Board Games

[alfonzos]

Personal Preference by Broderbund
- One person chooses the order which one who prefer to experience four random objects or events; the others guess the order.

Times to Remember by Milton Bradley
- Each team has seven brackets sized from one through seven years. Players try to guess when an event took place using any of the brackets. If you are correct, you lose the bracket. The object is to lose all seven brackets.

Celebrities (public domain)
- Guess the names of famous people from clues given by your partner. The names are recycled for each subsequent round and each round the type of clue become more limited.

[JasonA1]

Times to Remember by Milton Bradley

Would work as a round or a part of or the bonus round to a game show about history or something, but on its own, it's pretty dull.

-Jason

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'JasonA1\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 02:21 PM\']Times to Remember by Milton Bradley

Would work as a round or a part of or the bonus round to a game show about history or something, but on its own, it's pretty dull.[/quote]

-Jason

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Kind of like, "When Did That Happen?".

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 03:24 PM\'][quote name=\'JasonA1\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 02:21 PM\']Times to Remember by Milton Bradley

Would work as a round or a part of or the bonus round to a game show about history or something, but on its own, it's pretty dull.[/quote]
Kind of like, "When Did That Happen?".[/quote]

Well, yeah, but better.  I mostly agree with Alfonzo.  When I first played Times to Remember, I thought it would make a pretty cool game show. There are lots of elements to it that are very game-showesque.  It's clever and interesting in a traditional, 60s-70s sort of way with a bit of play-at-home factor to it.  Still, it IS rather static and certainly couldn't fly today.  

Of course, that's true of MOST of the board games that have been mentioned in this thread.  The most common mistake that amateur producers make is thinking that a game that's fun to play will make a good game show, when what you really want is a game that's fun to watch.

[Neumms]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 02:50 PM\'][quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 03:24 PM\'][quote name=\'JasonA1\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 02:21 PM\']Times to Remember by Milton Bradley

Would work as a round or a part of or the bonus round to a game show about history or something, but on its own, it's pretty dull.[/quote]
Kind of like, "When Did That Happen?".[/quote]

Well, yeah, but better.  I mostly agree with Alfonzo.  When I first played Times to Remember, I thought it would make a pretty cool game show. There are lots of elements to it that are very game-showesque.  It's clever and interesting in a traditional, 60s-70s sort of way with a bit of play-at-home factor to it.  Still, it IS rather static and certainly couldn't fly today.  

Of course, that's true of MOST of the board games that have been mentioned in this thread.  The most common mistake that amateur producers make is thinking that a game that's fun to play will make a good game show, when what you really want is a game that's fun to watch.

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[/quote]


"Times to Remember" sounds like another game, "Chronology" in which you build a hand of cards by inserting events into their proper place in a timeline. It's a little like the end-game on "History IQ," which was much more interesting than the rest of the show. It would have made a fine mini-game on "Time Machine." (Boy, that's a game that never comes up around here.)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Neumms\' date=\'Oct 20 2004, 02:21 PM\']It would have made a fine mini-game on "Time Machine." (Boy, that's a game that never comes up around here.)

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Why dwell on the negatives?

[alfonzos]

Smarty Party by R&R Games
Players guess items to fit a category but the penalties become stiffer as the game goes on.

Thingamajig by R&R Games
One player gives a clue to the others for a target word. The clue giver scores a point for everyone who gets the correct answer unless everybody gets it then the clue giver gets zero.

BTW, Things to Remember plays better than Chronology because TTR limits its events to 1950 to 1990. Chronology can go back to the beginning of civilization! One million B.C., A.D. 3; what's the difference? Who cares?

[Clay Zambo]

My wife and I played a game with some friends a few nights ago--actually, we'd given the game to the couple as a Christmas gift several years ago, but none of us remembered ever playing it.  Anyway, it got me thinking about this topic again--but then, what board game doesn't?

