout for
games to play with his daughter, especially those where she can shoot
him in the back.
Darren Watts on
Othello
Key Designers: Goro Hasegawa, James R. Becker,
Lewis Waterman, J.W. Mollett
Gabriel (first U.S. edition, 1975)
Othello is one of the greatest board games ever invented, which may be
why it’s been “invented” several times. Though it is limited to only two players at
a time, the brilliance with which it creates a near-infinity of permutations and the
simple purity of its rules and presentation can’t be questioned.
Credit for Othello’s design is a different matter. A version of the game was
played in Victorian England as early as the 1870s, and some accounts suggest
it’s considerably older than that. The game can be staged with easy-to-improvise
pieces, such as coins on a standard chessboard. In fact, some think it may have
begun as an extremely simplified variation of chess itself. It was first marketed
publicly in the 1880s, under the name Reversi, by two competing publishers. Lewis
Waterman patented his game in 1888, though he had been selling it for several
years by that point; his version was a simple pack of wooden circles painted red
on one side and black on the other, along with a one-page rules pamphlet, claiming
the game was “designed for play on the chessboard.” The Waterman patent was
disputed unsuccessfully by fellow publisher J.W. Mollett, who had been selling
a very similar game since 1870, occasionally under the name Reversi but more
frequently by the infelicitous title Annexation. Mollett’s version included a folded
cardboard playing board shaped like a cross, but included rules for playing on
alternatively shaped spaces. Waterman’s chessboard version eventually carried the
day and was included in some of the earliest versions of the famous Ravensburger
Wooden Games catalogs beginning in 1898. Though Reversi remained quite popu-
lar in the early decades of the 20th century, it gradually faded from view and was
almost forgotten by the 1950s.
In 1971, Japanese games enthusiast and writer Goro Hasegawa (with at least
some assistance from James R. Becker, though exactly how much also seems to be
a matter of some dispute) rescued Reversi from obscurity with a new version he
called Othello. The name is almost certainly a racial reference, as the title charac-
ter of William Shakespeare’s play Othello is a Moor and traditionally played as
black, while both his tragically doomed wife Desdemona and ally-turned-enemy
Iago are white. Apologists wishing to avoid unfortunate connotations prefer to
insist that, like the play, the game features “dramatic reversals” and “jealousy,”
claims as spurious as they are inane.
Hasegawa cleaned up the rules variations for Reversi into a simplified form,
adding a standardized opening pattern of two pieces from each color occupying
the center four squares of the board. The game was extremely successful in Japan,
and Hasegawa even wrote a book, How to Win at Othello, which is unfortunately
mostly known today by enthusiasts for being almost completely wrong about
effective playing strategy.
Nevertheless, both Hasegawa’s game and book spread rapidly around the
world in the 1970s, hitting America in 1975, where it benefitted from both a mild
board game craze and strong promotion from the famous New York City toy store
FAO Schwarz. Becker’s tagline for the new version, “A minute to learn, a lifetime to
master,” proved entirely correct, as serious players began to explore the strategic
and mathematical depths beneath the deceptive simplicity of the rules.
Within a few years several nations featured formalized clubs and standardized
tournament play. Today, the World Othello Federation represents the national
programs and smaller federations from 48 different countries around the globe.
Japan continues to dominate international competitions, with the best national
team ratings and 13 of the top 20 rated players as of January 2009, though the
individual title that year was won by Michele Borassi of Italy.
The rules of Othello are breathtakingly simple. There are two players, black
and white. Each places two disks on opposite corners of the most central four
spaces of a standard chessboard with eight rows of eight squares each. Players
alternate turns, with black traditionally playing first. A legal move consists of
placing a piece onto an empty square that causes at least one of your opponent’s
pieces to be “sandwiched” between two of your own. Any piece or set of pieces
directly sandwiched in such a manner is flipped — that is, turned over so it displays
the reverse color. A player may not avoid flipping pieces so captured, and may not
avoid moving if a legal move is available. The winner is the player with the most
pieces of his color when either the board is full or no more legal moves remain.
Novices regularly make the mistake of simply looking for whatever legal move
Othello O 247
causes the most disks to be flipped in their favor, but it does not usually take many
defeats at the hands of more experienced players to disabuse them of this practice.
The best strategy is to choose moves based on their long-term value. For example,
the only spaces that cannot be flipped, once they’re claimed, are the corners. With
pieces in place there, a player can protect other spaces nearby, creating small zones
of stability. This makes reaching the corners first of paramount importance, and
turns the spaces directly around them into exceedingly dangerous properties, too.
Indeed, as one’s skill at Othello grows, the focus shifts away from grabbing
spaces for your pieces and more toward denying certain ones to your opponent, or
forcing him into the less desirable spaces so that he can be crushed in the endgame.
Advanced players look for “frontiers,” where their opponents have pieces with
open spaces next to them, and divide the board into smaller spaces while trying to
be the last one to make legal moves in those. Advances in strategic thinking have
led to different schools of thought on how each side should play; since black goes
first, its player should be aggressive and seek to complicate the number of deci-
sions to be made, while white’s best strategies are frequently to play defensively,
simplify decisions, and seek parity to capitalize on the natural advantage presented
him by frequently making the last move.
Othello is a truly beautiful and elegant game, a genius work of minimalist
design from its brief rules, its featureless board on which plain chips, half black
and half white, are laid, and its flawless decision tree of binary states, decisions,
and risks. It has no setting, no gimmick or theme to make it more marketable,
so it may struggle to get noticed next to funnier or flashier products. Few games,
however, will reward a thoughtful player or a bit of study as richly as Othello.
O O O
Darren Watts is the president and co-owner of Hero Games, publish-

ers of Champions and other games using the renowned Hero System. He
has written or co-written more than a dozen titles, including Champions
Universe, Millennium City, Champions Worldwide, and Lucha Hero. He
lives in New York City with his wife Diane and cat Boomer.
Charles Ryan on
Pandemic
Key Designer: Matt Leacock
Z-Man Games (2008)
From a young age, I’ve been a big fan of football (or perhaps I should say
American football, since I now live in the U.K. where the term means something
completely different). Although I enjoy watching and playing football, and pas-
sionately follow several teams, both college and pro, I’ve never really broadened
my athletic interest to other sports.
I often wondered why that was the case, and the answer struck me about
halfway through my military career — about the time I became a squad leader in a
light infantry platoon. I found that playing out a movement to contact or a reaction
to ambush hit the exact same pleasure centers that fired in the heat of a football
game: I love the tactical interaction of a small team, each member throwing his
strengths at the challenge not as an individual, but as part of an organic whole
working to an agreed and ever-evolving plan.
Football is not the only sport in the world with a highly tactical angle, but the
way in which the teammates work together may be unique. Compare it to, say,
baseball, a game that on any given play pits one to, at most, four players on offense
against nine on defense. Setting aside a serious design imbalance that strongly
favors the prevention of anything interesting from happening, only a couple of
players on either team really interact at any one time.
In contrast, when a football is snapped, eleven players go into motion on both
sides of the line of scrimmage, and the actions of every single player matter. Not
every player will touch the ball, and some tasks will be purely diversionary. But the
play’s success relies on every teammate understanding what the team as a whole is
trying to accomplish. Individual athleticism enables the player’s successful perfor-
mance, but it’s following the playbook — or, more excitingly, improvising together
when faced with the unexpected — that really gets the job done.
This, then, underlies my passion for football (and small-unit military tactics,
Pandemic O 249
for that matter): working within a group to tackle a challenge together, evolving
strategies on the fly, and applying each individual’s strengths in just the right way.
These are not traits commonly associated with tabletop games.
Yet from childhood family sessions of Parcheesi and Kismet, through seven
misspent years of college, to a two-decade career in the hobby games industry, I
have also had a lifelong passion for games. Other than roleplaying games, though
— which rarely reach the tactical sophistication of a single snap of the pigskin,
and would probably feel quite bogged down if they did — games are not gener-
ally cooperative activities. Board games in particular are usually individual efforts,
more akin to track and field events than team sports, if I can stretch my athletic
conceit a little further.
So where do the two passions intersect? In Pandemic.
Pandemic is a cooperative game, one in which the players work together to
defeat the tactical challenge presented by the game itself. Each player has a set
of unique strengths, and together the players figure out how best to employ their
individual qualities in support of a strategy formulated and evolved as a group.
The premise of Pandemic is pretty straightforward: Several diseases are spread-
ing globally, and the players must stop them. You and your teammates trot around
the world, rushing to hot spots to quell outbreaks while simultaneously racing to
find cures. Each player has a unique role: a scientist or operations specialist, for
example, or a medic. After each player’s turn, cards are drawn to see how the
diseases progress; the course of the diseases, and the occasional catastrophic out-
break, are at once unpredictable yet reliably tenable.
As an aside, I think this clear premise partially explains why Pandemic, which
is essentially a hobby game in design and presentation, is so accessible to casual
players — even when you don’t have a swine flu crisis on the news every night.
Carcassonne, Tikal, or even The Settlers of Catan may be great games, but their
themes (a medieval city, Mayan stuff, or an island nobody’s ever heard of) don’t
really tell the neophyte why they want to play the game. Pandemic’s theme tells
its own story.
Pandemic pushes all my teamwork buttons wonderfully. But the beauty of a
cooperative game as a family venture isn’t just the interaction of individual perfor-
mances. In most games, people’s skill levels are directly pitted against each other.
A strong disparity in skill not only favors the more astute player, but, frankly, leads
to a less enjoyable experience for the winner as well as the loser.
In a family environment this disparity might be between a 40-year-old hobby

gamer adult and an eight-year-old graduate of Chutes and Ladders. Yet with a
cooperative game, rather than the one preying on the other (or deliberately holding
back — and hence not really playing the game), the disparate skill levels comple-
ment one another. The eight-year-old’s contributions add to those of the adult
gamer, rather than attempt to compete with them. Nobody need pull any punches
to ensure that someone else has a good time.
Another aspect of Pandemic that’s made it a family favorite in our household
is its scalability: Pandemic plays every bit as well as a two-player, three-player, or
four-player game. (It can even work for five, if you add the On the Brink expan-
sion set.) Although more players, as a team, have a few more options — simply
because more of the unique roles are in play — the fundamental gameplay assumes
no ideal mix, and the disease mechanism paces itself to the players’ actions, inde-
pendent of how many people there are at the table. Furthermore, if you have
just two players, you can always opt for a four-player game. Because the game is
openly cooperative, there is absolutely no conflict in having each person take on
two roles. For this reason, the game also plays well solo!
A final bit of genius that suits Pandemic well to family play is the adjustabil-
ity of the challenge. There are six catastrophic epidemic cards in the core game.
Include them all for a really difficult scenario, or omit one or even two to make
the scenario a bit more winnable.
Now, to be fair, Pandemic is hardly the only game with a cooperative design
and many of the features I’ve outlined here. Indeed, the sub-category of coopera-
tive games has practically exploded of late. Notable recent entrants include Lord
of the Rings (2000), Shadows over Camelot (2005), Arkham Horror (2005), and
Battlestar Galactica (2008).
These are all very good games, but they aren’t exclusively cooperative. Some,
such as Battlestar Galactica, give one or more players a secret victory condition,
effectively creating a traitor with an agenda that pits him or her against the group.
Others contribute to the game’s tension by presenting side quests or secondary
goals that tempt players from the group’s game plan — many a session of Shadows
over Camelot has been lost when a player’s draw of the cards presents a sudden,
glorious — but totally off-plan — opportunity to grab the Holy Grail. These ele-
ments can add a delicious drama or interesting play dimension to a game, but the
result isn’t fully cooperative. Pandemic draws its tension from the relentless spread
Pandemic O 251
of its diseases and needs no such temptations or treacheries; it is cooperative gam-

ing in its truest form.
With two dedicated gaming hobbyists in our household, we have a lot of titles
in our rather overstuffed games closet. Many are truly great; many are lifelong
favorites. Only a few have made the jump from hobby game to family game.
Pandemic is the first among them.
And it nicely fills a Sunday afternoon — especially in a country that doesn’t
broadcast NFL games.
O O O
Charles Ryan has worked in games for two decades, firmly straddling
the line between the creative and business sides of the industry. On the
creative side, he has design, writing, editing, illustration, and graphic
design credits in card, miniature, and roleplaying games, from hit brands
such as Dungeons & Dragons and Star Wars down to niche indie hits such
as Millennium’s End and Psychosis. On the business side, Charles again
runs the gamut, from stints operating his own independent publishing
house to serving as brand manager for D&D. He’s currently the market-
ing manager at Esdevium Games, the second largest games distributor in
the world, where he’s responsible for marketing most of the largest hobby
lines to the U.K. Charles won an Origins Award for the graphic design of
the Deadlands roleplaying game, and has eight further nominations. He
lives in a 300-year-old converted dairy barn in Hampshire, England, with
his wife and two children.
Michelle Lyons on
Pente
Key Designer: Gary Gabrel
Pente Games (1977)
It was around 1993. My then-husband and I had gone to my parents’ house

for Christmas, bringing our newest board game acquisition: an odd red tube with
a vinyl mat and two sets of glass stones inside. It was labeled Pente.
My family enjoyed games but were not gamers. If it was complex or required
a rulebook or something more than simple dice and cards, they weren’t interested.
Despite this obstacle, I got my mom and 18-year-old brother Mark to sit with us
at the dining room table and have a go at it.
All it took was one short game for my brother to be hooked. Always interested
in finding a way to compete with my husband, the two of them suddenly had a
new battlefield on which to meet: Pente. For years thereafter we’d come over, have
dinner, then watch my brother and my husband engage in male bonding over little
glass stones on a vinyl mat.
Pente, which means “five” in Greek, is the brainchild of Gary Gabrel. Gabrel
was working at a Stillwater, Oklahoma pizza parlor in 1977 when he developed
the game, which is based off the traditional Japanese game Go-Moku. He had
vinyl mats printed, packaged them and some glass stones in red mailing tubes,
and started selling his game under the name of Pente. It picked up steam thanks
to Gabrel’s heavy promotion, including world championships he staged annually
up until 1983.
In 1984, Parker Brothers bought Pente and released a new version with a more
standard printed board in a traditional box. It was not heavily promoted, however,
and its sales languished. Decipher acquired the game from Parker Brothers and
released a third edition in 1992, which went back to the vinyl mat and red mailing
tube of old. In 1991, Games magazine inducted Pente into its hall of fame, citing
its play value and high standards of quality.
The basic rules of Pente are simple. Each player gets a set of glass stones (ours
were yellow and green). The mat is printed with a 19 by 19 grid. You place a stone
Pente O 253
on the mat where two lines intersect and then your opponent does the same. You
win by getting either five stones in a row or by capturing five pairs, which you
accomplish by putting one of your stones on each end of a pair of your opponents’
stones. Pente functions best as a two-player game, but can be played by up to four
players with additional sets of stones — the standard version of the game typically
comes with only two sets.
Like any superior strategy game, Pente is easy to learn and play but has an
amazing amount of depth. The primary gambit of achieving five in a row is simply
a more complicated version of tic-tac-toe; there are exponentially more possibili-
ties available due to the number of stones needed and the size of the board, but
the strategy is the same.
Introducing pair captures, however, makes defense as important as offense. It’s
not enough to play a piece, have that effort blocked, and ignore it. Even stones
that are rendered unhelpful are still important and must be protected, lest they be
used against you and the spaces where they were located made available to your
opponent. It creates a give and take to gameplay that makes things moves quickly,
sometimes surprisingly so, and keeps the game lively.
As with tic-tac-toe, the first player in Pente has an advantage throughout the
game. By alternating who goes first, though, the advantage can be negated over a
series of matches. The 1983 world champion, Rollie Tesh, held that the first player,
white, could always win, regardless of black’s efforts through “correct” play. To
counter this, he issued a variant rules set called Keryo-Pente.
Should enthusiasts decide they want more of a challenge, there is a devoted
Pente community online that has made available a number variant rules to adjust
the difficulty level to suit the players’ skill level. There are even countless websites
and free Flash games devoted to Pente in its generic white and black forms. So
long as you’re hooked up to the Internet, you should never find yourself without
an opponent handy.
Simple rules and a depth of strategy only account for some of Pente’s appeal.
The game can be a sensory delight both to play and watch. Spectators can enjoy
the play of color and pattern as much as those currently in the game. Its moves
and countermoves are obvious to bystanders, allowing a level of silent participation
that fussier board games with random dice rolls rarely achieve. The glass stones
utilized in many editions are a pleasure to touch and hold, as well. This sensory
element featured highly in a limited edition glass board released by Pente Games
in 1983 — a rarity these days, though you can occasionally find one on eBay or
at a store specializing in collectible games.
Pente is one of those games that can reach across any number of divides — age,
language, culture, even familial rivalry. It doesn’t require that you know anything
more than what you see in front of you: no background in trivia, no details from
an esoteric rulebook, no knowledge of the political situation in Western Europe in
1880, no ear for music, no fondness for sports. It has a very low buy-in threshold,
as far as time or personal investment goes, so it can appeal even to people wary of
playing new games. Yet it can keep you entertained for hours and rewards deeper
thought, too, if you’re so inclined. Set-up and clean-up time are minimal, unless
you count the times you keep the stones out and make pictures and patterns with
them on the board. Not that I’ve ever done this. Ahem. . . .
Although Pente lapsed out of print for a number of years, Winning Moves has
licensed the game and has made it available again in finer game stores everywhere,
this time with an updated rules set by three-time Pente world champion Tom
Braunlich. They’ve also produced a deluxe version with a vinyl mat and four sets
of stones. The mailing tube-style container isn’t red any more — now it’s blue —
but no matter the packaging’s color, the fun it contains is still the same.
O O O
Michelle Lyons had hardly anything to do with gaming until hitting

college, but in her heart she’d been a gamer since she first discovered
Candy Land. She is a writer and editor who has worked in the game
industry since 2000, both as a freelancer and on staff at both FASA
and Wizards of the Coast. Her credits include Aion (NCsoft), World of
Darkness: Innocents (White Wolf), Shadowrun fourth edition (Catalyst
Game Labs), and Ex Machina (Guardians of Order). Michelle worked on
community websites for Microsoft Game Studios for a number of years
and is now spending a great deal of time being fascinated with just what
virtual communities do. She lives in Seattle, is a senior at the University
of Washington in the English honors program, and has two sons who love
games, too. (Whether or not Candy Land has anything to do with that,
she has no idea.)
Thomas M. Reid on
Pictionary
Key Designer: Rob Angel
Western Publishing Company (1985)
Plato argued in his theory of Forms that ideas exist separately from the
objects that represent them. Simply put, a table is not a table but merely wood or
stone, its base material. It only mimics the Form we know as “table.” Art embod-
ies this concept at its purest, where each work communicates much more than the
simple canvas and pigment or marble from which it is made. Pictionary — often
described as charades on paper — turns the notion of “art as the communication
of Forms” into a game.
Rob Angel, a graduate of Western Washington University, invented Pictionary in
the mid-1980s while working as a waiter in the Seattle area. He and friends would
play a forerunner of the game at parties by selecting words from a dictionary and
sketching them for each other to puzzle out. Eventually, he formalized the concept,
published it, and even spent some time selling the finished product door-to-door.
Pictionary may be only one of many successful board and card games to come
out of the coffee-shop, game-playing culture of the Pacific Northwest, but it is
surely one of the most popular. It has produced numerous spin-offs, including
variations on the main game (there is an edition that contains words and ideas
taken from the Bible, for example), video game editions, and versions in several
foreign languages. It even became a television show hosted by Alan Thicke in the
late 1990s.
The game includes a board, a set of 500 cards, an assortment of colored cubes
to represent each team, an hourglass-style minute timer, a single six-sided die,
pencils, and pads of paper. The board consists of a snaking path of squares, each
color-coded and labeled with a letter designating a category of word — object,
action, person/place/animal, difficult, and all-play. The cards contain lists of words
corresponding to these categories. Every component in the box is sturdy and well
made. Because the timer must drain out before it can be restarted, though, most
people set it aside in favor of a stopwatch or electronic kitchen timer.
The players divide up into two to four teams and take turns silently drawing
pictures, trying to convey a randomly selected word or phrase while the remaining
teammates attempt to guess it. Letters, numbers, and the pound (#) symbol may
not be incorporated into a drawing. Only when a team guesses a word before the
timer runs out may its members roll the die and advance spaces. The object of the
game is to be the first team to circumnavigate the board along the path by correctly
guessing drawings. In some instances, only one team is allowed to guess, while in
others, all the teams compete, with the first to deduce the word winning the round.
The rules of Pictionary are simple and straightforward, and there is little need for
debate or interpretations of success — either your team figured out the word in
the allotted time or it didn’t.
Pictionary’s ease of play means players of a wide age range can get in on the
fun. Even teenagers, who frequently consider games suitable for younger children
to be too juvenile, don’t mind participating. The recommended age for the standard
edition is 12 and up, but most people find that too conservative; I’ve enjoyed
sessions of Pictionary with kids as young as seven or eight. Their knack for sketch-
ing simple images can be a boon to any team, and they can guess the meaning of
other people’s drawings with the best of us. What’s more, playing Pictionary is a
good way to help children build their vocabulary and develop the creative skills
to attack a problem from different directions.
If children are often surprisingly good at Pictionary, some older players —
especially those with an artistic bent — can struggle with the game initially. They
may feel the urge to sketch out technically sound images to convey the target
word or phrase. But, as Plato reminds us, the idea is far more important than the
object representing it, so finding an ingenious alternative solution to a tricky word
allows the clever player to break past preconceived parameters. For example, if
the phrase to be drawn is Northern Lights, the artist in the group might try to
illustrate a nighttime landscape in silhouette, along with a bunch of stars formed
into the Little Dipper and some ribbony, wispy lines in the sky. The clever player
with little experience as an illustrator might instead draw a compass rose (with an
exaggerated North arrow, but no letter N, of course) and a variety of light bulbs
and lamps. Though the former may wind up looking beautiful, the latter is far
more likely to win the round.
Another feature that makes Pictionary such a successful family game is its
potential for gasping-for-air bursts of humor. Epic failure is often more fun than
Pictionary O 257
quick success. Finding a nifty way to communicate an abstract concept without

incorporating words or numbers might lead to brilliant wins — or howls of
laughter. The most memorable rounds of Pictionary involve misleading images and
unintended comedy. The funniest drawings become the topic of discussion for days
afterward. Indeed, websites exist where people post scans of their most hilarious
Pictionary drawings, along with their team’s bungled efforts to figure them out.
Anyone who has ever discussed the game at length with other veteran players has
witnessed a storyteller who must wipe away tears of mirth while recounting a tale
of a sadly botched drawing and the misguided guesses it inspired.
Pictionary’s ease of play and simple, effective design keep it a mainstay in
countless game collections, as popular now as it was when it was introduced a
quarter of a century ago. But it is the game’s ability to challenge how we think
about the world around us that garners it consideration as one of the best family
games. If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing Pictionary, give it a try.
You might just find yourself practicing a little Greek philosophy along the way.
O O O
Thomas M. Reid has been an award-winning roleplaying game designer

and editor since 1991. He is also the author of over a dozen short sto-
ries and novels, including Insurrection, the second title in the New York
Times bestselling War of the Spider Queen series. He currently lives on a
quarter-acre cat ranch in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and three
boys. In his spare time, Thomas enjoys woodworking, gardening, and
playing games with his family. You can learn more about Thomas’s work
at thomasmreid.com.
Nicole Lindroos on
Pieces of Eight
Key Designer: Jeff Tidball
Atlas Games (2006)
2 or More Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up
I vividly remember being introduced to Pieces of Eight. I know this doesn’t

seem like a shocking or revolutionary statement but working in the games industry
one sees a lot of games. A lot. My colleagues, co-workers, and friends contribute
to a ceaseless flow of creative new ideas, prototypes, and finished products. Trade
shows and game conventions bring forth new offerings in the hundreds every year.
Privileged as I am to work in such a flourishing creative garden, I don’t always
have the opportunity to stop and smell the roses as each new game design buds
and blossoms in the environment around me. Fortunately, Pieces of Eight was a
memorable exception to that rule.
In 2006 I was working my company’s exhibition booth at Gen Con, the big-
gest tabletop games convention in North America. Heading back from my lunch
break I took a quick stroll around the hall to see what new creations my fellow
exhibitors had to offer. That was when I saw designer Jeff Tidball standing at a
demo table in the Atlas Games area. I believe I said something along the lines of,
“Hi, Jeff. How are things going?” I was expecting we’d have a brief exchange of
water cooler talk about convention attendance or the like before I dashed back to
my own booth, but that was before he asked me if I’d seen his new game and slyly
opened his hand to reveal it to me.
Coins. Minted metal coins.
Contained in the palm of his hand was a game unlike anything I’d seen before,
entirely captivating and thematically irresistible. Buccaneer ships on the high seas,
you say? Represented by a handful of unique custom coins to sort and stack and
clink together like tangible pirate’s booty? I believe I demanded a demo immedi-
ately. After my second demo the same feeling came over me that I’d felt after my
first game of Magic: The Gathering over a decade earlier: it was a thrill to witness
a truly novel game concept at fruition, fully functional and setting game design
on its ear. When I got back to my own booth I told each of my co-workers (and
Pieces of Eight O 259
even a few of our customers) they had to go try it for themselves. It was my pick
of the show.
Pieces of Eight is a clever little game that fits in your pocket as easily as your
bus money and plays in the palm of your hand. Two coin sets have been published
to date — The Maiden’s Vengeance and The Cursed Blade. Each player builds a
“ship” of 13 coins from one set or even a combination of sets. The game uses 15
types of coins, each with a unique symbol. Some represent very pirate-y items, such
as a cutlass, pistol, mate, or monkey, while others represent swashbuckling actions,
such as broadside, pillage, and treachery. These form the basis for everything that
happens in the game, both the events that occur as the ships battle and the objects
or people involved. Most coins are silver, but each ship also contains one gold coin
— your stalwart captain, who is your key to victory or defeat.
Once arranged, the stacked coins of your ship lay in your hand. The “fore”
rests toward your fingers, the “aft” toward your palm, with the captain nestled
somewhere in the middle. You hold a single coin in your off hand as your “crow’s
nest.” Though there are several coins that make up the ship, when it comes to your
turn your only immediate worries are the active coins — the ones positioned in the
fore and aft of the ship, and in the crow’s nest. These are the ones that will matter
during the next stage of the battle.
Most things you can do are quite straightforward and operate just as you’d
expect. Bombs, for example, blow things up. Some coins need to be played in tan-
dem. (That bomb needs to be wielded by an active mate, since a bomb’s no good
without some sea dog to light it and toss it.) These few special rules are easy to
memorize, and there are compact cheat sheets available at the publisher’s website,
in case you need a mnemonic back-up. Coins that are destroyed in battle go into
the felt bag (included with the two sets) that serves as the hold, or just into your
pocket. The last player with a captain remaining wins.
At the risk of being chided for making an unnecessary pun, the game is delight-
fully easy to grasp.
While the basics of the game are straightforward, Pieces of Eight also success-
fully takes a page from the customizable trading card and collectible miniatures
games created in the 1990s. Ships may have different constructions from game to
game merely by choosing different coins from which to build. For example, Barrel
of Grog, Buried Treasure, and Call to Quarters all allow a player to return elimi-
nated coins to play in various ways, so including all three builds a highly resilient
ship. As in the trading card games, coins can be stacked to enable combination
moves, inviting players to think several turns ahead toward their ultimate goal.
Pieces of Eight is quick and fun with just two players, but the game is built to
open up and accommodate multiple players with ease. These multi-player games
add another level of strategy, as individuals can form alliances and contribute to
another player’s attack. Plus, players whose captains have been destroyed may no
longer win the game but they aren’t eliminated until their ship goes down. A
captainless ship is still a menace, hunting the waves and exacting revenge on the
scurvy dogs who struck the fatal blow until she sinks into the briny deep. Ye must
fight to the finish if ye want to rule the high seas, yarr! (Impromptu roleplaying is
not only common with Pieces of Eight, it’s positively infectious.)
When we speak of family games, a certain picture may come to mind of people
gathered at the dining room table, moving pieces around a board or slapping cards
down in piles or rows on some evening after a meal. It’s an idyllic image that’s
been used to sell games for decades. While it is not total fantasy, my life as a parent
seems to have been spent riding a lot more buses, trains, and airplanes, or wait-
ing in lines, airports, campgrounds, and hotels. Any game I can throw in purse or
pocket to take with me and pull out for distraction is like gold.
Abstract games such as Set and dice games such as Farkle were my first intro-
duction to the idea of a portable game, beyond those little magnetized travel ver-
sions of classics like chess. Over the years other games crossed my path, such as
the Farkle-variant Cosmic Wimpout and the “dice fighting” game of Button Men
(both of which were covered in this volume’s companion, Hobby Games: The 100
Best). Each was composed of a small number of components — specialty dice or
pin-backed buttons. The only roadblock to play with those games is the need for
a play surface, which made them great for passing time in a hotel room or on an
airplane, but less ideal for waiting in line for the opening day showing of a Harry
Potter movie. Pieces of Eight clears that potential hurdle by putting gameplay in
the palm of your hand and removing even the need for score keeping. Brilliant!
Compact, portable, easy enough for a child to learn, but with the strategic
depth to stand up to repeated play, thematically delightful, and just downright fun.
I wish I’d thought of Pieces of Eight and, just like on that day back at Gen Con, I
never fail to recommend it as one of the best family games around.
O O O
Pieces of Eight O 261
Nicole Lindroos lives in Seattle with her husband Chris and daughter
Katherine, who share her passions for good food and fun games. Nicole
entered the games industry in 1989 and has applied her talents to bring
board games, card games, roleplaying games, periodicals, and support
products of various sorts to market ever since. She’s helped found three
companies (two of them successful!), worked on two magazines, written
numerous articles, and contributed everything from editorial assistance to
graphic design for companies including Atlas Games, White Wolf, FASA,
Wizards of the Coast, and Green Ronin Publishing. She has volunteered
on the board of directors of the Game Manufacturer’s Association, the
Origins Awards committee, and as chair of the Academy of Adventure
Gaming Arts and Design. Nicole still clings stubbornly to the belief that
an individual can make a difference.
John Wick on
Pit
Key Designers: Edgar Cayce, George S. Parker, Harry Gavitt
I learned to play Pit twice. The first time was the wrong way and the second
time was the right way.
The first time I learned how to play I was at a Boys Club in Ames, Iowa, sit-
ting with a group of kids my own age, around nine years old. We grabbed the box
off a shelf crammed with other games — all donated by families or bought from
Goodwill — pulled out the small metal bell, and read the little rulebook. I still
remember the plastic pages stained with what appeared to be coffee. We read the
rules. They weren’t difficult. The components were simple, too. Just a bell and a
single deck of cards with six different suits. The suits were corn, wheat, and other
commodities traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Not that we knew what a
“commodity” was; we were nine-year-old boys, after all.
What we discovered you do in Pit is trade the commodity cards face down
with the other players, trying to collect a set. There was also a Bull card and a
Bear card, but they looked complicated, so we skipped them. Whoever got all of
one suit first through trading won and got a number of points based on what com-
modity he got. Pretty simple, so we started playing the game.
I pulled out the four cards in my hand that didn’t match, and I said, “I have
four.”
Other kids did the roughly the same. “I have two,” one of them said.
“I have five,” another said.
“I have three,” said someone else.
And then nobody said anything. We just sat there and stared at each other.
None of us traded anything. We just looked at each other, not even saying
numbers, nothing happening.
We put the game away and pulled out something we already knew how to play
and quickly forgot about Pit.
Cut to five years later.
Pit O 263
I’m sitting in a Boys Club in Albany, Georgia, looking at the shelf filled with
games donated by families or bought from Goodwill, searching for something fun.
My friend Danny says to me, “Let’s play Pit!”
“No way,” I tell him. “That game is boh-ring.”
He looks at me like I’m talking in a language from another planet. The way
boys look at each other to say, “You’re stupid.”
“You’re stupid,” he says, in case I missed the meaning of his look.
He grabs the little box and we sit down with his dad, my dad, and another kid
and his dad. Six of us. Danny’s father pulls out the little metal bell, shuffles the
cards, and explains the rules. I’ve been here before. I think I may have even yawned.
“It’s really simple,” Danny’s dad says. “We’re all traders in the Wall Street pit.
The bell starts and ends trading.” He shuffles the cards. “You have to collect sets.
A set of corn, a set of wheat, a set of soybeans, whatever. Each of the sets is worth
a number of points and those points are on the cards. You want to get a set, but
if someone else gets a set before you, you’ll lose points depending on the cards in
your hand. So, if you get a set of corn, it’s worth 75 points. A set of wheat is 100
points.” He even explains the Bull and the Bear.
All the cards are dealt. I’ve seen this before. Boh-ring. Danny’s dad says, “Trade
fast, because whoever gets a set first wins and everyone else loses.”
His hand hesitates over the bell. “Ready?” he asks. We say we are. His hand
drops . . .
And with the tiny clang of the bell, I’m suddenly surrounded by a rush of
sound and movement. Voices screaming, cards shoved in my face.
“THREE! THREE! THREE!” Danny’s dad shouts, loud enough that I almost
jump out of my seat.
“THREE! THREE! THREE!” Danny shouts, just as loud. And they’ve traded
cards.
The other kid — I can’t remember his name — he shouts, “FIVE! FIVE! FIVE!”
Danny’s dad pulls two cards from his hand and shouts back at him, “TWO! TWO!
TWO!”
I have no idea what’s going on. My dad — always a bit of a bashful fellow —
sits in his seat, not sure what to do.
Danny’s dad and the other kid, they’re shouting “FIVE!” and “TWO!” at each
other until they agree on “THREE!” Then they sort through their hands and shove
a trio of face-down cards at the other player.
“ONE! ONE! ONE!” the other kid’s dad shouts, but nobody wants to trade
with him until he adds another card. “TWO! TWO! TWO!” he shouts and Danny
trades with him.
“TWO! TWO!”
“THREE! THREE!”
“FIVE! FIVE! FIVE!”
“THREE! THREE!”
I’m surrounded by a madhouse of shouted numbers. This is not the game we
played in Iowa. What game is this? Are we playing the same thing? Where are the
turns? When are the turns? There are no turns! This isn’t like chess. This isn’t like
backgammon. Everybody’s going at the same time! This is chaos. How do I keep
tra — nobody —
Bing! Danny hits the bell, throwing his hand face up on the table. He’s got a
complete set of coffee. That means 80 points.
Everyone laughs. Even my bashful dad. I don’t. I’m sitting there with the same
cards I had when the game started.
“Round two!” Danny’s dad says, collecting the cards. He starts to shuffle. “You
didn’t trade anything, John,” he tells me, then winks. “You should try trading in
the next round.”
He deals out the cards. I look at my hand. I’m only one card short of having a
whole set of sugar. All I need is one more card to win.
I look at Danny’s dad. “Okay,” I tell him. “I’m ready.”
The bell rings and I’m shouting, “ONE! ONE! ONE!”
Nobody will trade with me. I’m shouting the card I need but nobody will —
Ding!
Round two is done.
The whole round lasts 10 seconds. A mere 10 seconds of numbers shouted at
the top of our lungs. I’m used to chess and go and hearts and rummy and back-
gammon. What kind of game is this? A whole round is 10 seconds? There’s no time
for strategy, no time to consider what you want to go after. I’ve got sugar and corn
and hay and flax and I don’t know —
Ding!
Another round done. Another round of everyone shouting numbers at each
other, trying to trade away what they don’t need in hopes of getting what they do.
And after three rounds, I’m finally starting to get it.
Pit O 265
I’m a pretty slow learner.

