It’s funny how the events that occurred over the intervening decade radically altered my course. In some ways, it was a good thing — I never dreamed I’d get to write comic books, or manage a video game store, or work towards a master’s degree in marketing research. I avoided getting into a job market where paying gigs are getting increasingly rare. I avoided finding myself frustrated at the rise of blogging and Twitter. And, best of all, I was able to keep writing as a hobby rather than a full-time profession, which meant I was able to enjoy my time spent getting better at the craft.

But every now and then, I look over at the field of journalism and wonder what it’d be like if I’d stuck with it. And I also think about all of the things I learned about journalism that made me lose my passion for the occupation. Because, you see, even in 1999, when I took my first college-level journalism class, I could see the hand writing on the wall, and I knew things were going to change radically in my lifetime. And while I had no specific insight into how things would change, I knew that the Internet was going to be the death of the 20th century institution journalism had become.

And, quite honestly, I felt it was a good thing. But my reasoning why might surprise you.

When I was in journalism school (or “j-school”, as it’s often called), I was struck by the difference between the intellectual side of the field and the practice of journalism itself. You see, in j-school, students are admonished to dig deeper — to look for both sides of any story, to try to figure out what makes something interesting and relevant to the reader, and to write up an article that will not only help readers to understand what’s going on, but to actually care. The journalist is supposed to be a surrogate pair of eyes and ears, reporting objectively, but in a manner that’s interesting and enlightening.

And yet, when I read the newspaper and see articles written by local reporters or by wire service reporters, I’m often stunned to see how apathetic journalists really are. My local papers, the Belleville News-Democrat and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, have a great way of sucking the life out of any interesting stories that happen in the area. They also have an unfortunate tendency of focusing most of their reporting on the tragedies that occur in the area (big car accidents, homicides, shootouts, five-alarm house fires, and the like) instead of trying to find news that’s relevant to their readers’ daily lives. The only good news to be found is generally buried in the back of the front sections, or written up as a feature article in the “Lifestyles” section.

Why all this focus on bad news? The prevailing wisdom is because these are the stories people want to read. Editors will tell you that people love to rubberneck — they’re drawn to death and tragedy, and they want to be informed about it. If the newspaper doesn’t cover these things, and only focuses on good news, the readers will accuse them of being propoganda machines.

But I disagree, and my evidence is the declining number of newspaper readers out there. Editors often attribute this attrition to the Internet, bemoaning the fact that they aren’t selling as many papers because people are getting their news online, for free. They’re really worried about the bloggers and the pseudo-bloggers (who write for sites like the Huffington Post). Some papers have attempted to start news blogs of their own, but most of these are pretty lackluster. Most editors complain that bloggers are inaccurate (they are), that they don’t cite sources (they don’t) and that they often steal content from newspapers and post it as their own (they do). In fact, the Associated Press has recently been going after bloggers who have been posting AP stories because they’re annoyed that the bloggers aren’t paying a wire fee in exchange for using their content.

The problem is that newspaper people don’t stop and consider why people are reading blogs. It has very little to do with the reliability of accuracy of the blogs, and everything to do with their personality. Blogs aren’t about information; they’re about image and lifestyle. When you look at the really successful blogs out there, you discover that they’re typically run by people who have very strong viewpoints and who aren’t afraid to share them. There is no illusion about objectivity, because there doesn’t need to be; the readers tend to be like-minded, and they’d much rather be pandered to than hear both sides of the story. For example, I have several friends who read the Daily Kos not because they think it’s fair, but precisely because they know it’s unfair to Republicans and people who lean to the right. They aren’t interested in hearing the other side; they’ve already chosen theirs.

There was a time when I would have seen such an attitude as a bad thing, but now that I’ve grown a bit and started to understand how the world works, I’m actually in favor of non-objective sources. My reasoning is that these sources have something newspapers lack — passion. They believe in something, and their readers believe in it too. Therefore, they’re much more useful as sources of information because the readers are actively involved in acquiring it. It’s far more fun to hear the news from a blogger, or Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh than it is to read a dry, dull story in the paper and try to make sense of what’s really going on.

“But Sean,” you may be saying, “the problem is that non-objective sources aren’t reliable because they twist and distort things. Newspapers stick to the facts.”

I won’t argue that those non-objective sources are reliable, because it’s pretty clear that they’re not. But what I will argue is that newspapers are often equally as bad. Reporters have a tendency to rush breaking news to print, and to get the facts wrong because they don’t dig deep enough and ask the right questions of the right people. I know this because I’ve been a journalist, but I also know this because I’ve been a victim of bad journalism.

