Games that the German designers stole from me.
Dane Peacock
United States
Stansbury Park
Utah
That tickles
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In the late 1980’s, I designed a few games and wrote them in a book.
Around that same period, I went on a date with a foreign exchange student from Germany named Anna.
Shortly thereafter, I noticed that my game book was missing.
Shortly thereafter that, the world was flooded with ‘German’ designed games.
Coincidence? You be the judge:
(Ever had your design stolen? Please add)
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Dane Peacock
United States
Stansbury Park
Utah
That tickles
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Rules from my book:
1 Get all of your Mom’s buttons and put them in a bag.
2 Take turns drawing the buttons out of the bag.
3 The player that draws the most red buttons wins!
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Dane Peacock
United States
Stansbury Park
Utah
That tickles
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1 Give everyone a jigsaw puzzle.
2 Each player puts his or her own puzzle together.
3 The player that ends up with the best puzzle is the winner!
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Dane Peacock
United States
Stansbury Park
Utah
That tickles
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1 Find all of your army men, barnyard animals, policemen, and cowboys and Indians.
2 Take turns placing them on the table.
3 The player that places the most barnyard animals on the table is the winner!
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Dane Peacock
United States
Stansbury Park
Utah
That tickles
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1 Choose two numbers between 2 and 12.
2 You cannot choose 7
3 The player that chooses numbers closest to 7 is the winner!
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5.
Board Game: Fluxx
[Average Rating:5.72 Overall Rank:4321]
♪ 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 had the same thing happen to me! My design was:
1. Take a hammer.
2. Smash it against your temple.
3. Repeat Step 2.
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Gerald McDaniel
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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In 1957, I created a mapboard on some scrap cardboard and cut off wooden dowels for playing pieces and marked them on the bottom with different numbers, which remainded hidden until a confrontation took place. I don't know how they found my game in a small town in the middle of Oklahoma, but I guess "they" did.....
First time I saw Stratego in a store, I was totally blown away. It was a freaky feeling, something akin to deja vu, to see "my" game published and for sale. Of course, no one believed me then, and no one will today..... Such is the life of a game designer genius, I suppose (okay, tell us another one, Gerald).
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Peter Darby
United Kingdom
Welshpool
Powys
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When I was about ten, I had a nightmare that I was being forced to play a version of rummy where they changed the rules every round, and you had to play until your brain rotted.
Lo and behold, next year...
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Crazy Bob
Philippines
Cebu
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1. Opponents pay me money
2. Whoever give me the most money wins
3. Ties are determined by ranting, or falling that, a coin toss
Well, I guess this company *did* get people interested in thier version of my game.
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9.
Board Game: Risk
[Average Rating:5.62 Overall Rank:6167]
Jesse Shaver
United States
New York
New York
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Actually, I can't take the credit for this one. My geography teacher gave me the idea.
1. Get a map of the world.
2. Point to australia.
3. Whichever player pointed to australia first, wins.
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Bill Koens
United States
Watsonville
California
marks the spot.
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That rat Seyfarth! He stole my idea!
1. Seat 3-5 players around a table.
2. Draw numbered chits from a bag labeled 'Skill'.
3. Whoever is sitting to the left of the lowest number wins!
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11.
Board Game: DVONN
[Average Rating:7.46 Overall Rank:138]
SH Wong
Singapore
Singapore
Singapore
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Well, Kris needed to complete his series, so I forgive. I got my idea from Oreos anyway, so it wasn't completely original.
1. Take an Oreo apart.
2. Lick the cream off.
3. Stack them with the rest of the licked Oreos.
4. Highest stack wins.
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Piet Lavens
Belgium
Deerlijk
West-Vlaanderen
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1. Take some fruit.
2. If you are hungry, ring the bell.
3. If there are 5 pieces of fruit, you can eat them. Otherwise, the other players can eat them.
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1. Shuffle a deck of cards numbered 1 to 13
2. Randomly divide the cards equally between the two players
3. The player of which the average number on his cards is closest to 7 loses
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Dean Wright
United Kingdom
Wokingham
Berkshire
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This is from my GCSE history classes:
1: Stare at a politcal map of 1941 Eupore.
2: Whoever falls asleep first loses.
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John Snyder™
United States
Fresno
California
You and the Cap'n make it hap'n
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They stole my idea!