Yes, as I’m sitting there, little machines in my head start turning. I’m learning.
Slowly, like I said, but I’m learning.
I learned how to play Pit twice. The first time I played it, I learned how to play
it the wrong way. The second time, I learned how to play it the right way.
Same box. Same cards. Same rules. Same little orange metal bell. But what
the second group of players brought to the table made the game. We professional
game designers have a big, fancy technical term for this.
We call it “bringing the fun.”
Pit taught me, more than any other game, that I can playtest like a madman
for years to make a design work, write a great set of rules to make the mechan-
ics clear, hire the best graphic designers to make it pretty, but if I don’t show the
players how to bring the fun, it’ll sit on that shelf — along with all the other games
donated by families or bought from Goodwill — and nobody will play it.
Those rules we read didn’t show us the game that was there. The fun that was
waiting for us. That’s because, sometimes, someone else has to show you how to
play. The pretty box won’t show you, the pretty cards won’t show you, even the
rules won’t show you.
You’ve got to get that from playing the game with people already in the know.
As a game designer, if you show your players how to bring the fun, a game can
transform from something that’s a momentary distraction into a pastime you play
every week for the rest of your life, or at least something more than a diversion.
I didn’t end up playing Pit every week for the rest of my life, but if you look
closely at the games I’ve designed, you might see the impact of the lesson I learned
so long ago in that Boys Club in Albany, Georgia.
Bring the fun.
And back in Albany, so many years ago, little John Wick watches Danny’s dad
shuffling the cards again. Round four. I look at the cards Danny’s dad gave me,
I pull three into my left hand. I feel the excitement building in my chest. A game
with no rounds. A game with no turns. A game that happens all at once.
And I’m ready.
Set.
Ding!
O O O
John Wick has designed over a dozen different games including roleplay-
ing games for children and families. His credits include Cat, Dragon, and
My Monster. He loves telling stories around campfires and collects orks.
You can find his games at johnwickpresents.com.
Matt Forbeck on
Pokémon
Key Designers: Tsunekaz Ishihara, Kouichi Ooyama, Takumi Akabane
Wizards of the Coast (English edition, 1998)
If you haven’t heard about Pokémon, then you’ve had no contact with any
grade-school kids for more than a decade and little exposure to media of any sort.
What started out in 1996 as a pair of Game Boy titles in which players collect
fun “pocket monsters” and pit them in battle against each other has become one
of the most successful entertainment franchises of the past 20 years. As of 2009,
Pokémon has spawned more than a dozen video games, three different TV series,
10 feature films, music CDs, countless books and manga, and an endless flood of
licensed material, from T-shirts and lunchboxes to a traveling theme park. Many
of the products have been translated into dozens of different languages. It’s a truly
global phenomenon.
The sublime thing about Pokémon is how its fictional universe, created by
Satoshi Tajiri, integrates perfectly with the games built around it. In the setting,
people travel the world and gather creatures known as Pokémon, then use them
to battle each other in various arenas. The real heart of the central storyline is
encountering and collecting the myriad different monsters, as suggested by the
hero’s last name in the Americanized versions of the licensed books and cartoons:
Ketchum.
Players of Pokémon games do much the same as Ash Ketchum. They collect
creatures, then use them to take on opponents in arenas on video game consoles
and kitchen tables around the world. You don’t just play at being a Pokémon
trainer. You are a Pokémon trainer, even if the monsters exist only as pixels on
a video screen or in Ken Sugimori’s charming card art. The motto for Pokémon
hunters — “Gotta catch ’em all!” — applies to both characters and players.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game first hit shelves in Japan in October 1996
and made its way to America in December 1998 via Wizards of the Coast, pub-
lisher of the original collectible card game, Magic: The Gathering. The Pokémon
TCG is a clear successor to Magic, featuring a pared-down set of mechanics that
makes the game accessible to kids while still retaining the sort of strategy and
gameplay that made Magic such a hit with teens and adults.
To battle, each player faces off with a deck of exactly 60 cards. You can pick
up premade “starter” decks at stores, or you can build your own from cards
amassed from packs called “boosters.” The game includes three basic types of
cards: Pokémon cards each describe a single creature, detailing its type, attacks,
powers, energy requirements, hit points, and so on. Energy cards come in several
different flavors, including fire, water, grass, lightning, and more; these power the
Pokémon’s attacks. Trainer cards add twists of all sorts to the action. The Poké
Ball card, for example, allows you to flip a coin. If it comes up heads, you can
search your deck for a monster and add it to your hand.
At the start of a match, each player draws a hand of seven cards and puts a
basic Pokémon into play in the center of the table. This forms the arena in which
the creatures battle. You then set aside six of your cards as prizes you can win in
the course of the fight.
To begin your turn, you draw once and then play cards from your hand to
prepare for the fight. This can include attaching energy cards to a Pokémon, add-
ing creatures to your bench — basically your reserves, which are ready to step in
and do battle — playing trainer cards, and even evolving a Pokémon into a more
powerful type of monster. Strategy here is important, as you need to attach the
right cards to your various Pokémon in order to utilize their powers. If you want
your Pikachu to zap an adversary with its Spark, you need to first attach two
lightning energy cards to the Pikachu. Then you can start letting loose with that
Spark as your attack each turn.
This all may sound a bit baffling, but even young children can grasp the game’s
basics. To play, they really just need to be able to read.
To win the game you must do one of the following:
O Win all your prize cards by knocking out opposing Pokémon;
O Knock out all the other player’s Pokémon;
O Have your opponent run out of cards before you do.
Thanks to the wide variety of available cards, there are plenty of different ways
for players to put together a deck that can get them to that win. At last count, over
Pokémon O 269
40 sets have been released. With thousands of cards to choose from — including
more than 400 different types of Pokémon — the possibilities are almost endless.
Clever players can create decks that capitalize on devastating card combinations.
With the Rare Candy trainer card, for example, you can instantly evolve your
Pikachu into the more powerful Raichu. The best of these combo pairings can
surprise even experienced opponents.
Since there are so many ways to build a deck, it’s impossible for a player to
come up with an unbeatable set of cards for every possible situation. If a particu-
lar opponent repeatedly mows down your Pokémon, all you have to do is rework
your deck to make yourself more competitive. Of course, the reverse is true as
well; if you wipe the arena clean with a particular collection of cards, you can be
sure to see your opponents tailoring their decks to counter yours more effectively.
Many kids buy and collect Pokémon cards without ever playing the game.
They love the colorful artwork and can often recite the creatures’ stats from mem-
ory. They enjoy them much as kids of earlier generations enjoyed baseball cards,
but they don’t have to worry about Pikachu becoming a free agent and switching
teams. Of course, people who collect the cards but never play the game are missing
out on a lot. It’s one thing to follow the “players” in a game, and it’s something
else entirely to dig into it and direct all the action yourself.
Pokémon is an excellent game for introducing players of any age to trading
card games. It isn’t the sort of classic board game you haul out of the closet with
the family over Thanksgiving weekend. It is, however, easy enough to understand
that even non-gamers will pick it up quickly. They won’t be bored with a few
quick battles, either. With so many different ways to build a deck, each and every
time you play the experience can be fresh and new.
Because Pokémon is so popular, it’s not hard to find people willing to duel. Like
Wizards of the Coast before it, the game’s current publisher, Pokémon Company
International, stages leagues and city, state, and national tournaments. There’s
even an annual world championship, in which the top Pokémon trainers from
around the globe square off to battle for thousands of dollars in scholarships.
To get going, though, all you need to do is hit your local hobby store and pick
up some cards and a set of rules. Then gather some friends and family, and start
battling. The sheer number of different cards released for Pokémon means it’s next
to impossible to “catch ’em all,” but you’re bound to have a blast trying.
O O O
Matt Forbeck has worked full-time as a writer and game designer since
1989 with many top companies, including Angry Robot/HarperCollins,
Atari, Boom! Studios, Games Workshop, High Voltage Software, IDW,
Image Comics, Mattel, Penguin, Playmates Toys, Random House, Simon
& Schuster, Ubisoft, and Wizards of the Coast. He has designed board
games, collectible card games, roleplaying games, and miniatures games,
and has written comic books, computer games, magazines, novels,
nonfiction, screenplays, and short fiction. His work has been published
in over 10 languages, and his projects have been nominated for 24
Origins Awards, of which he’s won 13. He has also won five ENnies.
He is a proud member of the Alliterates writers’ group, the International
Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the International Game
Developers Association. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, with his wife Ann
and their children: Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. Visit Forbeck.com
for more details about Matt and his work.
Robin D. Laws on
Prince Valiant
Key Designers: Greg Stafford, William Dunn, Lynn Willis
Chaosium (1989)
Roleplaying games, which allow participants to join together to create

a fun and adventurous verbal story, seem like they ought to be ideal for families.
All they require is a cooperative spirit and a sense of imagination — qualities no
age group claims a monopoly on. In practice, roleplaying rules sets ideal for all
members of a typical family aren’t so easy to find. Dungeons & Dragons, the
originator of the form as we know it and still the default introduction to the genre,
appeals brilliantly to people who delight in the mastery of complex rules details.
The elaborate structure it and its many descendants offer is sweet music to a
swath of players, mostly male, who stumble onto roleplaying in early adolescence
or beyond.
Family gaming, with its range of age groups and mindsets, calls for a simpler,
stripped-down approach to roleplaying. Prince Valiant: The Storytelling Game
provides just such an entry point.
Prince Valiant takes its basis in the classic newspaper comic strip, begun in
1937 by writer/illustrator Hal Foster and carried on to this day by successors. The
game allows you to create stories around characters inhabiting Foster’s sunny,
romantic version of the King Arthur myth. Both game and comic strip serve up
their thrills and derring-do within a positive, clean-cut context. Their reassuring
good nature appeals to younger kids, though they also offer plenty of Vikings,
clashing swords, and suits of armor to hook the fancy of older ones. The game
follows the comic strip in its happy disregard for historical accuracy. Parents with
a mind to do so can, however, use game sessions to sneakily induce in their kids a
basic grounding in the real history of Dark Ages Europe.
Character creation is simple, requiring players to make only two rules deci-
sions. First they must allocate seven points between two qualities — brawn and
presence — which are used to determine the results of broadly defined action
attempts. One measures physical capability; the other, mental. Then players assign
nine points to skills, from a list of 14. Examples of these more specific abilities
include agility, archery, courtesie, fellowship, healing, and hunting. Players also
invent suitable names for their characters, then describe their backgrounds,
appearance, and personalities.
As in most roleplaying games, one participant takes on a guiding role, here
called a storyteller. In a family game, you’ll want one of the adults, or an older kid
capable of smoothly handling a group of excited players, to perform this job. The
storyteller creates basic situations, called episodes, to which the players respond
by describing the actions of their characters. When outcomes are in doubt, the
storyteller uses the game’s resolution system to determine if the heroes succeed or
fail. Prince Valiant uses an ingeniously simple system of coin tosses, as modified by
the characters’ brawn, presence, and skills, to decide when the heroes forge ahead,
and when they are confronted with additional setbacks or complications. Set aside
a supply of shiny new pennies to ward off the grubby hand syndrome that comes
with prolonged coin-handling.
Guidance for storytellers appears in the form of pre-written episodes. Incidents
covered include dragon attacks, requests for aid from despairing families, and an
array of knights who issue challenges to the heroes. A clear, consistent format
allows you to easily create similar adventures arising from the Arthurian setting.
By dividing the episode format into categories according to their function in the
narrative — nuisance, assistance, and attack are examples — the game painlessly
teaches you the basics of story structure.
Prince Valiant shares with other roleplaying games the trait of persistence over
time: characters may succeed or fail in their story goals, but the players never win
or lose. Instead, their heroes return for as many episodes as you care to spin, much
like the ongoing protagonists of a TV series — or the Prince Valiant strip itself. A
continuity spontaneously develops as the characters build on past successes and
seek to overturn the complications of past failures. During the game, characters
accrue fame, which they can use to improve their skills or boost their chances of
success at certain social actions.
After several sessions, some groups may feel drawn toward the advanced rules.
Added options include a beefed-up skill list, adding such abilities as bargaining,
disguise, farming, and money-handling. By the standard of the typical roleplaying
game, these extra rules remain radically simple in presentation and in play.
A key aspect of any roleplaying game is its malleability: together, storyteller
Prince Valiant O 273
and players are the ultimate authors of their own experience. They can alter any-
thing, from the world to the rules themselves, to suit their own tastes and needs.
Although Prince Valiant is eminently suitable as a family game, it doesn’t take that
as its primary focus. A few obvious tweaks come to mind for storytellers running
the game for kids, or with a mixed group of children and adults.
For starters, I’d deemphasize the game’s focus on evoking the Hal Foster style.
Although the strip is still published in some newspapers, and King Features makes
periodic attempts to revive it in other media, few kids will have heard of it. The
strip’s stately appeal may be better appreciated by grown-ups. When I was a kid in
the early 1970s, I remember finding it stodgily opaque. Whether it was the absence
of word balloons or the classically measured compositions, its lack of obvious
energy kept me at arm’s length. I don’t think I’m projecting when I assume that
today’s kids, raised on SpongeBob and the Xbox, may need you to inject a more
raucous, irreverent energy into your storytelling than strictly fits the Foster ethos.
In keeping with the strip, Prince Valiant allows for female characters but
acknowledges the many obstacles that prevent them from acting with the
same freedom as young male knights. To run the game for girls, adjust Foster’s
Arthurian mythos to permit female knights. Let them pursue adventure with the
same disregard for historical sexism as the boys do.
You can also allow kid players to customize the setting by adding elements that
tickle their imaginations, whether or not they’re true to Foster or the Arthurian
tradition. Foster’s strip takes a rationalistic approach to magic. If the kids want to
add a dash of Harry Potter, follow their lead. If they’re going through a Twilight
phase and want to meet a hunky, non-threatening vampire, take advantage of that
pre-established interest. The opportunity to build on one another’s creative con-
tributions is the core of the roleplaying experience. Granting this full flower will
probably require you to set aside the game’s purist inclinations; the personalized
roleplaying experience is well worth it.
The solid structure of Prince Valiant: The Storytelling Game provides the ideal
platform for the family gamer to introduce his or her brood to the joys of role-
playing. This is only fitting, as lead designer Greg Stafford’s love of storytelling in
general and the classic strips of Hal Foster shines through on every infectious page.
O O O
Robin D. Laws is a writer and game designer. His roleplaying game

designs include Feng Shui, The Dying Earth, Rune, HeroQuest, and The
Esoterrorists. Among Robin’s six novels are Pierced Heart, The Rough
and the Smooth, and The Freedom Phalanx. His nonfiction work includes
40 Years of Gen Con, an oral history of the hobby games industry’s
biggest convention. Pelgrane Press recently published an anthology of
his appallingly funny comic strip, The Birds. Robin’s recent roleplaying
design, Mutant City Blues, is a game of procedural investigation in a
world where one percent of the population has acquired superpowers.
Robin hails from Toronto and is a fixture of the game convention guest
circuit.
Stephen Glenn on
Qwirkle
Key Designer: Susan McKinley Ross
MindWare (2006)
Game snobs exist. I can confirm this because, you see, I am one. It’s an
admission for which I feel neither pride nor shame. There is a running gag in my
local game club; when I observe my companions enjoying a rousing session of a
game I find to be inferior, I will smile and admonish them: “Gentlemen, you’re
having the wrong kind of fun.” This typically results in a mild verbal assault on
my person. Mild, because they think I am joking.
It was in a state such as this, floating on a cloud of my own superiority, that
a good friend suggested I try a new game, Qwirkle. After looking at the box I
could only emit a soft, disappointed sigh. For starters, it was from an unknown
company by a designer whom I’d never read about on my private gaming mail-
ing list. Furthermore, the game just looked basic and plain. Chunky blocks with
colors and shapes. The type of elementary nonsense from an amateur, maybe a
Maureen Hiron-wannabe who wasn’t up to speed on the most recent sophisticated
design techniques. Finally, the name annoyed me. Qwirkle? A q followed by a w?
Why not go ahead and toss a z at the end of it as well and shoot for the whole
street cred package? Suffice to say, my snob-meter was pinned in the red. This was
clearly the “wrong kind of fun.” I passed, quickly and confidently.
Several months later I happened upon a brief review of Qwirkle by my
good friend, W. Eric Martin. He was considerably impressed by the design, and
remarked that he had enjoyed it numerous times with family members as well
as more seasoned gamers. I’m quite happy to know Eric; our tastes tend to run
directly proportional. Therefore, when he peppered his review with such enthusi-
asm, I had to give Qwirkle a second look. Perhaps I had been wrong.
I was right. Well, about being wrong, that is.
Qwirkle is best described as Scrabble with colors and shapes instead of letters.
Each tile has a single colored shape on it. There are six colors and six shapes —
so 36 unique tiles — and three sets of these unique tiles in the box, making 108
beautiful, chunky, colorful wooden tiles in total. Unlike Scrabble, there is no fixed
board in Qwirkle. You can play on any flat surface, the only boundaries being the
size and shape of that surface.
The gameplay is nearly identical to Scrabble. A “word” in Qwirkle consists of
a minimum of two tiles that are: (a) all the same color with no repeating shapes,
or (b) all the same shape with no repeating color. Per these rules, you can see that
the maximum size of any word in Qwirkle is six letters. In a nutshell, your score
on any given turn is the number of tiles in any new word you’ve formed on the
table. If you manage to complete a six-letter word, you’ve formed a Qwirkle and
receive a bonus of six points.
With the lexical element removed, success in Qwirkle is not derived from hav-
ing a large vocabulary or being able to spell particularly well. Words in Qwirkle
are governed by specific, logical rules, not arbitrary combinations of letters found
in language. Using these specific rules, you can create over 20,000 unique words,
and the beautiful part is that none of them have to be memorized. Granted, the
Scrabble Player’s Dictionary has over 100,000 entries. On the other hand, um,
there’s a dictionary involved. Qwirkle requires no such tome.
Reading Eric’s description encouraged me to rush right out and purchase a
copy. I do not exaggerate when I say that it became an immediate hit with my
entire family (well, except for my wife who will only play mahjong and poker,
and only for money). It’s one of those games in which you only need to read the
rules once and then you’ll probably never have to refer to them again. There are
two types of bonus scoring in the game: the aforementioned six-letter bonus, and
a six-point bonus for the player who ends the game by playing his or her last tile
when there are none left to be drawn. You can also choose to sacrifice a turn by
discarding as many tiles as you want and refilling from the wall. While I’m not
the type of player who can bear to sacrifice turns like this, my son does it a lot. I
should add that his win record is far more impressive than mine.
Another aspect worth mentioning is the quality of the bits. The beautiful pat-
terns that form on the table during play appeal to my sense of order and color. I
almost believe that I would enjoy this as an activity even if there were no game
involved.
Qwirkle earned a ‘10’ from me just after one session. Far from being the glori-
fied matching game that I feared it would be, Qwirkle manages to streamline the
classic word game into a much more accessible contest, one that is perfect for
Qwirkle O 277
families. The third-grader can compete with the high school student on a much
more level playing field. Even so, there are tactics that an experienced player can
use to gain advantage over his opponent. The complexity for these is at about
the level you would expect from a family game. Don’t be surprised, however, if
you still find yourself having “aha” moments well after you consider yourself an
experienced Qwirkle player, as the design continues to reveal its depths to you.
I offer kudos and sincere thanks to Susan McKinley Ross for her significant
contribution to my gaming life. This snob is forced to admit that judging a game
by its cover is a dangerous business. In fact, it nearly cost me years of enjoyment.
Qwirkle is an instant classic — a game that I’m qwite sure I’ll be playing for the
rest of my life.
O O O
Stephen Glenn is the author of Balloon Cup, an award-winning two-

player card game. He is proud of the fact that he and The Beatles’
Revolver album were both released on the same day in 1966. As a child
he once spent an entire summer playing Dungeons & Dragons in the
back of a local game store and rewarded the proprietors by stealing
from them. He once asked Victoria Principal for a kiss, and was rather
impolitely rejected. As a high school student, he once tried, and failed, to
get himself suspended. In 1984 he was in Manhattan on New Year’s Eve,
but was in an elevator when the clock struck midnight. He doesn’t mind
hidden, trackable information, but he knows several people who do. He
understands that some games could, theoretically, last forever, but he’s
never seen it happen.
Sébastien Pauchon on
Ricochet Robots
Key Designer: Alex Randolph
Rio Grande Games (second English edition, 2003)
“Okay? New chip!”