When I had an apartment fire a few years ago, I didn’t see a single story that accurately reported the facts of what happened. Every news source in the area was there — TV, radio, print — and yet none of the ran the same facts. What actually happened was that one of my neighbors was burning green wood nonstop in her fireplace, which had a chimney that hadn’t been cleaned in at least 7 years. She claimed she had to because the property management company did a bad job insulating her apartment and she needed the fire to keep warm. So, her chimney caught fire in the middle of the night, and all four families in the building rushed outside at around 5 in the morning because their smoke alarms were going off. I called 911, and one of my neighbors did as well. The fire department was there within a few minutes, and everyone was told to get in their cars and wait across the street while the building burned. It was a sad, sad morning.

But how was it reported? One story said that a heroic man went from door to door, waking people up and getting them out. I was the only man in the building at the time, and I can tell you — that didn’t happen, because my neighbors were already outside when I got down there. Another story said that the fire may have been caused by bad wiring. Again, not true. Many of the stories reported that multiple children were without homes due to the fire. Not true — there was one child. And so on down the line.

Following the tragedy, there was very little follow-up. And that’s sad, because there was actually a substantial story there. One angle could have been looking into apartments with chimneys and asking who’s reponsible for cleaning them — owners or tenants. That very question was at the heart of our incident. Another angle could have been about renter’s insurance. As it happened, of the four families affected by the fire, two had insurance, and two did not. One of those families had just put insurance on their unit two days before the fire occurred. This freak coincidence saved them from financial ruin, which was all the more interesting since they were newlyweds. (As it happens, it was my wife and me … and what an interesting story it is even today, almost five years after the fire took place!)

Had any of these journalists bothered to get the real story, they might have been able to write an article that would have had some real meat to it. It could have been a story that started with a tragedy, but continued on to talk about the things that affect us all — the panic of a disaster, the worry, the loss, and the blessings — and the story could have even taught readers about the risks of not having insurance, or the results of the outpouring of community support that we received. But they weren’t interested in that story, because by the time those things happened, it was all “old news” — the fire was over, and other tragedies needed to be covered.

But guess what? That sort of writing is exactly the sort of thing that newspapers need to start doing if they want to survive in the 21st century, because that’s the sort of story that people want to read. It’s time for newspapers to get away from reporting every tragedy in the area, from running stories featuring quotes from irrelevant sources and from trying to cover both sides of non-issues. It’s time for these papers to stop keeping the pretense of being objective and to, instead, serve the community by reporting on the things that really matter to people day-to-day. A whole page could be devoted to briefs about the tragedies in the area, written in police blotter style. But the rest of the pages could be devoted to stories that talked about things, both good and bad, right and wrong, uplifting and depressing.

Let me offer an example: right around the corner from me, a small restaurant went out of business. Someone bought it up, and immediately had union protestors outside because he wasn’t using union workers to remodel. After weeks and weeks, the place still isn’t open, despite the fact that he’s had his sign up for awhile now. He doesn’t seem to have done any advertising, and chances are very good he’ll go out of business due to his location. He’s also going to be competing with a lot of chains opening in the area in more visible places.

This is such a great story for a journalist to cover, because it’s got a David vs. Goliath angle, it’s got union drama, it’s got the whole dynamic of trying to start a business in a tough economy… and so much more. So much could be taught in this piece, and it could cover so many aspects of life. And yet I haven’t seen any articles run on the place, even in brief. The journalists at the paper (which has its office literally three blocks from this restaurant) aren’t interested in that sort of “soft” news because they’re too busy reporting every murder that comes out of East St. Louis.

And it’s too bad,  because this is the sort of story people are hungry to hear. The days of the “just the facts” newspaper reporting are dwindling to a close, and journalists are going to have to change with the times if they want to have something to peddle at the end of the day. Sadly, the field of journalism is full of people who are rooted only in the now, and who seem to be incapble of thinking in the long term. It’s going to be the death of their industry in the short term. Tomorrow’s newspapers are going to be a completely different beast, and today’s journalists aren’t going to get to be a part of it unless they wise up and see the way the world is shifting.

As for me, I’m glad I got out of journalism and into the fields of marketing research and comic book publishing. At least in those fields, I don’t have to pretend to be objective and important for the sake of an outdated institution.

I've spent more hours working retail than I care to admit.

My wife and I went shopping at the mall yesterday, and it was a pretty horrifying experience. Our local mall has somehow managed to banish every bookstore, toy store and nature store from its premises, leaving us with a pet store (that will probably be out of business soon), a “Club Libby Lu” (which is going out of business), a GameStop and a slew of clothing stores, gift shops and cell phone kiosks. Blech.

Now, for those who don’t know, I have a fairly successful background in the retail industry — when I was working for EB Games (which is now GameStop), I was the top-ranked manager in the entire Midwest for 2 years in a row, and when I left the company to go back to school, I was ranked #2 behind the regional manager’s home store. From what I’ve been told, I was the only manager in the history of the company to ever do that. (To be fair, my employees were a big part of the effort, and they deserve credit too!) But it wasn’t just because I was really, really into video games — even when I worked in an Eddie Bauer, which was way out of my element, I was the top sales associate in the store fairly consistently.

