Photo by Cynthia Larsen
Board Games for the Bored (and Possibly) Gamey
Are you a player?
By Ed Goldman
Board games are sometimes bored games. They can be trotted out on a stormy day, an endless commute or during a mystery- theme dinner party when everyone has already guessed who the murderer is before salad’s served.
My favorite board games are Scrabble and Monopoly. Because I’m a crossword-puzzle addict, I’m not bad at the former. But because my business acumen is on a par with my lion-taming skills, I’m remarkably average at the latter.
Consumer retort
I’ve always been surprised by how many people love the board games “Clue” and “Candy Land”—but even more mystified by just how many board games there are out there. Like: Ticket to Ride, Dominion and Lords of Waterdeep, as well as those classic rainy-weather tine-killers such as Yahtzee, Chutes and Ladders and The Game of Life.
One thing all of the games have in common are printed instructions translated from their original Esperanto by someone coming down from a psychotic episode. By comparison, the instructions that come with IKEA furniture are models of clarity, brevity and native wit. Provided you’re a native of Sweden.
Well, people are still playing board games and I’m still trying to monetize everything I do, which includes tucking in my shirt, blowing my nose and flossing. Hence, the following new games and instructions:
Monopolize. An ideal game for six or eight players, one of whom is a loudmouth who can’t understand why you never show up for Rotary. Players roll the dice to determine which one of them will attempt to interrupt the loudmouth’s stories, which he refers to as “humorous antidotes.” The one who wins gets to inject him with snake venom and make him promise to shut up or else you’ll withhold the anecdote.
Trivet Pursuit. You and your dinner guests split into couples and go door to door in quest of a hot pad so that you, the host, can set a crockpot of stew on the table without ruining its Lemon Pledge finish. The winning couple comes up with a hot pad just wide and deep enough to totally protect the table surface. The losing couple secures a pad that’s barely half the circumference of the pot, thereby causing serious damage and having to purchase a replacement table for you. An ideal hosting game for newlyweds in starter homes who hate the furniture their parents passed on to them.
CLUE. So? Loosely adapted from the popular board game “Clue” and the Peter Sellers film, “The Pink Panther,” this involves multiple props, hallways, foreign countries, weaponry, pratfalls and stunt doubles for your guests. A wonderful evening for those who don’t need to watch their budget and have a liability-defense law firm on retainer. Paramedic Guidance recommended.
Fructose Land. Tired of fending off consumer complaints that playing Candy Land caused youngsters to develop early-onset diabetes, Parker Brothers, a cell division of Mr. and Mrs. Parker, has created a sugar-, gluten- and enjoyment-free board game in which kids “travel” from one Sweet ‘n’ Low confectioner to another in the course of the single most disappointing day of their still-young lives. They roll dice and use colorful, plastic zero-calorie scones as their avatar. They try to beat the other players to reach a magical pancreas-monitoring station first. Glucose tablets not included.
Shoots and Loiters. One of the first board games to be simultaneously endorsed by the National District Attorneys Association and the Hamptons Branch of the Cosa Nostra, this urban-jungle diversion pits pitbull lawyers against Mafia in-house consiglieri in cases involving street crimes, menacing black-leather jackets and a lovely array of pasta dishes. During a sensational trial in which habeas corpus, the 1970 RICO Act, the Miranda Decision and stewed tomatoes are given equal mention, each dude tries to prove the other one broke into a neighborhood COSTCO store and stole reams of legal pads and Post-It Notes to keep track of the trial itself. Fun for the whole Family—including those who, for some reason, are said to sleep with the fishes.
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
