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THE TOP DESIGNERS AND PUBLISHERS ON THE MOST ENJOYABLE, MOST CLEVERLY DESIGNED GAMES OF THE PAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS.

FAMILY GAMES

THE 100 BEST

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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

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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 entities 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 Leaco*ck 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

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 housekeeper. 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 entertainment 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!

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 manager 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 something 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 publication. 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 dedicated 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 allages 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 suggested 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 something 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 particular 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, referencing 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 afterword, 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 different 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 individual 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 essayist’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 exclusively 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 recommended, 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.

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 editions, 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 publisher. 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.

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 distinguished 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 discoveries. 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, visualization, 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.

4 O Family Games: The 100 Best

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 turning 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, beginning 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 running 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.

6 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 opponent’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 endorsem*nts 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 endorsem*nt 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 discovery 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 interested 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 production 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 encountered. 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

8 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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

Key Designers: Matthew Kirby, Mark Alan Osterhaus Out of the Box Publishing (1999) 4 – 10 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 written on them. When it is your turn, you are the judge. You flip over the next adjective 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,

10 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 interaction 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 wonder 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 concentrating 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.

Dominic Crapuchettes played countless games with his European parents. 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 suggested 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 occupations (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

14 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 editions 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 definition 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 pointless 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 probably 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

18 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 meanings. 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 landscape 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?

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 coauthor, with Will Hindmarch, of Things We Think About Games, a nonfiction 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 product 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)

4 – 7 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 co*cks 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

22 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 protesting 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 storytelling, 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 excellent 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!

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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 consists 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

24 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 variant 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 hoping 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 preadolescent 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!”

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) 2 – 8 Players; Suggested Ages: 5 and Up

“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 understanding 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 furrowed 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 physical 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-

28 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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, thankfully, were almost unchanged. What Bausack boils down to is a toolkit for Games Design 101. All the elements 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 collaborative-yet-competitive building. Just don’t — whatever you do — jog the table.

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 lecturer 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) 1 – 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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.

30 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 convention 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 original, 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 solution, 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.

Paul Jaquays pioneered pre-made RPG scenarios in his D&D fanzine The Dungeoneer in 1976 and is well known for his enduring game adventures Dark Tower and Griffin Mountain. He assembled one of the first art and design studios for video game development at Coleco to make

32 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 5 and Up

Blokus is a very easy to learn abstract strategy game playable by young children 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, plastic 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

34 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 companion 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 biophysics, 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 biography, which may help provide insight into the design process. Another source suggests 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.

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

36 O Family Games: The 100 Best military and diplomatic history. Formerly contributing editor to several roleplaying game magazines and author of over a hundred game magazine 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 contributor 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 Parker Brothers (1972) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 letters. 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

38 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 letters 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 published 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!

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.

Buffy

Fred Hicks on

Vampire Slayer: The Game

the

Key Designers: Rob Daviau, Bill Sabram, Craig Van Ness Milton Bradley (2000) 2 – 5 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 something 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 weaponage. 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.

42 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 circ*mstances 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 bloodsucking 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 surrounded 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 fangirl 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 vampires — 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 competitive 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.

44 O Family Games: The 100 Best Thanks to the support of his wonderful wife, Fred Hicks does what makes him happy for a living. He contracts as a customer service specialist (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 Milton Bradley (1949) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 3 and Up

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 professional 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 specific 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.

46 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 practice. 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 threeyear-old, why doesn’t it make sense to us? Candy Land is a great educational game for kids and adults. It lets each generation 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.

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 Parker Brothers (1980) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 9 and Up

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 nothing 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 smugness 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,

50 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 reroll 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.

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 franchises, 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 Parker Brothers (1955) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 following 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 platform 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

52 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 question 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 attention 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 changing 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 vocational 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 unfortunate 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 setting our sights on the planets. Sports was added and Uranium Prospecting in Peru

54 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 contemporary edition of the classic game. So, should you buy Careers for your family? Buy it for yourself, but let the kids play, too.

Bruce Whitehill’s research on American game companies and his understanding 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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up “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

56 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 combination 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.

58 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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

60 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 intimidating 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.

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) 3 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 commonly 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 partying 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 deduction, 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

64 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 observation 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 something 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 suggestion 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 exceptions 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 handsdown 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 benefit 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 revolutionary. Conversely, if you fancy yourself a traditionalist I do advise that you get the

66 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 conjures 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 citystates 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. . . .

68 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 enjoyable. 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!

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 working 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 Milton Bradley (1974) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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 commercial 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 victory 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

72 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 accompanied 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 circ*mstance 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 dimension 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.

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) 4 – 16 Players; Suggested Ages: 13 and Up

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 frustrated 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 questions, 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

74 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 activity 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.

