Have you ever invented a board game? I have.

[Dr. Shades]

I enjoy board games and always think of ways to "tweak" them so that they'll be better. . . at least, better in my own mind. This has led me to invent a few board games over the years. The following aren't counting the endless simplified versions of Dungeons & Dragons that a friend and I would invent. From earliest to latest:

• Inspired by the lightcycles scene in the original Tron, my first game was a tile-laying game wherein the board consisted of a grid with rectangular spaces. Each player would alternate by laying down tiles that corresponded to moving straight up or down, moving straight left or right, or making a 90⁰ turn. Tiles would never "run out," so you could always make your desired move. You advanced your cycle in the appropriate direction and lay the tile behind you, thus creating a birds-eye view of a solid wall as you went. The idea was to box your opponent in so that he or she would crash into the edge of the board or into his or her own, or your, "wall" before you did.
• My next game was called "Global Crisis I" and was an updated rule book for the original 1984 version of Axis & Allies. 82 pages. As an amateur World War II historian, the intent was to make the game much more historically accurate. The folks at Historical Board Gaming sell it for me as a downloadable *.pdf for $5 a pop.
• The next game was played on a hexagonal grid with checkers. You could move your pieces into spaces containing your own pieces in order to create a stack of two or more. Instead of jumping the enemy's pieces, however, you would destroy them by occupying their spaces like you would with a chess piece. To win, however, you have to do so with a stack of checkers taller than the enemy's stack. Of course, you'd think that creating a single mega-stack would be the surefire way to win, but you could still attack a larger stack with a smaller stack of your own. Instead of winning, though, you would forcibly disperse that enemy stack into its individual checkers, making them (in theory) easy pickings for your own stack right afterward. Therefore, players would have to strike a balance between more but shorter stacks to achieve greater tactical reach or fewer but taller stacks to better exploit those dispersions when they did happen. . . or some combination of the two.
• My fourth game was "Global Crisis II" and, as you would expect, was an upgrade based on my original. It was 105 pages this time, not including all the charts and player aids. This time, though, it used Axis & Allies Pacific and Axis & Allies Europe as its base. A key difference was that I did a huge amount of research into the book World War II: A Statistical Survey along with a couple of others (and made use of a similar research project done by an acquaintance to incorporate information that that book lacked) in order to have historically accurate force pools (read: numbers of each type of unit) for each nation.
• My most recent game is based on my many years of experience working in the correctional system and is called "The Big House." In it, each player takes the role of an inmate trying to survive the prison system. There are three ways to win: A) to become the prison kingpin, B) to earn early parole, or C) to escape. Players roll dice at the beginning to determine their prison moniker, the name by which all other players must call them during the game or suffer a penalty. They also roll dice to determine the type of crime they're in on and the severity of said crime, all of which will influence their starting statistics, which consist of connections, respect, and behavior. As the game progresses, they try to cultivate contacts (or eliminate opponents' contacts) in the various work areas to bring back contraband to them, which function as the game's currency. They try to unduly influence other players or random NPC inmates through strong-arming, fighting, or snitching, each of which have tables to determine the winner or loser and the benefit--or penalties--of each. They also interact with the guards--run by the game system itself--in various ways. Players can join work crews, drug rings, or gangs, and they can obtain weapons, escape tools, or bribery points. Once each turn, a random event occurs, and players either reap the benefits, take the penalties, choose how to react, or perhaps the game rules change in some way.

So, there you have it. Have you ever invented a board game? If so, please tell us about it here.

[¥akaSteelhead]

The Axis and Allies one sounds cool. Does it take 97 hours to play a game, like the original?

[Father Francis]

I invented one when I was 12 or so. It was a project for school based on the ancient Greek religion. It was all about Daedalus and Perseus trying to escape the labyrinth. I used Warhammer figurines for the players and the DM. The DM played the minotaur whose movements were mostly randomized.

On a similar note when I was about 8 years old me and two of my friends made a kind of table top game with our Lego castles and minifigs. We wrote out stats for each kind of minifig and set our castles up around the living room. There were massive battles, alliances and betrayals. It was fun. I miss playing games like that.

[Physics Guy]

I've played a lot of board games but no, I can't remember actually creating one. I've tinkered with role-playing game rules a lot, and even invented one whole system once.

I have created a childish perversion of the great Canadian checker-flicking game of crokinole, called "Towers that Shoot at Each Other". It's a pretty self-explanatory game and surprisingly fun if you don't get hit in the face with a coin-sized wooden disk.

I've daydreamed about creating a couple of games. One is going to try to be a simulation of wild animal life in a big African game reserve, accurate enough to go for the educational game market, but somehow also fun. Each player is to play a different species, and it's the overall state of that species in the whole reserve that matters, not the life of any individual animal. I want to have a larger-scale game where you make strategic decisions for entire seasons, that breaks down into a bunch of little mini-games involving lions chasing zebras and stuff. Beyond this I have few ideas, alas.

The other is even vaguer: a game for people who love trying to get away with wicked rule exploits by arguing over what the rules mean. You play a sort of generic board game with one of several boards, a whole bunch of pieces, an egg timer, dice, spinners, multiple decks of cards, a cloth bag full of cardboard tokens ... everything, with wildly inconsistent design themes. It may even be best if that game is cheesy and lame. Simultaneously you play a meta-game of setting the rules for that first game, with the goal of making sure that you win it. Beyond that all I have is an idea for an expansion set, "Bad Translation", in which you get to include rules that offer extra room for interpretation because they have been badly translated from some foreign language. In the expansion set there will be one rule card that reads simply, "If the Zloty rolls off the Table it is ALL OVER." A powerful card indeed, if you can implement the right rule for what the heck "the Zloty" is, and then win the vote to establish your interpretation of "ALL".

I am making no serious effort to develop either game, though. Maybe when I retire.

"The Big House" sounds like an interesting game. Any way of getting a copy?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Shades,

That's really impressive. Are you still planning on writing Midgley's biography? I speak for many when I say I really hope you are.

[Dr. Shades]

The Axis and Allies one sounds cool. Does it take 97 hours to play a game, like the original?

Ha ha, nope! Both versions have a built-in self-destruct feature. The turns, instead of being abstracted, are set into 6-month periods (for the original) or seasonal periods (for the sequel). If the Axis endure longer than their historical counterparts did, then they win the game regardless of how poorly they may be doing otherwise. Therefore, both sides have to play hard at both offense and defense.

"The Big House" sounds like an interesting game. Any way of getting a copy?

Yes, but first you'll need a number of generic tokens (pennies will work), nine sets of 25 chips of differing colors, and nine movement pawns of different colors that correspond to the chips' colors. Once you have those I'll email you the files to print out.

That's really impressive. Are you still planning on writing Midgley's biography? I speak for many when I say I really hope you are.

Yes, but I won't be able to take the most important steps--interviewing his family, friends, and colleagues--until after he passes. I have to make sure they can be objective.

[Res Ipsa]

Played hundreds of them; never tried to invent one.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

That's really impressive. Are you still planning on writing Midgley's biography? I speak for many when I say I really hope you are.

Yes, but I won't be able to take the most important steps--interviewing his family, friends, and colleagues--until after he passes. I have to make sure they can be objective.

Good to hear.