I have always enjoyed playing games. What kind of games I tend to play, however, has changed over the years, and also somewhat has depended on the others in my life. The traditional family board games and card games I played with my family as a child mostly gave way to video games on the Commodore 64, then on the Nintendo and Super Nintendo. My freshman year at the University of Jeromeville, I learned Risk from Pete Green. A few years later, Pete taught Catan to me, and Noah Snyder, and Cambria Hawley who started dating Noah later that year, and some of our other friends, and this had dominated most of my game playing since then.
The last time I saw Noah, he mentioned that Cambria and her roommates wanted to have a game night, and that he had a new Catan expansion to show us. He told me I could invite other people, so when I got home I mentioned it to Jed and Brody, and Jed mentioned it to his girlfriend, Candace. So, that Saturday night, Jed, Candace, and I took my car to the Sagebrush Apartments, about half a mile to the north on Maple Drive, and knocked on the door of apartment F-3. Brody drove separately because he had other plans later and would be leaving earlier than the rest of us; he arrived a few minutes after us.
Cambria let us in, and I looked around the room. Her roommates Courtney and Erica were home, and Mike Knepper, Courtney’s boyfriend, was here too. Mike was my age and finished his degree last year; I had known him since freshman year, before Courtney even came to Jeromeville. I did not see Sasha or Kirsten, the other two roommates, and I never did find out where they were that night. Courtney turned her arm a certain way, and the light caught her hand in a way that I noticed a diamond ring on her finger. Apparently Mike was Courtney’s fiancé now.
“Hey, Greg!” Courtney said, giving me a friendly side hug. Mike greeted me as well.
“Dumb question,” I asked, pointing to her finger. “Is that new?”
“Yes!” she replied excitedly. “Mike proposed last night!”
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you!” Mike and Courtney said together.
“When is the wedding? Do you know yet?”
“We’re thinking about a year from now,” Courtney explained. “That way, I’ll be done with school. And Mike has been interviewing for jobs closer to Bay City, there’s a lot more for computer programmers there, so we’ll move down that way after I graduate.”
“I see. That’s exciting.”
“So I got this a couple weeks ago,” Noah said. The Catan base game was actually titled The Settlers of Catan back in those days, and Noah gestured toward a similarly-shaped and decorated box called The Seafarers of Catan. “You add pieces to the board so there are other islands around the main island. And you build shipping routes to expand to the new island. But it only plays with up to four people, so we’ll probably have to split into two groups and play two different games.”
Noah, Mike, Cambria, and I decided to play Catan at the kitchen table, while Jed, Candace, Courtney, Erica, and Brody started a game of Uno in the living room around the coffee table. After Noah explained the new Seafarers rules, we began the game the same way as a regular game of Catan. The new islands included two gold mine tiles, which were like the Catan version of a wild card, producing any resource of the player’s choice when the gold mine number was rolled. There were two gold mines, with the more productive one on a more isolated island harder to get to. I placed my first settlement on a port, touching wood and sheep, since those were the resources required to build a shipping lane to the productive gold mine. Mike went next, placing his settlement exactly in the spot I wanted for my second settlement. “You stole my spot,” I said.
“That’s part of the game,” he replied.
“Oh, I know.” By the time my turn came around, I found a spot to place my second settlement, but it left me unable to produce ore, and the numbers I had on all of the resources other than sheep were mediocre at best. My hope lay in getting to that gold mine quickly, so I would be able to collect whatever resource I needed from it, and in getting enough sheep that I could trade them at the port.
“My plan isn’t working,” I said after five turns around the board; only one of my five dice rolls had gotten me any resources, and the others rarely seemed to roll the numbers for my resources.
“Things could change,” Noah offered reassuringly. And things did change. My numbers for wood and sheep started getting rolled, giving me enough resources to start building shipping routes, and to build a road leading inland.
“So have you started school yet?” Mike asked me. “You’re teaching full time now, right? Not just an internship under another teacher?”
“Right. Tuesday is the first day I have to go in, and then kids start Monday the 30th.”
“Nice! Are you excited?”
“Excited, but also a little nervous. I’m not going in completely blindly, though; I taught summer school there last year, so I know some of the students and teachers.”
“That’s good.”
When I was ready to build my settlement on the gold mine, which earned me an extra point for being the first one to get to that island, I pumped my fist in the air excitedly. “Yes!” I exclaimed. My excitement dimmed quickly as I started planning my next move, realizing that the other players’ settlements had trapped me along the coast. “Now I have nowhere to go,” I said sheepishly after assessing the situation.
On the other side of the board from my gold mine lay a larger island off the main island, where Noah already had two settlements. The gold mine with the less productive number than the one I had was on this island. Mike had just built a shipping lane to that island, and now he placed his first settlement. “Hey, this is my island,” Noah said.
“Not anymore,” Mike playfully retorted.
Just before my turn, Cambria rolled a 7 on the dice, which enabled her to move the robber piece and steal a card. I had collected resources on both Mike and Noah’s turns. Cambria placed the robber on my gold mine and stole a card from me, saying, “Sorry, Greg, but I know you have the resource I need.”
