|
An Introduction Through Twelve Games, with Lessons Learned and Relationships Lived
|
|
|
After reading several Newbie Introductions Through Games postings I thought I would do one myself. However, as my list of games from childhood through my adult years grew longer and longer I realized that, while it was a fun list to create, no one else would be interested in reading it. Before I started to pare the list down I needed to work on the criteria by which games would be cut or remain. After settling on the somewhat nebulous “Games That Had Been the Most Important to Me” I started looking to see if they had anything in common. What I discovered was they either had taught me something important and/or were linked to important relationships I have had with the people I have played with. So, maybe this list is a bit more personal than most, it’s a glimpse at my life and welcome to it. Hopefully you may even find parts of it interesting and/or humorous.
|
|
|
Posted Sat Apr 5, 2008 3:55 am
|
|
|
|
|
My father had an old yellow plastic board with black corner dots and lines with the name "Mill" on the box. The pieces were green and red college cap and gown graduates with diplomas in their hands. (I was so psyched to find this picture on BGG today! I haven't seen that box in over 30 years)
This was one of the first games I ever remember playing with my father and, for that, it holds a special place with me. It was also the first game that I played that wasn't a random/luck race game. Mill required thought and strategy to win. I don't think my father let me win too many games; I think he enjoyed watching me try to work out the board and my moves.
|
|
|
|
My parents were lucky in that my father's parents lived about 30 minutes away and my grandmother loved to baby-sit her grandkids. Whenever my parents wanted to go out for the night my grandmother would come over and spend the evening with us.
At some point she taught me how to play gin rummy and it became a regular part of our evenings when she stayed with us. I think my grandmother genuinely enjoyed playing gin rummy with me as much as I enjoyed playing it with her.
|
|
|
|
Score Four was the first strategy game that I learned to play well. I learned the board, the ways to win and, more importantly, how to play my moves into my opponent?s moves to force a double-win (winning either two ways or forcing a win after my opponent?s forced next move to block a win).
One night while on vacation, my father and I sat out on the porch of the apartment we were renting in Ocean City, NJ and played game after game. I racked up a lengthy winning streak that seemed to seriously confound my dad. It was one of my favorite game memories for a long time.
|
|
|
|
Other games may have introduced me to the concept of developing a strategy, but MasterMind introduced me to the rigors of logical thought and deductive reasoning. It was a game I found difficult at first, but was continually drawn to.
The major problem with MasterMind is that unless you have two games going on at once you have one person trying to logically reason out the solution while the other person sits around getting bored. Late one Friday night my father decided I was taking far too long between moves so he got up and put a banjo ragtime album on the hi-fi and turned it up LOUD. He sat down, smiling, saying he just wanted to enjoy himself while he waited.
|
|
|
|
Skipping ahead to my late teens/early twenties and a silly, ridiculous dice game with weird, absurd rules was introduced to me by a friend. She loved the game and it quickly spread amongst our widening circle of friends.
I play Cosmic Wimpout with a Big Score mentality -- you shouldn't stop rolling until you've at least racked up several hundred points. The more the better, in fact. Sadly, there have been very few games played with people who shared in my enthusiasm for the Big Score and most games have been played with people who treat Cosmic Wimpout as a standard race game without trying to make it interesting.
My copy of the game resides in a wooden box I made in Jr. High for which Mr. Watt, my shop teacher, gave me an "A". (It's still on the bottom of the box) I have a collection of playing pieces I've collected throughout the years in the box as well, but I've always found that by encouraging people to use something personal and special for their marker it brings a bit of personality to the game.
(Besides, my guess is that no matter how Serious a game player we may feel ourselves to be, we all have at least one game on our favorites list that remains a favorite no matter how badly our friends/game partners may scoff at it. I think of it along the same lines as that one hideously bad pop song that you secretly will listen to when you're in the car alone but don't admit to liking)
|
|
|
|
I'm guessing I first met Kate Jones and her Kadon Games at the Maryland Renaissance Faire somewhere back in the 80s. By the mid-to-late 80s I had been given a copy of Quintillions, a game that had initially reminded me of the Soma puzzles I had as a young kid.