So, yeah, I know a thing or two about retail. And what I want to say right now to anyone else who is in the retail business is to stop asking me if there’s anything I’m looking for when I walk into your store. This helpful-sounding question actually kills more sales than you’d think.

“Huh?” you might ask. But trust me, I have a good reason for saying this.

It all begins with the reason why the question is being asked. Let me set up the scenario for you.

[Sean walks into the store. An associate greets him.]

Associate: Hi, how are you today?
Sean: Great.
Associate: Is there anything I can help you find today?
Sean: Nope, just looking.
Associate: OK. Let me know if you need me.

Most of us have encountered this scenario before, and it appears that the associate is doing the right thing. He or she is being visible and offering assistance, right? That’s how you start a sale, isn’t it?

Wrong. The associate is being lazy and inept. Offering to help people find items is customer service. Sales is a process of building a rapport, listening to the customer’s needs, making suggestions, and closing. A good salesperson is not concerned about the transaction that will be made, but the overall impression the customer has of the experience. This is very important, since customers tend to return and want to deal with the salespeople who helped them before. They also tend to return items less and to buy more liberally.

So, here’s how the scenario should properly go:

Sales is ridiculously easy... if you actually make an effort to get good at it!

[Sean walks into the store. The Associate walks up to greet him.]

Associate: Hey, how’s it going?
Sean: Great.
Associate: How’s the traffic out there? Pretty bad?
Sean: Um, yeah. A lot of people seem to be out and about today.
Associate: (groans) I guess that means the food court’s pretty packed, huh?
Sean:  Oh yeah. We waited 20 minutes for our food.
Associate: Thanks for the tip. Hey, have you been in here before?
Sean: Um, maybe once or twice.
Associate: That’s cool… yeah, I always like to let people know how the store’s laid out so they can find things, you know? We move things around all the time in here. We’ve got mens’ clothing to the right, and womens’ to the left.
Sean: I didn’t realize that. Thanks.
Associate: No problem. Go ahead and have a look around. I’m going to go say hi to these people who just walked in, but let me know if you need any advice or have any questions or anything.

I know what you’re thinking … “Who puts this sort of effort into talking to customers?”

Well, I did, and it always paid off for me. Even when I was busy, I tried to make time to talk to customers this way. And I tried to make sure I wasn’t re-using the same lines over and over, but legitimately continuing the conversation.

You see, the problem is that you don’t want the customer to say, “I’m just looking,” because what they’re really saying is, “leave me alone. I don’t like salespeople.” When people come into a store with that attitude, they’re not going to be very good customers, and associates aren’t going to be very good salespeople. What’s more, the phrase “I’m just looking” kills any further attempts at building rapport. The salesperson is defeated they moment they ask a question that can lead to an, “I’m just looking,” and the customer will be more resolved to do just that for fear of having to talk to the salesperson again.

So, listen, retail sales people — don’t ask, “Is there anything I can help you find today?” or “Are you just looking today?” or anything of the sort. Instead, compliment the person on an article of clothing, or talk about the traffic on the roads, or ask about the weather, or tell a joke, or do anything other than ask people if you can help them. And once you’ve established rapport, don’t just offer to help them find things; offer your expertise and advice. Trust me, it works. I’ve got the trophies to prove it.

“Why are you sharing this information?” you might ask. “Do you really want salespeople to be more competent?”

To which I reply: Absolutely. I’m not afraid of salespeople, but I am afraid of incompetent, disinterested employees who give bad advice because they don’t care about their customers. Good sales associates listen to customers’ needs, offer good recommendations and make the shopping process easy and fun. And, when customers come in with problems, good sales associates dazzle them with customer service so much that the people rave about the service they received. I love shopping in stores with good sales associates, because it’s an easy process. I hate shopping in stores where the sales associates are just standing around and feebly offering assistance.

Good service goes a long way. I still hear from my old customers how much they miss me and my team of employees, all of whom understood these principles. People tell me how much fun they had shopping in our store, how much they enjoyed our recommendations, and how much they loved the level of service they received. They tell me that the people who work in my old store now are nice, but that they don’t really seem to care that much.

And so, in closing, let me implore upon you, retail sales people — make the effort to actually sell and forget about this “May I help you?” stuff. It’s better for everyone involved, and you’ll come out of it feeling better about yourself… especially when your numbers start climbing.

Star Wars: Epic Duels is surprisingly fun for a licensed game.

Last week, I shared five card games you’ve probably never heard of, but should try. This week, I’m going to focus on board games.

Now, I’ve been a fan of board games ever since I was a kid, but I’ve always found that the standard family games (Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Stratego, Risk, The Game of Life, Payday, Sorry! and so on) are a little dull. I’ve also never been a fan of gimmick games that require a massive amount of setup time for a weak payoff (Mousetrap comes to mind…).

