The next game

I had a lot of time in the car this past week, and it gave me an opportunity to invent a new board game. I did something similar a few years ago, and eventually that road-trip spark turned into a full-fledged game. This time around, the game will be much simpler… it’s mostly cards, with some wooden cubes to track a few things.

It has a science-fiction theme, and part of the twist is developing technologies and science-fictiony things but giving them away to the other players. I call it Forward Humanity, a reference to moving forward in a positive and cooperative way. It feels like our world could use a bit of that.

Today I spent some time putting onto paper the ideas that had been fermenting in my head. I grabbed a bunch of wooden cubes from my game development kit, and gave it a go.

The end result? Frankly, not too bad. There were definitely some refinements to make, but at first blush it wasn’t horrible.

Tomorrow I’m meeting up with some friends for pizza (of course) and will be introducing them to the game. It’ll be interesting to see what they think…

The good things

A few weeks ago I bought a big bag of Starburst. I’ve been picking through them as I’ve gone on trips (they make a great road trip snack). Today I noticed the proportion of yellow Starburst left in the bag is far above what statistics would predict.

The reason, of course, is that I don’t like yellow Starburst. So when I reach into the bag to grab a couple, I toss back the yellows. Eventually I suppose the bag will contain nothing but yellows, and at that point I’ll just hand it to a friend or something.

The thing is, life is too short to eat yellow Starburst. Or, for that matter, to do things you don’t want to do if you don’t have to do them.

Enjoy the good things. And throw the rest back into the bag.