I glared at her, but with no malicious intent since I knew that it was just a game. In the other room, I heard Brody scream in frustration as someone made him draw four; apparently I was not the only one having a rough time tonight. I rolled a 9 on my turn and glared at Cambria again, since this was the number that would have made my gold mine produce, but the gold mine was being robbed so I got nothing. I had no way of moving the robber right now unless someone rolled a 7, and by the time the next 7 was rolled, Noah was close to winning, which he did two turns later. Too little too late.
“Well, that didn’t work,” I said. “Going for the gold mine first.”
“Yeah,” Noah observed. “You ended up boxing yourself in, and it takes a lot of resources to spread out on the islands.”
“And it didn’t help that my numbers didn’t perform well. And my gold mine got robbed.”
“Yeah. It’s probably not the best strategy to go there first. That’s why they put the gold mine with the good number so far from everything else, because otherwise the game would be too easy once someone got there.”
“Good point. Don’t go for the gold mine right away. There’s probably a life lesson in that somewhere.”
“That’s true too.” Noah stood up and looked in the direction of the others playing Uno around the coffee table; by now, they seemed to be tired of Uno and were just talking. Noah said, “We’re done if you want to play something else.”
“I have to get going,” Brody explained, “but you guys have fun the rest of the night.”
“Mike and I were talking about going for a walk,” Courtney added. “So if there are only six of you left, you might be able to find a game that everyone can play.”
“Good idea,” Noah said, pointing to the stack of games he had brought alongside a few that Cambria and her housemates owned. “Any suggestions?”
Candace got up from the Uno table and looked through the games that were available. “You have The Game of Life?” she asked. “I haven’t played that since I was a kid.”
“Yeah,” Noah explained. “I saw it on sale recently, and I figured, someday I’m going to have kids, so I may as well build up a collection of kid-friendly games when I see them on sale.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Good idea.”
“Can we play that?” Candace asked.
“Sure!” Noah said. He took the box for The Game of Life down from the shelf and began setting it up.
I had this game when I was young. Players moved around the board driving cars, passing through spaces representing things that happened at various stages of life. The player’s choices would have an effect on the game’s outcomes; for example, not going to college moved players along by a slightly shorter route, giving players chances to make money earlier, but going to college gave players a better chance of earning a higher salary. Players also had opportunities to buy insurance, which would cut down on certain expenses that they may incur later in the game. A great deal of chance was also involved, with the exact events determined by spinning a spinner. As the player progressed through life, various milestones such as marriage and births of children happened in the game, and family members would join the players’ cars.
“What are these?” I asked, pointing to a stack of cardboard tiles with the game’s logo on them. The game I had as a kid did not have these.
“Life tiles,” Noah explained. “It’s a new rule that was added recently, I guess. I don’t remember these when I was growing up.”
“Same.”
As we began the game, I noticed a number of other changes to the game compared to the one I had as a kid. A player choosing to go to college at the start of the game began the game in debt, a much more realistic scenario for 1999 compared to the older edition that I had grown up with. I chose to go to college anyway, and I ended up as a teacher. “That’s appropriate,” Cambria said when I got my career in the game.
I was the first to reach the “Get Married” space. I took a female pink peg out of the box and added it to my car. “What’s your wife’s name?” Jed asked. I paused, flustered, and did not say anything, not wanting to admit that I found anyone attractive at the moment. Jed continued, “I think the rest of us should be able to decide your wife’s name.”
“That’s a good house rule,” Noah said. “And since it’s my game, I have final say over house rules.”
“Sasha,” Jed announced. I blushed as everyone but Candace laughed. I knew that Jed, Cambria, and Erica knew about my history with Sasha, and I figured Noah did as well since he had run with that crowd for so long.
When Cambria got married on her next turn, we could not think of an obvious name for her spouse. Of course, we were not going to say Noah; that would be too obvious. The only other prominent man in her life that I could think of was Bennett Lee, with whom Cambria led a Bible study last year. “How about Bennett?” I suggested.
“Bennett? My Bible study co-leader last year?”
“Yeah.”
“Bennett and I definitely are not getting married.”
“So it’s perfect.” I pointed at the blue spouse peg in Cambria’s car and said, “This is Bennett.”
“Wait! If Bennett and I get married, my full name will be ‘Cambria Lee Lee.’”
“That makes it even better!” I said as the rest of us laughed.
Candace was next to reach the marriage space, and while she and Jed were arguing over who her spouse should be, I again jumped in with a winning suggestion. “Matthew,” I said.
“As in Matthew Gallagher? The swing dancing instructor?” Jed asked, laughing. I nodded, and Jed replied, “Wow. Yes. Candace and Matthew.”
“Eww,” Candace said. “He’s such a sleaze.”
“Oh, come on,” Jed told her. “You can make it work. He’s only, what, five, six years older than you?”
“Yeah,” Candace replied, “but I’m, five, six years older than the kind of girl he goes after.”
“Whoa,” Noah shouted as the rest of us laughed loudly at this comeback. All of us except Noah had been swing dancing at the U-Bar and knew Matthew, and all of us knew, at least from apparent outward appearances, that Candace was right.