When I was in junior high school, some friends introduced me to some board games that dared to go beyond what I’d experienced before. The first I played was HeroQuest, a game co-developed by Games Workshop and Milton Bradley. It was a board game that played like a paper-and-pencil RPG — very cool. Another game was Battle Masters, a giant battlefield game that featured humans, elves and dwarves fighting goblins, orcs and ogres. Because of these games, I learned about Games Workshop titles like Space Hulk, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl… none of which I could actually afford to play. I was, however, able to afford a copy of Battletech: 3rd Edition, which included little plastic mechs and a paper gameboard.

Yeah! A good board game should come with LOTS of pieces. It's especially awesome when the miniatures are painted already.

I left board games behind as I got into video games, but when I was a little older, a friend introduced me to Star Wars: Epic Duels, a board game I didn’t expect to like, but which was surprisingly fun. I got so into it, in fact, that I wrote one of the definitive tactics pages for the game (apparently), which people still use as a resource for developing strategies. If you can get your hands on Epic Duels, I recommend it; it’s a fun and easy game that is easily accessible to casual gamers, but which has some real depth and strategy to it as well.

This game helped to rekindle my interest in board games, and over the last few years, I’ve been able to play a few that I never even knew existed. The five games below are all games that are a lot of fun, and which I’d recommend to anyone looking for an interesting evening of playing games with friends.

It shouldn't be so much fun to be Dracula... but it is!

Fury of Dracula is a board game where one person plays as Dracula and the other players control Lord Goldaming, Mina Harker, Van Helsing and Dr. Seward in an attempt to track Dracula down. The game takes place a few years after Stoker’s novel, and the playing board consists of a map of Europe. On each turn, Dracula secretly moves from one place to the next, and the hunters have to find his trail and track him down before he either attacks them and turns them into vampires or before he raises three vampires in the cities on his trail.

What makes this game fun is that it allows one player to play the villain while the other two, three or four players work against him or her. It’s a lot of fun to be Drac, and you can really play some complicated mind games with the other players if you’re cunning enough. It’s particularly fun to watch the other players attempt to guess where you are — sometimes wrong as wrong can be, and other times, with maddening accuracy. The production values are very high as well, and the (unpainted) miniatures and the game graphics are very detailed.

My wife and I play this game with our friends Collin and Jenna, and Stacie and I have both been so devious at being Dracula that Collin turned to us and said, “You really are quite a horrifying couple.” And that’s part of what makes this game so much fun — it gives you a chance to outwit your friends and show them what a great lord of darkness you can be.

Price range: $40-60 for the game. (Get it here)
Learning curve: About an hour.
Ease of play: Moderately simple.
Length of play: 2 -3 hours (though it can go longer if Drac is particularly cunning)
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 3-5. A 2-player game could be played, but I’m not sure it’d be fun.

One of the best-looking zombie games I've ever played!

Last Night on Earth is a game about running away from zombies and surviving long enough to see the dawn. The game is divided between players, with half playing as the humans and half playing as the zombies. The human characters are mostly high school stereotypes like you’d see in a zombie film (the football star, the track star, the cheerleader, the school nurse, the farmer’s daughter, the loner, and so forth), but it’s in the spirit of fun. The zombies shamble in the direction of the closest hero, hoping to win by overwhelming force; the heroes explore buildings and try to find enough weapons to keep themselves from becoming zombie food.

There’s something of a random element to the way the game is played; the board is always slightly different due to the way it’s set up, the human characters are randomly selected, and actions are performed through using cards and rolling dice. Some of the cards allow the zombies to move faster or to slow the humans. One card, called “Last Night on Earth,” takes effect if a human male and female are in the same building together. The characters basically decide it’s their last night on Earth and, erm, lose their turn. Zombies can also bring down a human and turn it into a “Zombie Hero,” which gives the undead a great advantage.

There’s a lot to like about this game — it’s well-produced, with beautiful graphics and nice (unpainted) miniatures. The game also comes with a soundtrack CD, which I didn’t find too interesting, but I suppose it can help set the mood. There are different scenarios you can play, and different ways to challenge the humans (or the zombies) if one side is winning too often. I personally feel the game is in favor of the zombies, but that makes it all the more fun to win as the humans.

There’s also an expansion called Growing Hunger that I have not yet played, but which looks like a ton of fun!

Price range: $40-60 for the game (Get it here), $30-50 for the expansion (Get it here)
Learning curve: About an hour.
Ease of play: Moderately simple.
Length of play: 1 hour
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 2-6.