76 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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, constant 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 interlocking 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 fortresses 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

78 O Family Games: The 100 Best “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 modern 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 handling 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 competitive 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 aching 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 concepts of more complicated miniatures battle games such as Warhammer or Flames of War, planting seeds that could easily lead to a lifetime of challenging, strategic 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

80 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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 Milton Bradley (1981) 1 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 tremendously 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 endorsem*nts 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 talking 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 number 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

82 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 happening 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 sequentially 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 defenders. 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 microprocessorcontrolled 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.

84 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 Key Designer: uncredited Milton Bradley (1963) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 centennial) 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

86 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 determines 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 surrounding 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 creation 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 introducing 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.

88 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 respectively 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) 2 – 8 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 dungeons, 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.

90 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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! adventurer 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 determines 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 effective 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 denizens. 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.

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

92 O Family Games: The 100 Best designed or developed RPG accessories and games for the best publishers 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 9 and Up

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.

94 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 complain 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 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 energies 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, important 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 perform 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 advantageous 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 cannot escape. Conversely, there’s nothing quite as desperate as realizing you’ve been

98 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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, comics, 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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 continental 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

100 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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, spending 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 expectations. 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 similar 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!

102 O Family Games: The 100 Best

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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up 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 incendiary 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 adolescents of any age to play Faery’s Tale Deluxe, Patrick Sweeney and his collaborator 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 magical 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

104 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 circ*mstances, 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 experience 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 generation, about weaving kids into both the magical world of fairies and the wonderful 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.

Kenneth Hite is a multiple Origins and ENnie Award-winning game designer, developer, editor, and author whose work includes 70-plus roleplaying 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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 waiting 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 tension — 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!”

108 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 longgone 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 bachelorhood. 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.”

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

Key Designer: Sid Sackson Whitman/Western Publishing Company (1965) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 fourplayer 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 stalemateby-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 themselves 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 capturing 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 situation 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.

112 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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-yearhistory, 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 courage 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

114 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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) 3 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up “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 realworld 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.

116 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 goodness 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 allaround 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.

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 Milton Bradley (1986) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 weapons 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.

120 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 gamers 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.

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 Rio Grande Games (English edition, 1999) 3 – 7 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 masterfully 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, pictures 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 complexity 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 current 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

124 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 pairings 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.

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

Life

Key Designers: Milton Bradley, Reuben Klamer Milton Bradley (1960) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 controlling 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-

128 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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. . . .

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 company’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

Games

Key Designer: Sid Sackson Random House (1969) 1 – 10 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

A Gamut

Games

is arguably the best book of original games published

during the 20th century. Rules for 38 diverse games, playable with everyday implements, 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 serious (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 evening, 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-

130 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 understanding. 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 similarity 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 contain 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 mentioning 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.

132 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 coinvented 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

When I think of all the family games that I played as a child, I don’t remember 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

134 O Family Games: The 100 Best numbers are really good to attach to your family members; they indicate something 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 ducklings” 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 suitably 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 misfortune 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.

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 Leaco*ck on

Go Away Monster! Key Designers: Ann Stambler, Monty Stambler Gamewright (2001) 1 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 3 and Up

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 covers. 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

138 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 designers 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.

Matt Leaco*ck 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 nominated 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) 4 – 8 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 conversation 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

140 O Family Games: The 100 Best (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 previous 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 sad*stically 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 computer 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.

Steve Jackson began his career in games in London as a freelance journalist 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

142 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 – 5 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 discussion 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!

144 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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

Rules Yardstick

O The Topsy-Turvy Method O The Weasel Factor O That’s

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 guillotine 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

146 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 knocking 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 family 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

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.

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 Rio Grande Games (English edition, 2003) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 5 and Up

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 basem*nt. 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, incidentally, 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

150 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 successfully 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.

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 Rio Grande Games (English edition, 1992) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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 dozens 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 scanning 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

154 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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 create 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) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

“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 kindergartners, 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

156 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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

carrots

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 finish, 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.

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-

158 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 collectible 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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-builtin-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 revolutionized 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

160 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 glorious 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 character’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, veteran, 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 inevitably 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-inchtall 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 slugfest 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

162 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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!

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 Milton Bradley (1989) 2 – 5 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 experience, 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.

164 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 impressive 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.

166 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 adventure board game Dwarven Dig! (Kenzer & Co.), for which he was nominated 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 Milton Bradley (2004) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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).

168 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 prepainted. 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 miniature 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 battlefields 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 miniatures 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.

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

170 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 playing 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

172 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 during 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 growing 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, making 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.

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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 9 and Up

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 icebreaker; 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

176 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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. . . .”

Hive O 177 Colin McComb started playing games early — and started “improving” 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) 3 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 collection 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 collection. 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

180 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 competition 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 version 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.