I glance at the cardboard disc that’s just been flipped, taking in the information
as quickly as possible, then at the board: Red robot . . . red star . . . over there.
And it begins.
Onetwothreefour —
Nah.
Onetwothreefour — looks good! — fivesixseveneightninetenelev —
“Nine!” someone shouts. The sand clock is flipped; one minute to go.
Damn it! Nine?
Onetwothreefourfive —
No.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseven — ah, got it! — eight . . . nine!
“Nine, too!” I shout.
Shorter! Shorter!
Onetwothreefourfivesixseven —
Did that before! Quick, quick!
Onetwothree — this time take a left — fourfivesixseveneight — nine . . .
“There’s a second niner . . .”
Switch tactics. Shift another robot to change red’s path, but which?
Blue. . . ? Nah. Takes three moves.
Yellow. . . ? Dead lead.
Green! No, three moves, as well.
Oh, wait — green and blue! One move each to get them into place to deflect.
Red now needs — onetwothreefourfive — only six moves! Plus the two for green
and blue.
“Eight!!!” I crow.
Everyone else at the table: “What?” “Oh, come on!” “You’re kidding!”
Ricochet Robots O 279
Heh heh . . .
Fifteen seconds to go.
Better double-check. Green one, blue two, red threfourfivesixseeven — eight!
Pffffffffff, that was close. Since time’s almost up, I’ll —
Someone: “SEVEN!”
What!? No way!
Gah! Only five seconds to go . . .
There you are, inside my head, as I play Ricochet Robots. And behind my eyes,
too; you sure don’t want to forget your eyes for this game. Talking about REM!
I have a trick to count really fast with my eyes. Well, I call it a trick but most
onlookers would probably tell you it’s a (creepy) spasm. Each time I count one
move for a robot, my head jerks ever so slightly in that direction. So it’s up-left-
down-left-up-right-down-left . . . during the whole game. I’m sure it looks odd from
the outside, but, hey, it’s a race, and you don’t want to lag because of aesthetic
considerations, do you?
But first things first: Ricochet Robots is among the last games published by the
great Alex Randolph. It was originally released in 1999 as Ricochet Robot, but has
seen two later editions under the plural title. It’s a puzzle-solving game and a race.
Or the other way round, depending on how good you are at it.
Ricochet Robots is one of those games that splits opinions. Some just don’t
“see” the solutions and though they might admit the central idea is neat, they have
no fun playing it. Some don’t consider it as a game at all, just a puzzle. Fortunately
there is another side to that fence, and I happen to stand in that playground. And
it’s great place to spend time. Let me tell you why. (If, at the end of this, you’re half
as excited about Ricochet Robots as we are here — a couple of my friends love it
as much as I do — then you’re in for a treat.)
Ricochet Robots is a race. The race, if you ask me. In most race games — like
the great Ave Caesar, for instance — it’s more about the story of a race, with play-
ers pretending to take part in the action. For Ave Caesar, that means using cards to
simulate charioteering in the Roman Colosseum. Don’t get me wrong, Ave Caesar
is a top-notch family title; it often lands on our table and we always have a blast
playing it. But Ricochet Robots is not about a race, it is a race.
You don’t need much to play: one board; four robots, each with a respective
marker (the second and third editions include five robots); and 17 chips. The
board shows the inside of a warehouse from above, with a 16 by 16 grid printed
on the floor. It’s walled on the outside, with no entrance, no exit. Some small walls
are scattered inside the warehouse, obstructing certain alleys and turning that grid
into a loose labyrinth. Four (or five) robots of different colors stand within the
maze, awaiting your orders.
The 17 chips each show a symbol, a target for the robots to reach; the same
symbols are to be found on the warehouse floor. The chips are also color coded,
to indicate a specific robot.
So, how is the game played?
You turn a chip over. That chip indicates which robot has to reach which tar-
get. Everybody then tries to find a way to bring the correct robot to the target with
as few moves as possible. When you have a solution, you usually shout out the
number — “nine!” or “five!” The one-minute timer is turned over, and everyone,
including the player who made the first “bid,” scrambles to find a shorter solution
within that last minute. Once the time is up, the player with the shortest solution
demonstrates it to the others and gains the chip. A new round begins.
That’s it.
There is, of course, a twist: The robots have only very basic functions, and
braking, unfortunately, isn’t one of them. So if you send a robot in a given direc-
tion, it won’t stop unless it meets a wall, or another robot, at which point it veers
off at a right angle. So the path to the target can be quite complex, and many
solutions end up including movement by several robots. On its own, a robot might
be able to reach the target in 12 moves. Moving another robot into its path can
change its course, cutting down the necessary moves to eight, or seven, or five!
The race aspect is introduced by the simple fact that everybody plays each
round simultaneously. Since you’re not allowed to touch anything, your gaze must
travel those alleys and rebound off the obstacles. The tension is wonderful. The
moment the chip is revealed, you know that, at any moment, someone may shout
that perfect solution, so you’d better move faster, faster, faster!
As a designer, I find Ricochet Robots splendid in many ways. The number of
players is completely open; some editions set the upper limit at 10, but the original
says an infinite number can play, which is a bit rhetorical, of course, as everyone
should at least see the board. Anyway, you get the picture. The rules are also won-
derfully concise. The second and third editions add some twists, such as diagonal
deflecting walls (a very nice touch), but basically the rules explained above sum
Ricochet Robots O 281
up the game. And the set-up is fast and simple: just put any robot anywhere, and
you’re ready to go. A very pure design, with a minimum of parts and rules, and
yet a fantastic game.
I’ve had the opportunity to play Alex Randolph’s prototype for this design at
the German Games Archive in Marburg, and it is even purer than the publisher
version. The board consists of a grid/labyrinth, hand designed, on soft white paper.
It looks very Japanese in its elegance and simplicity. A real delight.
As I said before, people who don’t like Ricochet Robots will tell you it is no
game, or at least not one they find enjoyable, and they’ll go on at length about it
with sour looks on their faces. But for me and my friends, it’s always a treat. When
we play, we’re hysterical, often the loudest table. With the time pressure, the game
is so fast paced as to be almost literally intoxicating. And the fact that we often
make the same mistakes or overlook the same kinds of moves makes me feel like
I’m somehow exploring my adversaries’ minds. Or that they are spying into mine.
It’s a curious feeling, but very vivid for me.
Ricochet Robots is also one of the only board games I’ve every witnessed being
played in a truly casual fashion. It often happens that someone stops by, let’s say
during a BBQ, when some of us have a game going. They play a couple of chips,
then move on. Nobody minds; it’s all about challenge. You don’t have to play
through all 17 chips to have fun.
I am willing to admit that my group might be a tad atypical in our love of
Ricochet Robots. Contrary to the rules, which state that a solution of one move
should be overlooked, we call out “one!” even louder when such a chip is turned.
So, too, when the solution is zero, on those occasions when a robot is already rest-
ing on its target. This keeps everyone on their toes throughout the game, but we
also don’t like missing out on even a single round.
So while you may never come to love Ricochet Robots as much as we do, I
hope my enthusiasm has convinced you to give it a try.
Fantastic, I tell you!
O O O
After being an instructor of pool for several years and writing an exhaus-
tive book on the subject, Sébastien Pauchon first caught the gaming
community’s attention in 2005 as the first non-German to be awarded the
Spiel des Jahres “scholarship” for rookie game designer at the Göttingen
designers’ meeting. That same year, one of his designs received an award
in the Ludothèque de Boulogne-Billancourt’s annual Game Designer
Contest. This design eventually became Yspahan, published in 2006 by
Ystari Games and nominated in 2007 for the Spiel des Jahres. Another of
Sébastien’s games received recognition from the Game Designer Contest
the following year, and this went on to become Metropolys. In 2006, he
founded GameWorks Sàrl with Malcolm Braff, and together they have
released several titles, including Animalia, Jamaica, Kimaloé, and Jaipur.
GameWorks is a full-time publisher, and their future looks . . . interesting.
Sébastien currently lives in Vevey, Switzerland, with his wife and daughter.
He’s always ready to play any type of game, and constantly marvels at his
fellow designers’ ideas. Meanwhile, his straight pool high-run still hasn’t
reached 100, which is sad. But hey, it’s only a game!
Peter Olotka on
Risk
Key Designer: Albert Lamorisse
Nice guys wind up with Madagascar.

Back in the day, we played the 1959 edition of Risk for hours on end. We
played the same dog-eared copy with the Disneyesque whale and the sailing ship
on the board. It had wooden cubes as armies and left it to our fertile imaginations
as to their armyness.
We kept playing right up through the early 1970s.
The younger you are, the slower time seems to move. As kids we didn’t mind
a four-hour game — it wasn’t wasted. It was packed with the glory of conquering
the world. The thrill of a secret strategy. The tension of worrying that your plot
would be preempted. And, yes, the despair of being wiped out.
Dice rolling incessantly. Last stands by a single army changing a history yet to
be born. Massive forces growing strong in remote lands suddenly looming large.
Forgotten connections between continents suddenly having import.
Who knew you could see Kamchatka from your porch in Alaska?
For us, Risk was the military Monopoly. We were the generals in lieu of robber
barons.
Fatigued from bending brains and fingers, we break off the game at last and
sleep the sleep of contentment from a battle well fought, savoring victory . . . or
plotting revenge.
We dream Risky dreams. We dream of time traveling into the future to future
Risks. Risk 2008. Featuring the fast game.
We see a collector’s dream of Risks blurring by our time machine.
Early on, wood gives way to plastic. Total domination gives way to nuanced
objectives. Themes adorn the battles. Star Wars, Clone Wars, Moon Wars, Hobbits,
Transformers, and more. And the incessant clatter of dice rattle your eardrums as
you speed by.
The luck of the roll is the heart of Risk. Seizing this or that objective bestows
an extra die. More armies equals more dice. More power accrues to those who
have more.
Life’s like that, we chortle if ahead. Life sucks, we complain if behind. That’s
the Risk way.
En route, the paradox of Risk 2210 a.d. shivers our strategic synapses as we
get off at the time machine’s last stop: Risk 2008.
Bright arrows of war adorn the map, as in a World War II situation room,
pointing at adversaries, pretending a threat to a southern neighbor only to whirl
on cue to attack north. The visuals of pointing arrows supersede the stolid cubes
of before and lend an under-the-radar method of signaling intent (or not).
Chevroned objectives line up in strict columns ready to be plucked by the
skilled. Gathered close by the first, and held in perpetuity, yielding an eventual vic-
tory. Three of this, two of that, and keep your capital — you win. Gone is the one
true way. Last man standing.
Plastic cities and capitals lobby for distinction. They are not the same but have
value and must be held. The territory is but a vessel for things laid on. An airport
here. A city there.
The short game loses none of the thrill of the Risk of Yore. It fits the bustle of
a faster time. The clatter of the dice still sounds, though less incessant in deference
to saving time. Can time be saved?
The dream ends and we awake as Future Pastimes, bursting out of the Risk era.
We proudly brag that we sever all ties. We compose a set of game principles that
fly in the face of the game which we absorbed and which absorbed us.
We would make our own game:
O It would have no dice;
O No one would be eliminated;
O You could have allies and win together;
O Every player would be different;
O Every game would be different;
O You could attack and compromise;
O It would not be of this world.

Risk O 285
Our Constitution of Game Design was the anti-Risk. How then from a game so
loved comes its antithesis? The process was a catharsis, called Cosmic Encounter.
The great games are the ones that make you keep playing them. We are in their
clutch. Risk is such, then and now. The roll of the dice remains incessant, but time
quickens.
We could only break the spell with an inhuman (alien) effort.
The obscure island off the east coast of Africa is called the Eighth Continent by
some scientists because of its unique life forms. In gameplay, we laugh at who-
ever gets stuck there. You can’t really march around much. You have a peaceful
existence on your little island kingdom. Implementing our Constitution of Game
Design, we birthed a raft of alien life forms. We broke the rules in the face of Risk.
Subliminal Risk side effects, from being stuck on the Eighth Continent when only
seven need apply?
Decades later, in homage to Risk, we add a tag line to our Lords of Conquest.
A computer Borderlands. A game of pure strategy with no luck whatsoever.
Another anti-Risk.
The tag line on the package?
“Nice guys wind up with Madagascar.”
Sometimes we think we did not awake at all. Are the aliens playing us?
Gaming is always a Risk.
O O O
Peter Olotka has developed and designed games, activity kits, museum
exhibits, public programs, and various other products. His game credits
include Cosmic Encounter, Quirks, Dune, Isaac Asimov’s Robots, Lords
of Conquest, Hoax, Darkover, and Runes, among many others. As a
creative consultant for science museums, Peter has provided conceptual
design, research and content support, and project management. He has
worked in multiple media and platforms, including print, CD-ROM,
museum kiosk, large group event, radio, and television, for such diverse
companies and organizations as Children’s Television Workshop, Disney,
Boston’s Museum of Science, Sundance, National Inventors Hall of Fame,
LucasArts, Electronic Arts, Scholastic, WGBH TV, and WNET TV.
Richard Breese on
Rummikub
Key Designer: Ephraim Hertzano
Lemada Light Industries/Pressman Toy (1977)
I was first introduced to Rummikub by my friend Liz Anderson in 1982.

The box of 106 ivory-colored plastic tiles was emptied onto the table. On one
side of 104 of the tiles was a number between 1 and 13 in one of four different
colors, each appearing twice. The remaining two tiles were jokers represented by
a smiley face. The reverse side was plain. All the tiles were thoroughly mixed up,
with the plain side showing. We each took our initial hand of 14 tiles, plus one
extra for the starting player, and placed these onto our own individual tile rack.
The straightforward rules were then explained and from that point I was hooked.
Since that day I have introduced Rummikub to my family and to many friends,
and it has become a firm favorite with most of them. Young children can enjoy
the game, often playing together with an older player if needs be, as do my now-
elderly parents and others from their generation. It is rare for a family gathering
in the Breese household to take place without at least one game of Rummikub
being played.
Rummikub makes an ideal family game for many reasons. It plays well with
two, three, or four players. It has simple rules, and the tiles are easy to handle,
with the numbers on them large and easily read. There is the positive feel that
comes from a game where players build and collect, and the fun and excitement
of drawing new tiles that you want or, often, don’t want. There is sufficient luck in
the tile draw for everyone to have a chance of winning, although the better play-
ers will, of course, tend to win more often. As the game progresses and tiles are
placed onto the table, there is plenty to think about whilst your opponents take
their own turns, especially as moves can get quite involved, sometimes requiring
several steps.
I have played Rummikub several hundred times, with each of those games con-
sisting of four rounds. Each round is effectively a complete game in itself, with a
playing time of approximately 15 minutes. It is, of course, possible to stage longer
Rummikub O 287
or shorter games by playing a different number of rounds, and also to let other
players join in, if the occasion requires.
The object of Rummikub is to be the first player to place all the tiles from his
or her rack onto the table as part of connected “sets.” A set can consist of a “run”
of three or more consecutively numbered tiles, all of the same color, or a “group”
of three or four tiles of the same number, in different colors.
To begin laying tiles, a player first has to “meld.” This just means the player
must be able to place one or more sets of tiles onto the table, which together add
up to at least 30 points. (The rules to my copy of the game only require 25 points
to meld, and I prefer playing to that slightly easier total.) Each tile’s value is equal
to the number printed on it. The jokers, which can be used to represent any num-
ber, take on the value of the tile that they are representing. Often a meld can be
achieved from the initial hand, but just as often this won’t be possible. If you can’t
meld straight away, then you draw a tile from the face-down pool. An interesting
variation allows players to draw more than one tile; this can be advantageous
early in the game when a player is trying to meld.
The beauty of the gameplay is that once someone has melded he or she can add
tiles individually to the sets on the table. Players can rearrange the tiles that are
in play to create new and different sets, but on their turn they must add at least
one new tile. Players that can’t add a new tile must draw another from the pool.
The game’s use of tiles rather than cards facilitates the ability to manipulate
the tiles already in play, and it is this aspect of Rummikub’s design that sets it
apart from — and, in my opinion, makes it superior to — the card game rummy.
Indeed, it was the fact that card games were banned in Rumania in the 1940s that
led designer Ephraim Hertzano to develop a game using tiles. Hertzano continued
to fine tune Rummikub when he moved to Israel after World War II. Initially he
created handmade copies and later published the design through his own com-
pany, Lemada Light Industries.
Three different sets of rules were included in the original box: American,
International, and Sabra. The Sabra rules, which are the ones this essay describes,
won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres in Germany in 1980 and have gone on to
garner similar accolades in a number of other countries. Sabra is also the version
of Rummikub most commonly played internationally. In fact, new editions of the
game — available from a number of publishers worldwide — tend to include only
the Sabra rule set, though often with slight variations.
When playing Rummikub in a family setting, I usually suggest a couple of

house rules that make the game a little easier to play. The first and most signifi-
cant of these, which I am certain some purists would consider sacrilege, is that we
always allow the number 13 and number 1 tiles to be joined to create a run. So a
three-tile run could be 12, 13, and 1 or 13, 1, and 2. A second house rule I favor is
permitting players to add to a set containing a joker, split it apart, or remove tiles
from it. This is allowed in some official versions of the game, so this particular rule
is less likely to offend purists.
As mentioned, Rummikub works well with two, three, or four players, but I
enjoy playing with three the most. With three, the active tiles will change more
between a player’s turns than they will when there are only two, and the down
time between turns is less than it is with four at the table. If one of the players is
particularly slow in taking turns or overly thoughtful, a one- or two-minute time
limit for a turn is recommended. Playing with fewer than four also decreases the
chance of one player placing all his or her tiles before another player has even had
a chance to meld.
Once a player has played all his or her tiles the round is over. In the official
rules, losing players subtracts the total of their remaining tiles from their scores
and the winner scores the total of all the losers’ tiles. For a family setting, I recom-
mend a simpler scoring method, whereby the winning player scores zero points
and the other players score points for their remaining tiles, with the ultimate
winner being the player with the lowest total after the chosen number of rounds.
Over 40 million copies of Rummikub have been sold worldwide, testament
to its popular appeal as an easily accessible, enjoyable, and highly recommended
family game. If you empty that box of 106 ivory-colored tiles onto your kitchen
table and give the game a try, you’re bound to agree with all the acclaim.
O O O
Richard Breese has been designing and publishing European-style fam-

ily games since 1989 and is the proprietor of R&D Games. Keydom,
published in 1998, is widely recognized as being the first design to use
the “worker placement” mechanic, later popularized by Uwe Rosenberg’s
Agricola and William Attia’s Caylus. His other designs include Aladdin’s
Dragons, chosen as Games magazine’s Game of the Year in 2001, and the
Rummikub O 289
critically acclaimed titles Keythedral and Reef Encounter. Richard, who is

a chartered accountant, qualified banker, and an MBA, lives in Stratford-
upon-Avon with his wife Dawn (the D in R&D Games) and their three
sons: Mark, Stuart, and Jonathan.
Jesse Scoble on
Scotland Yard
Key Designers: Werner Schlegel, Dorothy Garrels, Fritz Ifland,
Manfred Burggraf, Werner Scheerer, Wolf Hörmann
Milton Bradley (English edition, 1985)
Where is Mr. X? That question lies at the heart of Scotland Yard, wherein
Britain’s top detectives pursue London’s most wanted criminal across the city.
Growing up with two workaholic parents, playing games together was treasured
time. My parents taught me the basics, such as Monopoly, Sorry!, and Risk, and
we eventually branched out into more challenging games. A few of those were too
complex for any of us and stayed virtually untouched in their boxes, while others
introduced me to a whole new realm of strategy and tactics. These are the games
that remained with me over the years, in memory if not always in tangible form.
Among my favorites are Stratego, Survive! and Scotland Yard.
I’ve always thought of Scotland Yard as the advanced version of Clue, although
there is no real relationship between the games. Clue struck me as an Agatha
Christie mystery set in a quaint English countryside, where the villain might be
revealed as one of the players in an abstract sense and everyone scrambles to put
the evidence together by themselves. Scotland Yard, on the other hand, is set in the
London sprawl, and while Mr. X’s crimes are never detailed, he’s described as “a
most-wanted criminal” — surely more ominous than a base murderer! Finally, the
game splits the players into two camps: the larger group plays detectives, working
in unison, to hunt down the other side — made up wholly of the sinister Mr. X.
Scotland Yard is played on a detailed board depicting central London; players
race through the West End and Soho, Hyde Park and Kensington, Parliament and
Charing Cross, via taxi, bus, and underground. The board is covered with num-
bered locations, color-coded to indicate what services can be used to move to and
from each. While taxis can reach all parts of the city, bus stops and underground
stations are considerably rarer, though they often let you cross much greater dis-
tances. At the start, the detectives are given a limited number of tickets for each
mode of transportation. If they use up all their underground tickets, for example,
Scotland Yard O 291
they can no longer take the Tube. If a detective runs out of tickets altogether, he is
stuck in that location for the rest of the game.
Mr. X. also uses tickets to move around the city; as the detectives use up their
tickets, they’re given to Mr. X, who thus has an almost unlimited supply. Mr. X
also has the advantage of remaining off the board for most of the game, reveal-
ing his presence only on specific turns. For all other turns, Mr. X must record his
location on a pad of paper and hides it with a ticket. So while the detectives know
what mode of transportation Mr. X uses each move, they have to deduce where he
might be heading from the evidence of the tickets he uses and from the rare times
he surfaces. The game ends if a detective lands on Mr. X’s position, capturing him.
If all the detectives run out of tickets, Mr. X has eluded them and he wins.
There are a few other twists to the rules. Mr. X has two double-move tokens,
and five “black tickets” that not only allow him to use a ferry to cross the Thames,
but can also be used to hide any other mode of transportation. These are the tools
that Mr. X can employ to sow confusion among the detectives. Even with these
twists, the mechanics are straightforward and easy to learn in just a few minutes,
yet they provide for great tension between the detectives and Mr. X.
Scotland Yard was supposedly first conceived as a hunting game in which the
players were hunters (or, perhaps, hounds) in pursuit of a fox. Interesting, but not
terribly compelling, and rather cruel to some. It’s interesting to see how the design
team translated the mechanics from one concept to an urban setting and added in
the famous detectives of Scotland Yard, which would appeal to a wider audience,
especially in North America, where police dramas and FBI whodunits are a staple
of television and film. Dividing the players up into two sides was innovative at
the time. Certainly Scotland Yard introduced me to the notion of truly cooperative
play, and to two-sided competition in a multi-player board game. In fact, Scotland
Yard has been said to have introduced the “one-versus-many” mechanic to North
American gamers.
Originally published in Europe by Ravensburger in 1983, the game won the
Spiel des Jahres, or German Game of the Year. It was released two years later in
the North America by Milton Bradley. There are a few variants: a recent edition
features London by night — though I prefer the original, which boasts a rather
striking map of London by day — and a 20th anniversary edition includes a funky
black visor so Mr. X can scan the board without giving away his position. Hardly
necessary, but a cute addition. I’ve heard of some groups that have house rules
allowing Mr. X to use dark sunglasses and whatnot to help hide any tells.
A session of Scotland Yard plays out fairly quickly, normally in 30 to 45 min-
utes. If Mr. X starts badly, the game can end in just a few rounds. Some see this as a
fault, but short sessions just mean that several matches can be played in an evening
and other players may get a chance to take on the role of Mr. X. Personally, I love
playing Mr. X. Listening to the detectives strategize is endlessly fun (and similar
to the joy I get out of running roleplaying games). The game is described as suit-
able for three to six players, and while some play it with two — one as Mr. X, the
other as all the detectives — I find it most compelling when five or six players are
involved. Fewer is perfectly viable, with players controlling multiple detectives, but
it’s the table talk and teamwork that makes the game so interesting and replayable.
Scotland Yard was one of the first games that got me thinking about how
games work, even if I didn’t realize how compelling the design was when I first
played it with my parents. It has stood the test of time, and continues to hold a
well-respected spot in my library. It’s simple to teach, great for families, and helps
broaden the concepts of gameplay. All in all, it is truly a “compelling detective
game,” as its subtitle boldly proclaims.
O O O
Jesse Scoble is a writer, story editor, and game designer, in no particular

order. He was creative director on the award-winning A Game of Thrones
RPG, and helped out on Green Ronin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. He wrote
the world bible for Silver Age Sentinels, and has contributed to more than
two dozen books, including two short-story anthologies, several White
Wolf titles, and Hobby Games: The 100 Best. More recently, he wrote
web content and event fiction for NCsoft’s City of Heroes, Exteel, and
Dungeon Runners. He works as a writer and game designer for Ganz,
the makers of Webkinz, one of the world’s most popular children’s online
games. He currently lives in Toronto, Canada, and has unfortunately lost
his dog since writing his bio for Hobby Games, but has been blessed with
a small, squawking baby girl who will be introduced to all these games as
soon as she can be trusted not to eat the pieces.
Richard Garfield on
Scrabble
Key Designer: Alfred Mosher Butts
Selchow & Righter (1948)
I wonder if architect Alfred Butts knew when he designed Scrabble in

the 1940s that he had created what would become the standard for word games.
Well-designed games can have an amazing property — they can be played for
your entire life without becoming boring. Computer games sometimes boast 60 or
80 hours of (often tedious) play. A game like Scrabble puts them to shame. Scrabble
can be played by young and old, by casual and serious, even by competitive and
cooperative players. And for the people who enjoy it, Scrabble never gets old.
In case you are a visiting extraterrestrial, Scrabble has letter tiles that players
take turns placing in crossword fashion on a board. Points are scored according
to the values on the letter tiles used to create a word and that word’s position on
the board. It is a cultural icon, which, according to some estimates, can be found
in 27 percent of American households.
I often played Scrabble casually with my grandmother. With her, I learned
that just because I know a word such as AA doesn’t mean I should play it. There
was a sense that it wasn’t proper to use words that were artificially a part of my
vocabulary because of Scrabble. At one point she challenged my word BYTE. I
knew BYTE was a word, and it was a legitimate part of my vocabulary, but sus-
pected it probably wasn’t in the old dictionary we were using. My only hope was
that it had some meaning previous to being adopted by computer science. Well,
as it turns out, BYTE wasn’t there. Then on a lark I looked up AIRPLANE and
found that wasn’t there either, showing how old the dictionary was! Playing with
this dictionary became something of a sport in the family. At one point someone
unsuccessfully challenged CALCULATOR, which was defined not as an electronic
device, but as “one who calculates.”
My father plays what is essentially collaborative Scrabble. He rejoices at every
good word created and grimaces every time a word gets placed that gums up the
board for future plays. He will allow free access to any dictionary if it will put
good words on the board, and will enthusiastically help his opponent. In fact,
more than one game with him has ended with all players working together to
make some immense word that straddles many tiles already on the board. “Look,”
he’ll explain after studying a player’s rack consisting of I, G, A, V, I, X, and Q, “if I
put the word PRIME here, so that the R is lined up right, you can extend the word
ANT above it with I-G to the R in PRIME, then put A-V-I after it, connecting to
TIES down here. That will get us ANTIGRAVITIES!” Frequently this cooperation
is quite complex. Playing the V to make ANTIGRAVITIES, for example, might
not be possible without additional planning. Placing the V could make it lie over
an O, and VO is not a word, so we might then conspire to get a W underneath
the O (creating the valid word OW), which in turn makes the V legally playable
(creating VOW).
Serious Scrabble is a very different game from that played with one’s family; I
have dipped a bit into that as well, memorizing, for example, the two-letter words,
the common seven-letter words, and the Q words with no U. I lost patience going
beyond that, but found to my delight that getting the highest score possible every
turn is only going to make me an adequate player anyway. To be a Scrabble cham-
pion, one has to master other skills, such as keeping the best tiles in hand for the
next turn and limiting your opponent’s access to useful tiles. Fortunately, there is
enough luck in the game that a weaker player can beat a stronger one, which gives
me hope that I can stay competitive no matter how rusty I get!
Like most good games, Scrabble has many variations which are fun to experi-
ment with. One variant a friend and I came up with allows dictionary access for
making words, but, naturally, you have to decide whether to challenge without
dictionary access. This makes it more of a bluffer’s game. (Would he really have
put down RHYXMATL if it weren’t real? Is it worth risking the penalty points
and a lost turn to find out?) Another friend of mine plays a variation called
Clabbers, in which players are allowed to play anagrams of words. I haven’t yet
tried it, but it is also a bluffer’s game, since you may be put in a position where, if
you don’t unscramble the anagram correctly, you may not even know what word
you are challenging.
In casual play and on the computer, the challenge rules are often ignored and
bluffing is not allowed. In these games players are not permitted to create words
that aren’t legal, and if it’s discovered that they’ve put something down that isn’t
a true word, they just take the letters back and play again. I am happy to play
Scrabble O 295
without challenges, but the game will never be as rich without that thrill of put-
ting down a questionable word, or even a word you are certain doesn’t exist. My
favorite story about Scrabble challenges involves a tactic I am told was perpetrated
by Don Woods, creator of the best-known version of the text game Colossal Cave
Adventure. Don played D-O-I-N-G and said “doyng.” His opponent challenged
based on the sound alone, certain that DOYNG was not a word. When he found
it in the dictionary, he realized that, when you pronounced it “do-ing,” it is quite
a common word!
Scrabble has bled into my life. Every word I learn is a potential Scrabble play,
and if I were hooked up to sensors I am sure I would discover that my pulse jumps
just a bit when I encounter a word that has some interesting letters in it — Q, J,
or Z, for example — letters that, in Scrabble, can cause problems or can bring big
rewards. Perhaps this magnificent creation of Alfred Butts has bled into your life,
as well. Does ZOBO or QANAT kind of make you tingle? How about JNANA
or PYX? I thought so. . . .
O O O
Richard Garfield was a math professor at Whitman College when his

first game, and the first trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, was
published in 1993. A year later, he was working full time in the game
industry, designing trading card games as well as more traditional card
and board games. Since 2000, he has become more and more involved
in computer games. His company, Three Donkeys, consults with such
publishers as Electronic Arts and Microsoft, and he has worked on such
games as Schizoid (Xbox 360 LIVE Arcade), and Spectromancer (PC).
Most recently he has been teaching a class, “Characteristics of Games,”
for the University of Washington honors department, and is compiling a
textbook of the material covered in the course. He has a blog and semi-
regular podcast at threedonkeys.com.
Mike Selinker on
Set
Key Designer: Marsha J. Falco
Set Enterprises (1990)
I’m a big fan of brain cells. One should have as many of the little buggers as one
can. But I confess that in my geologically brief time on the planet, I have done two
things to significantly reduce my supply of usable brain cells. The first, of course,
is imbibing various beverages not compatible with continued consciousness. The
second is getting good at Set.
Because, as my mathematically inclined friend Robert Gutschera sagely says,
any brain cells you devote to getting good at Set cannot be used for anything else.
Looking at the game’s 81 cards — and that’s all the game contains — you’d be
hard pressed to discern why Robert speaks the truth. The cards feature no numbers
or words, just colored shapes one step up from Candy Land. A Set card’s symbols
have the following four characteristics:
O A Quantity: one, two, or three;
O A Color: red, green, or purple;
O A Shading: solid, striped, or open;
O A Shape: ovals, diamonds, or squiggles.
The object is to collect sets of three cards. A set is made up of three cards that
satisfy four conditions. All cards in a set have:
O The same number of symbols, or three different numbers;
O The same color symbols, or three different colors;
O The same shading on their symbols, or three different shadings;
O The same shape of symbols, or three different shapes.

