"ROYGBIV? More like ROY(R/G?)B(dB)(drB)*.": How I Modified My Games So I Could Actually Play Them
♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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It affects 8% of the male population. It's a condition that affects the cones in the eyes. The most common form of this condition is known as "dichromacy." There is no known cure.
Colorblindness! Also known in more politically correct circles as "color vision deficiency," it's the bane of some gamers' favorite pasttime. Look at any game and you're likely to see red and green pieces, the two most commonly confused colors in colorblind people. Mix in oranges and browns, or purples and blues, and it just mucks up the problem even more.
Below are some examples where I've had to physically modify my games in order for me to be able to play them. There are others that have to be modded for play (Taj Mahal and Tongiaki come to mind), but I don't have those games, so I didn't include them. If you have examples you would like to add, feel free to do so.
*Red, Orange, Yellow, Red or Green?, Blue, Dark Blue, Darker Blue
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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In my first game of Ticket to Ride, I made a tremendous error in playing a handful of green cards to claim an orange track (or was it orange for brown?). I'm happy to say that the other players didn't attempt to block me straight out. They did give me a chance to make that connection, but the turns it took to recollect the right cards to make that connection contributed to my horrible loss. Regardless, I believe I griped for the remainder of the game about the game being colorblind-unfriendly.
Later, Days of Wonder addressed this problem in the second edition of the game, and for a mere $20 (!), I could order a copy of the board to replace my un-symboled one. Screw this, I thought. I have a Sharpie that only cost me $1.
As you can see, my artistic skills are lacking, but at least now I can play the game without having to point at the board and ask, "What color is this again?", thus giving away my plans.
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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Schotten Totten was one of those games I bought when I was buying anything that sounded interesting, and it's one of the handful of games that has survived in my collection. It's taut and tense, yet very easy to explain and play. I will always be up for playing this game.
The thing is, that picture over there shows two different-colored cards. Really. At first, I thought the game had been shipped with an extra set of yellow or orange cards, but my wife pointed out that the colors were different.
As you can see, that Sharpie that helped me solve the problem with Ticket to Ride also helped me solve a similar problem with Schotten Totten. At least this time, I didn't have to worry about my lack of artistic skills.
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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Sticheln is another 6-suited game, with the horrible red-brown color combination. It's truly hideous. In the picture to the left, I can sort of make out the difference between the two colors, but in the game, I can't see it well at all.
What's funny is that the first time I played this game, I kept getting confused. It wasn't the colors that were causing the problems (I had already marked one of the two problematic suits), but I kept losing track of what color was led. I started blaming the cards, because whenever I wound up taking a ton of negative points, I had played one of the marked cards to win the trick. The other guys in the group didn't believe me, but I stuck by my story that the dots were amnesia-inducing.
To this day, if I screw up a trick in this game, I always blame the "amnesia-inducing dots."
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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Most card games solve any problems with colorblindness by using different symbols for each suit of cards. Die Sieben Siegel does this, as does Canyon, Alhambra, and Hick Hack in Gackelwack. All of these games create problems with me by the choice of colors, but the symbols on the cards help me discern what goes with what.
Corsari, though, chose to go with theme over function, and chose to put a different person on each NUMBER of card. This would normally be okay in a 4-5 suited game, but Corsari has TEN DIFFERENT SUITS. I had to mark two different suits of cards to help identify all the colors, and even then, I still have trouble making out some of them. I hear that even non-colorblind people have problems with this game.
I have yet to play this one, but it's all ready to go for when I do.
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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Tabula Rasa is an interesting example of problems with colorblindness, because when the cards are next to each other, they're easy to discern. In Schotten Totten and Sticheln, the two problem colors look the same to me, so that was why I needed to mark the cards. In Tabula Rasa, though, I have to match the cards to a particular tile.
This was the first case where I had to mark a tile, as well as a suit of cards. Again, I was able to tell the colors apart when they were side by side, but matching them from a distance was more problematic. It was well worth the effort to correct the cards, though, because this is a tense game that is reminiscent of Schotten Totten and Lost Cities.