Arkham Asylum may be familiar to Batman fans, but the name comes from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

Arkham Horror is fairly unique as far as board games go since it is a purely cooperative game — you play as one of many people investigating the strange events around the town of Arkham, and you have to work with the other players to prevent one of the Great Old Ones or Elder Gods (such as the monstrous Cthulhu) from awakening and destroying the world. No one plays as the bad guys; the game mechanics handle that. Thus Arkham Horror is not about competition – it’s about survival.

The game board is huge, with lots of bits and parts, and it takes awhile to set up. Due to the players who can be used, the variety of enemies, and the random events that can occur, every game plays very differently. Familiarity with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft is not necessary, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to know what it means when your player walks through a portal into the realm of R’lyeh or is whisked away to the City of the Great Race. Though the majority of the game takes place on the streets of Arkham, players must enter other worldly locations to seal off the portals that are allowing monsters to come into our world and to weaken the slumbering opponent.

Battles are fought with sanity and with physical stamina; some monsters are relatively easy to kill, while others are quite a challenge. Players can travel around Arkham to find weapons and spells to aid in combat, or they can try to sneak past monsters and avoid fighting. One of the interesting things about the game is that players can adjust their attributes on each turn to suit their play style. So, for example, if they want to raise their sneak ability, they do so at the expense of their movement ability. Players can also collect “clue” tokens, which are used for re-rolls or for sealing gates.

We have a lot of fun with this game, but it is a time investment; most sessions last 3-4 hours, and if we add on the many expansions (which really only make the game harder), our sessions can go 5-6 hours. If this were a competitive game like Risk, tensions would rise quickly, but since everyone’s on the same team, the time just flies.

Expansions for Arkham Horror include:

• The Dunwich Horror, which adds a new section to the board and a secondary objective. (Get it here)
• The Curse of the Dark Pharoah, which adds more cards to the deck. (Get it here)
• The King in Yellow, which adds more cards to the deck and a sense of foreboding as a blasphemous play that can bring about the end of the world is about to be performed. It also adds in a new gameplay element called Heralds that add yet another layer of insanity to the game. (Get it here)
• The Kingsport Expansion includes yet another section of board and more of pretty much everything. It also allows for the creation of wandering rifts (which are really bad news) and other nasty things. (Get it here)
• The Black Goat of the Woods expansion just adds more cards. (Get it here)

All in all, you’re looking at a pretty significant investment to own the game plus all its expansions ($300-400 easily), but it is enough fun that it’s well worth it. It’s not the only game out there that’s based on the Cthulhu mythos, but it’s certainly one of the best.

Price range: $40-60 for the game (Get it here), $20-50 for the each expansion
Learning curve: About an hour.
Ease of play: Moderate.
Length of play: 3-4 hours (or 5-6 with the expansions)
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 2-8.

If the box art doesn't convince you that this game is crazy, try playing a round. It's nuts! (In a good way.)

Betrayal at House on the Hill is yet another horror game, but it’s a little bit different from the others in that its board is not set, but made up of randomly drawn titles. It starts off as a cooperative game — each player selects a character and wanders through an old mansion, exploring rooms and looking for items. As doorways are entered, room tiles are placed down, so you never know quite where you’re headed. Some rooms have what’s called an “omen,” and if a player triggers an omen, a random process determines which of the players will betray the others… and kick off a scenario that can be anything from that player trying to load the others up into his flying saucer to that player sprouting a bunch of firey bats and trying to hunt down and kill everyone before they can exorcise the house.

Betrayal is actually out of print, and it’s gone through a couple of versions due to a few spotty rules. But it’s a great game since it’s so unpredictable, and it has some pretty humorous elements about it for a horror game. Each character is a spoof of a horror movie cliche (the little girl with her teddy bear, the big dumb guy with an ax, the fortune-teller, the crazy scientist, and so forth), and the betrayal scenarios can get pretty wild.

I like the house tiles and the painted player miniatures; they’re very nice. I wish the rulebook held up better (make copies if you play it often!), and the little tokens you use for the scenarios are really easy to lose and difficult to find when you need them. Ah well.

Price range: $25-100 for the game (Get it here)
Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Moderate.
Length of play: 1-2 hours
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is for teenagers and above since the theme of the game is horror.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, but the game is designed for 3-6.

It's like my childhood dreams brought to life...

Monsters Menace America is a game about rampaging across the United States with a giant, unsociable monster. There are, of course, King Kong and Godzilla wannabes, but there’s also a giant eyeball, a giant crustacean, a praying mantis and a smog monster. Each player selects a branch of the military and a monster. They’ll spend part of the game trying to slow down the enemy monsters with their fighter jets, tanks, rockets and subs, and they’ll spend the other part trying to destroy cities and gain enough notoriety to become the king of the monsters.

There’s also a neutral branch of the military – the National Guard – which no player controls, but which can put a hurting on the monsters. And yes, there are two super military units that can fight the monsters as well — a giant robot and a guy named “Captain Colassal” who looks like a superhero.

