Project: The Base Game Set

The Base Game Set is a set of simple elements that practically anyone who enjoys games will already own, and which can be easily bought for minimal amounts of money if you don't. It can be used to create your own board-and-card games, or play the ones listed here.

The Base Game Set was inspired by two very fine ideas: Cheapass Games, which create games using "generic small parts" rather than selling you a complicated and expensive set with pawns, dice, money etc. that you already have in other games; and the Piecepack, a generic and public-domain set of tiles, coins, dice and pawns for which a number of games have been written (at time of writing, about 132). I have since found a site called Galegames which presents "free, original games that use common pieces such as dominoes, dice, tokens, and pen & paper".

I was originally going to include a chessboard and chess pieces, but that would seem to overcomplicate the games needlessly.

You should be able to obtain the makings of the Base Game Set for well under $10 with minimal difficulty. I went to a randomly selected suburban mall bookshop (the one that happened to be closest when I thought of it) and priced it up; the base cost was higher there (about $5 for a pack of cards and $7 for a set of dominoes), but still well under a quarter that of a boxed board game like Monopoly (which you would think would be extremely cheap to manufacture given how many sets have been made, and that it is in fact public-domain).

At a discount store, I found a compendium set in a nice tin box for about $10 which would give you dominoes, chess, checkers, pick-up sticks, backgammon, cards and Chinese checkers (if I remember correctly). A pack of cards and a set of dominoes together came to about $7 or so. Dice seem to be the hardest things to find separately unless you go to a specialty games shop; perhaps they are too easy to shoplift. All these are New Zealand prices, and other countries are likely to be cheaper.

Not only are these items inexpensive, but virtually any shop which stocks games will stock them. After all, these are all very old and very popular games. Chinese dominoes (which are a set of 21, with no blanks) are approximately 12^th century, European dominoes about 18^th century. Dice (in some form) appear to be prehistoric. Cards were known in Europe, in basically their modern form except for details of appearance, at least from the 14^th century. They appear, like dominoes and dice (and chess), to have been of Asian origin. All of these game pieces are most definitely in the public domain and nobody is going to stop you manufacturing your own, though they are so cheap and easily available that you probably wouldn't bother.

Using the Base Game Set

I have created a few sample games, and the notes below give suggestions for creating your own. I also suggest looking at the websites above for inspiration (Cheapass has some free games, and all the Piecepack games are free).

Basically, the dominoes form the "board", on which the pawns move. You can lay the board out randomly or specify in your game how it is laid out, and whether blanks are used or not. It can be in a "chess-like" layout (in which all the dominoes are laid out side-by-side to form a square or rectangular board), a "Monopoly-like" layout (a track in a hollow square or rectangle), a "self-crossing path" layout (where there is a track which crosses itself at one or more points), etc. Your track could be single (dominoes laid end-to-end) or double (side-by-side).

You have 28 dominoes (each with two ends) if you use the full European set with blanks, or 21 if you use the Chinese set without blanks; this gives you 56 or 42 squares for your board, respectively. Of course you can opt to remove some more dominoes and have a smaller board; or use several domino sets or insert additional markers, etc. between the dominoes and have a larger board. A larger board is something of a departure from the Base Game Set, but that is why it is referred to as a "base" set: you can expand on it. Be aware, though, that in game design as in all other design, less is more.

By absolutely no coincidence whatsoever, the spots on dominoes correspond to the spots on a 6-sided die (apart from the blanks, if you use them). You can give this correspondence significance in your game (see League of Powers for an example), using one or two dice (a domino has two ends to represent the throw of two dice). Alternatively, you can dispense with the dice and use the domino spots of the half-domino on which a pawn is currently located to indicate a player's next move.

You can insert markers in between the dominoes to indicate that a card should be drawn, or use the blanks for this purpose, or simply place piles of cards, face down, at certain points in your layout. You can also associate various conditions with drawing a card or cards (example: the domino half on which your pawn is sitting corresponds to the number on the die). You can use several decks of cards and make one or more decks part of your board, or the whole of your board (if you don't want to use or don't have a set of dominoes).

Cards have suits, and dominoes are also said to have "suits", meaning the number of spots. You could relate the number of spots on a domino half to a suit of cards and give this significance in your game (there are seven domino suits and only four card suits, so you would need to either eliminate some dominoes or make some domino values either "wild" or not significant).

Alternatively, the number of spots on a whole domino varies from zero to 12, giving a range of 13, the same as the number of cards in a suit. The game Spotted uses this feature.

Help Wanted

Works

League of Powers (Games) by Mike Reeves-McMillan

A cooperative card game (also using dominoes and dice) for 3-6 players.

Created 05 August 2010.

Average rating: Not rated.

Spotted (Games) by Mike Reeves-McMillan

A simple demo game using the Base Game Set.

Created 05 August 2010.

Average rating: Not rated.

Card Duel (Games) by Mike Reeves-McMillan

A simple game for the Base Game Set, for two to four players.

Created 06 August 2014.

Average rating: Not rated.

Submissions Invited

Please send me suggestions for games using the Base Game Set. If I manage to collect enough, there may be a book, and if I then manage to sell enough, there will be royalties. No guarantees of either hypothetical event.