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6.
Board Game: Razzia
[Average Rating:6.37 Overall Rank:2246]
♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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Razzia was the second game I had where I had to mark the tiles, as well as the cards. I already owned Hick Hack in Gackelwack at this time, and while I pondered marking that game for the same reasons (matching cards to a particular tile), I realized that the birds on the cards matched the birds on the tiles. There are still some issues with the foxes and the -2 cards in that game, but I don't like marking up my games unless I have to. So far, there haven't been issues with that game.
This one, though, was too similar for me to leave, and it also posed a new problem, since there were THREE colors that were too similar for me to tell apart at a glance. As you can see, I chose to dot one color, and then double-dot the third. Now, all three of the colors are easier to tell apart.
Of course, I also had to mark the cards, as well:
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7.
Board Game: Loot
[Average Rating:6.34 Overall Rank:1042]
♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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When I first opened my copy of Loot, I swore that the game only shipped with two suits of cards. My wife pointed out that there were actually FOUR colors, and she held up two cards, side-by-side, to prove her point. Nope. There were blue cards, and yellow cards, as far as I could tell.
What's weird about Loot is that there are ship cards, and there are pirate cards, all of which belong to different suits. I had to get help in separating all the colors properly, but I marked the cards as soon as I could. This game would be downright hostile if I tried to play it without the suits being marked.
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8.
Board Game: Mhing
[Average Rating:6.60 Overall Rank:1379]
♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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In Mhing, I can tell the red dragons from the green dragons. In fact, in that picture over there, I can tell you that the card on the top is red, and the one on the bottom is green. Shoot, I can tell you that just based on the thumbnail picture I see while creating this entry!
The thing is, in certain lights, I can't tell the two colors apart. I don't know if it's a problem with glare, or artificial light, but when my wife and I were playing this game at the beach, I kept having to tilt my hand in a certain way to figure out which color dragon I had. Of course, seeing this, my wife knew not to discard ANY dragons, which put me in a bit of a bind.
My wife kicks my butt at Mhing already, so I didn't want to give her any advantage. As soon as we returned from the beach, I marked the green dragons.
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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I didn't mark Great Wall of China when I first opened it, because it looked like everyone played with their own colored deck. Of course, once we started playing it, and I was trying to figure out who had majority on which wall, I started seeing problems. I kept having to ask who had majority where, and even then, I lost track of some colors on the walls. I lost that game, too, but for more reasons than the color issues alone.
So, this was another case where I needed to mark two different colors of cards. The blue and the grey (green?) cards were easy to tell apart side by side, but get them in different walls, and I was having trouble. I had the same problem with the yellow and orange (green?) cards, so I took the Sharpie to those cards, too.
I have yet to play the game since I corrected the suits, or since learning the correct rules. I expect that both will contribute to a better game the second time around.
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One of the primary complaints, even amongst the non-colour blind, are the similarities in some of the horse colours in Winner's Circle. As you say, side by side, there's no problem, but from a distance, it's easy to mix the two mid-brown horses, and depending on the lighting, the dark brown and the black. This was solved by painting numbers on the backs of the jockies.
As an added benefit, it helps my 5 year old son when he plays too. While he's shown no signs of colour-blindness, it's easier for him to identify the '4' horse by number than by it's colour.
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Aaron Tubb
United States
Fuquay Varina
North Carolina
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This reminds me of Hasbro/AH's History of the World. The player colors are: pink, purple, blue, mustard-yellow, green, and darker green.
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Andy K.
United States
Norman
Oklahoma
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The brown pieces, oh the damned brown pieces. They're nearly identical to the red pieces from the base set. I spraypainted mine yellow. Why the publisher couldn't have used yellow or silver or pink or gold or, I dunno, polka dots will never be known.
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Andy K.
United States
Norman
Oklahoma
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I play a lot of trick-taking games with buddies, and I wanted to bring something new to the table. So I bought Mu yesterday.