I just got this one, so I haven’t had a lot of hands-on time with it. But from what I can tell, this is exactly the sort of game I dreamed of when I was a kid. It’s set up like a wargame, but it’s all about destruction and chaos, with some application of strategy, but some reliance on luck as well. The monster miniatures are painted, and the pieces are really nice-looking overall. The board is huge, and takes up the entire table. And since the monsters in the game can’t die, but merely get shipped off to Hollywood on exhibit until they summon the strength to resume their rampage, every player gets to stay in the game until the end. Awesome.

Price range: $30-50 for the game (Get it here)
Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Easy.
Length of play: 1-2 hours
Family-appropriateness: I’d say this one is OK for kids, but it may be too advanced for kids under the age of 10 or so.
Recommended number of players: 4. It supports 2-4 players, but it’s the most fun with 4.

We do this pretty frequently at the Jordan house. It’s a lot more fun than watching a movie, and it’s lead to some legendary rivalries. Card games are a lot cheaper than board games, and they’re usually easier to play.

But when most people think of card games, they think things like Poker, or Blackjack, or Uno. Not us. Here’s a list of five card games that we enjoy playing… and that you might like too!

Gotta love that horny helmet and chainsaw.

1) Munchkin: Back in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, there were two kinds of role-players: those who were interested in developing their characters through role-playing, and those who just wanted to kick down the door of every dungeon, kill all the monsters, take all the treasure, and get to level 10 as quickly as possible. This latter group generally consisted of younger players, and they became known as “munchkins.”

And that’s the premise of this simple card game. Everyone at the table begins as a level 1 human with no class. But as you take your turn, you flip over a “door” card — “kicking down the door” and either fight the monster you find or loot the room. The monsters are generally pretty goofy and named with puns — for example, “The Shadow Nose” or “The Great Cowthulhu” — and the weapons you’ll use to attack them are humorous as well. For example, you can get a “vorpal sword” that gives you a special bonus against monsters that have the letter “J” in their names, or you can get a “horny helmet” that’s just a piece of Viking-inspired headgear, but which sounds very naughty.

Groaner puns aside, what’s really fun about Munchkin is the way you can stab your friends in the back by assisting the monsters they have to fight or throwing curses down on them. Since the object of the game is to be the first player to get to level 10, most people are willing to help other players out in their lower levels. But once a player reaches level 9, everyone else at the table will be gleefully against him or her, often coming up with ingenious ways to prevent that player from winning the game. And that’s where Munchkin really shines — it’s won partially by skill, partially by luck, and partially by being able to outwit everyone long enough to slip a winning combination of cards through.

Munchkin itself has a bunch of expansion packs that add things like steeds, new weapons, new monsters, and new character classes and races. But it comes in many other stand-alone varieties, too:

• Star Munchkin is the space equivalent, lampooning sci-fi shows and films.
• Munchkin Bites is the horror equivalent, lampooning monster movies, Halloween and horror in general.
• Munchkin Impossible makes fun of the spy and espionage genre.
• Munchkin Fu takes on ninjas, martial arts and kung-fu films.
• Munchkin Cthulhu is for fans of H.P Lovecraft’s bizarre epic about that which man was not meant to know!
• Super Munchkin lampoons superheroes.
• The Good, The Bad and The Munchkin makes fun of westerns.
• Munchkin Booty takes on pirates.
• Munchkin Blender throws several of these varieties together into one nutty game. (Though you can always combine sets, if you like!)

There’s even a Munchkin Quest board game, Munchkin Dice, a Munchkin d20 paper-and-pencil RPG (and a Star Munchkin equivalent), and other Munchkin merchandise that can have an effect on the game, like bobbleheads, t-shirts and bookmarks.

We own several versions of Munchkin, and we enjoy it quite a bit. I’d recommend the original game (with expansions) and Munchkin Bites for starters, since both are extremely fun. From there, any Munchkin is good Munchkin.

Price range: $25 for a core game, $10-20 for expansions.
Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Fairly simple.
Length of play: 1 -2 hours (but longer if you get too many people playing)
Family-appropriateness: Many of the cards are tongue-in-cheek, but there’s nothing grossly raunchy.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, though we’ve done as many as 15. When the game gets that large, it’s best to split the group in half, just because it takes so long to go around the circle as everyone plots and schemes.

Make up the rules as you go along in Fluxx!

2) Fluxx: It all begins with two simple rules: “Draw 1. Play 1.” But as the game goes on, new rules can be added, and the objective of the game can shift rapidly. Within a few turns, the rule can be “draw 3, play 5″, with the added caveat that you can only end your turn with one card in your hand. And while the goal of the game might begin with the objective of trying to collect the cards “milk” and “cookies,” the goal can be replaced, sometimes several times in one turn, and an additional rule can be thrown down to make it possible for there to be two different ways to win the game.