Set O 297
The cards may be the same for some of these characteristics, and different for
others. As the deck contains one of each possible card, for any two cards there is
exactly one additional card that completes the set. The one-green-striped-squiggle
card and the two-purple-solid-squiggle card can only make a set with the three-
red-open-squiggle card.
(Pausing here for effect: This is a serious game whose rules contain the term
squiggles. How fun is that?)
The game is played in real time, which means there are no turns. The real-time
card game is a little-explored genre, primarily limited to kids’ classics such as spit,
Pit, and a few later proprietary games by James Ernest, myself, and a paltry few
other designers. There should be bunches more, given how prevalent real-time
computer and video games are. Everybody else in this book: Get to work, slackers.
Instead of taking turns, you just lay 12 cards on the table, and then everybody
stares at them. The first person to say, “Set!” stops the game while she points out
the set she found. If it’s legit — on each of the four conditions, the cards are all
the same or all different — she takes those three cards, and they are replaced with
new ones. If it’s not legit — say, two cards have diamonds and one has ovals — she
gets mercilessly mocked and the game continues. In the rare case where no one can
find any sets, you just add three more cards and keep playing. (In theory, you can
put out up to 20 cards without getting a set, but I’ve never seen it.) Once you run
through the deck, whoever has the most sets wins.
As you can probably see, nothing in your daily life prepares you for Set. There
are times where you need to be able to spot things that are the same (“all of those
cars are mine”) and other times where you need to be able to spot things that are
not the same (“one of those cars is on fire”). But it’s very rare that you need to be
able to identify things that are both the same and different on multiple axes at the
same time (“all of the cars are mine, but I think I’ll drive the one that’s not on fire”).
So you try to get good at it, devoting unused bits of your brain to set-sorting.
You probably no longer need that instantly recallable list of Elvis B-sides, so that
can go. Soon you’re turning into Johnny Mnemonic, de-rezzing portions of your
childhood so that you can get a little extra processing speed. Last week, I forgot
how to use a fork.
Set is that rare game where you can get better at it alone. Just drop a dozen
cards on the table and see what you can see. You can also pick up the Set hand-
held game or the Set iTunes app. Or, even better, go to the Set Enterprises website,
setgame.com, where you can play a daily Set puzzle. I went there today and found
four of the six sets quickly. I found the fifth a lot less quickly. I still haven’t found
the sixth one, and it’s making it hard for me to finish this paragraph.
At its heart, Set is a puzzle game like Scrabble and Boggle and Trivial Pursuit.
Puzzle games appeal to those who are good at puzzles. Unfortunately, this means
that playing Set with an expert can be a grueling experience for the newbie. Your
goal becomes to get any sets at all, while the machine hoovers them up around you.
But fear not. People plateau in Set; while the preening expert can revel in his
expertise, he also knows his limit. You do not. You may discover untapped poten-
tial in spotting sets that he could never attain. And someday, after you play a lot
of rounds, you may crush him. Talent at this can come out of nowhere: Many of
the best Set players are kids. The same way Little Jimmy can waste you in Halo,
he can waste you in Set.
So back to that claim of Robert’s at the start of this article, that any brain cells
you devote to becoming good at Set cannot be used for anything else. I stand by
that claim, but I also claim that any brain cells you use for this purpose make those
around them smarter. Set is mental yoga; it makes your brain flexible. If you can
process data at high speed — well, you can sure use that for something else. You
can identify ingredients in food faster. You can find your keys faster. You can talk
that officer out of a speeding ticket faster. Set will train your brain to unclutter
itself. And if you can think with a clearer focus, you can . . .
Darn it, where the heck is that sixth set?
O O O
Mike Selinker is a game and puzzle designer from Seattle. He is the co-
designer of such board and card games as AlphaBlitz, Key Largo, Risk
Godstorm, Link 26, Escape from Zyzzlvaria, and Pirates of the Spanish
Main. At Wizards of the Coast, he helped revitalize Axis & Allies and
Dungeons & Dragons. Mike also writes puzzles for the New York Times,
the Chicago Tribune, and Games magazine. He runs the game design
studio Lone Shark Games (lonesharkgames.com) alongside a happy crew
of mercenaries, including fellow 100 Best writers Teeuwynn Woodruff and
James Ernest.
Rob Heinsoo on
Small World
Key Designer: Philippe Keyaerts
Days of Wonder (2009)
Here’s what I hope you’ll love about Small World: charming components,
elegant design, simple gameplay, humor, replayability, and mythic savvy. As a
player in Small World you control a series of magical races, each with unique
powers, struggling to dominate a world that’s not quite big enough for you and
the civilizations controlled by your opponents. Like the stories I ate up as a kid —
the Norse myths, the Lord of the Rings, the rise and fall of Rome — Small World
understands that it’s not enough that what goes up must come down. In order to
tell the best stories, there’s got to be hope of rising again. Small World puts the
sagas of the people into your hands. You may crumble for a while, but the game’s
mechanics require everyone to rise and fall. Even if you can’t quite climb to the
top of the world, you might just pull off a final daring conquest that everyone will
remember after they’ve forgotten who won the game.
How does a game that’s about more-or-less merciless expansion and the eradi-
cation of earlier civilizations turn out to be good-humored fun? First, the game’s
simple mechanics capture the feel of crazy fantasy battles without getting gory.
Second, the fantasy races and powers are far enough removed from our world
that even pure pacifists seem to have no trouble carving new homelands from their
opponents’ empires; the art and mechanics combine to create the game’s enchant-
ing milieu, half Middle-earth, half fairy tale. Third, Small World’s most cunning
aspect — the moment during in gameplay when you have to choose to give up on
your current race by putting it into decline — forces players to accept that you
can’t always win and you won’t always lose.
Before I say more about the decline mechanic, I need to set the scene a bit.
Each of the four painted Small World maps portrays a fantasy world divided into
regions of hills, forests, mountains, farmlands, swamps, and lakes. Players try to
spread across as much of the game board as possible, creating an empire for the
fantasy race they currently control. The 14 empire-building fantasy races have
their own counters and unique powers that set them apart. Skeletons, for example,
create more Skeletons when they conquer enemy-occupied regions. Giants excel
at conquering when they launch attacks from mountain regions, terrain the other
races usually avoid. And the flower-sniffing Elves excel at running away, instead
of taking casualties when they are conquered.
But your innate power isn’t the only advantage you’ll enjoy over the other
would-be conquerors. At the start of a game, races are randomly paired with one
of 20 unique special powers. You can’t play simple Skeletons, Giants, or Wizards —
your race will be modified by an adjective and the accompanying ability. Flying
Skeletons, for example, can conquer any region; they’re not limited to spreading
out into adjacent areas like everyone else. Given that Skeletons prosper by pick-
ing on the weakest possible enemies in order to generate more Skeletons, Flying
Skeletons are badass. But are they really better than Merchant Giants, who score
two victory coins for every area they occupy, instead of one? Or Commando Elves,
who conquer any region with one less token than normal?
Happily, each player gets to discover his or her own answers to these questions.
You’re never forced to choose a particular race/special power combo; you select
from the six possible combos currently available. Taking the strongest power isn’t
always the best choice because a group with a strong power receives fewer “race
tokens,” the troop units that you’ll use to spread across the board. Since you have
to place at least two tokens in each area you conquer, plus one for every enemy in
the area and another for certain types of terrain, more tokens can sometimes be a
mighty power in itself — as proven by the Ratmen, whose only advantage is three
more tokens than most of the other races provide.
Conquering regions is a pleasantly disguised math puzzle. You keep putting
tokens down on the board until you run out or until you want to try to capture
an area you’re not quite tough enough to take by rolling the “reinforcement die.”
In the tradition of many of the best Eurogames, this mathematical resource man-
agement challenge is disguised as a physical act any kid or math-averse adult can
handle with ease. How far can you go with the tokens in your hand? People hardly
notice they’re doing math.
Since you score one victory point for each region you occupy at your turn’s
end, there’s a powerful incentive to choose soft targets and spread as far as you
can. But it’s just not possible to stick to the soft targets. There are four different
game boards, one apiece for games with two, three, four, or five players, and each
Small World O 301
of the maps is too damn small for everyone to prosper. As the cover of Small World
illustrates, when someone falls in this game, there’s a good chance they’ve been
pushed. The game maps are just big enough to give every player a turn to expand
into regions occupied only by non-player tribes. After that one turn of relative
peace, you’re going to have to conquer regions held by someone else earlier in the
game.
Expansion is your agenda, but you have to leave at least one token in any
conquered region you want to hang on to. Therefore, even if you don’t take casu-
alties from enemy attacks, there’s going to come a point when you can’t expand
any farther. This brings up Small World’s key strategic moment, the moment of
“decline” that turns each game into a shared saga. You can’t play only one race
per game. When your current active race has run out of vitality, you put it into
decline, leaving only one counter per region and flipping your tokens onto their
gray side to show that they’ve lost all their special powers. On your next turn, you
get to choose a new race with its own special power. Your new army starts the
conquering cycle afresh at the map’s edge. You might even choose to run over the
top of your own in-decline race, but given that you’ll keep scoring a point apiece
for every in-decline region you control, you’ll be hoping to run over your enemies’
weak and declining empires.
The game’s basic math of token-placing conquest is kid-friendly. But choosing
the right moment to enter decline isn’t nearly as easy. Just as most kids — as well
as strategy-challenged or overly optimistic adults — don’t naturally want to fold
out of poker hands, many will have a hard time admitting that the moment has
come for their beloved Commando Ratmen to call it quits. Happily, you won’t
have to do too much coaching; the game’s internal logic teaches the lesson of
decline forcefully. The moment you want to pick up your troops and conquer,
but can’t, you’ll realize that particular empire has to go into decline. The rampage
you’ll get to unleash on your next turn — with a new race and a fresh stack of
tokens — should soften the blow. Decline isn’t bad; it’s just the first step of rebirth.
This chance to play multiple races is part of what makes Small World fun for
kids and casual players. Most games of conquest-and-control give you one faction
to play for the entire game. For better or worse, you’re Carthage or white or the
rebel armies until someone knocks you out of the contest. Play a few games with
children and you know that they can get frustrated when they’re stuck in a losing
rut, and the best way of finishing a game in these circumstances can be to trade
sides: “Okay, I’ll take white now. Let’s see what happens.” Small World has the
solution to this problem built in, by promising that you’ll never be stuck with just
one faction or mired in the same terrible board position. Even players who know
they’ve been doing poorly can get excited as new race and special power pairs
open up — any of them could be the next empire under their command.
In fact, people have so much fun with Small World that they care less about
winning than just playing. When teaching games, I like to point out that getting
second or third is still a worthwhile thing, that you can play a good game, even if
you don’t end up winning. Usually this advice is wasted; people focus on victory
and think of a hard-fought second place as just another loss. But with Small World,
the reactions are often quite different. Each new turn gives you the feeling that
you’re succeeding. You’re conquering territory you didn’t hold before. For some
players, of course, the emotional satisfaction of such conquests is even greater
when they’re taking territory away from certain people, preferably someone
related by blood. But it’s all in good fun. When the Berserk Halflings explode out
of their halfling holes in the middle of an empire you’d considered safe, you’re
likely to laugh — even when it’s your kingdom that’s been punctured.
For other Small World players, it’s more about the excitement of controlling
a specific faction than about focusing every action on victory. I’ve seen the Flying
Skeletons strive to produce as many new Skeletons as possible each turn by attack-
ing occupied areas, even when that’s not the best possible play. And the Pillaging
Orcs can’t help but play to their role, screaming into powerful civilizations they
would have been better off ignoring — but, hey, they’re Pillaging Orcs, so what
should you expect?
In the end, the final count of victory coins tells only part of the story. Each
player has contributed epic exploits to the world’s chronicle. Players relish both the
accomplishments and miseries of the races they controlled, even when the victory
coins judge that their saga wasn’t quite as stirring as the legend created by another
player. You can look at the board at the end of the game and see traces of each
race that populated it. Each game creates a shared saga, a group history, a tapestry
of near-misses, glorious deeds, and heroes from each race.
So the game works as an amusing entertainment for casual gamers and for
people who love a good story. What if you’re also a hardcore hobby gamer
dead-set on creating the strongest legends and the highest pile of victory coins to
immortalize your heroes? It’s all good. Small World is a balanced and wonderfully
Small World O 303
replayable hobby game, engaging as both a two-player contest and as a multiplayer

challenge. Victory in Small World is as close as your next all-conquering race
and special power combo. Defeat is temporary. Pull out of that decline, send the
Mounted Amazons or the Dragon Master Sorcerers on a board-crushing rampage,
and turn this saga into the history of your people.
O O O
Rob Heinsoo creates roleplaying games, card games, miniatures games,

and board games. He led the design of the fourth edition of Dungeons
& Dragons and wrote a bunch of its sourcebooks. Other recent designs
include Three-Dragon Ante, Three-Dragon Ante: Emperor’s Gambit,
and Dreamblade. Games he worked on in the 1990s that have aged well
include Shadowfist, Feng Shui, and the computer game King of Dragon
Pass. Rob blogs at robheinsoo.livejournal.com.
Hal Mangold on
Sorry!
Key Designer: William Henry Storey
Every lesson I’ve ever learned about revenge starts with the game Sorry!
Sorry! is the concept of karma made manifest. It’s a simple game: Move your
pawns from start to home as fast as you can. Hinder your opponents before they
hinder you — and they will. Revenge is sweet, but what you do to others may
have consequences for you.
The game’s exhibition of an ancient Eastern religious belief isn’t unusual, given
its probable inspiration. Sorry! shares some basic similarities with the Indian game
Parcheesi, to which British diplomats and travelers, given their extensive contact
with India in the 19th and early 20th centuries, were surely exposed. They could
have easily brought home a copy, inspiring, as it was initially billed, The Fashionable
English Game: Sorry! That first version of the game was published in 1934 by
Waddingtons, the same year Sorry! made its North American debut from Parker
Brothers. It’s been a staple of American family game nights ever since. It was on one
of those nights, around the kitchen table with my parents, that I first encountered
Sorry!
The rules of Sorry! are simple. The square board has four start circles, each
a different color, and four corresponding home circles. In the traditional version,
each player has four pawns of the same color, which all begin play on that color’s
start. Movement is handled not by rolling dice, but by drawing from a deck of 45
cards numbered 1 to 12 (excluding 6s and 9s), with four Sorry! cards. On your
turn, you draw one card and follow the instructions. Pawns can only be introduced
into play when you draw a 1 or a 2. Other number cards require you to move
your pawn forward or backward a certain number of spaces along the track on
the board’s outer edge. The idea is to get all four of the pawns from your start to
the home, a trek of 65 spaces. The last five squares before your home are called,
collectively, the safety zone. Only pawns of the same color as the home circle can
Sorry! O 305
enter this safety zone. Pawns inside the zone are immune to harassment by other
players.
Like the rules, the basic gameplay is rather straightforward, too. What you can
do in any given turn is dictated by the card you draw. Unless you are playing with
the “adult” rules, which we’ll get to in a moment, there isn’t much opportunity for
planning. But not being able to forecast your future moves is counterbalanced by
the pleasure of messing with your opponents. And how exactly do you mess with
your opponents? There are three primary weapons at your disposal.
The first weapon a player can employ against an opponent is a maneuver:
landing on his pawn. Each space on the board can only hold one pawn at a time.
If you land on a square occupied by a pawn of a different color, your pawn knocks
the target pawn back to its own start zone. (How annoying!)
The next weapon in a player’s offensive arsenal is the slide zone. There are
eight slide zones along the movement track, two each of the four different colors.
When a pawn lands by exact count at the head of a slide, it immediately moves
to the end. If you miss the slide’s start triangle, or the slide is the same color as
your pawn, then you must creep along the individual squares — and pray. Any
pawns caught on the slide when an opponent slips on through are sent back to
their respective start circles. A well-timed or lucky slide can inconvenience more
than just one of your adversaries. (Gosh, that’s just too bad!)
The best cards in the game compose the third weapon. Drawing an 11 card
lets a player either move a pawn 11 spaces — or switch the position of one of his
pawns with another player’s. (How rude!) Even more irritating, the Sorry! card
allows a player to take a pawn directly from his start and replace an opponent’s
pawn with it, sending the opponent’s pawn back to his own start circle. (All that
hard work undone. What a shame!)
With these three weapons available to players, what might appear at first to
be a very simple game of move-your-pawns-around-the-board-to-their-home often
shifts into a cycle of one petty, vengeful act after another, until someone finally
manages to limp his last pawn across the finish line and declare a (pyrrhic) victory.
Sorry! was the first game I ever encountered that featured mechanics focused
on the active obstruction of another player’s efforts. That design element has
become a central tenet of enjoyable games for me ever since. Call it the Weasel
Factor or a screw-your-neighbor mechanic — it translates to engaging fun. The
heart of the experience is in the player interaction and strategies this adversarial
gameplay sets in motion. The question for each player changes from the typical
“How can I get my piece home the quickest?” into “How can I directly hamper my
opponents’ efforts as I try to get ahead?” Sorry! introduced me to the sublime plea-
sure and slightly cruel joy of looking over at one of my friends or family members
and making the conscious decision that he or she was the one that I was going to
inconvenience next. Such joys do not come without a cost, though. It doesn’t take
long for a typical session of Sorry! to evolve — or devolve, depending upon your
perspective — into an exercise in mostly cheerful revenge, thanks to the steadily
growing web of recrimination spreading over the table.
Because of this sort of interaction, the psychological dynamics generated by
Sorry! are quite a bit different from those created by other classic family games.
There is a personal element to the adversarial, even persecutory gameplay that is
particular to it among the designs of its vintage. Unlike the random dice roll that
lands a token on a hotel-laden property in Monopoly, or the whim of the spin-
ner that places one of the little cars on a house fire space in Life, it is the people
around you causing your worst setbacks. And while chess and checkers feature the
direct confrontation of equal and opposing sides, Sorry! allows for — in fact, it
encourages — a sort of casual victimization, the targeting of players who may not
have done anything to hinder you. Not yet, anyway. . . .
In addition to the basic rules of Sorry!, more modern editions offer several
interesting variants. Team play is an obvious one, as is the enforced playing of
Sorry! cards . . . even if that means victimizing yourself! For those who are ready
to step the game up another level, there’s also a point scoring scale. But the real
game changer, as it were, is the variant rule that sees each player maintaining a
hand of cards, rather than relying on a random draw each turn. The cards you get
are still random; when you play them is not. Notably, this variation is tagged as
“for adults” in most editions. That’s not a surprise. The baseline game can be an
exercise in frustration for smaller children. Adding rules that complicate strategy
and increase the likelihood of targeted and untimely setbacks may result in more
than a few temper tantrums.
Delicate sensibilities and egos aside, it’s this provocative aspect to the gameplay
of Sorry! — the sense of indignation that is generated when one of your oppo-
nents casually undoes all the work you’ve put into moving your pawns around the
board, and the resulting desire to get back at him — that makes it such a strong
design. That same quality might lead some to question whether Sorry! should be
Sorry! O 307
categorized as a true “family” game. Its core interactions hardly seem conducive
to household unity, at least at first glance. The same can be said of Uno, though,
and many other games that allow younger children the momentary, empowering
glee of tripping up Mom or Dad or an older sibling. In fact, that trait makes Sorry!
eminently suitable for family play, provided everyone can sit back and enjoy the
rich experience created by the interaction of the game’s simple set of rules and the
personalities of the people gathered around the table.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I notice you’re in my way. Man, I hate to do this to
you. I really do. I mean that . . . but . . . Sorry!
O O O
Hal Mangold is an Origins Award-nominated writer, graphic designer,

game designer, and publisher from the Washington, DC area. He’s
been playing games for as long as he can remember, and has no inten-
tion of stopping. He’s been affiliated with Green Ronin Publishing,
Atomic Overmind Press, Games Workshop/Black Industries, and Pinnacle
Entertainment Group, and has done freelance design for any number of
other companies in the hobby games industry. Hal lives in Alexandria,
Virginia, with far too many books, games, and computers, and one rather
spoiled cat.
Jess Lebow on
Stratego
Key Designers: Jacques Johan Mogendorff, Hermance Edan
Milton Bradley (first U.S. edition, 1961)
During summer break of 1984, before I got a driver’s license and was
therefore required to get a job, I spent my vacation from school looking after my
younger brother. From the moment we woke up to the moment we were called to
dinner, you could find us in the family room, playing any game we could get our
hands on. Checkers, chess, Uno (which is less interesting with two players, but we
played it anyway), Parcheesi, Life, Battleship . . . you name it. If our parents had
a copy in the closet or we could afford to buy a new one with our meager allow-
ances, we’d play it.
Up until that year, my brother and I had suffered from a spectacular case of
sibling rivalry. We liked each other well enough, and I choose to believe that neither
of us ever really meant any harm. But if left alone together for too long, we would
inevitably end up testing our tactical prowess by pushing each other down the
stairs, or experimenting with the amount of force needed to knock the other from
his feet when applying said force with the pillows from the living room couch.
For some reason, though, in 1984 we found a more constructive outlet for our
competitive relationship. Games not only brought an end to our fisticuffs, they
also became the catalyst that transformed us into friends. Perhaps we were just
growing up, or maybe we’d just needed to start rolling dice together much earlier.
Whatever the truth, that year changed everything.
News of our summer game sessions slowly became family lore. Everyone
from our distant cousins to our favorite aunt knew how much we loved to play.
Apparently, our previous knock-down, drag-out brawls had also been well-known
family tales, and fearing an end to the ceasefire, that following Christmas our rela-
tives all pitched in to keep the peace.
Much to our delight, it seemed like every present that year was a game. My
grandmother gave me her hand-me-down set of Monopoly with the original wood
houses and metal racing car. My parents gave me a hand-carved stone chess set.
Stratego O 309
My brother got a briefcase-sized backgammon set. And both of us got our own
copy of a game neither of us had ever heard of, but which would quickly become
the only game we wanted play for almost the entire next year — Stratego.
First produced in the United States under the name Stratego in 1961, the game
shows some rather striking similarities to earlier designs, in particular one called
L’Attaque. That game appeared in Europe in the early 1900s and is credited to
Mademoiselle Hermance Edan, who filed for a patent on her idea in 1908. Copies
of L’Attaque, which featured rules and gameplay much like those for Stratego,
were seen in circulation as early as 1910. The modern version, with its images of
Napoleonic soldiers and credited to Jacques Johan Mogendorff, was originally
produced by the companies Smeets & Schippers and Jumbo in Europe in the late
1940s and 1950s, and was then licensed by Milton Bradley in the 1960s.
The object of Stratego is simple: capture your opponent’s flag. And like all
truly classic designs, the rules can be learned very quickly. The game is played
on a 10 by 10 gridded board, made to resemble a flat, open battlefield with two
impassable lakes in the middle. Each player has a collection of 40 pieces with
which to outfox his opponent. The pieces represent the various soldiers of that
player’s army, and each has a number rank on it, printed only on one side. The
backs of the pieces remain blank, so their identity is hidden from your adversary
until revealed in combat.
The pieces are ranked from 1 to 9. For editions released before 2000, the lower
the number, the more powerful the piece — the captain, rank 5, beats the sergeant,
rank 7. (In newer editions, the captain still defeats the sergeant, but higher num-
bers are more powerful; the captain is now ranked a 6 and the sergeant a 4.) Each
player also has a flag, which you are trying to protect; six immobile bombs, which
destroy most pieces that come in contact with them; and a spy, which can take
out your opponent’s most powerful piece, the marshal, but will lose to every other
piece. Miners are also specialized; as their title suggests, they’re the only pieces
that can destroy a bomb. All pieces can move one space forward, backward, left,
or right per turn, except for the scout, which can move any number in a straight
line. No diagonal movement is allowed. except for the miners.
Before a game of Stratego can start, both players have to set up the board,
deciding how to deploy their forces to accomplish the goals of defending the
flag, retrieving vital reconnaissance about the enemy, and, of course, successfully
launching attacks. Preparing to play Stratego can be a game in itself. As the pieces
line up, you can imagine yourself setting cunning traps for your enemy, organizing
brilliant and daring flanking maneuvers, and outwitting your opponent at every
step. Once you’ve mustered your army, the fine tuning begins. A good Stratego
player will analyze every potential weakness in his battlefield array and spin out
possible combat sequences like a Department of Defense computer simulation
running through possible world war scenarios.
My brother and I would sometimes spend hours creating new strategies and
setting up our halves of the board. The bolder the plan, the more anticipation and
excitement we had when the game actually began — and, sometimes, the more
powerful the heartache when things went wrong or something got overlooked.
For me, the beauty of Stratego is in its simplicity. The rules are short enough
to be printed on the box lid, and anyone can sit down and begin a game with very
little effort. In my mind, the best games are the ones in which the rules don’t pro-
vide a barrier to entry, the ones in which the objective is easy to understand but
the gameplay still provides a challenge for experienced players.
Maybe even more important is that in Stratego, achieving a higher level of skill
is not a difficult proposition. Every time you play, you learn a little something
about strategy or tactics. It took me only one game to discover that you should
protect at least one miner to deal with your opponent’s bombs. If you don’t, even
if you wipe out all his other pieces, you’ll never get to a flag ringed by explosives
and the game will end in a draw.
Since a Stratego battle can last an hour or more, there’s a sense that anyone can
hang in and play a solid game, no matter his experience or skill. So someone can
have fun even if he loses, and to me, that’s what games, especially family games, are
about — bringing people together to have fun, no matter the outcome.
After Christmas, before we had to go back to school, my brother and I became
fanatics for Stratego. We played game after game, and even developed our own
set of house rules. We agonized over the set-up, tried to discover the battleplans in
each other’s eyes like poker players looking for a tell, and reveled in each sweet,
hard-fought victory.
Apart from superficial tweaks to component materials, box art, and the rank-
ing values, the core game has remained consistent for almost a century. Like many
of its fellow classics, Stratego has had themes and licenses layered over the basic
mechanics, and recent editions and variations — Legends, Star Wars, and 2008’s
fantasy-themed re-release, nicknamed Stratego: Fire & Ice — have introduced
Stratego O 311
special powers and movement rules. But the original will continue to gather fans,
cementing its reputation as a masterpiece. It’s fun, easy to understand, and simple
to play. Stratego brought my brother and me together. It transformed us from
rivals to friends, and we had a good time while we were at it. Seems to me, that’s
the most you can ask — of both your family and your games.
O O O
Jess Lebow has been part of the game industry since the 1998. He
started with paper games, working with both Magic: The Gathering and
Dungeons & Dragons. From there he moved into video games, where he
created the world and story for the Guild Wars series and Pirates of the
Burning Sea. He has five novels and seven short stories to his credit, and
is currently working on a web comic. He lives in Los Angeles.
Eric Goldberg on
Strat-O-Matic Baseball
Key Designer: Hal Richman
Strat-O-Matic Game Company (1962)
“OBP is life.”
With that terse declaration, Bill James neatly summarized the analytical per-
spective that was to make him famous. In doing so, he overturned a decades-old
order of thinking about the game of baseball and forever changed our appreciation
of the American national pastime.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when James did his pioneering work, the
fact that OBP (on-base percentage) was a far more important reflection of a
player’s contribution to winning than the hallowed stat of batting average was a
revelation — to the casual fan of the game, to the majority of reporters who had
baseball as their beat, and, with a very few exceptions, to the men who ran and
managed Major League teams.
James is deservedly lionized for his insight, and his later-career rewards have
included a statistical analyst position with the Boston Red Sox, the team that —
perhaps not coincidentally — ended their legendary 86-year World Series drought
soon after he came on board.
Less known is that this insight had been previously communicated to hundreds
of thousands of players of Strat-O-Matic Baseball, as many as 15 years beforehand.
The man responsible was and is Hal Richman, whose genius encompassed a rare
understanding of the strategy and tactics of baseball, together with the design of a
game that rewards hundreds of hours of play over the course of years.
At first, Strat-O-Matic Baseball (hereafter SOM) might seem like something

of an outlier in a collection of essays about family games, as it’s traditionally been a
game played and cherished by a predominantly male audience. That said, its creden-
tials as a popular game start with its elegant leveraging of Americans’ familiarity
with the country’s national pastime. The first-time player quickly overcomes a
surface impression of arcana as SOM evokes the rhythms of the game of baseball.
Strat-O-Matic Baseball O 313
The basic version reduces the complexity of both the game and the sport so that
it can be accessible to kids as young as eight, and incidentally provides a sturdy
platform to transmit a love of baseball from parent to child.
Historically, SOM has been something of a rite of passage for boys, exerting
its strongest appeal on those with geeky and numerate tendencies. The interest of
many wanes in the college years. If an SOM fan stops playing before he gradu-
ates college, there’s a good chance that he’ll be lost, first to building an adult life
and career, and then, as often as not, to fantasy baseball or — horrors! — fantasy
football. (Fantasy baseball is played by an estimated two million people each year;
it’s a distant cousin and arguably a lineal descendant of SOM.)
During the period for which SOM exerts its fascination upon a player, it’s
marvelously addictive, thanks in no small part to its quick play time. In SOM,
a regulation nine innings can be completed within 35 to 60 minutes. This tends
to promote a Lay’s Potato Chips “bet you can’t eat just one” pattern to play. A
common session comprises a short series, perhaps a rematch of the previous year’s
World Series, or a three-game bout between two friends’ favorite teams (e.g., the
Cubs vs. the White Sox).
Each year, SOM aficionados purchase hundreds of thousands of the annual
new card sets, which include the statistics from the previous year’s season. Many
of these dedicated fans graduate to league play. Leagues can be organized among
as few as four friends and scale up to 12 to 16 teams, comparable in composition
to the actual American and National Leagues.
This league formation pattern is a metagame that follows organically from
SOM itself, and is the precursor to the star and superstar leagues so common in
fantasy baseball: people prefer to play teams that are better than most, if not all,
actual teams. In one of many play patterns that fantasy baseball has borrowed
from SOM, everybody gets to be the equivalent of the big-spending Yankees —
and when their fantasy team advances further than the Yankees do in real life, they
can be serenely confident that they would spend $200 million dollars better than
the Steinbrenners do most years.
The gameplay in SOM is deceptively simple, and is driven by the statistics on
the player cards and the roll of three six-sided dice, two of which are the same
color. The indicator die determines which player card to consult: on a roll of 1, 2,
or 3, the event is determined on the batter’s card, and on a roll of 4, 5, or 6, the
pitcher’s card.
The other two dice are read as a range from 2 to 12, as in craps, with a 7
result six times more probable than either of the two extremes of this range. The
entries on each player’s card are statistically correlated to the actual performances,
so Phillies slugger Ryan Howard’s card will offer more chances to hit a home run
than for almost all other hitters, and Giants ace Tim Lincecum’s a greater percent-
age of strikeouts than other starting pitchers. These statistics change from year
to year, though, so it matters whether you’re looking at the David Ortiz card for
2007 (.445 OBP, 35 home runs) or for 2008 (.369 OBP, 23 home runs).
Within these three-dice outcomes, there are finer gradations of results. A triple,
for instance, is among the rarest plays in baseball, and so it’s generally achievable
only after a “split” result. When the initial die roll indicates a split, the player rolls
a 20-sided die — in the bad old pre-Dungeons & Dragons days, he would’ve had
to pick among 20 dog-eared perforated cards numbered from 1 to 20. The lower
numbers are more favorable to the batter, with the higher a friendlier outcome to
the pitcher. To a dedicated SOM player, there’s nothing quite like the agony of a
20 roll into an inning-ending double play or the ecstasy of a 1 that pushes across
the winning run from third base.
Fielding is incorporated as part art and part science. Position players are
assigned a subjective numerical rating from 1 through 5, with the magnificent
Ichiro Suzuki a 1 in center and right fields and the glove-challenged Carlos Lee a 5
in left field and first base. (In the life imitates art department, when Gregg Jefferies,
a notoriously awkward outfielder, botched a flyball, fans in the bleachers started
waving his Strat card and chanting that he was a 5. On the other hand, Doug
Glanville, the good-field, indifferent-hit center fielder, reportedly lobbied Hal
Richman and, perhaps as a consequence, remained a top-rated fielder in SOM
when he had lost a step or two toward the end of his career.) Errors, on the other
hand, are a straight percentage reflection of the errors the individual fielder com-
mitted during a season.
From the earliest days of professional baseball, conventional wisdom held
that a pitcher could significantly influence the results of balls put into play against
him by the quality of his pitches. (The logic being that, for example, a hard fast-
ball would result in more outs and weaker hits than an average fastball.) SOM,
however, made a great number of its fielding outcomes pitcher-independent. While
outcomes may be triggered by dice results appearing on the pitcher’s card, these
results actually only bring the fielders behind him into play — so the result depends
entirely on whether a great fielder starts an acrobatic double play or whether an