Mu has 5 suits, and the red and green suits are uncomfortably close for me. I can tell them apart, but to do so might take me a few seconds of close inspection of the cards. Which could be a give away of what I'm looking at in my hand or misfiring of cards if I try to play quickly.
But then I thought, well no big deal. I'll just look at the pictures on the suits. Guess what? The pictures are similar enough that they're next to no help either. Grrrrr. I can appreciate that someone wanted to get artistic with the animals on the suits, but the green dragons and red birds are both so dang swirly. The only way I can quickly tell them apart is that the dragons' mouths are open and the birds' mouths are closed. (Or do I have it backwards?)
Looks as though it is time to break out the sharpie marker. (That picture is a little blurry, but you can see the colors of the suits.)
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Pony Casts Fire
United States
New Haven
Connecticut
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The light and dark green in this game are almost impossible to tell apart. Thankfully, it's just the scoring pieces. We modified ours by adding clay tusks for the mammoth. Now I can play in peace!
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Darryl Boone
Canada
Coquitlam
BC
Reading your recent posts has been like dipping my bottom over and over into a bath of the silkiest oils and creams.
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Colour choices: white, blue, green, red, dark orange. You don't need to be colour-blind to see a problem with that last one. I painted mine yellow.
There isn't really a good photo of the red alongside the dark orange -- maybe I should have snapped a side-by-side comparison before painting mine.
The green is a problem too, since it may be quite hard to (a) differentiate from the red, and (b) see on the green grass. I may later need to paint those pieces too.
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Andy K.
United States
Norman
Oklahoma
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I'm a sucker for molded plastic pieces and I think a quick-playing area control game sounds awesome, but really, really, what's with the colors of these camels?
In this picture, I can see the colors clearly. Of course, each color is separated by group and the camels aren't spread across a sand-colored background. Once that has happened, I can't tell the middle three camel colors apart easily.
I took the time to color the saddle blankets on two of the camel colors. I colored the blankets of the second from the left camels dark green and blankets of the second from the right camels red (different sharpies). It took me about 3 hours to complete this project, but I still haven't gotten the game to the table.
Someday I'll buy or borrow a digital camera and upload a pic of my work for everyone's viewing pleasure.
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David Heldt
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
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This product of SPI's heyday has probably driven generations of the colorblind to distraction. The game takes place in a world where there are six different types of magic, each associated with a different color(There's a Rock-Scissors-Paper relationship among the magics). Different magics are prevailent in different hexes, red in the red hexes, blue in the blue and so on, and a unit is most powerful when standing in a hex of its own color. To complicate matters there are white hexes(all magics are present) and gray hexes(no magics are present), which results in the unique game map shown.
Incidentially, it should be noted that SPI intentionally pasteled the colors on the map so that players wouldn't go "dazzle-happy" looking at it--
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18.
Board Game: Rage
[Average Rating:6.19 Overall Rank:1674]
Greg Silva
United States
San Ramon
California
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Red and Orange- all bad.
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Manuel Pombeiro
Portugal
Sao Joao do Estoril
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Once I was getting Russians and picking inside the American Order of Battle looking for the squads I needed to use, when my friend checked what I was doing!!
 
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Rachel
United Kingdom
Norwich
Norfolk
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When we played this for the first time the comment was "There are different colours of planes?"
As a result I had to modify 10 Days in Africa for my husband. I have added stickers with the names of the colours on every plane card and a crib sheet listing the countries by colour. He's happy with that but I think that it would help to mark the board too.
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21.
Board Game: Genoa
[Average Rating:7.33 Overall Rank:149]
Steve Coates
United States
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma
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I am color blind. We played Traders of Genoa for the first time last night, and I got my wares a little confused and needed clarification from other players. Not to mention, I had to call in backup for the setup of the wares. I haven't begun fixing it yet, but it will begin shortly.
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22.
Board Game: Tempus
[Average Rating:6.63 Overall Rank:685]
Arne Thomi
Germany
Hamburg
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I'm not colorblind, but this one is tough. Another candidate I could think of would be Oltremare - Merchants of Venice (new Amigo edition)
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Rob Martin
United States
St. Louis
Missouri
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The Mayfair version used to drive us NUTS.