That’s the way a game of Fluxx goes. It’s a chaotic card game where you literally make up the rules as you go along by playing cards. It’s extremely simple to play, and always unpredictable — I’ve had games last close to an hour, and I’ve had games finish within a few minutes. The unpredictability factor means that it’s impossible for someone to dominate the game through sheer skill, and the haphazard way that rules can be stacked really makes the game take turns that will foil and long-term strategies.

Winning the game is accomplished by accumulating cards called “keepers” that portray simple things, like “love” or “peace” or “rocket” or “the moon.” If the goal “All you need is love” is played, any player who just has “love” and nothing else will win. If the goal “Rocket to the moon” is played, and player who has both “rocket” and “the moon” wins. Keepers can be stolen or destroyed, and goals can be replaced, so the best strategy is to try to play the winning goal and the appropriate keepers down at the same time.

Fluxx comes in other editions as well, and some include “creepers,” which are bad cards that automatically go in front of you if you draw them. For example, in Zombie Fluxx, creeper cards are actual zombies, while in Monty Python Fluxx, they’re things like “The Spanish Inquisition” or “The Knights Who Say Ni”. Even though the presence of creepers in your collection generally prevents you from winning the game, there are ways around in — there’s a goal in Zombie Fluxx called “Zombie Baseball Team” that states that if you have nine zombies in your collection, you win!

The varieties of Fluxx currently include:
•Fluxx 3.1, the version we have, which has 84 cards and several expansions (Jewish Fluxx, Christian Fluxx, Family Fluxx)
•Fluxx 4.0, the latest version of the game, which has 100 cards, including some creepers not in earlier editions.
•Zombie Fluxx, one of my favorite versions, where you attempt to collect weapons or means of escape to get rid of all the pesky Zombie creepers.
•Eco Fluxx, the environmentally themed version of the game where you collect animals and environmentally conscious items and see nature at work.
•Monty Python Fluxx, the latest version of the game, which is wonderful for fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and which has a little bit of other Pythonesque humor thrown in for good measure.
•There are also special language editions like Japanese Fluxx, German Fluxx, and Fluxx en Espanol.
•You can get a few extra cards from Looney Labs, the maker of the game.

The only thing that could possibly be better would be if they could somehow do a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Fluxx. Maybe I should email them and suggest that…

Price range: $15-20 for a core game, $5-10 for expansions
Learning curve: About 10 minutes.
Ease of play: Very simple.
Length of play: 2-42 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Extremely appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: You can play with two people, but I’d say 3 or more is ideal. Since this is a fast-moving game, you can have large numbers of people (8, 9 or 10) and still keep things under control somewhat. But the more players you have, the harder it is for someone to actually win.

Much less gore than cutting off heads on your own...

3) Guillotine: It’s the French Revolution, and the peasants are revolting… and not just in appearance and odor! This simple game takes place over 3 game “days” where you line up twelve members of the French nobility (including other corrupt people from the clergy, military, and courts) and take turns chopping off their heads down the line, one at a time! You score points by how important the person was. A lowly Piss Boy is only worth one point, while Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI are worth five points each. You also have to be careful not to execute an innocent victim or a Hero to the People, since these cards actually cause you to lose points!

What makes the game fun is that each player gets a handful of cards that allow them to manipulate the line or score point bonuses. So, for example, if the Innocent Victim is next to be executed, and it’s your turn, you can play a card such as “Trip” and move the victim back one place in line and take the Palace Guard behind her, leaving the next player to either have to take the victim or find some other way to manipulate the line. There’s certainly an element of luck involved, and the real skill involved in the game is figuring out how to upset everyone else at the table. But when you’re playing a game that makes fun of the French, everyone’s a winner, right?

Price: $15-20
Learning curve: About 10 minutes.
Ease of play: Very simple.
Length of play: 20-30 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Fairly appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: 3-4 at a minimum, though you can play 6-8 comfortably.

Experience all of the fun of time travel... from your kitchen table!

4) Chrononauts: You’re a time traveler stuck in an strange and alternate timeline where John Lennon was assassinated, the Titanic sank, and Soviet communism collapsed. But in your home timeline, John Lennon is still alive, which led to marijuana being legalized. The Titanic avoided the iceberg, and blew up later on in the 1940s. And since Ronald Reagan was assassinated in 1981, the Soviet Union is alive and well. What else can you do but hop in a time machine, change history, and find your way back home?

If this sounds like a crazy game, it is. But man, is it a lot of fun. It starts off with a timeline that looks something like this after a few rounds of play:

The picture is from the official website, where you can learn more about the game!

There are two kinds of cards on the timeline: linchpins and ripplepoints. Linchpins are the big events in history; if you alter them, you create ripples in time that will cause several of the “ripplepoint” cards to flip over and become paradoxes. You can fix these paradoxes in two ways: first, you can alter time again by flipping the linchpin back over and removing the ripple, or second, you can apply a “patch” to a ripplepoint and change history further.