eminently catchable ball gets past a bad fielder for a base hit. In downplaying
the pitcher’s influence, Richman displayed another prescient analysis of the inner
game of baseball; nearly 30 years after the first publication of SOM, sophisticated
statistical analysis showed that a pitcher indeed has relatively little control over
the end result of balls put into play.
The full spectrum of baseball plays — from stolen bases to injuries — is reflected
via generally simple game mechanics. Even park effects are taken into account;
for example, home runs occur more frequently in the thinner air of Colorado’s
ballpark. It’s a testament to the elegance of the design that the infrequent clumsy
game device, such as that used to generate wild pitches, stands out.
SOM divides into basic and advanced games, with the latter incorporating
many of the more unusual events, such as the catcher trying to block the plate on
a play at home. The chief distinction between the two versions, a facet introduced
to the game in the 1970s, is a player’s handedness: both batters and pitchers have
full sets of results based on their performance against their right- and left-handed
opposite numbers.
It is this element of realism, ironically, that exacerbates the chief deficiency of
SOM as a simulation: small sample sizes. Left-handed pitchers, in particular, tend
to be less valuable in SOM than in Major League Baseball because there are a
relatively large number of players in the game pool who perform spectacularly
well against southpaws. There are fewer such outliers against right-handers, as the
extremes revert to the norm over a greater number of at-bats.
Other than an admonition about overusing cards that are based on relatively
few appearances, SOM has yet to satisfactorily address freak performances. For
example, as a journeyman infielder for the Reds in 1978, Rick Auerbach put up
MVP hitting numbers, but only had 63 at-bats, compared to the 500 or more
racked up by most starting players. Similarly, whether a reliever is rated for 1 or
2 innings worth of work skews the value of such a pitcher — significantly so over
the course of a replayed season.
There are signs that, as with board wargames, SOM will be a hobby that will
dwindle in popularity as the player base ages. The game is often passed from
father to son, but has made an uninspired translation to a computer environment.
It’s had a little more success in spreading beyond its existing audience in a version
adapted to fantasy baseball and co-branded with The Sporting News, a publica-
tion once strongly identified with baseball that is itself struggling to adapt to the
21st century.
Regardless, SOM, like Dungeons & Dragons, has achieved a rare place as a
game that has redefined its cultural context.
Just as D&D’s influences on fantasy and fantasy gaming are indelible, SOM
was the precursor to a millions-strong fantasy baseball — and, from there, fantasy
sports — hobby, for which widespread appeal has tracked the rapid growth of the
Internet.
SOM has changed, and continues to change, the way the professional game
of baseball is played. An entire generation of baseball analysts, including many
of the so-called sabermetricians — after SABR, the Society for American Baseball
Research — acknowledge a great debt to their childhood play of SOM. And as
Joe Sheehan of the highly respected Baseball Prospectus website observed in 2009:
More than 20 years ago Bill James suggested that prospective managers
have to play a thousand games of Strat or APBA or whatever before
taking over a real team. It’s still a good idea. It’s not that you learn every-
thing by playing those games; it’s that what you do learn is incredibly
important.
Hal Richman, who invented the game at a time when the primitive computer
technology of the day made the annual card sets fiendishly complex to generate,
has branched out into football, basketball, and hockey titles with some success,
but mostly diminishing returns. Strat-O-Matic Baseball, on the other hand, is
established as his legacy.
A number of Strat-O-Matic Baseball leagues have been active for as many
as four decades. Every longtime SOM player has a story of how a banjo-hitting
infielder smacked a home run off his ace pitcher, or how a bizarre series of plays
echoed the legendary Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, which ended with a ball
rolling between Bill Buckner’s legs.
Even in this computer-dominated era, first-time players instinctively pick up
SOM’s elegant capture of the cadences of a baseball game, and discover the joys
of bouncing dice in perhaps the finest baseball simulation ever developed.
For a design that’s had such a profound impact — on the fantasy games played
every year by millions and on the management of the sport of baseball itself — it
is this ability to encapsulate and convey a love of the Great American Pastime that
rates as Hal Richman’s greatest achievement with Strat-O-Matic Baseball, his gift
to generations of baseball fans and game players.
O O O
Eric Goldberg is a 30-year veteran of the game industry, starting as

a game designer before becoming an executive. Since 2002, Eric is or
has been a board member or advisor to three U.S. venture capital firms
and over 25 companies, from seed-stage to public, in the game, virtual
world, consumer Internet, wireless data, and monetization sectors.
Previously, Eric was co-founder and president of Unplugged Games and
of Crossover Technologies, the consumer online pioneer, and president of
West End Games, an adventure game company. He also has been a board
member for the New York New Media Association and NYU’s Center
for Advanced Digital Applications. His award-winning games include
Paranoia, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Junta, The Tom Peters Business
School in a Box, and MadMaze, the first online game to draw one million
players. Both the third edition of Arabian Nights and the 25th anniversary
edition of Paranoia were published in 2009.
Andrea Angiolino on
Survive!
Key Designers: Julian Courtland-Smith, C. Courtland-Smith
I was born and grew up in Italy. Nowadays, several Italian game authors are
appreciated abroad and people even debate if there’s a recognizable “Italian style”
of board game design. When I was a boy, though, Italy was definitely a marginal
province of the Gaming Empire. We had a rich toy and game industry, but it was
mainly focused on the local market and produced nothing that was noticed by the
rest of the world. At the same time, we did not have access to most of what was
happening abroad, by way of game designs. Or, at least, not in a timely fashion.
The main Italian board game publisher in the 1970s and early 1980s was quite
happy with his Monopoly, Clue, and Risk licenses, and Scarabeo, a letter board
game that, according to Italian judges, was not a plagiarism of Scrabble.
Luckily, I had friends attending the American University in Rome and others
who were spending time in the United States, so I had a way of finding out what
was going on elsewhere. I saw those friends riding a rough wooden plank with
wheels on the bottom and throwing something similar to a bin lid months or years
before the skateboard and Frisbee became fashionable in Italy (even if the fads had
ended overseas years before). Thanks to them I discovered miniature wargaming,
simulation board games, and roleplaying games — all stuff that changed my life.
I have these friends to thank, too, for my discovery of some jewels of family
game design. These were titles that any kid could have easily bought at some store
around the corner in the U.S., but to me they were rare finds indeed. Foremost
among these was Survive! by Julian and C. Courtland-Smith. It was my friend
Gregory Alegi who first showed me that colorful and cruel board game in the early
1980s, between a session of Dungeons & Dragons and a “quick” scenario of The
Campaign for North Africa. It was a filler, in gamer slang, a light title to play in
between more serious designs. We tried it several times and were really impressed,
even if it was really far from the kind of gaming experiences that we were then
seeking out.
Survive! O 319
With Survive! we are somewhere in a tropical ocean, on a little volcanic island

surrounded by coral reefs and schools of whales. This could give you a hint of the
place and season, but you can save a trip to the encyclopedia to see where and
when whales and coral meet: the presence of huge sea serpents, of the kind that
ancient cartographers depicted in the middle of unexplored seas, are a clear sign
that the setting is not entirely realistic.
Each player controls a little group of people that must be saved from impend-
ing doom. The island is sinking and the volcano will explode soon. Several of these
people will be eaten by sharks and sea monsters, drowned by whirlpools, or killed
by the final eruption. The lid of the box does not depict the would-be victims of
this bloody disaster as natives of this exotic place. Given the artwork, it seems more
likely that they’re a group of tourists who did not choose wisely when deciding
where to spend a bank holiday.
The game board has a hex grid superimposed on a deep blue sea, with four
strips of lands at the corners. The main island is created by placing beach, forest,
and mountain tiles at the board’s center. This means the island is different each
session, which was something of an innovation for American and British games at
the time Survive! was published. Once the island is set, each of the players puts his
10 little plastic people on the tiles. Finally, lifeboats are placed in the water near
the island; these can carry up to three potential survivors each.
The aim is to save as many of your people as possible, bringing them across the
water to the corner safe havens. On his turn, a player has three movement points
to divide up between his men and the boats he controls. People racing across the
land on foot or across the sea in a boat can move up to three hexes, but swim-
mers can only move of one space in a turn. Successfully managing your limited
movements points is key to getting your people to safety.
Next, the player selects a tile to remove from the island. Tiles must be removed
in order: beach first, then forest, then mountain. This mechanic serves two purposes:
it cleverly simulates the sinking of the island and it reveals the events printed on
the tiles’ reverse. With each patch of sand or forest the island loses, sharks or whales
arrive to menace swimmers or boats, extra lifeboats appear, or whirlpools burst
into existence, destroying everything nearby. Some event cards offer movement
bonuses or certain defenses; the player keeps these for a later use.
Finally, the player throws a special die, which can turn up a sea serpent, a
whale, or a shark. He can then move one of these beasts already on the board. A
whale will sink any boat it reaches, making occupants into swimmers. A shark eats
any swimmer in its hex. The dreaded sea serpent destroys boats and devours any
unlucky swimmers it can reach.
The event hidden below one of the mountain tiles is the volcanic eruption that
destroys the island. As soon as this tile is turned over, the game ends and scores
are immediately tallied, with points given for the people you’ve ferried safely to
the corner havens. Alas, all men are not created equal. Some of the people are
worth six points, some worth only one, so it matters which you manage to rescue.
The value is concealed under each piece and is kept secret. Even the owner cannot
check the value once he has placed the man on the board, though a clever player
will pay attention to which men his opponents are trying hardest to get into a
boat and out of harm’s way. Those might be high-value pieces — and thus worth
targeting with sharks or sea serpents, should the opportunity arise.
After our first try, my friends and I were impressed with Survive! We were a
bunch of wargamers and roleplayers, but this little family game became something
of a Holy Grail for us. We tried to get copies. However, the joys of e-commerce
were still science-fiction at the time, so there was no way. Color photocopies were
still rough and expensive, but my old friend Gianluca Meluzzi did not hesitate to
spend twice the price we would have paid for an actual copy of Survive! to build
the best possible facsimile.
Eventually I discovered that an Italian edition had been published under the
title Si salvi chi può! but it had disappeared quickly, replaced on local shelves by
the predictable pocket, tournament, luxury, and travel editions of Monopoly, Risk,
Clue, and Scarabeo. I looked for Si salvi chi può! everywhere; I checked the dusty
shelves and hidden corners of every game shop I could find. No luck. Years of
fruitless searches followed. This gave Parker Brothers time to publish several more
foreign editions of the game, CERN in Geneva to invent the World Wide Web, and
somebody else to put eBay on it. When I heard that my friend Pier Giorgio Paglia
had secured a cheap copy of Survive! in the very same game shop where I’d asked
for it a few weeks before, my nerves failed. I went to eBay and bought the first
complete copy I saw — a Canadian edition with both English and French text on
the tiles. Postal fees were crazy, but I’d finally found my Grail.
Two months later, I came across two cheap copies of the Italian edition in a
game shop in Genoa. Fate can be fickle and cruel. But I bought them anyway:
Gianluca finally got a legal copy of Survive! while Gregory’s daughter received a
Survive! O 321
replacement for her old and battered one, in which one of the groups of would-be
survivors had lost a couple of men forever — not to sharks, but to some other
unknown and definitive fate.
Why all this enthusiasm from gamers who usually saw dragons only together
with dungeons, who filled hex grids not with fanciful island pieces but with gray-
ish Panzer divisions, and who moved plastic men only when they portrayed New
Kingdom Egyptians on the field of battle against Byzantine cataphracts? Well,
Survive! is a really well-designed game. The components have an old-fashioned
glamour to them, so much so that we never felt the need to get the revised edition,
called Escape from Atlantis, with its 3-D plastic tiles and pieces. The rules are ele-
gant, but with sophisticated mechanics. Gameplay features a nice balance between
tactics and luck, memory and bluffing, allowing for such entertaining options as
kamikaze boat drivers kidnapping enemy men and bringing them straight into the
mouths of monsters. There’s even an opportunity for a bit of roleplaying theatrics,
making funny chewing noises on behalf of the sharks or melodramatic cries on
behalf of the doomed tourists — easy Aristotelian catharsis for everyone.
Call it a filler, if you speak the jargon of the hobby gamer, but it can provide
hours of real fun. If you don’t have Survive! in your collection, do yourself a favor
and get a copy. It’s so much easier to do nowadays.
O O O
Since mid-1980s, Andrea Angiolino has designed board games, RPGs,

gamebooks, computer and Web-based games, TV and radio-games, as
well as games for magazines, events, advertising, and training. He is also
a journalist and book author. All this happens mostly in his far-off home-
land, Italy, where Andrea is a male name. His most well-known design
is Wings of War (with Pier Giorgio Paglia), originally released by Nexus
Editrice in 2004, but with many editions all over the world. His most
obscure design is Fair Play, about the fair trade of cotton, released only
in Italian, Maltese, Czech, Portuguese, and Greek. The Italian Education
Ministry named him an “expert game designer,” and he was the Italian
Game Person of 2007. In 2004, the Lucca Games convention awarded
him its first Best of Show prize for lifetime achievement. Andrea still
hopes for a longer lifetime and further playful achievements.
Karl Deckard on
Thebes
Key Designer: Peter Prinz
Queen Games (2007)
Thebes, designed by Peter Prinz, is an updated and improved version of

his earlier game, called Jenseits von Theben (or Beyond Thebes), from 2004. I was
one of the original game’s biggest proponents, but due to a very small, desktop-
published print run, it dwelled in relative obscurity, unknown to the masses.
This has changed with the re-issue, which boasts magnificent production values,
streamlined rules, and a much larger print run. Each version has garnered critical
acclaim; the early version was nominated for several awards, including the coveted
Spiel des Jahres, and the 2007 edition won the Deutscher Spiele Preis in Germany
and the Golden Geek Award on the BoardGameGeek.com website for Best Family
Game.
In Thebes, players adopt the roles of rival archaeologists striving to uncover
artifacts buried deep within five famous dig sites across the globe. Players compete
to gain knowledge about each dig site, obtain the ancient artifacts secreted within,
and proudly exhibit their precious finds to the public, all of which earn the player
victory points that determine the winner of the game.
Each turn the active player may move to a new geographical location and
execute one of three actions: choose a researcher card, start an excavation, or host
an exhibition. Researcher cards provide a number of potential advantages, not the
least of which being increased knowledge of a particular dig site, thus bettering
the chance for a successful dig. The excavation action allows players to apply their
current knowledge to perform a dig for a chosen number of weeks, which deter-
mines the number of tiles to pull randomly from a bag representing the dig site’s
contents. Each of these tiles is either a valuable artifact or worthless debris. The
debris is then dumped back in the bag, causing diminishing returns for later digs,
much to the dismay of the other players. Finally, players may host an exhibition
by traveling to the city shown on a visible exhibit card and then displaying the
appropriate number and type of artifacts needed to obtain the card.
Thebes O 323
Each of the three actions takes a specific number of weeks, which are tracked
by a player’s position on a 52-week timeline. This system dictates turn order in
an innovative manner, because the player farthest back on the timeline is always
the first to move. This “time as resource” system presents a clever, self-balancing
dynamic; choosing a high-value research card or opting for a lengthy dig moves
the player farther forward on the timeline, which may give trailing players multiple
actions before catching up. The true genius of Thebes is how perfectly all these
disparate systems are interwoven to form a fluid, atmospheric, and immersive
thematic construct.
Hardcore gamers sometimes criticize mechanics that include some element of
randomness, but in this case, it is fundamental to the theme of archaeology. In
fact, the integration of gameplay and theme in Thebes is among the best I’ve ever
seen. The players who are best able to mitigate the inherent luck factor, which so
elegantly simulates the unknowns naturally present in an actual archaeological
dig, will excel at this game. They must learn to be cognizant of the quantity and
quality of the artifacts other players have already secured, to assess their opponents’
ability to obtain more (relative to their own ability), and be able to dynamically
adjust their strategy to either combat or capitalize on these factors.
Luck may even make the game more appropriate for families, as it tends to
level the playing field. In an entirely skill-based, open-information game, an adult
is more likely to win against a child due to a better understanding of the interplay
between the different game mechanics. Adults are more likely to “min-max” the
system, or get the maximum payoff for the minimum effort, to gain an advantage.
In Thebes, however, a child has the same chance of digging up valuable artifacts
as an adult. Not only that, but kids love that part of the game! An important facet
of any risk/reward mechanism is the notion of “opening the present” and the
ceremony that this entails. Not knowing exactly what you are going to get is half
the fun.
Thebes is a “designer game,” which refers to a class of games that are typically
easy to learn, but hard to master (a core philosophy of my own game design). They
are oftentimes aesthetically pleasing, due to high production values, they rarely
promote direct conflict or allow player elimination, and they typically downplay
randomness in favor of skill. A designer game doesn’t have to adhere to every tenet,
of course, but these are the most common signifiers. I have watched this movement
grow from its relative infancy to a full-blown craze, with hundreds of thousands of
supporters, thanks in large part to German ingenuity and the international market
success of its vanguard releases.
In fact, these titles are often referred to as “German-style” games, because that
is where the design movement was most prevalent initially. Germany does, after
all, publish more board games per capita than any other country. If you ask recent
converts to the hobby what brought them into gaming, or back into gaming, many
will say Klaus Teuber’s The Settlers of Catan, the quintessential designer game. First
published in 1995, Settlers helped trigger a renaissance in gaming and made every-
one take notice of what was happening in Germany: Very approachable strategy
games were being released in droves and players were flocking to them. With that
came recognition of the designers behind the titles, as their names were featured
prominently on the box. Prior to this, games developed in the United States often-
times made little or no mention of the designer. The newfound focus on the people
creating the games was an important development because it helped legitimize the
concept of professional design and individual aesthetic vision.
I have fond memories of playing Settlers and other early titles, learning of their
creators, and studying their design philosophies. Luckily, over the last few years, the
paradigm seems like it may be shifting outside of Europe. More and more American
companies are adopting the design aesthetics and development methodology to
produce more accessible strategy games. Now that these types of games are more
readily available, families around the world are getting together to play them, just
like German families have been doing for years.
And Thebes stands among the very best designer games for families. It is easy
to learn and to teach. It is educational, presenting a diverse selection of historical
data and decision-making opportunities. It makes for a rewarding social experience,
because it’s non-confrontational and based on a compelling and familiar theme.
Most of all, it’s fun and that’s what games are all about.
Designer games, such as Thebes, are very approachable, both for adults and
children, and they can add diversity and depth to your family game night. Why
not expand your game library, while expanding your children’s knowledge and
willingness to learn? If we make an effort to introduce designs like Thebes to our
families, quality strategy games may become as prevalent in America as they are in
Germany — and that’s a victory for games as an art form, and for fun.
O O O
Thebes O 325
Karl Deckard graduated from the University of Illinois with a major

in graphic design and a minor in film theory. Since the mid-1990s he’s
been a designer in the video game industry. After launching his career at
Nintendo of America he became a designer at Valve Software, where he
worked on the seminal title, Half-Life. Later, in the role of senior game
designer at Retro Studios, he served as a driving force behind Metroid
Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Karl
is currently working on the much-anticipated Diablo III from Blizzard
Entertainment. He’s also served as a playtester for several wargames and
board games. An avid gamer since childhood, Karl has a collection totaling
over 2,000 board games.
Dan Tibbles on
Time’s Up!
Key Designer: Peter Sarrett
R&R Games (2000)
What do John Travolta, Anakin Skywalker, Mark Twain, Kool-Aid Man,

and Cinderella all have in common? They’re all found in a session of Time’s Up!,
an energetic family party game that’s part charades, part Password-style guessing
game. It’s simple to learn and has great replay value, even for those who aren’t
familiar with the people or characters on the cards.
During the game, you and your partner guess as many famous names as you
can over the span of three rounds. The catch? While you can say almost anything
in the first round, and guess as many times as you want, the subsequent rounds are
much more limiting. The second round only allows you a one-word clue for each
name. In the third round, mum’s the word as you break out your best charades. The
deck from which the names are drawn is a trip through history, fiction, and pop
culture. You’ll see Albert Einstein next to Tiger Woods, Cleopatra next to Billy
Idol, or Tom Brady followed by Kermit the Frog.
If your partner doesn’t know the Kool-Aid Man, can you break it down to
smaller parts? (Hints: Cool is another word for cold. And almost everyone knows
what a first “aid” kit is!) Can you come up with a single word to describe Cookie
Monster? Can you pantomime playing a fiddle to get your someone to guess Nero?
Is that the best clue to give if Charlie Daniels is also in the deck? And can you do
that all before the time is up? Everyone will certainly try, which leads to hilarious
hijinks, and before the game is over you may get to find out what your friends
look like when they try to dance like Elvis or toss food around like Bobby Flay.
To start the game, players pair off in teams — two works best, but larger teams
are possible — and sit in a circle across from their partners. One person takes on
the role of official timekeeper and give the first team the deck of cards. The timer
is started and the fun begins! To get his partner to guess the name on a card, the
clue-giver can use any combination of words, sound effects, and actions, provided
that the words they say are not part of the name or directly related to it in any way.
Time’s Up! O 327
For instance, rhyming with a word on the card, or using a different version of the
name — such as saying “Dick” or “Rick” when the card reads Richard Nixon — is
forbidden.
Having good cultural and historical knowledge can make the first round easier,
but it helps a lot if your partner shares that knowledge. It does no good to say,
“He led the Patriots to win the 2002 Super Bowl” if the person sitting across from
you doesn’t know anything about American football, just as you might have no
idea what your partner is talking about when she says, “She was the lead singer
for The Holograms.” It will be obvious to someone born after 1980 who Britney
Spears is, but that same person might not recognize Nat King Cole.
To be effective, then, players must size up their partner’s knowledge base and
give clues that bridge their different experiences. One of you isn’t a sports fan and
would never guess the right name based on that Super Bowl clue you offered?
First-round play also affords you the chance to describe people or characters by
breaking down their names into smaller component parts and giving clues for
those individual segments. To get a non-sports fan to guess Tom Brady, you might
try “Blank Sawyer, from Mark Twain” to elicit “Tom” and then follow it up with
“The blank Bunch, from the television show of the same name” to get “Brady.” Put
them together and you have Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots,
and the card is yours! But there’s no time for high-fives just yet; you need to be
quick and move on before time runs out.
Once your team’s minute or so for the round expires, you collect the cards you
guessed correctly and pass the remaining cards to the next team. In this fashion,
the deck passes around the circle of players several times and everyone is given a
chance to both guess names and to give clues. Once all the name cards have been
claimed, each team records its score. But the game’s nowhere near over. It’s time
to recombine the cards back into a single deck and start round two!
The second and third rounds in Time’s Up! increase the fun and the silliness
factor — always a plus in a party game — by forcing players to use very different
skill sets than those utilized in the first round. These two rounds have the same
structure as the first and use the recombined deck of cards. However, each one
adds restrictions for communicating clues.
In the second round, the clue-giver may only utter a single word for each
name. You can offer “Bunch” to get Tom Brady. Or is “Patriots” a better way to
go? A successful strategy here means using what you learned about your partner
in the first round to shape your clues. You also need to play off the clues other
teams used the first time the deck went around, since you will be drawing some
names you didn’t win in that round. And precision matters; your team only gets
one guess per card.
In the third and final round, even that single word is taken away — players
must rely upon gestures and sound effects to elicit the correct name. Sometimes
this means translating the verbal clues of the first two rounds into action clues.
Other times, it means taking some entirely new tack. Instead of “Cartoon super-
hero rodent” for Mighty Mouse, you might strike a heroic pose and squeak. The
addition of the charades component separates Time’s Up! from other wordplay
games and the different skills required mean a wider variety of people have a
chance to shine. It’s not at all unusual for a team lagging at the start to leap right
back into competition in later rounds.
The round structure also means that each game of Time’s Up! creates its own
referential network, as players and teams offer clues and then build upon them —
or find themselves forced to work around false connections. If the first round clue
for Charlie Chaplin was “Silent movie star with a Hitler mustache,” in the second
“Hitler” alone might be enough. But the other names in play might complicate the
connection later, when a pantomimed salute might be mistaken for, say, a heroic
flying pose signifying Superman or Mighty Mouse (even if you didn’t squeak).
The mistakes and miscues are part of the fun, though, and by the end of the game,
when the teams have gone through the deck three times, there will have been
plenty of opportunities for laughs. The most memorable gaffes sometimes become
part of the game itself, growing that referential network for later sessions.
Time’s Up! takes the most compelling mechanics from several familiar designs
and cleverly combines them into a unique and entertaining experience. To win,
players must master a wide range of skills, but the game is really about everyone
in the room finding a way to express themselves and to connect with their friends.
In short, the number of points you tally is a lot less important than participating
and having fun. You’re certain to come away with some great stories, too, and it’s
never a bad thing to be able to laugh with your family about the evening you spent
mimicking Billy Idol and trying to figure out a wordless clue that your mom would
understand meant Kool-Aid Man.
O O O
Time’s Up! O 329
Dan Tibbles has been designing, developing, retailing, and publishing

board and card games since the 1990s. His credits include Magi-Nation,
Legend of the Five Rings, DragonBall GT, Anachronism, The Spoils,
Dread Pirate, Blasphemy, Rorschach, and Bill of Rights. In 2008, Dan
founded Bucephalus Games. As the company’s CEO, he strives to publish
unique games from an eclectic roster of designers.
Tom Wham on
Trade Winds
Key Designer: uncredited (Geoffrey Bull)
I’ve been an avid board gamer since my father taught me how to play
Monopoly. I ate them up (and designed my own, too). In the late 1950s and the
early 1960s, however, there were not a lot of choices for board games, unlike
today. My friends and I had Pirate and Traveler and the Milton Bradley and Parker
Brother clones of Monopoly (not as good as the real thing). I had Clue, and a
friend of the family gave me a copy of S.S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance Detective Game
(somewhat like Clue). I also had Scrabble, Cootie, and Skunk. A friend and I also
played Selchow & Righter’s Assembly Line. Add to this a couple wargames from
Avalon Hill, and that was what I was playing in 1960. Then my parents got me
a copy of Trade Winds: Parker Brothers Caribbean Sea Game! It was a breath of
fresh air. A game for two to six players that didn’t use dice and was just perfect
for family gatherings.
In Trade Winds you are, of course, a pirate, sailing the Caribbean Sea in search
of plunder. The board features a 20 by 20 grid of alternately colored squares, like
a giant checkerboard. Arrayed around the edge are six sea ports players will use,
as well as two non-player ports: Tortola and Tortuga. Also pictured on the board
are some rocks, two special islands, and a couple bays in the corners where you
may be occasionally sent. The board’s center is cut to fit over the molded plastic
“Pirate Island,” which rises above the sea for a great 3-D effect and into which all
the treasure is poured. This makes for a rather nice change from the flat world of
Easy Money or Monopoly.
Treasure consists of cute little wooden barrels (worth two points), white glass
beads that represent pearls (worth three points), plastic gold bars (worth four
points), and faceted colored plastic gems (worth five points). Each player chooses
a port and places his colored plastic ship therein; the ship is hollow enough to
hold several pieces of treasure. A deck of chance cards is shuffled and placed in
one corner of the board, and crew cards — numbered 1, 2, or 3 on the back —
Trade Winds O 331
are dealt, six to each player and two to each unoccupied port around the board’s
edge. Treasure is also placed in the unoccupied ports, up to a value of eight minus
the number of crew housed there. This creates the game’s setting: a Caribbean Sea
with ports full of treasures and crew ready to go.
The object of the game is to be the first to bring 20 points of treasure back
to your home port. On your turn, your ship sails in a straight line up to the total
point value of your crew cards. The principal way to get treasure or more crew is
to land on a space of your color on the opposite side of Pirate Island. When you
do this, you draw the top chance card and read it aloud. Most of the cards award
you crew or treasure or both. The chance cards also have doubloons that may be
taken to ports and traded for treasure or crew. You can also get booty by sailing
into any port, including those belonging to other players, and trading crew for
treasure on a point for point basis. If you’re low on crew, you can trade treasure
for crew in a port.
This being a pirate game, the most important way to gain loot is to steal it
from other vessels on the high seas. When your ship lands in the same space as
that of another player, a battle occurs and you compare crew cards. This combat
mechanic is the game’s greatest feature. The faces of all crew cards are either red
or black. Your sailing power is the total of all crew, but your fighting power is the
difference between your red and your black crew. After a battle, the player with the
greatest fighting power may do one of two things: take all the treasure loaded in
the loser’s ship or take two crew cards. The loser then gets a free move. This red/
black crew mechanic leads to all sorts of interesting situations and strategies, such
as players going to port to trade crew cards for crew cards in order to make them
all one color, maximizing their fighting strength.
There are other cool rules that make Trade Winds stand out. If any treasure
falls from your ship while you’re moving it, that treasure is returned to Pirate Island.
This make the game a bit of a dexterity challenge, particularly with cargos like the
barrels, which we always imagined were full of rum. Folks with shaky fingers
should stay away from rum! From many years of experience I’ve learned that the
best way to carry three of those barrels is to stack them in a pyramid, sideways
across your ship. This also leaves room for gems or pearls below. If your ship tips,
nothing is lost.
For years I just thought Trade Winds was a Parker Brothers original, but with
the advent of the Internet and BoardGameGeek.com, I was pleased to learn that
it has a long and varied history. It seems Trade Winds probably began life in 1938
as Buccaneer, designed by Geoffrey Bull and released by the English company
Waddingtons. It subsequently appeared in many different iterations and countries.
The Waddingtons version differs from Trade Winds in two important ways: In
Buccaneer, the board is a larger grid — 24 by 24, not 20 by 20 — and you may
only turn your ship at the end of your move, with no movement point cost, rather
than at the move’s start, for a cost of one point. (The differences might seem minor,
but they impact strategy and gameplay.) In 2006, Hasbro re-released Buccaneer as
Pirates of the Caribbean: Buccaneer, to capitalize on the film franchise’s success.
You might be able to find this most recent version still available at stores, but
the pieces are just die-cut counters. To experience the true game, I recommend
that you look for Trade Winds with the cool ships and treasures. Start with eBay
or a used game reseller (there are a lot of them these days). Trade Winds is fun
for young and old, and invariably causes everyone at the table to talk like Robert
Newton in the movie Treasure Island. How can ye beat that? Arrr!
O O O
Tom Wham became a game designer around age seven when he got his
first Monopoly set and immediately began modifying the rules. In 1972
he landed a job with Don Lowry at Guidon Games, where he co-authored
Ironclad, a set of Civil War naval miniature rules. May 1977 found him
in Lake Geneva as employee number 13 of TSR, Inc. After running the
Dungeon Hobby Shop for a summer, he was bumped upstairs (literally)
to the art department, where he worked with Dave Sutherland and Dave
Trampier on D&D’s original Monster Manual. Then came a deal with
Tim Kask, editor of Dragon magazine, to do a game in the centerfold, Snit
Smashing. This led to other games in Dragon, including The Awful Green
Things from Outer Space. Other game credits for TSR include Kings &
Things (with Rob Kuntz), The Great Khan Game, and Mertwig’s Maze.
After TSR, he collaborated on fiction with Rose Estes and did his own
novelette for Christopher Stasheff’s The Exotic Enchanter. More recent
game efforts include Iron Dragon from Mayfair Games, a reprint of Snits!
from Steve Jackson Games, Planet Busters from Troll Lords, and Dragon
Lairds (with Jim Ward) from Margaret Weis Productions.
Susan McKinley Ross on
TransAmerica
Key Designer: Franz-Benno Delonge
I’m lucky. I grew up in a family that played games frequently. On school