Are you yellow or orange? Blue or slightly lighter blue?
Had to have been an artist that picked those colors. Heck, the artist in our group can tell you the specific names for the colors in any game, as well as the name of the font used for the cards.
Never let the artist pick the colors!
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24.
Board Game: Sumera
[Average Rating:6.23 Unranked]
Matt Ruff
United States
Seattle
Washington
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Here's one that even the non-colorblind can appreciate. Sumera's tiles and huts are stained in different shades of brown. In the set I (briefly) owned, the two intermediate shades were almost impossible to tell apart, even under bright light.
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♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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I forgot about Victory & Honor when I first created this GeekList. These cards have symbols, but they're for special powers, NOT for suits. As it is, the above two colors are very similar to my eyes, and I had to mark one to distinguish between them more easily.
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Entropy Seminar:
The 2nd edition orange was dark, and the expansions were lighter. I knew that didn't make sense. 
Glendale
Arizona
It causes some problems for one of the guys in our group who is color blind. I keep thinking I should buy a tub of 1 cm plastic cubes from the teacher supply store and another of the 2 cm cubes just so I could add white and black cubes to the game. Another option would be to get some plain cubes from Michael's and paint them white or black, or even just seal them and leave them with the natural wood finish.
Commendations should be given to Days of Wonder for making the changes on the board of Ticket to Ride once the issue was pointed out and for having a different mix of colors for the player trains in Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition which seems to have been made with color blind people in mind. That makes the decision to go with red, green, and blue as the colors for the banners in BattleLore a little confusing.
London
Ontario
Chicago
Illinois
The real problem with that is the fact that purple (also magenta) is not a spectral color (hence not in the rainbow), but indigo and violet are. How you slice it is not the issue. There is no frequency of light corresponding to the perception of purple or magenta; they are pure artifacts of the way our eyes and brains work.
West Hollywood
California
Unfortunately, in this class, electrical resistors were frequently needed. Resistors, which have colored bands to indicate their resistance value...
The professor showed little sympathy, telling them they should have picked better lab partners.
Montevideo
Montevideo
While it is good and important to try to design any product in a way that it is easy to use for as many people as possible, there's always a balance to reach, and sometimes colorblind people are left out. Just as shortsighted people is some other times, or left-handed people is for most home appliances, etc. You just can't always find a solution that works for everyone. Even when you can, you might not want it, because it means a not so good solution for over 90% of your market. What would a publisher want: a game that looks great for 92% of his potential customers, or a game that looks just ok, but can be played by 98 or 99%? Actually, not all color-blind people has the same problem, so designing for people who can't tell red from green doesn't help people who can't tell green from blue. Some people can't see any color, just lightness: does that mean any design should refrain from giving color an informative function?
I think designers should try to keep color-blind people in mind as much as possible, though. The Battlelore example is clear: different shapes for the helmets would be a practical solution, with little extra illustration cost and no evident drawback.
For those interested in experiment what color-blind people sees, a good approximation is the L*a*b color mode in Photoshop and similar applications. Unlike RGB and CMYK, which are shaped around light sources and ink pigments, L*a*b is based on the human eye and the way we (or 92% of us) see. Like RGB, it decomposes the image in 3 channels, but these reflect the human eye vision: L=Luminosity, a=red/green, b=yellow/blue. Turn off the a channel and you'll see the world through the eyes of a color-blind person who can't tell red from green. Turn off the b channel instead, and you will not be able to distinguish blue from yellow or green. Try the Battlelore helmets image: turning off the a channel makes the first and last helmets almost equal, turning off the b channel makes the second and third helmets look the same.
For those with a pet dog, the change would have to me more comples, as dogs can only see the yellowness or lack of it, no blue, no red, no green. Tortoises, OTOH, are able to see a wider area of the spectrum, so they probably find out colorful TVs extremely dull. They make 100% of humans become color-blinds by comparison.