When Alan Moon was a kid, every Sunday was family day. Along with his father, mother, and brother, Alan would spend the day bowling, playing 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) 1 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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

184 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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 number 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 Rio Grande Games (English edition, 2000) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 AngloAmerican 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

186 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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, costing 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!

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) 2 – 8 Players; Suggested Ages: 7 and Up

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 delicious 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 person’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 something 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

190 O Family Games: The 100 Best form factor, and you have an excellent game for quickly teaching to friends, relatives, 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!

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) 3 – 7 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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

192 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 pedestal. 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 particular 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.

194 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 nonfictional 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 everlasting 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

196 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 counterclockwise. 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 introduces 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, countermoves, 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 careful 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.

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 Milton Bradley (1987) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 exaggeration, 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 immediately. 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-akind 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

200 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 mathematic 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 encourages 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. . . .

Like many before him, Todd A. Breitenstein started gaming in high school. In college Todd moved from roleplaying games into more traditional 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 Milton Bradley (1992) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 4 and Up

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’ttrigger-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 graphics 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

202 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 powerful “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 mesmerizing. 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.

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 Key Designer: Reiner Knizia Fantasy Flight Games (English edition, 2002) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 difficult 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, players 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 direction 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.

206 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 mechanics 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 combinations 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.

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 Key Designer: Reiner Knizia Rio Grande Games (English edition, 1999) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 playing 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 suddenly 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 perfect 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,

210 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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?

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 dozens 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 present 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.

212 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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, published 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 murmurings 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

214 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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. . . .

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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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, intersections 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.

216 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 professor 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, identifying 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 simplicity, but also the elegance of its design. Labyrinth in all its forms can be easily

218 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

Bill Bodden has been part of the hobby game industry since the mid1980s, 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 establishing 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,

220 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 practically 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 codemaker) 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 wondering 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 codemaker 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 computers 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.

Andrew Greenberg, best known for designing computer games and roleplaying 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,

222 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 basem*nt 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 discomfort 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 artillery 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 basem*nt. 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 basem*nt 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

224 O Family Games: The 100 Best that sits in violent opposition to learning and playing a board game with a 150page 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 eventually 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 brilliant designers began to notice that, just because basem*nt dwellers and cardboard counter pushers like me didn’t have the time to play the games of our youth anymore, 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 basem*nt. 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 basem*nt. 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 resulting battlefields are both gorgeous, flexible, and tactile. It gives you the best of the basem*nt 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 paratroopers. 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 experience 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 generally 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 command 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 superiority 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 basem*nt 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.

226 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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-ofthe 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 Parker Brothers (first U.S. edition, 1962) 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, respectively). 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.

228 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 permanent 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 exercise 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?

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 editor 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 Parker Brothers (1935) 2 – 8 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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, adding 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, complete 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 significant 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 position 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 edition 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 properties, 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 various 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

232 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 folklore 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 fundamental 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 disadvantage, 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 himself 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 success 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.

234 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 players. 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.

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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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 assortment 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 prancing 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 bowling 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

236 O Family Games: The 100 Best behind such childhood favorites as Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, Mystery Date, Operation, and Lite-Brite. Barlow and Meyer were the game’s primary designers 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 accordion 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!

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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 second; 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, simultaneously 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

240 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 family 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?

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 Milton Bradley (1992) 1 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

“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 confronting 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

242 O Family Games: The 100 Best control of BattleSat 1, placing its world-threatening weapons array under the command 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 colorcoded 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 command 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 number 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 confrontation 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-

244 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 missing 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.

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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 popular 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

246 O Family Games: The 100 Best called Othello. The name is almost certainly a racial reference, as the title character 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 decisions 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.

Darren Watts is the president and co-owner of Hero Games, publishers 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 Leaco*ck Z-Man Games (2008) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 passionately 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 performance, 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 generally 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 spreading 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 outbreak, 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 performances. 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.

250 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 complement 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 expansion 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, independent 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 adjustability 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 cooperative 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 elements 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 gaming 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.

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 marketing 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 possibilities 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

254 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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) 3 – 16 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 embodies 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.

256 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 sketching 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.

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 stories 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

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 biggest 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 immediately. 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 tandem. (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 delightfully easy to grasp. While the basics of the game are straightforward, Pieces of Eight also successfully 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 eliminated coins to play in various ways, so including all three builds a highly resilient

260 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 waiting 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 introduction to the idea of a portable game, beyond those little magnetized travel versions 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.

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 Parker Brothers (1904) 3 – 7 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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, sitting 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 commodity 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.

264 O Family Games: The 100 Best “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 backgammon. 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 mechanics 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!