After my first marriage crumbled I ended up back in Maryland, back in my parent?s house, trying to pick up the pieces of my life. During that time I had the excellent fortune to reconnect with an old high school friend of mine. We started getting together once a week to play board games. We went through a lot of the remaining games in my parent's basement (most had been roughly used by my younger brother and a slew of godchildren who loved that basement) but ended up spending most of our evenings together playing some of the various games included with the Quintillions set.
Those evenings of quiet introspection, staring at the pieces and working out strategies, brought back a quietness to my mind that I'd been missing for a number of years.
|
7.
Board Game: Pente
[Average Rating:6.65 Overall Rank:614]
|
|
|
|
I had been playing Pente for years when I met my second wife. On our first date she told me about how she came from a family of nationally ranked Chess champions. On our second date I brought along a Pente game.
Sure, it wasn't Chess, but she looked at me in a very favorable light for having the guts to bring another game to her.
She also didn't like the fact that she couldn't beat me. Maybe that?s why she?s stuck around for so long.
Pente is also a game she will suggest pulling out if we have company over. She prefers playing Pente as a three or four player game -- it's a far more cutthroat game that way and I think that appeals to the Viking/Berserker part of her DNA.
|
|
|
|
Within eight months of getting married we moved to rescue my wife?s then five-year-old son from her psychotically deranged ex. I'll spare you all of the gory details, but suffice it to say I became an instant father in less than two weeks of our move.
The Boy had been"home schooled" by said psychotically deranged ex (who didn?t like the idea of the public schools teaching "dinosaurs" as having been "fact". The "schooling" part extended as far as being able to recite the letters that spelled out his name (but not able to recognize the letters themselves). Shortly after enrolling him in kindergarten in we were told he was so far behind the other students that he would need to be held back if he didn't learn his letters and his numbers quickly.
My wife, (loving Chess snob that she is) happened to be in one of our local thrift stores and found Alphabet Game. Given how poor we were after the move, it was priced right for us, and seemed to just what we needed.
We played Alphabet Game every night for well over a month, long after The Boy could not only recite the alphabet but also could recognize each and every letter and make their sounds. This was all largely due to a simple game that was designed to teach just that. Within a few weeks his teacher contacted us to tell us how amazed she was at The Boy's progress and wanted to congratulate us on taking such an active role with him.
So, while it's not a gamer's game, it is a game that, in some ways, did more for building our family than any other game we've played.
|
9.
Board Game: Chess
[Average Rating:7.05 Overall Rank:218]
|
|
|
|
Twelve or so years ago God/The Universe/Nature/Buddha/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/etc., (I have my choice; feel free to choose your own) decided to have something of a laugh at my expense and made me an Elementary School Librarian. My only qualifications for the job was that I had worked in my own elementary school library when I was in elementary school and that I had just finished my graduate coursework for a degree in Children and Television.
Yeah, I didn't really see the connection, either.
Still, I was desperate for a job and this one came with those all-important health benefits, so I resigned from my going nowhere temp job and went to work in two public academically gifted schools in our county.
One day while cleaning out the library's main office I found a box filled with vinyl chessboards and plastic chessmen. The boards and pieces were all of good quality and in very good shape. When I asked about them I was told that someone had offered to teach an elective class in Chess so the boards and pieces were purchased. After that person left, they had all been put away to collect dust.
"I could teach Chess," I said.
Before I could realize that I had no idea how I would teach Chess to elementary school aged kids, the principal was saying what a great thing Chess would be back in the school and kids were already asking to sign up.
See, I've never been a very good Chess player. In fact, I'm pretty lousy. But, heck, I reasoned. I should be able to beat some 8-10 year olds.
Luckily I found a book at one of the schools that taught Chess by playing a game with just the pawns. Then one extra piece at a time was added for a game, only to be removed to make way for the next piece in the next game. Then play a game with the pawns and two of the pieces, changing which two pieces with each new game. Then with three pieces, then four. Finally, put all of the pieces on the board and explain the object of the true game of Chess.
It ended up working so well the one school created a class for the Kindergarten, First and Second grade students. (Luckily I didn't learn about this until after the class was full)
All in all I ended up teaching over 300 kids how to play Chess. I was able to give them the basics of the game, including an introduction to Opening game, Middle game and Ending game strategies and challenge them with Chess puzzles.