nights I often played Scrabble or whist with my mom and grandparents. My dad
and I played cribbage for serious bragging rights. I spent most of one summer
playing gin rummy with my grandma, keeping score on typing paper and drinking
ice-cold Pepsi out of jelly jar glasses. Did I mention I’m lucky?
Because of these happy memories, I have a soft spot in my heart for the games
I played as a child. I think everyone does. The games you learn in childhood are
the comfort food of board games. You don’t even have to think about the rules
— they’re ingrained. You can play with complete confidence. Personally, I have to
concentrate when I learn a new game. In fact, learning a new game can be a little
intimidating.
Let me assure you that there is nothing intimidating about TransAmerica. It
is the perfect introduction to the vast and wonderful world of games you didn’t
grow up playing. TransAmerica feels familiar right out of the box; it’s got a game
board, it’s got cards, and it’s got cute little wooden trains. You’re building a rail-
road across 19th-century America and you’re trying to connect five cities. Yay! You
get to be a railroad baron for half an hour. How cool is that?
Each game consists of several rounds. At the start of a round, you receive five
city cards. The city cards are color coded to correspond to regions of the United
States: west, north, central, east, and south. This simple color-coding mechanic
ensures that you receive a city card from each region. Your goal is to be the first
player/railroad baron to connect all your cities.
Once the city cards are distributed, everyone looks at their cards and whines.
It’s funny. No matter what cities you get, they seem impossibly far apart. Whining
is such a natural part of the game that it’s supposedly incorporated into the original
German rules. All routes feel hopeless at the beginning of the game. Even on a
two-foot-wide game board, linking San Francisco to New York, with connections
to Kansas City, Atlanta, and Bismarck, seems like a Herculean task. But it’s not!
One of the fun parts of TransAmerica is watching the tracks link up enormous
spans of the country.
The map on the game board is crisscrossed with a triangular pattern so that
it vaguely resembles a Chinese checkers board. On the first turn, you place your
start marker on the board. This marker determines where you can build tracks.
Deciding where to put it is arguably the most important decision in the game.
After that, you add one or two pieces of track each turn. The limited number of
choices you have really helps the game move along. I’m usually a slow player, but
even I don’t agonize over TransAmerica.
The goal of the game is to connect cities. You build tracks to link your cities,
but you don’t actually own the tracks. Once the tracks you’ve built connect to the
tracks another player has built, both of you can add tracks anywhere on your com-
bined railroad network. This is the core of the game. The challenge lies in figuring
out how to take advantage of the rails built by other players without letting them
gain too much from the ones you’ve built.
If you’re the first player to connect all your cities, you win the round (and you
feel a sense of victory). If you don’t win the round, you shake your head and vow
to do better next time. Once a round is finished, the city cards are shuffled and
redistributed; it almost seems like you’re starting a brand new game. Don’t forget
to complain about your cities when you get your new cards.
The scoring system is brilliant, but it isn’t as intuitive as the rest of the game.
You start with 13 points. At the end of a round, you lose points for any tracks
that you still need to place in order to complete connections. When someone loses
all her points, the player who has the most remaining points wins. There are some
slight scoring variations among the different editions, but they don’t affect the
gameplay. Since the game is over as soon as one player is eliminated, no one ever
has to sit around watching the other players finish up the session.
Even though TransAmerica is delightfully easy to learn, and delightfully easy
to play, it is not delightfully easy to win. My friend Dave, who often wins at
TransAmerica, compares it to poker and claims that victory lies in accurately
predicting what your opponents are going to do. I’m not very good at that part of
the game. I’m usually too caught up in my own route to pay attention to anyone
else. And yet, TransAmerica is one of those designs I thoroughly enjoy playing —
even when I’m losing. It’s just too fun to cause any stress.
TransAmerica O 335
My husband Chris and I host a monthly game night. Many of my favorite games
have complex rules and intricate mechanics. I adore Puerto Rico, Agricola, and
Power Grid. But it is also a joy to play TransAmerica. As a designer, I appreciate
the genius of a game that can be enjoyed by both casual gamers and serious gam-
ers. Simple and compelling is a hard balance to strike.
I like TransAmerica because even though each individual decision is small, they
all add up to an interesting game. I like that multiple rounds mean more than one
player can feel the thrill of victory. I like that it scales well from two to six players.
I like that you can complete an entire session in half an hour. I like that you can’t
attack your opponents. I like that there’s a balance of luck and skill.
Most of all, I like that TransAmerica is elegantly compact on multiple levels.
It’s small and sturdy, easy to learn, quick to play, and, because it’s incredibly
well designed, simple to remember. There’s something quite wonderful about a
game so intuitive that the rules fit on a single piece of paper. Once you’ve learned
TransAmerica, you’ll always be able to go back to it with confidence — just like
the games you learned in childhood.
O O O
Susan McKinley Ross has been designing cheerfully low-tech toys since
1999. She loves the first wonderful thrill of a new idea. Because of her
experience designing toys and her love of board games, it was natural for
her to branch into game design, most notably with Qwirkle and Qwirkle
Cubes. Susan and her husband Chris have hosted a monthly game night
since 1998. She adores these get-togethers for many reasons, not the least
of which is that they force them to clean their house. They’re also a great
way to keep in touch with friends and play games. She’d like to say thank
you to her family, for playing lots of games with her, and to Chris, for
helping her venture into ever more complex games. Susan’s list of things
she enjoys keeps growing, and she hopes yours does, too.
Ray Winninger on
Trivial Pursuit
Key Designers: Chris Haney, Scott Abbot
Selchow & Righter (first U.S. edition, 1983)
Blue (Geography): Home to its designers, in what country was Trivial

Pursuit first published?
Pink (Entertainment): What sitcom featured an episode that hinged

on a misprinted answer to a Trivial Pursuit question?
Yellow (History): In what year was Trivial Pursuit first published in

North America?
Brown (Arts & Literature): How old was artist Michael Wurstlin
when he agreed to create the artwork for the original edition of
Trivial Pursuit in exchange for five shares of stock in the game’s
fledgling publisher?
Green (Science & Nature): If a Trivial Pursuit player is on a Roll

Again space, what are the odds his next roll will move him to
another Roll Again space?
Orange (Sports & Leisure): How many copies did Trivial Pursuit sell
in 1984, its first full year of availability in the U.S.: fifteen hundred,
fifteen thousand, or fifteen million?
The first board games were played on the banks of Euphrates more than
5,000 years ago (Yellow: History). The first mass market board games were pub-
lished in the 1930s (Orange: Sports & Leisure). Conceptually and mechanically,
Trivial Pursuit is simple, obvious, easy to dance to. So how come it wasn’t invented
until the 1980s?
Because Chris Haney and Scott Abbot’s design might parse like a pop song but
it’s actually an immortal symphony.
There were plenty of trivia games that came before Trivial Pursuit — 3M’s Facts
Trivial Pursuit O 337
in Five is perhaps the only one anybody remembers — but none with its verve.
Trivial Pursuit is simple, it’s flexible, and it’s pleasantly fast paced. There’s also
much to be said for the fact that play is actually enhanced by the consumption of
alcohol — only fitting for a game that numbers dubious bar bets and pub quizzes
among its ancestors.
Although a summary hardly seems necessary, Trivial Pursuit pits up to six
players (or teams!) against each other in a test of esoteric knowledge. Players scoot
around a circular board, answering questions in each of six categories along the
way. The object is to visit special spaces spread across the board to earn six slices
of “pie” by answering a question in each category. Once you’ve completed your
pie, you head for center of the board, where you must answer one final question
to win the game.
Designing a great party game is a lot harder than it looks. In a game like
Trivial Pursuit the fun is in failing. It isn’t about answering questions; it’s about
almost answering questions, racking your brain for that obscure factoid you seem
to recover, but fail to get past the tip of your tongue. You’re certain you know
the answer, yet you just can’t dredge up the words. Everybody else is staring and
smiling — they all know the answer — and getting ready to laugh as you groan.
Trivial Pursuit isn’t a single game design at all; it’s six thousand separate games.
Each question was carefully crafted to achieve a harmony with the others, a perfect
balance between questions that make you feel smart, questions that make you
feel dumb, and those agonizing brain benders in between. Haney and Abbot’s
questions pace play as carefully as Hitchcock paced his thrillers. Somehow almost
every session sees just the right proportion of gimmes, lucky guesses, groaners,
and stunners (“How on earth do you know that?”) to generate a memorable
melodrama.
And speaking of drama, while just about everyone agrees that answering
the questions is fun, Trivial Pursuit is maligned in some quarters for its board
mechanics. In a vain effort to “improve” the game, too many players forego the
board altogether and invent simplistic new mechanisms for distributing the pie
and determining victory. A particularly common objection is the number of “use-
less” spaces on the board that simply instruct players to “Roll Again.” “Why not
eliminate these spaces and move on to the next question even sooner?” detractors
argue. Don’t you buy it! The board mechanics and (especially) the Roll Agains are
another tool the game uses to create drama. Watching that die drop when you’re
just a couple spaces away from your last pie piece creates suspense. The Roll
Agains prolong that suspense. Trivial Pursuit without the board rivals Monopoly
with a $500 bill on Free Parking for the greatest heresy in board gaming!
Needless to say, many flavors of Trivial Pursuit have been released over the
last 25 years, some of which have taken their own dubious stabs at “improving” its
mechanics. By far the very best were the earliest editions that came when Haney
and Abbot were still involved personally: the original Genus Edition, the Baby
Boomer Edition, the Silver Screen Edition (for movie buffs), and Genus Two. Later
teams of designers never quite duplicated Haney and Abbot’s exquisite alchemy.
Still, the game’s impact on pop culture has been undeniable. It’s even inspired
five separate TV game shows and a made-for-TV movie about its creation (Pink:
Entertainment).
Sadly most of the earlier versions of Trivial Pursuit are long out of print,
though they’re easily available on eBay and elsewhere. If you’re only familiar with
the game’s more modern incarnations do yourself a favor, track down a copy and
almost answer a few questions.
ANSWERS:
Blue (Geography): Canada
Pink (Entertainment): Seinfeld
Yellow (History): 1981
Brown (Arts & Literature): 18
Green (Science & Nature): 1-in-3
Orange (Sports & Leisure): Fifteen million
O O O
Ray Winninger is the former editorial director of Mayfair Games and a

former contributing editor of Dragon magazine. He designed numerous
games and supplements for TSR, FASA, Mayfair Games, West End Games,
Last Unicorn, White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, and Pagan Publishing.
Ray is currently a senior platform strategist at Microsoft. He’s more than
Trivial Pursuit O 339
willing to square off against all comers in a game of Trivial Pursuit: Silver
Screen Edition anytime, anywhere.
Leo Colovini on
Twixt
Key Designer: Alex Randolph
3M (1962)
I was in trouble. I found myself in the ancient town of Cagli, in the Italian
province of Pesaro-Urbino, and the person sitting across the table from me in the
Twixt tournament was the tough Dario De Toffoli.
My opponent had me blocked in, his pegs towering over mine as if they were
somehow larger and more powerful. I studied the situation for a long time, until
my attention focused on a particular gap on the board. I imagined the peg I
would place and the chain of links that might develop from that placement. It
seemed incredible, but with that one move I would stop my opponent’s advance
and begin a counterattack. I placed the peg in the hole, inserted a link to a nearby
peg, and lightly pressed the button on the clock, stopping my time and starting
my opponent’s.
Dario welcomed my move condescendingly, with a smile on his lips, but after
a few seconds he realized that this placement could give him a lot of trouble. The
minutes went by and his expression became more and more sullen. At a certain
point he rose to his feet to examine the board better. He wasn’t able to understand
how that little move was able to stop his triumphant progress. It couldn’t be! His
position had been so good that he couldn’t not win. Now, though, none of the
countermeasures he was analyzing seemed likely to break through my line — this
despite the fact that I was desperately skirting the edge of the board. At last Dario
thought he’d found a solution and placed his peg, but he was making a mistake.
His move was one I had foreseen; I already had my countermeasure prepared.
The conflict in that part of the board lasted a few more moves. Finally Dario
resigned himself to the defeat there and tried to counterattack on the opposite
side, but in that quadrant my position was better. Being careful not to make any
mistakes, I managed to avoid his traps and to make the game mine — and with
it the tournament.
The emotional ups and downs of that tournament game capture Twixt’s appeal
Twixt O 341
and ability to fascinate. The game was invented by the great Alex Randolph. Since
its initial release in 1962, Twixt has been published in various editions around
the world by such companies as 3M, Avalon Hill, Schmidt, Klee, Kosmos, and
Felsberger.
Twixt is played on a square board with 572 holes — a 24 by 24 grid with the
corner holes missing. Some editions label the grid A through X and 1 through 24,
in case you want to record your game. The objective is to connect the opposite sides
of the board using pegs and links that rest between them. There are two colors —
red and black in the original 3M edition, but other colors are used in other editions.
One color aims to connect the top and bottom, the other the left and right. Rules
exist for Double Twixt, allowing for team play, but the game is typically for two
individuals.
Players take turns placing one peg in any free hole and linking it with his
existing chain. Two pegs of the same color can only be linked when they are at
a distance that corresponds to the knight’s move in chess, or, when considered
mathematically, in the diagonal of a rectangle of six squares or points. Links can-
not cross over each other. Before making a move a player is allowed to remove
one or more links of his own color that were previously connected. The winner is
the first player to create an unbroken chain between his two sides of the board.
In Twixt, the person making the first move certainly has the advantage, but
Alex Randolph conceived of an addition to the rules that has been included in
every edition after the first. The so-called “pie rule” states that the first player
places a peg of either color in any position on the board. After that, his opponent
can decide which color he will play. This equalizes the starting positions just as
dividing up the last slice of pie between two people is made fair by having one
person cut the slice and the other person choose which half to take.
Twixt — an abbreviation of the word betwixt, an archaic synonym of between
— was originally developed as a paper-and-pencil game in the rooms of Vienna’s
celebrated Café Hawelka, the central meeting place for intellectuals and artists.
Twixt is considered by some to be a derivation of the game Hex, which appears
to have been developed independently by the Danish mathematician Piet Hein in
1942 and also in 1947 by the American John Nash (the protagonist of the film A
Beautiful Mind). Like Twixt, Hex has players positioning their pieces on a rhom-
boid grid of hexagons (usually 11 per side), with the goal of connecting the two
opposite sides. Twixt nevertheless is a game strategically much more profound than
its predecessor, thanks in large part to the use of the knight’s move to determine
legal links. This allows for the connection of each point with eight points, in con-
trast to the six connections possible in Hex, and the linking between pegs that are
not contiguous, thus multiplying the possibilities of play.
Twixt is typical of the deceptively simple designs of Alex Randolph. He pub-
lished dozens of games, beginning in 1961 with Pan-Kai. His subsequent designs
included such well-regarded titles as Square Off (1972), Ghosts! (1980), and
Ricochet Robots (1999). But the ones he loved best of his long list of designs were
the fairy tale-like Sagaland (1981, released as Enchanted Forest in the United
States), for which he won the Spiel des Jahres, and the rigorous and elegant Twixt.
Alex was also something of a philosopher when it came to the subject of
games. In his essay “Homo Ordinator,” published as part of my book, I giochi nel
cassetto (Venice Connection, 2002), Alex explained:
In all this great baggage that we call culture there are many useful things
that contribute to survival, but there is another category of things, the
most precious, that are totally useless, but necessary. And these are music,
art, theater, dance, in short all that makes the world livable. And there’s
a side of this culture that I particularly enjoy and it’s games: because a
game, more than any other thing, is the reproduction of life itself; it’s an
improvement of life, because, instead of being how it is, it’s how it should
be. That is its code, it has rules that we have voluntarily accepted, it has
an easy aim to understand, and it’s aesthetically beautiful. Games are
wonderfully ordered, at least the ones that I make, I hope.
Alex had a long and very intense life, having lived in many parts of the world,
taking in with intelligence those disparate cultures. He spent his last decade in
Venice. He had a loving, kind character, but could be difficult and unpredictable.
He never cared about money, but he was able to drive an editor crazy over the
terms of his contracts. When he received the Gradara Ludens prize in 1992, he
noted that he didn’t particularly deserve the award for his creations, but rather
because he was, as he described himself, “the inventor of the profession of inven-
tor of board games.”
His impact upon game design around the world was profound, as reflected in
the awards and prizes he received during his long career, and the respect he garnered
Twixt O 343
from his fellow designers. SAZ, the association of German authors, awarded Alex
a special prize for his career, and, during 2002’s International Game Fair in Essen,
an exhibition was staged with examples of his work. For seven years Alex served
as panel president for SAZ’s prize recognizing superior journalism about games.
The award has since been renamed the Alex Prize in honor of him.
The most telling honor is the one bestowed by the Deutsches Spiele-Archiv
— or German Games Archive — of Marburg. After Alex’s death in 2004, this
research archive set up “Alex’s Office,” a room containing reproductions of the
bookcases from his office in Venice. Any game designer in search of inspiration can
go there to work on his own projects.
I was in Marburg for the dedication of Alex’s Office. It’s incredible how similar
it is to Alex’s real studios. No sudden idea for a new game came to me that day,
but Alex and his designs continue to be an inspiration for me. And if you would
like to sample Alex Randolph’s brilliance, there is no better place to start than with
one of his earliest and greatest designs, Twixt.
O O O
Italian designer Leo Colovini is considered by many to be the foremost

disciple of Alex Randolph, continuing the master’s style of elegant and
dramatic games. Among the games he designed with Alex Randolph are
Drachenfels (1986) and Inkognito (1988), which was a Spiel des Jahres
special prize winner for “most beautiful game.” Leo’s other designs
include Carolvs Magnvs (2000), Cartagena (2000), Clans (2002), The
Bridges of Shangri-La (2003), Carcassonne: The Discovery (2005), and
Atlantis (2009). He is one of the founders of the Venice Connection, and
with Dario De Toffoli and Dario Zaccariotto form the Venice-based
studiogiochi.
Matthew Kirby on
UNO
Key Designer: Merle Robbins
Uno Games/International Games (1971)
Uno is a proud member of the fraternity of pioneering games, those designs

that introduced a new play experience into homes around the world.
Invented in Cleveland in 1971 by Merle Robbins, Uno was inspired by his love
of the card game crazy eights. Robbins tested out the new design with his family,
with whom it was played furiously and often. He then put together around $8,000
and printed 5,000 copies. The game caught on locally and was soon purchased for
$40,000 or $50,000, depending upon the account, and an offer of a continuing
royalty by a local funeral parlor owner, who formed International Games. Since
1971, Uno has reportedly sold more than 150 million copies — a testament to its
staying power and its clever design.
In 1992, Mattel purchased International Games, and soon Uno was on its way
to true mass merchandising. Under Mattel’s guidance, Uno has spawned a host of
spin-off products and configurations. From licensed theme decks featuring Harry
Potter, Hannah Montana, and the Los Angeles Lakers, to novelties such as Uno
Attack (a card-spitting machine) and Uno Spin (spinner included), there are dozens
if not hundreds of ways to experience this classic.
All great products reflect the times in which they are created; so, too, Uno. The
game itself is all about speed of thought and action. Its blissfully simple mechan-
ics worked wonders in the 1970s and continue to provide a perfect diversion for
generations increasingly stricken with “Short Attention Span Syndrome.” A contest
of mental and physical reflexes, Uno flourishes in a market crowded with more
traditional, slower-paced card and board games. It offers a respite from these
rivals’ incessant analysis and listlessness.
The game modifies a standard set of playing cards. There are four colored suits
numbered 0 to 9. There are also special cards: Draw Two (the next player draws
two cards), Reverse (change direction of play), Skip (skip the next player’s turn),
Wild (change the target card color), and the powerful and sought after Wild/Draw
Uno O 345
Four (change the target color and make the next player draw four). The cards
have always sported a big, bold, colorful design. One can instantly guess from the
graphic elements that the game was first produced in the 1970s, but there’s a time-
less aspect to it, too. The minimal text, primary colors, and heavy use of symbols
give Uno an appealingly universal look, in the tradition of such venerable gems as
Pit, Rook, and Mille Bornes.
Uno’s gameplay bears a notable resemblance to that of its inspiration, crazy
eights. Everyone is dealt seven cards, the remainder are put in a draw pile, and the
top card is turned up. The first player must match the top card in color, number,
or word, drawing a card if he can’t match. If he can play that new card, he can
do so. If not, play passes to the next person at the table. The object is to dispose
of your cards quicker than everyone else. When a game really gets going, there’s
little time to ponder strategy or deliberate excessively. Uno is, at its very best, fast
and furious, leading to frenetic interaction more common with toys than games.
Uno also benefits from a clever bit in the rules that sets it apart from other
designs and makes for easy marketing, a memorable hook that connects the title to
the gameplay itself. It’s all in that single playful, all-important declaration: “Uno!”
Inspired, perhaps, by the growing influence of Hispanic culture on the U.S., but
whatever the source, it’s simple, to the point, and very fun to say, like “Bingo!”
Anyone who has ever played Uno — and a lot of people who haven’t — can tell
you how it works: When you’re down to your final card, you need to say “Uno!”
or you must take two new cards from the draw pile. This forces quick thought and
quicker action, and offers up a large dose of consternation if you don’t remember.
Because Uno’s core rules are so simple, the game lends itself to customization.
Many players make up their own mechanics and penalties for various gameplay
scenarios. In 1998, Mattel asked people to send in their own variations and then
published three of them as Uno House Rules:
O Jump-In Uno: A player who has a card that exactly matches the last
one played can jump right in and play as if it were his turn.
O Seven-0 Uno: Players trade hands when specific cards are revealed.
O Progressive Uno: A player who can match a draw card that has
been played on him passes the compounded effects to the next
player. (If a Draw Two is played on you and you have a Draw Two
in your hand, the next player must draw four and so on.)
The player who goes out first receives points from the cards remaining in his
opponents’ hands. The numbered cards are worth their value, the Skip, Reverse,
and Draw Two cards are worth 20 points, and the Wild cards have a value of 50.
The first player to reach 500 points wins the game. Play can be, as I noted earlier,
fast and furious. However, there are still strategies to be formulated and tactics to
be employed. Always playing the highest-value card in your hand, for example, is
a solid defensive strategy. On the other hand, sticking too close to a rigid plan in
a game this free-flowing is often a mistake. One must use intuition and even a
little prudence, surveying the status of all the other players before putting down
any card. Like all card games, a good memory is the supreme tool for victory.
Most would say that its simplicity makes Uno such fun for families; once
younger kids pick up the game’s mechanics they can play just as well as older
folks. That’s certainly true, but I think there’s more to it than that. There’s just
something wonderful about being the first to get rid of your cards, the uncluttering
of your hand — it’s like the dispensing of burdens, a very cathartic feeling. The
game also gives players just the right sort of genial interaction through the special
cards. It’s competitive without being combative. And Uno is gloriously inexpensive.
There’s much to recommend a game that can provide such strategic and interactive
play in such a small (thus portable) and inexpensive package.
Uno has become an American family tradition, as much a mainstay of the
kitchen table as salt and pepper shakers. It’s the kind of game that is bound to get
rediscovered by each successive generation — with very good cause.
O O O
Born in San Diego in 1964 Matt Kirby is the original designer of the
games Apples to Apples (1999) and Shipwrecked (2000). His father was
notable abstract artist Sheldon Kirby. He is married and has three chil-
dren. After obtaining his BSME in 1987 (UCSD), he began his career with
a manufacturing company, where he developed both games. Fascinated by
the “connections of things,” Matt hopes to continue exploring the basic
nature of what we call “reality” through the creation of games, documen-
tary movies, and other media.
David Parlett on
Upwords
Key Designer: Elliot Rudell
“The 3-D game of high-rise word-building” for two to four players involves
a board of 10 by 10 squares and 100 square letter tiles. Everyone takes seven tiles
from the bag and a rack to put them on. Each of you in turn then places one or
more tiles on the hoard so as to make or extend one or more words reading either
downwards or from left to right, then draws fresh tiles from the bag to make up
seven again (or as many as may remain). All words must interlink. That is, any two
or more adjacent letters on the board must form or belong to part of a valid word.
Sounds familiar?
Well, yes; and the superficial resemblance to Scrabble may make you wonder
how anyone could have enough faith in such an idea to finish developing the
game, let alone try to rival its predecessor on the open market. And yet — it works.
Upwords is a different game, and I am not alone in preferring it to its better-known
rival.
The original feature of Upwords, as implied by its title, is that you can build
words not only from left to right and from top to bottom, but also in the third
dimension from ground level upwards. In brief, you can change words by piling
letter tiles on top of one another. For example, given the word NOVEL you can play
an H to make it HOVEL, or A-A to make NAVAL, or M-A-D to make NOMAD.
Or you can build and extend it to make ENAMEL or INNOVATE — or even, with
A-I-I-N-N-O-T in your rack, INNOVATION, thereby gaining a 20-point bonus
for using all seven tiles.
Another appealing feature of Upwords is that the letters do not have separate
values, so the tiles are not cluttered up with distracting numbers. Instead, every
word you make scores one point for each tile it contains. A five-letter word with
two tiles in each position scores 10, for example, but if every letter tops a pile of
five then it scores 25 points.
Certain other scoring elements are worth a mention, especially as some were
introduced or modified several years after publication of the original edition. The
first is that a word consisting of single tiles only, none of them having yet been
built on, scores double. This rule was introduced early in the game’s development
to provide an incentive for spreading words out rather than congregating in a
narrow area of tightly packed skyscrapers. It is for similar reasons that the original
eight by eight board, with 64 letter tiles, was replaced in 1997 with a 10 by 10
board and 100 tiles.
A commendable feature of the letter complement is that a single tile is devoted
to the combination Qu, so you don’t have to worry about your chances of drawing
a U once you have that awkward consonant. There is a (rather miserly) two-point
bonus for placing this tile, but only in a word entirely at ground level (one letter
high throughout). In the original version of the game the same bonus also applied
to J, V, X, and Z, but its abolition in the 1997 revision seems universally regarded
as an improvement.
Finally, unused letters at end of play count minus five each. In this connection
it’s worth noting that you can go on making words as long as you can — the game
doesn’t necessarily end when you’ve used all your tiles or everyone has had the
same number of turns.
The maximum permitted building height is five tiles. This is primarily another
device for ensuring that the game spreads out, but it has interesting repercussions
on your strategy. For example, in a two-player game you’ll want to be wary of
placing the fourth tile on a column, or the third in a three-player game, for fear of
its reaching maximum permitted building height before you get a chance to top it
yourself. If there is a four-tile column that you yourself have no letter to complete,
a safety device is to change either or both of the letters adjacent to it in order to
reduce the number of letters that will validly top it.
Suppose the word FINDER is on the board and all are five-high except for the
I, which is only four high. You’d really like to change the I to E or O or U for 30
points. You have none of these vowels, however, though you fear than an opponent
may have. For a low score, you can sabotage an opponent’s chances by placing
tiles around the I to make it harder to change that vowel. An X above it would do
nicely. Or a Qu or Z above it and a T below. That placement won’t score much,
but will cripple your opponent’s chances of making a rich haul while at the same
time ridding you of an awkward letter.
The five-high rule also introduces an exciting structural element into the game.
Upwords O 349
It often happens that a cluster of columns will start appearing in a particular area
of the board, centering on a couple of words overlapping in opposite directions.
For a few turns everybody will be building these upwards, making increasingly
higher scores as they do, till most of the columns, and especially the pivotal one,
are five high, preventing any further profitable development. The game then moves
on to another area of the board, where the same thing starts over.
Another commendable rule prevents you from entirely obliterating a whole
word by building on it — at least one letter from the underlying word must remain
untouched. This exerts a desirable discipline over the play and ensures that the
game is one of organic evolution rather than minor revolutions. After all, the spirit
of Upwords is to change words, not completely demolish them.
Equally satisfying is the rule prohibiting you from placing a tile immediately
on top of one bearing the same letter (A on A, B on B, and so on). But great fun
may be had by subsequently repeating a letter or a word that appeared at the next
but one level down, or lower. For example, suppose you make NOVEL and your
opponent changes it to HAVEN, leaving the original V and the E still showing
at ground level. There is nothing to stop you, provided you hold L-N-O, from
changing it back again to NOVEL.
On your turn to play, you may pass if you cannot or will not make a word. If
you pass, you may (but need not) exchange one of your tiles for one in the bag if
any remain. You may think it mean to allow only one letter to be changed, but it
is quite enough, as there are so many ways of getting a good score from even a
single letter. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone exercise this option.
Rather more questionable is the rule that prevents you from merely sticking
an S an the end of a word to make it plural. If you do add an S, you must play at
least one other word-differentiating letter in the same turn. The rationale is obvi-
ous, but it doesn’t go far enough. On the same grounds, it should be illegal to add
an S merely to make a verb form for the third-person singular. For example, given
GIFT, the present rules prevent you from adding a singleton S to make GIFTS. But
you could then argue that there is an increasing tendency to use GIFT as a verb
in certain contexts — it is, in fact, tending to replace DONATE — and that what
you’re doing is making a verbal inflection rather than a noun plural.
Despite this very minor cavil, Upwords remains after some 25 years of play my
favorite word game — apart, of course, from those of my own invention!
O O O
David Parlett was born in 1939 in London, England, where he still

