House Rules

Whether it’s Poker, Euro Games, or even chess, most gaming family have gaming house rules. 

Some of the rules are about the games themselves.  In my family we had assigned colors. My dad would always play red. No matter what game we played (unless the game happened to not have red.) Sometimes it would be the youngest player goes first no matter what.  I have even heard of people doing “do over” rules.

In my family we had a lot of rules around food and gaming. You have an eating hand and a playing hand, and you don’t mix the two. This was very important for pizza.  And don’t even think about spilling your drink. Yes we were that hardcore.

What are your gaming house rules? Do you have special foods that are required at your gaming sessions?

More Gaming Memories

Another childhood gaming memory I have is of playing Aggravation with my mom’s family.  They weren’t big into gaming. Well not in the same way my dad’s side is. My grandma does play Bridge though.

Aggravation was… well so aggravating. But it was fun. And the game could accommodate a lot of people, which meant more fun. When I was little we would play it all the time with Grandma, sometimes Grandpa. Sometimes we would even get to drink tea from one of Grandma’s special tea cups. It was great. Sure we played Yahtzee too, but Aggravation always stuck in my mind.  Over the years the Aggravation board became well loved.

A few years ago I had taken a trip to NYC. I happened upon a flee market, where I found an unused 1954 (?- it was 50 something) copy of Aggravation!!! OMG!! I gave it to them as a present for the 50^th Wedding Anniversary! Sure I only paid $5 for it (now that I think about it should have haggled him down to $3), but the price did not matter. It was what the game represented. It was all those family memories.    

Childhood Game Memories

What are your first gaming memories? Candy Land? Monopoly? Risk? Stratego?

For me it was Survive. Don’t get me wrong. I played those other games too. I might have even played them before I learned Survive. And I am not talking about the cool new edition, but the old school one with those little plastic people that looked like candy and the green Loch Ness serpent monster on the box.  We use to play that game all the time. I hated it when I would get eaten by the monsters.

In fact I was so happy when they reprinted it. Not because I thought it was the best game in the world. (Though now it has beautiful wooden pieces and a Squeeples (Squid Meeples) expansion! It was more for nostalgic reasons. Survive was one of my “gateway” games.  I guess I should start saving money now. The 1982 edition of Survive is currently going on Ebay for $45-100! But how could I not?! Especially for nostalgia. 

The reason why Survive sticks in my head is because it was the first game none of my friends had heard of or played. Everyone has at least heard of Candy Land, Monopoly, Risk and Stratego even if they have not played it. I remember kids at school going “Survive… what is that?!”  Maybe that’s also when I first realized I was different – that I was a gamer?! Who knows? At any rate it is a good childhood gaming memory and might be better if I had an original copy.