I still think it's one of the better things I've done with my life thus far.
|
|
|
|
(A Personal Venture Into Games Production and Selling)
The Elementary School Librarian job came with a catch -- I had to get a degree in Library Science to keep it. So, during the summers I started taking classes at a local university that would teach me how to do what I was already doing.
I quickly became bored with Librarianismanship and started looking for other things to spend my time studying. After all, isn't research research?
Board games seemed the logical choice to me. I went through the library and found several books on the history of board games and started to dig further into several games that I thought sounded interesting.
My current wife of 17 years (loving Chess snob that she is) is an artist. About that same time she was trying to launch a business and she somehow managed to convince me that we could make, package and sell board games. After all, I already had all of the research and hadn't I said there were several games I wanted to try playing? How hard could it be to make up a few boards, gather up some pieces, throw it in something and sell it?
Well, really hard, actually.
This was back in the days when graphics work on computers was still out of the reach of mere mortals such as myself. Seeing as how we had next to no start-up money (on a teacher's salary? Are you kidding?) I hand-drew all of the boards and borders myself, then learned how to do silk screening in our apartment. I was able to borrow a Mac LCII from one of the schools over a summer and write up instruction manuals for each of the games complete with text, board game diagrams and some of the history of the game. (Thank heavens for ClarisWorks!)
We sold the games at local arts and craft shows. Or, rather, we tried to sell them at local arts and craft shows. Without any investment capitol I had to make each game one at a time, using retail purchased marine vinyl. The pieces were all glass globs that, while cheap themselves, cost an arm and a leg to have shipped to us. They were packaged in wide, blue cardboard tubes from an office supply store with a cut print-out of the game name, tag line and board design taped to the side. (Oddly, enthusiasm for the games would diminish in potential customers when they saw this high-class packaging)
I was very strict in the criteria for the games I chose. No race games, no games of chance or luck. They had to be strategy games, games with something unique, something interesting that made them stand out. (Interesting histories, be classics, have a special meaning for me, or were very unusual) They also all had to be playable on flat boards and needed to use glass globs for playing pieces.
I believed in these games. (and still do -- which is part of the reason I'm not naming them here. If you're interested in knowing more, contact me with your venture capitol team and we'll talk)  We just lacked the finances the proper distribution to make a proper go of them.
|
|
|
|
Our daughter has brought home many boyfriends over the years. Finally, after she turned 30, she brought home a gamer.
We sized each other up the first time we met with the intent to play and talked about some of our favorite titles. I made some strong margaritas and brought out Abalone. He snickered at the simplicity of the rules and then started in on his drink.
Heh...
On a trip two years ago to a small, remote village in Scotland I brought Pente and he brought Carcassonne. We ended up playing Carcassonne almost every night. I loved the idea of building a new board with every game, the idea of strategy in broad terms that had to be re-defined in each game to fit the particulars of how the board was being developed.
I?ve since played with several of the expansion sets (all well documented here on BGG) and have grown to appreciate the game even more.
Carcassonne was the game that got me back into game playing after being away from regular board game playing for many busy years.
|
12.
Board Game: YINSH
[Average Rating:7.79 Overall Rank:36]
[Average Rating:7.79 Overall Rank:36]
|
|
|
|
I am continually impressed with the Gipf project and have both Zertz and Yinsh. Yinsh earns it's place on this list because it is the first game my wife (loving Chess snob that she is) has agreed to play with me since Pente.
She doesn't like games with lots of paper pieces, cards or too much fussiness. (She's intrigued by the beat-the-game approach to Arkham Horror, though) Relatively simple pieces along with a simple board are her idea of what a game should be. Carcassone and Fjords are both a bit too busy with the tiles and markers. (drats) Hive was dismissed as "yet another game that wants to be Chess." (double drats, but I haven't given up hope yet)
With Yinsh, though, we both appreciate the simplicity of the rules, the continually changing board and the evolving complexity of the strategy. The rule that you must remove a ring with each 5-in-a-row scored and, thus, making both offense and defense that much harder, only improves the game in her eyes. It's a game we won't tire of anytime soon.
|
|
|
Posted Sat Apr 5, 2008 3:28 am
