Since I was a kid, every family gathering I can remember eventually turned into playing games at the table with relatives young and old. I was lucky enough to learn tons of games passed down from the older generation that didn't come from a cardboard box at the store. Since then I've seen a lot of these games actually turned into retail versions which feels a bit devious to me, like trying to copyright and box tic tac toe (which I've seen done). I'd like to share some of my favorite games you can play just with cards, dice, and other stuff laying around. Whether you're trying to save funds, save space, or just discover an old classic, these games should help you out.

Spoons

Supplies: A deck of cards and a bunch of spoons
Similar to: Jungle Speed, Slap 45, Pit

Spoons is a dead simple game of reflexes and panic. Using a deck of playing cards, each player takes a card passed to them from the right, and then passes one card to the player on their left, trying to collect a four of a kind in their hand. The first player to do so gets to take one of the spoons on the table. But the next rules turn this from kiddy card game to adrenaline-soaked…

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June is LGBTQ Pride Month, in honor of the Stonewall Riots of 1969 - a reaction to police raids on the homosexual community in the Greenwich Village neighborhood. In the spirit of Pride, I wanted to discuss my experiences with Fog of Love, a storytelling board game that’s character driven, depicting an often doomed or awkward romance in the style of romcom movies.

From the outside, Fog of Love hits all the popular methods for addressing gender and sexuality diversity in board games. Two sided character cards let you choose a male or female silhouette for each player. The manual and scene cards avoid gender specific pronouns. It even affirmatively mentions the ability to play a same-sex couple in the manual, and notes that if there is a scene that uses a specific gender combination different from the couple you're playing, you can discard it and draw a new one.

This is all a great step forward for commercial board games, especially one that you can get from Wal-Mart. I’ve seen in…

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In this new series Playology, I’ll be diving into gaming topics from a historical, cultural, and sometimes even mathematical perspective. This first episode is all about dice, and how we got to the standard polyhedral dice we know and love today. When you’re done watching, you can make your own giant paper dice like the ones in the video using the image templates here. If you make any, be sure to share the results with us here or on social media, and if you have topics you’d like to see covered in other Playology videos, let us know!

Credits

Writing, Editing, and Narration by Alex Colby
Filming, Editing, Visual and Sound Effects by Julian Crisostomo

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