1. Read a page from Lord of the Rings.
2. Act out what happens on the board.
3. When you get to the last page, kill Frodo instead.
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Kane Klenko
United States
Ridgeway
Wisconsin
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Notes I dug up from my old game design journal:
1) Write down random words on slips of paper.
2) Each player: Randomly choose one and throw it at a table.
3) Someone randomly points at one of them.
4) Everybody loses.
5) Repeat.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
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Fritz Schwartz
United States
Oakland
California
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I know that this isn't a German game, but I have such a case of deja vu reading this list that I had to share my sad, sad story. In the mid 60's, I invented a game for history class. The mapboard was of Mediterranean Europe during the Roman Empire. There were various cards that had to be combined into sets in order to advance in the game. Basically, the game was so complicated and involved that it took hours upon hours to play--in fact, we never did finish a game to completion. Years later when the Avalon Hill game came out I was convinced that my idea had been stolen. Then we read the rules and played the game and I realized that AH's "Civilization" was a much simpler and less time consuming game than my earlier creation. So I decided to let it slide.
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L. Stitz
Germany
Lüneburg
Tee-hee-hee-hee-hi-hihihi-hu-hua-huar-huarrrRRRrrrrrr.
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I think I got the idea for this game while being breast-fed by my mom. But the memory is all foggy -- it's been a while, I guess...
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L. Stitz
Germany
Lüneburg
Tee-hee-hee-hee-hi-hihihi-hu-hua-huar-huarrrRRRrrrrrr.
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Shortly after having invented Busen Memo, I went on to create this little gem. We played it every evening -- when my dad was to tired to go on, I took over and continued his stories.
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20.
Board Game: Go
[Average Rating:7.77 Overall Rank:41]
L. Stitz
Germany
Lüneburg
Tee-hee-hee-hee-hi-hihihi-hu-hua-huar-huarrrRRRrrrrrr.
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I could go on and on, but I'll try not to bore you and will conclude the trifecta with my greatest invention. The rules for this one crossed my mind as I was working in a home for the elderly as a community service. One morning, as I was laying out the pills for the inmates on the counter, I had an idea...
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21.
Board Game: Caylus
[Average Rating:7.97 Overall Rank:11]
Tim K.
United States
Seattle
Washington
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1. Dump the contents of the family junk drawer on the table
2. Get Dad's gun and add it to the pile (unless it was already in the junk drawer)
3. Stare at the pile for two hours, then whoever grabs the gun and shoots themself in the head first wins!
(We could only play the game a few times) 
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Breno K.
Brazil
Brasília
Distrito Federal
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1- Take out your report cards
2- Compare math grades.
3- Highest grade wins.
4- If there are 6 players, it takes four hours to do this.
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Ben Vögel
United States
Golden Valley
Minnesota
I've been on this site for 8 years now, and I'm far from sick of games, but I think I am, to some degree, sick of learning too many new games. I'm also tired of playing 4+ hr multiplayer games, but I'll still happily play really long games 2 player.
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1. Declare a target price between $0.05 and $4.99
2. All players reach into their pockets.
3. Whoever has exact change wins!
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Adam Kunsemiller
United States
South Bend
Indiana
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1 - Lay cards out in an intricate circle of life
2 - Mess around with the circle for an hour or so
3 - Roll a die to determine winner
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Gary Webster
United States
Littleton
CO
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This happened BEFORE the German games came out, but since Civ is a pre-euro euro, it works. In college, actually in 1972, I was rather obsessed with maps, and drew a world map onto a huge styrofoam sheet for some reason. Then it hit me. How did civilizations start? I looked into whatever historic and geological atlases I could find, locating large amounts of raw materials, and logical farming locations based on climate. I put a grid on the map and located areas of resources, using mineral and arable land as two numbers for each region. I developed a game system where each player starts with a few pieces (since the map was styrofoam, I used different colored pins and put the map on the wall). Depending on the available resources, the population could grow until it reached a certain size, in which case it could gain a technological level (if the mineral resource numbers were high enough). At certain levels, one could develop a military, which was important because there weren't quite enough resources to go around. At other levels, one could build ships and explore. I foresaw competitions for exploring and invading the American continents, and even world wars and nuclear capability.
Of course, the scale of the game was so big it never got played, and a decade later, I played "Civilization" and realized that someone else had a better idea, but really, really close. Ah, well.
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Sorry, just quirked my interest.
I would say just the opposite
