May 28, 2009

Open Source Board Games

Earlier I talked about making Monopoly "open sourced" and how such an important piece of American culture should be owned by the culture. Now Im wondering how to do this for Settlers of Catan, a really fun and unique board game I just learned about. This game too, seems a bit overdone, but nowhere nearly as bad as monopoly. Making a game free from its manufactured nature often requires reducing the complexity of the game in several ways and just trusting the natural shape of the game to produce interesting situations. Ive been having some luck with a version Im trying with a deck of cards as the board.