resides. He gained a degree in modern languages at the University of
Wales, Aberystwyth, and taught French for a few years before joining
a PR firm as a technical writer. A games enthusiast and inventor since
childhood, he started writing for Games & Puzzles magazine (now
defunct) in 1972, and in 1975, with the success of his board game Hare
& Tortoise (still in production), he became a freelance game designer,
critic, researcher, and consultant. His books include The Penguin Book of
Word Games, The Penguin Book of Card Games, The Oxford History of
Card Games, and The Oxford History of Board Games. He is a member
of the International Playing-Card Society and the International Society
for Board Game Studies. Further details are on his website at davpar.com.
Lester Smith on
Werewolf
Key Designers: Dimitry Davidoff, Andrew Plotkin
public domain (1997)
Werewolf is a party game for six or more players, involving few rules but
rich psychological and social elements. The game is often described as pitting an
“uninformed majority against an informed minority.” In Werewolf, the majority
of the players take on the role of simple villagers, and the minority players are
werewolves. The trouble is, no one knows who the werewolves are — except the
werewolves themselves. The only game components needed are a deck of cards or
scraps of marked paper to secretly assign the villager and werewolf roles. Free,
public domain versions of the rules are available online. (Search for “werewolf
party game rules,” for example.)
Each turn of play in Werewolf is divided into a “day” phase and a “night”
phase. During the day, everyone votes to lynch a suspected werewolf. After that
execution, the victim’s card is turned up to reveal whether he or she actually was
a werewolf or simply an innocent villager. As you may imagine, the day phase can
be very vocal, with accusations and defenses flying, followed by howls of delight
or dismay once the execution is over. During the night, any surviving werewolves
secretly choose one innocent to devour. Eventually either the villagers all fall prey
to the werewolves (and mistaken lynchings), or all the werewolves are destroyed
and the village is saved.
The game originated as Mafia in 1986, invented by Dimitry Davidoff as a class-
room exercise in the Psychology Department at Moscow State University. In that
guise, it quickly gained popularity among students throughout Russia, and over the
next decade and a half spread across Europe and to the United States. Although
obviously well liked, Mafia lacked some features necessary for a masterful game
design, and its balance tended to devolve quickly during play. It also had a fairly
complicated scoring system compared to the simple “kill or be killed” victory
conditions of its successors.
In 1997, Andrew Plotkin (a.k.a. Zarf, an influential figure in the interactive
fiction community) created the first Werewolf version. Not only did the monster
theme prove more attractive to a wider audience, Plotkin also tweaked the game
rules to ensure balanced play from beginning to end. His primary innovation was
adding a moderator role to oversee the turn sequence, having the players close
their eyes during the night phase, then allowing the werewolves to open theirs to
recognize each other and jointly choose a victim. (The Mafia night attack had been
much more random, with players scrawling their actions on pieces of paper and
potentially destroying more than one victim.)
Adding a moderator helped to simplify and speed play, while further allowing
for the introduction of a “seer.” This is a villager who can silently indicate one
other player each night and learn from the moderator whether that player is a
werewolf or just another villager. Of course, the seer cannot afford to be too vocal
about this knowledge during the daytime phase or any surviving werewolves will
be certain to target that player the next night.
Later designers have taken advantage of the moderator rule to add a number
of further possible villager roles, including a Cupid character who can secretly
assign two other players to be lover characters whose survival is tied together
(which can be interesting if one is a werewolf and the other isn’t), a sheriff charac-
ter whose lynching vote counts double, a hunter who can kill when killed, and a
witch who can poison or heal, among others.
Several publishers have produced the game commercially, most often with
the werewolf theme, though at least one deals with zombies instead. The more
notable commercial examples include (in order of increasing expense): Are You a
Werewolf? from Looney Labs, Les Loups-Garous de Thiercelieux from France’s
Lui-Même (called The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow in the English version sold
by Asmodée), and Ultimate Werewolf from Bezier Games. Whatever the title,
however, they are all variations on that same Mafia/Werewolf concept invented by
Davidoff and perfected by Plotkin.
What makes this game so successful is not just its flavor — though the idea of
secretly being a killer, whether a supernatural beast or a Mafia assassin, seems to
appeal to nearly everyone. More important, however, is how elegantly a few simple
rules provide for such a rich experience. This is a party game that nearly anyone
can grasp, with rules that — once played — are pretty much unforgettable.
Another reason the game has spread so widely, of course, is that the simple
rules make it adaptable to local tastes. People regularly fit the mechanics to new
Werewolf O 353
genres, such as aliens or cultists. Some people play it online. In some universities,
the game is played across actual days and nights, with killers marking a victim’s
door with an X during the evening and all players gathering at some point during
the day to decide who must be lynched in retribution.
Then there’s the price point: Nothing sells like free, public-domain goods,
especially on the Internet. On the other hand, the various commercial versions all
provide professionally designed components for people who prefer to have that
option. Again, variety adds to the game’s appeal.
Ultimately, however, the secret to the success of Werewolf comes down to
human interaction. From its earliest incarnation in a university classroom in
Moscow to the session of The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow I held in my home
a short time ago, the fascination is in experiencing the psychology of a justifiably
paranoid community trying to rid itself of a hidden evil — and too often learning
that they sacrificed an innocent instead. It is in experiencing the psychology of the
secret predator who must kill to survive. These are the social elements that give
Werewolf its bite. Add to this the allure of secret knowledge, part and parcel of
playing the role of that hidden evil or the various other characters that have been
developed for the game, and you have the makings of a masterpiece.
Now you have been let in on the secret of Werewolf, as well.
O O O
Lester Smith works days as a writer and Internet technologist for an

educational publishing house. In his spare time, he serves as president of
the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, manages the micropublisher Popcorn
Press, and designs an occasional game just for fun. He won an Origins
Award in 1995 for Dragon Dice and has contributed to three other
Origins Award-winning projects, including Hobby Games: The 100 Best.
His other design credits include the board game Minion Hunter and a long
list of roleplaying game products. Visit him online at LesterSmith.com.
John Kovalic on
Wits & Wagers

Key Designer: Dominic Crapuchettes
North Star Games (2005)
Wits & Wagers is self-described “Brainless Trivia, Shameless Fun.”

Well, that’s half right.
It is “shameless fun.” But in trying to devise a party trivia game centered
around — for the most part — unknowable questions, Dominic Crapuchettes has
created one of the smartest party games to be released in years.
You may have no idea what the answers are, but “brainless” this isn’t.
“Trivia” might also be disputable, simply because Wits & Wagers can’t be a
trivia game. You see, I’d know: I hate trivia games in much the same way mongeese
hate cobras, Hatfields hate McCoys, and oil hates water. Yet I love Wits & Wagers.
Ergo, it can’t be a trivia game.
In most trivia games, the actual “trivia” are facts that people playing the game
have a decent chance of knowing. “What is the capital of Wisconsin?” for example.
Move forward a space. “What year did mankind first land on the moon?” Collect
a pink triangle. “Who directed Porky’s XIII: Revenge of the Barf?” You get the
idea. . . .
For heaven’s sake, trivia games are not made up of questions that no one
around the table has a hope in heck of answering.
“How many teaspoons make up a quart?”
“Ronald Reagan was the oldest U.S. president. In years and days (emphasis
mine), how old was he when he took office?”
“What percentage of American families annually spend more than they earn?”
“How many McDonald’s locations were there 10 years after the first store
opened?”
In the space of seven rounds, Wits & Wagers players are hit with questions that
make those in the movie Quiz Show seem as elementary as the words on a first-
grade spelling bee, that place Jeopardy!’s Daily Double square in “One of These
Things Is Not Like the Others” territory.
Wits & Wagers O 355
Gameplay is straightforward: One player acts as the question reader, but can
also partake, since they are most likely as unaware of the answers as anyone else
in the room. We play by a house rule that has every player take a turn at being the
question reader, the duty going clockwise each turn after the first.
The question is posed. A 30-second timer is turned over. Players franticly
scribble their best guesses at answers on dry-erase boards, and then those answers
are revealed, simultaneously.
Now, here’s what’s genius about Wits & Wagers, the thing that makes it more
than just another trivia game. Since guessing the correct answer is usually next
to impossible, that’s not important. What is important is being able to guess who
around the table will come closest to the correct answer, without going over. Yup.
All answers in Wits & Wagers are numerical, and The Price is Right rules are in
effect.
What’s hard to describe is how the answers are then arranged, in order, on
the betting mat that comes with the game. But trust me, it makes sense, and it’s
far easier to understand than any non-illustrated description I could attempt here
would be. All you really need to know is, the answers are arranged in order, from
lowest to highest. The timer is turned over again, and players are then allowed
to place wagers on any of the answers. The more extreme an answer’s deviation
from the middle ground, the greater the payoff is, should you correctly bet on it.
Everyone starts the game with two tokens that remain with them throughout
the game. Players can never lose all their chips, though if you’re down to those two
late in the game, catching up is pretty tough. For the most part, though, betting on
answers produces a wonderful back-and-forth flow of chip leaders — chip leaders
who may not even have gotten a single answer correct themselves.
The betting mechanic introduces all sorts of interesting gameplay. Bluffing
other players by moving your chips at the last second before time runs out is a
perfectly legitimate strategy. If, for example, your musical knowledge is legendary,
folks may follow your lead on “For how many consecutive weeks was Pink Floyd’s
The Dark Side of the Moon on the Billboard 200 album chart?” If, say, you just
happen to switch your answer from 102 to 741 right as time runs out, who are
you to feel sorry for those left behind? The race goes to the swift. And, sometimes,
to the sneaky.
The wagering should be what keeps Wits & Wagers interesting, but really, like
all great party games, it’s the social interaction that keep me coming back for more.
Ronald Reagan was 69 years and 349 days old when he took office? Really? How
on earth did you get within a few days of that, Todd? Wait, Sarah bet everything
on there being 192 teaspoons in a quart? No way! Is Wits & Wagers better as a
game or as a discussion generator? Let’s call it a tie, there.
Look, here’s my caveat on all this: Creating a trivia game based around
unknowable knowledge is hard. I should know, I tried. Shortly before Wits &
Wagers was released, I developed a home version of Michael Feldman’s popular
Wisconsin Public Radio show Whad’Ya Know? I think it came out okay, but I was
never really satisfied with the mechanic by which essentially unknowable answers
had to be known.
Halfway through my first game of Wits & Wagers, I almost began banging my
head against a wall. This is how it should be done; this is the design that takes
that difficult concept, knowing the unknowable, and turns it into a beautifully
playable game.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld, “There are known knowns. These are things we
know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things
that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are
things we don’t know we don’t know.”
All I know is this: I love Wits & Wagers.
Now, remind me again: How many turkeys are eaten in the United States on
Thanksgiving each year?
O O O
John Kovalic’s cartoons have appeared everywhere from his hometown

of Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal to the New York Times and Dragon
magazine. His creations include the comic books Dork Tower, Dr. Blink:
Superhero Shrink, Snapdragons, Newbies, Wild Life, and Beached, as
well as the panel cartoons Murphy’s Rules and The Unspeakable Oaf. A
co-founder and co-owner of Out of the Box Publishing and a contribu-
tor for Steve Jackson Games, John has illustrated over 100 games and
game supplements, and is at least in part responsible for such bestsellers
as Apples to Apples, Blink, Munchkin, and Chez Geek. In his spare time,
John searches for spare time. Find him online at dorktower.com.
Philip Reed on
Yahtzee
E.S. Lowe (1956)
As a child I played a lot of games. Even before I knew anything about “hobby”
games, I played games with my family. Monopoly, Candy Land, Battleship . . . all
these and more filled my evenings and weekends as I sat down at the kitchen table
with my parents and my sisters.
One game I never played with my parents, though, was Yahtzee. Instead, I had
to learn about this game of chance on “the streets.”
At 10 years old, during an overnight stay at a friend’s house — the same night,
in fact, that I first played the Dungeon! board game — I was introduced to Yahtzee.
My friend and I sat at a small rickety table in his garage during one of the hotter
nights of the year as he showed me the score pads and the dice, and slowly taught
me how to play a game that, I soon decided, was an awful lot of fun. On my turn
I would roll the dice and try to create combinations: three of a kind, four of a
kind, as many 3s as I could get at once, or, the ultimate, a Yahtzee! I don’t think I
fully grasped the rules until the fourth game — and it was weeks before I started
to realize that there was some strategy to the game — but I had fun from the first
roll of the dice.
Yahtzee’s past is wrapped in mystery and may never be truly revealed. Published
in 1956 by E.S. Lowe, the game was supposedly created by “a wealthy Canadian
couple” who played it as “The Yacht Game” with their friends. Regardless of
the source, Yahtzee’s history consistently works its way back to the idea that the
unnamed designers asked Lowe to produce 1,000 game sets in exchange for the
rights.
If this is true, I’ve no doubt that this couple had to have kicked themselves at
some point in their lives. No matter how “wealthy” you are, giving up the rights
to a game that has sold over 50 million copies has to sting.
Yahtzee wasn’t a hit at first, though. Lowe had faith in the game and sank
almost a million dollars into marketing, without success. Reportedly, it wasn’t until
he started running “Yahtzee parties” to demonstrate the game that it took off. The
parties may have been an unusual idea, but they apparently worked out in Lowe’s
favor because sales slowly started building, thanks to positive word of mouth. By
1973, Yahtzee had grown popular enough that Milton Bradley took notice and
bought Lowe’s company. Since then, Yahtzee has become a household name —
and a strong part of Hasbro’s “Family Game Night” promotions.
A game of Yahtzee is played with five six-sided dice, a cup, a score pad, and a
pencil. While the cup isn’t necessary — you can easily play without it — using one
really helps with the fun; the sound of the dice rattling around inside the cup is an
important part of the Yahtzee experience. Each player, one at a time, noisily rolls
the handful of dice and then compares the roll to his score pad, dividing the dice
up into ones that he’ll keep and ones he’ll reroll. After your reroll, you go through
the process one more time, for a total of three rolls on your turn. You may stop
and score at any time — even after the first roll — but where’s the fun in that?
Scoring is as easy as finding the section on the score sheet that’s most beneficial
to you for this roll. Roll three 2s, a 1, and a 5? You’ve just scored six points in
the “3 of a kind” row on the score sheet. Did you roll a 1 and four 5s, but you’ve
already placed a roll in your “4 of a kind” row? Well, just dump this roll into your
“Fives” row and you’ve now scored 20 points. The only real trick to remember
is that once you score a row you can’t go back, so make absolutely certain that
you really want to write down a score before passing the dice to the next player.
The only unusual score is when you roll a Yahtzee — five of a kind — at which
point you just write down 50 points in the “Yahtzee” row on your score sheet.
If you manage another Yahtzee as the game progresses, grab a chip; that’s 100
bonus points!
The game ends once all the players have scored all 13 rows on their score
sheets. As with a lot of fun games, determining the winner is as easy as adding up
the scores for each row and then comparing the totals: the player with the most
points wins! Did you lose? Not a problem. Yahtzee plays so fast that an evening
can be filled with two or three sessions. Hardened players will even track scores
throughout the evening, working toward an “ultimate winner” for the night.
Yahtzee is primarily a “dicefest” — a game in which players do nothing but
roll dice — which means that winning depends almost completely on luck. That
doesn’t lessen the fun at all, though, because a game of Yahtzee generates a lot
of noise, even beyond the clatter of the dice in the cup. From groans of despair
Yahtzee O 359
as luck goes against you to cheers of surprise as someone makes an unbelievable

score, Yahtzee games are anything but quiet. As a party game, when played with
a group of up to eight or more, Yahtzee works out great. Sure, there’s no direct
player interaction, but the joy of watching as someone flubs a reroll — and the
excitement of watching as an opponent nails that Yahtzee — creates a lot more
excitement than you would expect after just reading the rules.
For me, Yahtzee is especially enjoyable because of the “push your luck” aspect
of the gameplay. The question of what possible dice combinations to go for —
what rolls should be keepers and what you should put back into the cup for a
potentially better outcome — is always challenging, and that hope for the biggest
possible score drives people to take some really stupid risks. I know that I almost
always make the wrong decisions when it comes to trying for a longshot result,
but on the few occasions that a crazy reroll works out, the cries from the table are
worth all the previous failures. Much like other push-your-luck games, such as the
highly recommended Can’t Stop, the act of going too far in Yahtzee is as much fun
as any other part of playing the game.
Yahtzee makes an excellent introductory game. With a copy of Yahtzee, a copy
of the Catan Dice Game, and a night with your relatives or non-gamer friends,
you can easily transition from Yahtzee to a simple Catan game. After a few ses-
sions of Catan Dice, it’s actually not that great a leap to the slightly more complex
board game The Settlers of Catan. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself with a
group of players willing to try all sorts of new games. And that’s a situation where
everyone wins.
O O O
Philip Reed has been working professionally in the game industry since
1995, during which time he has done everything from book design to
management to game design. These days, Philip spends his days as chief
operating officer at Steve Jackson Games and his free time (what little of
it there is) playing games, playing with toys, and writing about life, games,
and toys at philipjreed.com and battlegrip.com.
Kevin Wilson on
Zendo
Key Designer: Kory Heath
Looney Labs (boxed edition, 2003)
Does a dog have Buddha-nature?

This is the most serious question of all.
If you answer yes or no
You lose your own Buddha-nature.
— Ancient Zen Koan
After reading those words at the start of Zendo’s rulebook, you can
tell that this is no ordinary game. There are no dice to roll, no wooden cubes to
trade — there isn’t even a board on which to move around little pewter top hats.
In short, it’s a pretty weird game. Fortunately, it’s also brilliant and a lot of fun.
Zendo, as its name implies, takes its theme from Zen Buddhism. One of the
three to six players is cast as the proverbial “master” attempting to lead the other
players, a.k.a. the “students,” to enlightenment in the form of a logic puzzle built
out of little plastic pyramids.
I told you it was a weird game.
Looney Labs, the company that published Zendo, uses the same little plastic
pyramids in a lot of their games. (They refer to them as “Icehouse pieces,” after
the first game in which they appeared.) They’re hollow, come in three sizes and
at least a dozen different colors, and can be stacked on top of each other in lots
of ways. Best of all, once you’ve got a decent set of Icehouse pieces, you can play
literally dozens of games with them. They’re a bit like checkers that have fallen
through a time warp from the future.
Aside from these pyramids, Zendo also uses black, white, and green glass
stones, along with some cards that can offer ideas for beginners.
To play Zendo, the master first thinks up a rule, or draws a card from the
deck of sample rules for beginners. This might be something like “No pieces are
green,” or “There are more red pieces than blue pieces,” or even “No pieces point
Zendo O 361
at each other.” The master then builds two little structures, or “koans,” out of the
pyramids. These can be as simple or as complicated as he likes, as long as each is
obviously self-contained. One structure must follow the rule — it is said to have
the “Buddha-nature” — and it gets a white stone placed next to it. The other struc-
ture must break the rule and has a black stone placed next to it.
So, for example, if the rule was “There are more red pieces than blue pieces,”
the master might stack a red pyramid on top of a yellow pyramid and put a white
stone next to that, then place a blue pyramid by itself and place a black stone next
to it. It’s up to the students to figure out that the yellow pyramid is a red herring,
of course.
After the master finishes setting up his two koans, each student in turn builds
a new koan and says either “Master” or “Mondo.” With the former, the master
inspects the student’s koan and either places a white stone next to it if the koan
has the Buddha-nature, or a black stone if it does not. With the latter, every student
secretly guesses whether the koan has the Buddha-nature or not. Each student who
is correct receives a green “guessing stone” from the master.
Guessing stones can be spent at the end of a student’s turn to take a guess at
the rule. If the student is wrong, the master then builds a koan that follows the
secret rule but does not follow the student’s guess, then places a black stone next to
it. The first student to correctly guess the rule wins the game. What the win means
is up to the players. Perhaps the student who guessed the rule can become the new
master. Perhaps the previous master can remain the master and create a different
rule. In all, it takes about 15 minutes for a round of Zendo, so the opportunities
to shift roles are frequent.
I’ve played a lot of games with a lot of people, so I’m always on the look-
out for those that deliver a new and unique experience. Zendo stands out from
every other game out there with its simple, logic-driven play. It’s not particularly
competitive, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment when the students work
out the master’s rule. However, the master has to be careful not to make a rule
that is too difficult or the game can turn frustrating rather quickly. Fortunately,
the master can always adjust the game’s difficulty simply by providing easier or
harder clues.
Zendo is one of those games that appeals to all sorts of unexpected people.
After just a couple of plays, I’ve gotten friends and family who wouldn’t touch a
normal board game to run out and buy a copy for themselves. Young or old, most
people can quickly grasp the game’s simple, intuitive rules. It can even be used as
a fun tool to teach children basic logic — something neglected in many school
systems, but which people find surprisingly useful in their daily lives.
Although Zendo’s theme may seem a bit strange to some, it can be a lot of
fun if you play it up. For instance, I managed to purchase a tiny metal gong for
my copy of the game, and one of our house rules is that after the master places a
stone, he rings the gong. Other than that, the master isn’t allowed to speak in our
group. This can lead to a lot of laughs, as the master performs his tasks silently,
but with mock seriousness. Other groups might get more mileage riffing on the
Kung Fu TV series, with “Grasshopper” and “Take the stone from my hand” jokes.
The boxed set edition of Zendo published by Looney Labs in 2003 is no longer
in print, but that doesn’t mean the game is out of reach. The rules for Zendo, along
with 11 other designs utilizing Icehouse pieces, can be found in the book Playing
with Pyramids. The special pieces themselves are available individually, as well.
The first step in putting together your own copy of this brilliant game is to visit
the Zendo page at looneylabs.com.
Trust me, the road to enlightenment is never easy, but it’s always worth the
journey.
O O O
Kevin Wilson has been a game designer since the late 1990s. He is the
co-designer of the 7th Sea and Spycraft roleplaying games, as well as the
author of numerous other RPG books. He has also designed several board
games, including Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Arkham Horror second
edition (with Richard Launius), and Android (with Dan Clark). Kevin
received a B.A. in cognitive science (artificial intelligence) from U.C.
Berkeley in 1997, and was active in the interactive fiction community at
the time, writing several games — including Once and Future and Lesson
of the Tortoise — as well as founding the Interactive Fiction Competition
and the Internet magazine SPAG. Kevin lives near the Twin Cities with
lots of books and an utter lack of cats.
Jess Hartley on
Zooloretto
Key Designer: Michael Schacht
My home tends to be a veritable potluck when it comes to game players.

Between family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and those who just seem
to show up on occasion, we cover the spectrum of experience and interest, from
“hardcore strategy gamer” to “played Monopoly as a kid” to “only into things
with pixels.” We include everyone from grandkids to grandparents, with the
majority of us of an age falling somewhere between the start of the teen years and
the end of middle age. While the diversity provides us with some fantastic conver-
sation and a wide knowledge base, it raises unique challenges when it comes to
choosing a game to play.
Zooloretto has become one of our mainstays, regardless of the combination
of gamer-types gathered around the table on any particular night. With a running
time of under 45 minutes, it’s fast enough that we need not commit an entire
evening to one session; this also makes rematches very appealing! The rules are
simple, so people of any age or experience level can pick them up quickly, even as
they play. And while the game’s animals really pull in kids (and some of us adults),
the presentation isn’t so cutesy as to alienate more serious types.
Zooloretto won the Spiel des Jahres in 2007, and for good reason. The zoo
theme is instantly accessible, and the mechanics are straightforward, yet engaging.
Players take on the role of rival zoo owners vying to build up their parks in the
hope of attracting visitors. To achieve the improvements, they draw upon a central
pool of resources, represented by sturdy square pressboard tiles; these include
vending stalls, coins, and, of course, different kinds of animals. The animal tiles are
used to fill enclosures, attracting park-goers and letting zoo owners collect coins
both during and at the end of the game. So, too, the vending stalls, which increase
the value of incomplete enclosures and generate coins in their own right. Coin tiles
can be used to pay for different actions, such as purchasing animals from another
owner or expanding a zoo with a new enclosure.
Before play starts, most of the resource tiles are placed face down in multiple
small stacks in the middle of the table. The exception is a stack of 15 tiles, which
is set aside and covered with a small disc; these tiles are reserved for use at the end
of the game, after the rest of the resources have been put into play. Around the
central cache of tiles stand wooden “delivery trucks,” one per zoo owner, which
will transport tiles to the different parks. The trucks have slots to hold up to three
resources.
On his turn, a player can either spend coins on an action, flip over a face-down
resource tile and place it in one of the delivery trucks, or claim a delivery truck
already holding tiles. Taking one of the trucks ends the player’s turn for the round,
but until he claims a truck, each zoo owner can continue to spend coins or place
newly revealed tiles into the remaining trucks. The goal is to secure the specific
resources needed to build up your zoo. Each of your enclosures holds one type
of animal, and they’re worth more at the end of the game the closer they are to
being full — if people came to your park to see elephants, they want to see lots of
elephants. The round continues until all the players have taken a delivery truck.
Initially, your zoo can hold up to three different kinds of animals in its trio
of enclosures, so early turns tend to be fast paced. Players can put resource tiles
in any truck, but they can’t load something into a truck and take a truck in the
same turn. So deciding how to load the resource tiles requires some thought; if you
make a truck too appealing, crowding it with coins or three animals of one species,
another player is bound to take it before your turn comes around again. Claiming
trucks has a strategy all its own, too. Sometimes it’s smart to snap one up early,
even if it only has a single resource in it; you may need that camel to complete
an enclosure, and if you wait, someone else may grab it. Other times, you can be
more patient, hoping that luck will favor you and another player will add helpful
tiles to a remaining truck.
Somewhere around the third round, zoo owners will face new challenges.
Around this time players often find themselves with animals they can’t add to an
enclosure. Each zoo contains a barn to hold all the creatures that cannot be placed
on display, whether it’s because they’re the wrong species or because an area is full.
Animals languishing in the barn at the game’s end earn penalties, so it’s important
to manage your resources carefully. This can prove tricky, even if you avoid getting
animals you can’t immediately put on display. Some of the animal tiles are marked
male or female, indicating that they’re fertile, and pairs of fertile animals housed
Zooloretto O 365
together in an enclosure will result in an offspring. Usually this is a boon — it

gives your zoo a new animal and, well, who doesn’t want an adorable little panda?
— but if your enclosure is full, the poor little tyke gets shuffled off to the barn.
Shrewd players also realize that it’s possible to stack delivery trucks to hinder
rivals and maximize the populations in their barns. If another zoo really needs a
gorilla and there’s one already loaded, you can try to add other animals to the
truck — flamingos or kangaroos, whatever the owner needing the gorilla can’t use.
Zooloretto does not have to be played as a cutthroat competition, but a winning
strategy sometimes involves preventing the other zoos from having too easy a time
acquiring the resources they want.
A final burst of excitement comes as the game nears its conclusion. When
all the randomly stacked tiles are used up, the last stack of 15 is put into play.
Drawing a tile from this reserve stack triggers the endgame; once the round under-
way is completed, points are tallied and a winner is declared. As the randomly
stacked tiles dwindle, players need to change their strategies, hurrying to complete
enclosures and, if possible, move animals from the barn, all with an eye toward
the final score. A zoo owner with a point lead might try to initiate the final round
at soon as the chance arises, while others might do what they can to stall, hoping
to draw the resource tiles they need to pull ahead. This clever endgame mechanic
adds another level to play that helps make Zooloretto more than a simple building
game.
Throughout the course of the game, players can change their goals to counter
setbacks or to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. If two of the other
zoo owners have taken most of the limited number of leopards, it might be time
to move your solo leopard to the barn and grab some of the camels that are more
readily available. There’s never a sure winner until the points are tallied, so no one
is likely to get bored or disappointed by lopsided play. And because the game can
involve as much or as little strategizing as you’d like, Zooloretto manages to appeal
to a broad spectrum of players, from the casual gamer to the hardcore hobbyist.
Designer Michael Schacht has created a host of expansions for the game,
including Zooloretto: Exotic, Zooloretto: XXL, and more than a dozen small
supplements — buildings, enclosures, and even individual animals. (Many of these
smaller releases, which were originally available through magazines or at conven-
tions, have been bundled by Rio Grande Games into two expansion packs.) Each
new release adds different goals and items, building upon the basic game’s theme
and mechanics. You can also visit the Rio Grande website, riograndegames.com,
for free downloadable expansion items: additional enclosures; a petting zoo, which
puts a stronger emphasis on the acquisition of baby animals; and a restaurant,
which is a variation on the existing vending stalls. Zooloretto can also be com-
bined with Schacht’s Aquaretto, adding aquatic animals to the mix.
Whether you play Zooloretto right out of the box or add one or more of the
expansions, it is a game that has both theme and design appeal for a broad range
of players. It’s easy to learn, fun to play, features a strong balance between luck
and strategy, and boasts an extremely high replay value. All these are wonder-
ful traits, but they are not what make Zooloretto one of the best family games.
What earns it that title is the sheer amount of fun that my friends and family have
whenever we break out that bright green box with the panda on the front. Time
spent playing Zooloretto — from giggling at the silly animal noises it invariably
inspires to groaning over a particularly brilliant but unexpected maneuver pulled
off by someone utterly new to the game — is invariably time spent having fun.
And, especially for family games, having fun is what it’s all about.
O O O
Jess Hartley is an avid gamer who has the good fortune to work as
a novelist, designer, editor, and developer in the gaming industry. Her
credits include Supernatural Adventures from Margaret Weis Productions
and the White Wolf books Changeling: The Lost, Geist: The Sin-Eaters,
and World of Darkness: Innocents. She dwells with her husband and
daughter and a menagerie of other interesting creatures in the desert wilds
of southeastern Arizona, where she’s an active member of The Camarilla
and the Society for Creative Anachronism, and participates in a plethora
of other strange and curious pastimes that often make her neighbors and
acquaintances scratch their heads in confusion. More information about
Jess, including a full list of her published works, can be found on her
website at jesshartley.com.
Afterword
by Wil Wheaton
I was introduced to gaming in 1983, when my great aunt gave me the