As the game continued, I started getting frustrated as I kept hitting many of the bad luck squares. Poor Sasha and I only had one child, whereas Cambria and Bennett had six children and could not even fit them in their car piece. In the rules I grew up with, the birth of a new child meant collecting money, gifts from friends, but in this game, players drew a Life tile for every birth. I was still not sure what these Life tiles were for, the rules said not to look at them until the end, but the fact that Cambria was racking up a huge stack of them while I managed to land on a lot of bad luck spaces was disconcerting to my competitive nature. What made it even worse was that once the draw pile of Life tiles ran out, the rules said that players steal one from another player instead of drawing one, and Cambria had been getting many more opportunities to steal than others had to steal from her.
At the end of the game, players could choose to retire either to Millionaire Estates, where the player with the most money got four additional Life tiles but could still have tiles stolen, or to Countryside Acres, where players could not be stolen from but had no chance of getting the four tiles. Cambria chose Millionaire Estates. “Speaking of Millionaire,” she said, “have you guys been watching that new show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
“We watched it a couple times,” Candace replied, indicating herself and Jed. “It was more high-pressure than I was expecting from a game show.”
“Greg, I think you’d like it,” Cambria suggested.
“I saw commercials for it,” I said. “It looks interesting.”
“They’re showing it every night next week again. They’ll probably bring it back eventually, because so far it’s been super popular.”
“I’ll have to check it out.”
“Greg, you’d probably be good at that show,” Noah said. “You’re good at trivia. You know a lot of random facts.”
“Are they doing contestant tryouts or anything?”
“I don’t remember if they’ve said anything, but like Cambria said, the show is really popular, so they’ll probably bring it back and make an announcement about being a contestant,” Noah explained. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
“Thanks! I don’t know, though. I’d probably freak out and get horrible stage fright if I knew I was going to be on national TV.”
“It doesn’t hurt to try out,” Cambria offered encouragingly. “You never know what’ll happen unless you try.”
“I guess,” I replied. I took my turn in The Game of Life, which brought me to retirement. I chose Countryside Acres; I was not going to win this game.
After everyone finished the game, with Erica and I being the only ones choosing Countryside Acres, we counted our money. Cambria had the most, but the game was much closer than we expected, with Jed a close second. “Next, we turn over the Life tiles and add the money on them to your score,” Noah explained. I turned over the few Life tiles I had remaining and read the printing on them. “Paint a masterpiece, $150,000. Climb Mount Everest, $50,000. I see what they’re doing here.”
“I won the Nobel Prize!” Jed exclaimed. “$250,000!”
“The older versions of the game were all about making money,” I continued. “And the message that success in life is all about money isn’t trendy anymore like it was in past decades. I mean, I agree that life isn’t all about making money, but all this feel-good mumbo-jumbo takes away from the spirit of the game I enjoyed as a kid. And it leaves too much to chance.”
“Win Dance Contest,” Erica read out loud, laughing a little. “$50,000.”
“Hey! I’m supposed to win the dance contest!” Jed replied.
“Greg, look at it this way. It’s called The Game of Life,” Candace explained. “And life leaves a lot to chance.”
“That is a fair point,” I said. “I guess I just don’t like attempts to rewrite my childhood.”
“That’s fair too.”
“I won!” Jed exclaimed. “I finished just $10,000 ahead of Cambria!”
“What?” Cambria replied. “Count again!” Jed started to count his money again, and Cambria replied that she was not being serious and congratulated him on a good game, and on winning the Nobel Prize.
“I had fun, even though I didn’t do well in either game,” I said.
“I should probably clean up and get to bed,” Cambria said. “I’ll see you at church in the morning, Greg?”
“Yes!”
I watched Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? a few times the following week, and I started watching it regularly when they brought it back a few months later. I quickly became hooked. As Noah had speculated, they did in fact hold contestant tryouts, and they were conducted over the phone. Each show included questions requiring contestants to put four things in some kind of order, and the phone tryouts consisted of three questions like this, listening to recorded messages and answering with the phone buttons. Players who got all three right got put into a drawing, where they would be randomly selected for another phone call and five more ordering questions. In two years of actively trying out, I got called back once, and of the five additional questions, I got four correct, so I did not get asked to go on the show.
On the way home from apartment F-3, I kept thinking about how spectacularly my Catan plan failed. I had put my entire focus into reaching that gold mine, and when things did not go as I expected, it left me shut out of the game without a plan. I would learn this life lesson again in a harsh way the following year, but that was another story for another time.
The Game of Life brought even more lessons, since at its core the game was a simulation of life. I did not like these new rules, where the Life tiles could add varying dollar amounts to players’ scores without anyone being aware of anyone else’s score. To me, it made the game even more dependent on chance than it already was. But maybe that was the point. People can plan their lives out all they want, but really, so much of what happens in life comes down to chance. All I could do was hope to be prepared for whatever life threw at me. Sometimes I would be, sometimes I would not be, and everyone was more or less in that same position.
Readers: What’s your favorite board, card, or party game? Tell me about it in the comments.
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