You alter time with the cards in your hand, which give you all sorts of time-traveling abilities. You begin the game with a secret identity (which tells you which timeline you’re from) and a secret mission. If you decide that manipulating the timeline is too much trouble, you can attempt to complete your mission by collecting artifacts from the past, present and future. For example, one mission is to collect three different kinds of dinosaurs, while another sends you after holy relics like the Ark of the Covenant, the Crown of Thorns, and the Videotape of the Creation of the Universe.

One of my favorite things about Chrononauts is that it encourages role-playing, so if you change history so that JFK is only wounded, you’re supposed to explain that you tackled Lee Harvey Oswald as he was firing the rifle and that Kennedy lived on as a result. But if another player wants JFK dead again, they can play the appropriate card and then explain that they were the second shooter, behind the grassy knoll. Now, imagine having to explain why you helped the Nazis win, or how you encouraged the US to start World War III (which actually brings about the end of the world… in 1962.)

If that doesn’t sound like enough fun, you can get a booster pack of extra identites to make the game even crazier. There’s also a version of the game called Early American Chrononauts that starts in the days of the colonies and goes up through the Civil War. Oh, and you can even stack both games together for a game called “Ubernauts,” which is quite a lot of fun indeed! (If you want to go it alone, there are also rules for a version called “Solonauts,” where you help eight time travelers make it home. It’s not as fun as playing with others, though.)

If the game sounds like it could even be educational, creator Looney Labs agrees — they’ve even developed lesson plans so the game can be used in the classroom. If you even slightly enjoy history, this is a game to try.

Price: $20 for the core games, $3-5 for the booster pack.
Learning curve: About 20 minutes.
Ease of play: Easy.
Length of play: 40-60 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Fairly appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: 3-4 at a minimum, though you can play 6-8 comfortably (and even more if you play Ubernauts).

Set is one of those games Mensa people like.

5) Set: Twelve cards are laid out on the table, each depiciting a shape, a color, a number and a shade. Your job is to find a pattern that consists of three cards and add it to your collection before other players spot it. As cards are taken off the table, more are added until every possible set is captured. But what makes the game challenging is that sets don’t just have to consist of cards that are alike — they can also consist of cards that are all different!

This simple pattern-matching game is great for a quick warm-up round to get your mental energies focused. People who have a strong sense of the visual will really clean up initially, since this game is about learning how to spot things quickly and grab them. But once you start to get good at the game, it’s very easy to spot patterns you’ve seen before and fun to yank them out of someone else’s hands when they spot the pattern a split second after you do.

Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Moderate.
Length of play: 10-20 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Extremely appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: 2-3 at a minimum, though you can play 4-6 comfortably.

Such a simple game... and yet so much fun!

Honorable Mention: Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples didn’t qualify for my list because it’s a game that’s actually fairly popular. But if you haven’t played it, you should. The premise of the game is simple — every player holds seven cards with a noun of some sort — a famous person, an object, an event, or so forth. Each player takes turns reading off a card describing something , and the other players each secretly submit a noun that they think fits the description. The person reading the card judges the entries, and gives a point to the one he or she feels is best (or funniest).

So, for example, the descriptive word may be “Messy,” and the cards that other players turn in may be “My Room,” “Earthquakes” and “Adolf Hitler.” The player who read the card will pick the most appropriate noun, find out who submitted it, and give that player the point. As you may have noticed from my example, this is a very subjective decision — one person might feel that their room is messy, while another might find a strange appropriateness in Earthquakes or fascist dictators!

It’s very simple, and very fun. This is a game that I’ve even played with my non-gamer grandparents. It’s almost guaranteed to get the laughter going around the room! My only caveat is that I don’t play the game with children under the age of 10 or 11, since it’s a little above their level. Even the kids’ versions of the game can be difficult for some kids to play since they’ll need to have enough of a vocabulary to be able to play cards.

There are expansion sets for Apples to Apples, as well as a children’s version, a Bible version, a Jewish version, a British Isles version and a travel version. Expansions simply add more cards that can be mixed in to the core deck, though you actually can play the expansions on their own if you really want to. You can also buy versions where you can make your own cards with an inkjet printer. Since there are two different publishers for this game (creator Out of the Box and Mattel), it’s often hard to tell which version you’re buying. I’d say stick with one publisher or the other and you’ll avoid duplicate cards. The Party Box is probably the best one to start with.

Price: $25-40 for a core set, plus around $15-20 for the expansions
Learning curve: About 5 minutes.
Ease of play: Very simple.
Length of play: 30-60 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Extremely appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: You can play with three or four people, but I’d say 5 or more is ideal. Since this is a fast-moving game, you can have large numbers of people (10+) and still keep things under control somewhat. But the more players you have, the harder it is for someone to actually win.