Anybody have experience of a game called Perpetual Notion?  I've already got it worked out as a format, but it'd no doubt play better in 1985 than it would today...

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Clay Zambo\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 08:33 AM\']Anybody have experience of a game called Perpetual Notion?  I've already got it worked out as a format, but it'd no doubt play better in 1985 than it would today...

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I just looked it up on the 'Geek (boardgamegeek.com, for those of you scoring at home), and it's an interesting concept. I shall have to ask my gamer people if they have it kicking around someplace.

(For those too lazy to look it up on the 'Geek, each player has a tray of attributes and adjectives, and you string together a set of them, trying to think of an item that fits all of the cards thrown out to that point. So, for example, for "red", "sweet", and "fruity", "apple" might be an acceptable answer, until the next player puts down "bigger than a breadbox", in which case it turns into "watermelon".)

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 12:50 PM\'](For those too lazy to look it up on the 'Geek, each player has a tray of attributes and adjectives, and you string together a set of them, trying to think of an item that fits all of the cards thrown out to that point. So, for example, for "red", "sweet", and "fruity", "apple" might be an acceptable answer, until the next player puts down "bigger than a breadbox", in which case it turns into "watermelon".)[/quote]

Or "A sunburned Richard Simmons".

Without knowing the details, it sounds like something that could have the same ugly flaw I associate with Pass the Buck: an over-reliance on judgement calls rather than hard-and-fast right answers.

[Strikerz04]

[quote name=\'Peter Sarrett\' date=\'Sep 23 2004, 08:24 PM\']My ears are burning.

Two key elements of Can't Stop are the randomness of the dice, and the probability curve of the board.  If you're looking to preserve the board game's flavor, you need to preserve these elements.

The simplest approach would be a Card Sharks model.  Players compete on some sort of knowledge question, with the winner gaining control of the dice. 

If time runs short, all in-progress markers are removed (only claimed columns stay) and the game switches to toss-up questions with a right answer earning a column.

The first player to reach the top of 3 columns wins the game.

For extra spice, each column awards a different prize for claiming it, if the claiming player wins the game.  The prizes could be visible from the get-go, thus creating stronger incentive for players to attack certain columns, or they might be hidden until someone wins the column.

That's one approach, anyway.

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I've personally would've thought that "Can't Stop" would be integrated nicely into a game show....

...Mine would work along the lines of that, but the bonus round will have the board cut out in half (to save for time), with the payoffs increase towards the outside ($2000 ----> $25000). Capturing three colums or more doubles it, potentially winning over $100,000!

of course, we can adjust that ;-)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 11:54 AM\']Without knowing the details, it sounds like something that could have the same ugly flaw I associate with Pass the Buck: an over-reliance on judgement calls rather than hard-and-fast right answers.

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In that form, definitely. But if it became more of a communication game, like Password, I could see something with this overall theme being interesting.

[Jimmy Owen]

Not a board game per se, but has "Twister" ever been piloted?  For sweeps week we could have "The Battling Brookes" with Ms Burke vs. Ms Burns.

[Clay Zambo]

Judgement calls indeed.

It works like this: after another player has added a condition to the game that you think makes it impossible to come up with an answer, you may challenge; s/he then presents the case for her/his answer.  Everybody votes.

I'd use the audience, or a subset thereof, to judge the challenges--with, maybe, a producer or three to break ties.

[SplitSecond]

[quote name=\'Clay Zambo\' date=\'Dec 6 2004, 09:18 PM\']Judgement calls indeed.

It works like this: after another player has added a condition to the game that you think makes it impossible to come up with an answer, you may challenge; s/he then presents the case for her/his answer.  Everybody votes.

I'd use the audience, or a subset thereof, to judge the challenges--with, maybe, a producer or three to break ties.

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The fatal problem with having the audience judge is that it has no motivation to be impartial or objective.

The part with three producers making a judgment call is just asking for two producers to be carried out on stretchers.