266 O Family Games: The 100 Best John Wick has designed over a dozen different games including roleplaying 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 7 and Up

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, publisher 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

268 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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, adding 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 particular 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 memory. 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.

270 O Family Games: The 100 Best

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) 3 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 decisions. 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

272 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 anything, 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 contributions 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 roleplaying. 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.

274 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

Game

snobs exist.

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 mailing 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 enthusiasm, 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

276 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 having 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 patterns 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 glorified 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.

Stephen Glenn is the author of Balloon Cup, an award-winning twoplayer 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) 2 – 10 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

“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-leftdown-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 players 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

280 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 target. 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 direction, 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 wonderfully 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 resting 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!

After being an instructor of pool for several years and writing an exhaustive book on the subject, Sébastien Pauchon first caught the gaming community’s attention in 2005 as the first non-German to be awarded the

282 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 Parker Brothers (1959) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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

284 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 victory. 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 whoever 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.

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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 nowelderly 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 players 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 consisting 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 number, 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 company, 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.

288 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 significant 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 recommend 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.

Richard Breese has been designing and publishing European-style family 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 Stratfordupon-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) 3 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

Where

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 numbered 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 distances. 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, revealing 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

292 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 minutes. 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 suitable 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.

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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 suspected 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

294 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 champion, 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 experiment 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 putting 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. . . .

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 semiregular podcast at threedonkeys.com.

Mike Selinker on

Set

Key Designer: Marsha J. Falco Set Enterprises (1990) 2 – 8 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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 threered-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 handheld game or the Set iTunes app. Or, even better, go to the Set Enterprises website,

298 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 potential 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?

Mike Selinker is a game and puzzle designer from Seattle. He is the codesigner 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) 2 – 5 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

Here’s

what

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 eradication 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 enchanting 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

300 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 picking 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 management 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 casualties 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 circ*mstances can be to trade

302 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 attacking 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.

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 Parker Brothers (first U.S. edition, 1934) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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

306 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 pleasure 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 spinner 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 opponents 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!

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 intention 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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 allowances, 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 relatives 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 numbers 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

310 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 provide 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 ranking 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.

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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 11 and Up

“OBP

is life.”

With that terse declaration, Bill James neatly summarized the analytical perspective 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 credentials 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 graduates 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.

314 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 percentage 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 committed 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 fastball 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

Strat-O-Matic Baseball O 315 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

316 O Family Games: The 100 Best adapted to fantasy baseball and co-branded with The Sporting News, a publication 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 everything 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

Strat-O-Matic Baseball O 317 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.

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 Parker Brothers (1982) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 impending 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 swimmers 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

320 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 grayish 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 elegant, 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.

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 homeland, 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) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

Thebes,

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, desktoppublished 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 determines 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

324 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 everyone 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 oftentimes 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.

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) 4 – 18 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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

328 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 superhero 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.

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) Parker Brothers (1960) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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

332 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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!

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 Rio Grande Games (English edition, 2002) 2 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

I’m

lucky.

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 railroad 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

334 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 combined 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 gamers. 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.

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) 2 – 24 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up 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 published 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 Hitchco*ck 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 “useless” 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

338 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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

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) 2 Players; Suggested Ages: 12 and Up

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 cannot 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 rhomboid 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

342 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 contrast 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 published 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 “hom*o 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 inventor 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.

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) 2 – 10 Players; Suggested Ages: 7 and Up

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 mechanics 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 timeless 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.)

346 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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 children. 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, documentary movies, and other media.

David Parlett on

Upwords Key Designer: Elliot Rudell Milton Bradley (1981) 2 – 4 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

“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

348 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 obvious, 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!

350 O Family Games: The 100 Best

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)

8 – 24 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 classroom 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

352 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 character 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.

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) 3 – 21 Players; Suggested Ages: 10 and Up

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 firstgrade 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.

356 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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?

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 contributor 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 Key Designer: uncredited E.S. Lowe (1956) 2 – 10 Players; Suggested Ages: 6 and Up

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

358 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 sessions 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.

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) 3 – 6 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up 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 structure 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 lookout 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

362 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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 Rio Grande Games (English edition, 2007) 2 – 5 Players; Suggested Ages: 8 and Up

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 conversation 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.

364 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 underway 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 conventions, 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 combined 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 wonderful 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.

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 imagination 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 particularly 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 teachable 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.)

370 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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.

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 characters 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 educational 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.

372 O Family Games: The 100 Best

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.

374 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 community, 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 roleplaying 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

376 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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 educators 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.

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 everyone 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.

378 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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

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.

380 O Family Games: The 100 Best 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

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

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

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.

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O FAMILY GAMES: THE 100 BEST GRR4002e ISBN-10: 1-934547-21-2 ISBN-13: 978-1-934547-21-2