D&D Basic Set for Christmas. Though initially disappointed that I didn’t get a
snazzy Nintendo Game & Watch like my cousins, it quickly captured my imagina-
tion and laid the foundation for a life spent battling fantastic creatures, exploring
strange new worlds, driving offensively, and obliquely referencing some of my
favorite games.
The very first sentence in the Players Manual, which we were instructed to read
first, tells us, “This is a game that is fun. It helps you imagine.” As an adult, I use
my imagination to create stories and characters so I can support my family, but
when I was a kid, I used my imagination to survive the unforgiving gauntlets of
elementary and middle school.
Throughout my entire childhood, I was weak, weird, sensitive, awkward, and
uncoordinated. I was one of the last kids picked for teams in playground sports,
and even then I was placed into the position least likely to interact with the actual
playing of the game. In baseball, I stood around in right field. In kickball, I was
the catcher.
This isn’t to say I disliked all athletics; I just wasn’t any good at the traditional
team-based sports. I loved to run, I was a great Frisbee player, and until the
teachers at our school declared that four square was just for girls, I was pretty
good at that, too. The only playground activity I truly hated was dodgeball, which
was little more than the sanctioned beating of kids like me whose dump stats were
strength and dexterity. Ironically, dodgeball was fundamental to my death as a
kid who was afraid of everything, and my rebirth as a gamer. After taking a par-
ticularly vicious dodgeball to the face in 1984, I was allowed to recuperate on the
bench next to an asthmatic kid who introduced me to AD&D, and became one of
my closest friends. Over the next couple years, we explored dungeons and slayed
dragons until our fledgling gaming group was broken up, a casualty of early 1980s
Satanic Panic. My love of gaming, however, endured, and it was in those polyhedric,
Gygaxian fires that my adult identity was forged.
I suppose it’s no surprise to learn, then, that I’m a gamer dad. When I had chil-
Afterword O 369
dren of my own, I couldn’t wait to introduce them to gaming, eager to share with
them the joy it had brought to me. As soon as they were able to hold dice in their
hands and gaming concepts in their heads, I took them on journeys to the same
lands I’d loved, from the fantasy worlds of Dungeon!, Magic: The Gathering, and
Talisman, to the bleak, post-apocalyptic futures of Ogre and Car Wars. I couldn’t
teach them how to throw a curveball or make a free throw, but I could teach them
how to throw 3d6 to roll up a character, make the most satisfying “pew pew pew”
noises while playing Mag•Blast, and thoroughly mess with every other player in
a game of Munchkin.
Gaming with my kids was more than just an opportunity to have fun together
and strengthen the bonds between parent and child. It presented countless teach-
able moments, allowing me to take something from our game and use it to share
basic values, like being honest and kind, doing the right thing when it isn’t the
easy thing, and being a good sport. Gaming, as it turns out, is perfectly suited to
teaching values that are extremely important to me: Life isn’t fair, and when things
don’t go the way you want them to, it’s not the end of the world. Never sacrifice
the journey for the destination. Always do your best. It’s just a game. Never pick
up a duck in a dungeon.
But what about those times when you’re trying to play a game with your child
and the dice are just out to get them? As an adult, I can accept that bad dice rolls
are just part of gaming, but when your child has just rolled his third or fourth
critical failure and is wondering why he’s even playing the game instead of — well,
instead of doing anything else, all that goes out the window. We want our kids to
have fun when they play games, after all, and we all know that nothing ruins a
game experience faster than totally horrible dice rolls, especially for kids.
This is where something I call Rule 17b comes in.
Depending on your kid, the game, and some X factor that I leave to you as
a parent to identify, you could give your child up to three “roll again” markers,
like poker chips or glass beads or whatever, that she can use at any time to redo
a particularly bad dice roll. She can use a marker whenever she wants, but once
it’s been used, it’s gone for the rest of the game, so your child will have to choose
carefully when to spend it. This practice can be especially great when playing with
a couple of smaller kids, because the parent isn’t put in the position of awarding
do-overs and giving the appearance of favoritism. (Raise your hand if you’ve ever
had to untangle that Gordian Knot, at –5, no less.)
I wouldn’t suggest this with more traditional board games of the Monopoly
variety, but I think it would work well with designs like Descent or even The
Settlers of Catan. It gives children a little bit more control than they’d otherwise
have, so they’re not at the mercy of the dice quite so much. The rule gives them a
little bit of a safety net, even when they get unlucky.
Using Rule 17b still allows for those teachable moments about enjoying the
journey and being a good sport, and when the markers run out, they’ll still see that
life isn’t always fair. But by invoking this rule, your child’s — and your — gaming
experience is less susceptible to the fickle whims of chance. Your son or daughter
is empowered at a time when they’d feel helpless and frustrated. Everyone has
more fun, which is the whole point of gaming in the first place, and you may just
add a gamer to the world.
And that’s kind of my ulterior motive with this essay, and the creation of Rule
17b. As soon as our children learn to walk and talk, they begin their inevitable
journey away from us and into adulthood. From the first time I sat down to play
Talisman with my boys, I’ve built and maintained a bridge of games across that
ever-widening gulf, and I hope that I can help some of my fellow gamer-parents
do the same thing, because the world needs games, and the world needs gamers.
My childhood was weird. It wasn’t enough that I was a huge geek, but I was also
an actor, surrounded by every Hollywood cliché imaginable. In a life that was
completely abnormal, filled with things that I didn’t choose for myself, games were
one of the few things that I did choose. I don’t even want to contemplate what my
life would be like without them.
O O O
Wil Wheaton is an on-camera and voice actor, writer, and champion of

geek culture. He is a columnist for LA Weekly and SuicideGirls Newswire,
a top 100 Twitter user, and the author of several books, including Just
A Geek, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, and Memories of the Future,
Volume One. In both 2009 and 2010, Forbes named him one of the top
20 most influential celebrities on the Web. This is all amusing to Wil,
who doesn’t think of himself as a celebrity, but is instead “just this guy,
you know?” He lives and games in Pasadena, California, and blogs at
wilwheaton.typepad.com.
Appendix A:
Games and Education
by David Millians
Games are an ancient form of both entertainment and education. Whether

encountered as a strategy game employing cards and tokens, a computer simulation
utilizing the latest advanced graphics, or a session of let’s pretend in which all the
props and pieces are purely imaginary, games are among a teacher’s most effective
and evocative tools. Many have clear applications for learning, and simply playing
games is one of the best ways a student can develop his or her mind.
Games cover a surprisingly wide range of subjects. King Arthur Pendragon, a
roleplaying game set in Dark Ages Britain, is packed with the motifs and charac-
ters familiar to readers of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and other classics from the
Arthurian canon. A different group of literary works will be referenced in a session
of Faery’s Tale, which is geared toward young children and focuses on classic fairy
stories such as those told by the Brothers Grimm. Sometimes the potential educa-
tional content is far more subtle. Sid Sackson’s Bazaar stealthily integrates algebra
into its gameplay, with players striving to complete equations using multicolored
chips. Those looking for more overt, and basic, math challenges might consider
Math Dice or the card game Numbers League: Adventures in Addiplication. There
are literally hundreds of designs devoted to military conflicts, with an incredible
spectrum of detail and scope. The classic board wargame Third Reich has players
contest all of Europe and North Africa during World War II, while the much more
familiar Battleship is a military game with only the most basic references to naval
warfare. Both challenge players to think spatially and strategically, but the former
is more appropriate for use in higher-level history courses, while I regularly choose
Battleship for lessons about coordinate graphs in my math classes.
That’s the key, of course: You need the right game to convey the right lesson.
Coupled with the essays in this book and its companion, Hobby Games: The
100 Best, the following list will help you to get started in identifying non-electronic
games that will be right for your classroom and in determining how best to utilize
them for educational purposes.
Print Resources:
Antunes, Sandy, Mike Holmes, Sam Chupp, and Zak Arntson. Roleplaying with
Kids: Bringing up the Next Generation of Gamers. Shoreline, WA: Technomancer
Press, 2007.
A delightfully written, important book on the science and art of gaming with
young people. The authors are creative and practical, with decades of experience.
Crookall, David, ed. Simulation & Gaming: An Interdisciplinary Journal of

Theory, Practice and Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Many of the articles in this venerable, peer-reviewed journal of game theory
provide deeper exploration of issues relevant to games of all sorts.
Hinebaugh, Jeffrey P. A Board Game Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield Education, 2009.
Hinebaugh offers a broad examination of many common and traditional games
and their applications as educational tools.
Koster, Raph. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph Press,
2004.
A very readable book on the appeal of games. Design-focused, but vital for
understanding how we interact with games and how to make them more enjoyable.
Mayer, Brian and Christopher Harris. Libraries Got Game: Aligned Learning
Through Modern Board Games. Chicago, IL: American Library Association
Editions, 2009.
Two thoughtful librarians systematically explore possible applications of many
board games within the context of state and federal standards. They share more
ideas and insights at their blogs, Library Gamer (librarygamer.wordpress.com)
and Infomancy (schoolof.info/infomancy).
Parlett, David. The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
David Parlett, brilliant researcher and award-winning designer of the game
Hare & Tortoise (see p. 155), explores the origins and importance of a variety of
Games and Education O 373
designs. Educators interested in commentary and historical background on card

games will find excellent information in Parlett’s other publications, which include
The Oxford A–Z of Card Games, The Oxford Guide to Card Games, and The
Penguin Book of Card Games. His website (davidparlett.co.uk) includes additional
games, ideas, and resources.
Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2001.
Written by one of the great researchers in the field, this book discusses the
importance of games, not only to learning but to the development of humankind.
Web Resources:
BoardGameGeek (boardgamegeek.com)
An invaluable website with discussion forums, reviews, and a vast database
of games searchable by designer, publisher, and a variety of subject tags. Material
about games and education can be found throughout the site, but the hub for this
data is boardgamegeek.com/forum/35/boardgamegeek/games-in-the-classroom. A
partner site devoted to roleplaying games can be found at rpg.geekdo.com.
Board Game Podcasts (boardgamepodcasts.com)

A directory of Web-based audio and video shows about games, viewable by
topics, including “Children & Educational.” A similar directory to online shows
about roleplaying games can be found at rpgpodcasts.com.
The Dragonkin Podcast (dragonkin.bearsgrove.com)

Sam Chupp archives his past interviews about roleplaying games, including
one wherein I discuss classroom applications of games at much greater length.
The Escapist (theescapist.com)

Bill Walton’s expansive website is devoted to roleplaying game advocacy, but
much of his material is applicable to many other types of games. Some of the pages
on the site (theescapist.com/rwrpg) are focused on educational games, including
some material penned by me.
GAMA Games in Education (gama.org)

The Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) maintains an educational
website with PDFs of my pamphlets and information from publishers on how their
games can be used in the classroom.
Games for Educators (g4ed.com)

A joint venture between the Chicago Toy & Game Fair and Live Oak Games.
the site is supported by the Games in Education newsletter and features reviews,
articles, and a game database that can be searched for educational subject matter,
support material availability, and state standards met.
Games in Libraries Podcast (gamesinlibraries.org)

This monthly show, designed to help librarians explore the world of games as it
relates to libraries, was created by Scott Nicholson, associate professor at Syracuse
University and driving force behind the Library Game Lab of Syracuse, which has
its own informational website at gamelab.syr.edu.
International Playing-Card Society (i-p-c-s.org)

This site, created by a group of researchers into the development of playing
card designs and games, features some interesting articles and useful historical
materials.
Introduction to Using Games (uoregon.edu/~moursund/Books/Games/games.html)

In his Introduction to Using Games in Education: Guide for Teachers and
Parents, Professor Dave Moursand of the University of Oregon extensively explores
largely familiar puzzles and games, and points out methods for applying them
successfully for educational purposes. This website includes links to the book in PDF
and Word formats, as well as a related PowerPoint presentation and additional
resources.
Kids-RPG on Yahoo Groups (games.groups.yahoo.com/group/kids-rpg)

This discussion mailing list serves a range of people interested in roleplaying
for young people, with some emphasis on girls and gaming. You can find a helpful
FAQ on Sam Chupp’s website (samchupp.com/kids-rpg.html), while the archives
for the Kids-RPG group are at community.livejournal.com/kids_rpg.
Games and Education O 375
Medieval and Renaissance Games Home Page (waks.org/game-hist)

A resource page with a large collection of links to rules and historical resources
for “Really Old Games.” Includes pointers to bibliographies, period sources, and
other research materials.
RPG.net (rpg.net)
RPG.net offers many resources, including a games database, columns, and an
active discussion forum. While these are largely aimed at the hobby gaming com-
munity, teachers and librarians can still find useful information there. One obscure
page on the site (rpg.net/sites/edu) archives a series of newsletters I published with
GAMA in the late 1990s. Many of the comments and reviews remain true, though
some of the games discussed are now out of print.
RPGs for Kids (tlucretius.net/RPGs/kids.html)

A terrific site with capsule reviews of many different roleplaying games, both
those intended for kids and those that can be customized for younger players, as
well as links to other pages that discuss gaming with children.
RPGs in the EFL Classroom (rpg.net/larp/papers/eflrpg.html)

In his 1993 conference paper “Role-Playing Games in the English as a Foreign
Language Classroom,” Brian David Phillips offers an in-depth examination of the
language-learning benefits of RPGs. He includes a nice summary section on role-
playing games as interactive stories.
Convention Resources:
CHITAG Games in Education Forum (chitag.com)

This special programming track of the Chicago Toy & Game Fair, one of the
largest public toy and game events in America, features teaching-focused seminars,
game demonstrations, and a tour of the exhibitor area. The forum is accredited
by the state of Illinois for continuing professional development (CPDU) credits.
Gen Con Trade Day (gencon.com)

The annual Trade Day Program at Gen Con, America’s premier hobby game
convention, includes special seminars and manufacturer demonstrations geared
toward helping librarians and educators use games to build community and foster
student achievement.
Origins Game Fair Educators Hall Pass (originsgamefair.com)

The Educators Hall Pass is a program that allows teachers and other educa-
tors to attend the Origins Game Fair at a discount. The convention includes many
informative seminars and presentations, and attendees can explore the huge range
of games being played and sold in the dealers’ hall.
O O O
David Millians graduated from Haverford College and holds a degree in

education from Swarthmore College. He’s taught in a half-dozen different
schools, but for the majority of his career he’s been a teacher at Paideia
School in Atlanta. David has worked with game designers and publishers
for more than two decades. His articles have appeared in both popular and
academic publications, including Comics & Game Retailer and Games
and Education. Mostly, he likes to teach and play.
Appendix B:
Family Games in
Hobby Games: The 100 Best
by James Lowder
Family games and hobby games are not mutually exclusive categories. A
design can reward both the casual player and the hardcore enthusiast, the people
who approach games as a pleasant diversion and those who want to spend hours
or months or, for the most devoted, a lifetime exploring their most subtle rules
and crafting the most effective winning strategies. So while the companion volume
to this book focuses on games of particular interest to hobbyists, essays on many
of those same titles would have been right at home in these pages.
It’s important to note that just about any game can be made family friendly,
provided someone at the table is capable of customizing the experience and every-
one is comfortable instituting house rules along the lines of Rule 17b as described
by Wil Wheaton in his afterword. For this appendix, though, I’m sticking to
games from Hobby Games: The 100 Best that should be accessible to a diverse
audience right out of the box. If you pick up the companion volume, don’t be
surprised if you discover many more games that will be right for your family.
Acquire (3M, 1962)

Designer: Sid Sackson; 3 – 6 players, ages 12+
A competitive finance classic in which players grow hotel chains and strive to
capitalize upon the value of their stocks. The deceptively simple gameplay makes
Acquire appealing even to people who aren’t typically fans of finance games.
Amun-Re (Rio Grande Games, English edition, 2003)

Designer: Reiner Knizia; 3 – 5 players, ages 12+
Pharaohs vie for control of the Nile Valley as they gather the resources needed
to build their pyramids. A smart mix of several mechanics, including a secret round
of bidding whereby the pharaohs curry the favor of the gods, keeps play exciting.
Battle Cry (Avalon Hill, 2000)

Designer: Richard Borg; 2 players, ages 10+
This Civil War game is built around Richard Borg’s innovative Command and
Colors rules system, which also powers Memoir ’44 (see p. 223). The modular
terrain pieces allow for the recreation of more than a dozen historical battles.
Bohnanza (Rio Grande Games, English edition, 1997)

Designer: Uwe Rosenberg; 2 – 7 players, ages 8+
A charming card game about bean farming. (Yes, bean farming.) Plant fields
of cartoony beans and collect coins for harvesting them. The rule requiring cards
in your hand to be played in the order drawn makes Bohnanza a novel challenge.
Button Men (Cheapass Games, 1999)

Designer: James Ernest; 2 players, ages 10+
Combining collectible pinback buttons and polyhedral dice, Button Men
allows players to battle such diverse characters as King Arthur and Sailor Moon.
A portable, fun, fast game with surprising potential for strategic play.
Carcassonne (Rio Grande Games, English edition, 2000)

Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede; 2 – 5 players, ages 8+
Players randomly draw tiles to construct a countryside consisting of fields,
roads, and castles, then lay claim to locations (and points) by placing their wooden
people tokens, known affectionately in hobbyist circles as “meeples.” A true gem.
Citadels (Fantasy Flight Games, English edition, 2000)

Designer: Bruno Faidutti; 2 – 7 players, ages 10+
Build up your holdings in a medieval city by adding districts to your control.
Each round, players select from eight character cards — the king, assassin, bishop,
and so on — that grant special abilities and keep the gameplay nicely frenetic.
Cosmic Encounter (Eon, first edition, 1977)

Designers: Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, Peter Olotka; 3 – 6 players, ages 12+
Unique and bizarre alien species try to spread to five foreign worlds. The basic
combat mechanic is uncomplicated, but the dozens of potential alien races each
possess a weird power that allows it to bend or break the rules of play. Brilliant.
Hobby Games: The 100 Best O 379
Cosmic Wimpout (C3, 1976)

Designers: The Cosmic Wimpout Clubhouse; 2 – 7 players, ages 7+
A flexible press-your-luck game in which you roll five special dice, racking up
points until you end your turn or throw five blanks to “wimpout.” The design’s
“Guiding Light” says that rules can be added or altered, as long as all players agree.
Fluxx (Looney Labs, 1997)

Designer: Andrew Looney; 2 – 6 players, ages 8+
In this chaotic, free-flowing game, the cards drawn each turn determine the
rules and victory conditions. The core game can be expanded with promos and
religious-themed cards and is available in alternate versions, such as Zombie Fluxx.
Formula Dé (Asmodée Editions, 1991)

Designers: Laurent Lavaur, Eric Randall; 2 – 10 players, ages 10+
One of the best auto racing games ever published. Drivers use different dice
to simulate changes in gear as they scream around a variety of tracks, trying to
make the specific number of stops required in each corner. Great for large groups.
Ghostbusters (West End Games, 1986)

Designers: Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis, Greg Stafford, Greg Costikyan; 3 – 6
players, ages 12+
A pick-up-and-play roleplaying game tied to the Ghostbusters franchise. Clear,
compact rules make this sadly rare title a wonderful introductory RPG.
The Great Khan Game (TSR, Inc., 1988)

Designers: Tom Wham, Richard Hamblen; 2 – 6 players, ages 10+
Connive and coerce your way to ruling the Whamite Isles in this whimsical
card-based strategy game. It’s a bit more rules heavy than most of the other designs
on this list, but it’s quite easy to play — and fun — once you get the hang of it.
Once Upon a Time (Atlas Games, second edition, 1995)

Designers: Richard Lambert, Andrew Rilstone, James Wallis; 2 – 6 players, ages 8+
Using cards that depict typical fairy tale elements players create a story, guiding
the plot to a particular ending. The winner is the first one to play all her cards and
conclude with a “Happy Ever After.” An essential for any family game collection.
Pirate’s Cove (Days of Wonder, 2002)

Designers: Paul Randles, Daniel Stahl; 3 – 5 players, ages 8+
Plunder, battle, and brag your way to the title of “Most Famous Pirate.” The
different possible paths to fame allow for diverse play styles and strategies. The
design nicely incorporates all the favorite elements of pirate lore.
The Settlers of Catan (Mayfair Games, English edition, 1995)

Designer: Klaus Teuber; 3 – 4 players, ages 10+
One of the most popular and influential games of the past 20 years, with good
reason. Players try to manage resources and develop the island of Catan. Simple
rules, a clever mix of hidden and open knowledge, remarkable strategic depth.
Talisman (Games Workshop, second edition, 1985)

Designer: Robert Harris; 2 – 6 players, ages 9+
As a warrior, thief, wizard, or another fantasy character type, you explore a
dangerous magical land. Essentially a simplified RPG, Talisman pits heroes against
monsters, traps, and each other in a quest for the Crown of Command.
Thurn and Taxis (Rio Grande Games, English edition, 2006)

Designers: Andreas Seyfarth, Karen Seyfarth; 2 – 4 players, ages 10+
With the rather unusual theme of postal delivery in 17th-century Bavaria,
Thurn and Taxis has players building routes and managing resources. Expansions
are available to add more countries and challenges. The mail must go through!
Ticket to Ride (Days of Wonder, 2004)

Designer: Alan R. Moon; 2 – 5 players, ages 8+
A fast-moving, easy-to-understand train game. Collect cards of different car
types in order to claim railway lines between U.S. cities and complete the longer
routes assigned by secret “Destination Tickets.” Wonderfully fun.
Tikal (Rio Grande Games, English edition, 1999)

Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Michael Kiesling; 2 – 4 players, ages 10+
Players spend their limited action points to search the Central American jungles
for lost Mayan temples and treasure. Part of the Masks Trilogy (see Java, p. 185),
Tikal features dynamic player interaction and a perfect balance of luck and skill.
“Family Games: The 100 Best provides a wonderful opportunity to discover
new favorite games with which to enjoy countless hours of fun with your family
and friends. The collection is the key to an abundant treasure trove of fantastic
games for you to explore.”
— Internationally renowned game designer Reiner Knizia
O O O
I
n Family Games: The 100 Best, the top game designers and
publishers write about the most enjoyable, most cleverly
designed titles of the last one hundred years. Their essays
cover the spectrum from board games to card games, miniatures
games to roleplaying games, including little-known gems and
old favorites. These are the games that the designers themselves
play, the ones that have inspired their most popular works.
Essayists include such legendary creators as Alan R. Moon

(Ticket to Ride), Matthew Kirby (Apples to Apples), Richard
Garfield (Magic: The Gathering), James Ernest (Kill Doctor
Lucky), Ken Levine (BioShock), Peter Olotka (Cosmic Encounter),
Leo Colovini (Cartagena), Mike Selinker (Risk: Godstorm),
Susan McKinley Ross (Qwirkle), Tom Wham (Snit’s Revenge),
Phil Orbanes (Cartel ) , Eric Goldberg ( Junta), David Parlett
(Hare & Tortoise), Emiliano Sciarra (Bang!), Warren Spector
(Deus Ex), Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (co-founders
of Games Workshop), and dozens of other award-winning and
noteworthy designers.
O O O
Green Ronin Publishing FAMILY GAMES:

3815 S. Othello St. THE 100 BEST
Suite 100 #304 GRR4002e
Seattle, WA 98118 ISBN-10: 1-934547-21-2
www.greenronin.com ISBN-13: 978-1-934547-21-2

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THE TOP DESIGNERS AND PUBLISHERS ON THE MOST ENJOYABLE,

MOST CLEVERLY DESIGNED GAMES OF THE PAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS.

Roleplaying Game Books:

Edited by James Lowder

Foreword by Mike Gray

Essays are © 2010 by their respective authors; all rights reserved.

Any discussion of trademarked, service marked, or copyrighted material or enti-

Visit us online at greenronin.com.

Electronic Stock number GRR4002e, October 2012.

ISBN 10: 1-934547-21-2

Carrie Bebris on 10 Days in the USA���������������������������������������������������������������� 1

Afterword by Wil Wheaton��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 367

“Togetherness in a box.” That’s my description of a board game. The

Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, or playing mahjong with the neighbors

10 Days in the USA

What a morning. I started in Wisconsin, took a plane to Alaska, flew

to 30 minutes — short enough to squeeze in before bedtime on a light homework

Although Carrie Bebris (carriebebris.com) grew up playing games, she

Steven E. Schend has been a street sweeper, a fast-food worker, a candy

squares that prompted players to compare certain subjects to an adjective, using

Dominic Crapuchettes played countless games with his European par-

The Awful Green Things

These are the voyages of the starship Znutar. . . .

published it as a stand-alone product the following year, in both a slipcased edition

Which of the following is true?

(a) Balderdash is a German word for expressing disbelief about the

(b) Balderdash is a competitive sport played in the winter, in which

(c) Balderdash is a board game whose participants propose plausible

(d) Balderdash, collectively, are invented and/or Latin words used on

The correct answer, of course, is (c).

Jeff Tidball is an award-winning game designer whose credits include

“Bausack” is German for “building sack,” and Bausack is a sack of bricks.

The work of electrical engineer Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield, winner of

Paul Jaquays pioneered pre-made RPG scenarios in his D&D fanzine

ColecoVision games. After working as an illustrator, designer, author, and

since a major part of the game is blocking; phonetically in English it would be

military and diplomatic history. Formerly contributing editor to several

Teeuwynn Woodruff is an award-winning game designer, author, and

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

O Help Cards: They bring in other supporting characters for a boost,

O Weapon Cards: They’re weapons — full of the stuff what slays.

Grown-ups, especially gamers, love to hate Candy Land. The game is

James Ernest is a designer of board, card, and computer games. He

7, and 8, or focus on the short columns with difficult-to-roll numbers such as 2

Ian Livingstone is Life President at Eidos, the U.K.’s largest publisher

O It should offer an opening game, mid-game, and endgame, each of

O It should have a level of complexity that requires decision making

eliminated. European vocations in later editions included Theater, Teaching, and

Bruce Whitehill’s research on American game companies and his under-

Wolfgang Baur is a winner of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in

John Scott Tynes is an award-winning game designer and writer in

Some translation dictionaries define the Italian word condottiere as

Alessio Cavatore was born in Turin, Italy, on Valentine’s Day 1972. In

Allen observes that, paradoxically, he finds it easier to win against opponents of

Elaine Cunningham is a fantasy writer, former teacher, and mother

Will Hindmarch is a freelance writer, graphic designer, and game

Crossbows and Catapults

Erik Mona is the publisher of Paizo Publishing, LLC, creators of the

Almost from the introduction of roleplaying games, people have tried

William W. Connors is a lifelong gamer who’s been lucky enough to get

John D. Rateliff multiclasses between being a Tolkien scholar and a

Robert J. Schwalb is an award-winning RPG designer and developer, best

The goal is to control as many pieces as possible by game’s end by stacking

Carrie Bebris on 10 Days in the USA�� 1

Afterword by Wil Wheaton�� 367