The second of the three-part Games Britannia series is much more modern in scope and details a number of British and American games of the past century.
This episode went past a lot quicker than the previous one and as a result I only have short notes regarding most of the games presented, rather than the more in-depth look as in my Dicing With Destiny entry.
The first game talked of was called Mansion of Bliss and was produced with the intention of teaching good moral values to children as well as tempt them into going to school as the government had only recently written the law that children should attend school at a young age. The game features a simple race mechanic (similar to Snakes & Ladders) and progress is issued by a spinning top called a 'teetotum'. Upon landing on each space a short sentence is read out from a book accompanying the game, and it describes moral etiquette regarding either a vice or a virtue, as decreed by the picture which you landed on. Landing on a virtuous space would reward the player and landing on a vice space would result in a forfeit.
This game was popular and prompted many similar games in the same period, such as Mansion of Happiness. This was another moral instruction game but this one became incredibly popular in America and resulted in the games market in America. A game was produced as a result of Mansion of Happiness's popularity, this one called "The Checkered Game of Life".
The Checkered Game of Life was very different to its inspirations however, as it had an element of choice in which space to move to and also it had goals less in tune with moral instruction and more in line with American ideals: ambition and opportunism. This game was made by Milton Bradley who went on to found MB Games.
Not so long after were politically inspired games such as Pank a Squith, a game about the women's suffrage movement, and Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit which was a liberal game intended to promote discussions of land tax & the liberal agenda.
Monopoly was based heavily on "The Landlord's Game" by Elizabeth McGee Phillips. The Landlord's Game was intended to teach about an equal society but it's successor Monopoly instead was highly competitive and had the goal of bankrupting the other players.
Finally we had the British inventions of:
Cluedo
Scrabble
Trivial Pursuit
and
Kensington
With the possible exception of Kensington (I hadn't heard of it until watching Games Britannia) these games appear to be eternally successful, although variations and iterations are constantly released (the American version of Cluedo features a 'Mr. Green' rather than 'Reverend. Green' out of some distaste for the notion of a murderous priest for example).
Our final act of global boardgaming importance it seems was the creation of Games Workshop by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The company was originally founded to produce and distribute boards for classic games such as chess and backgammon, but later important the ever-popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Sometime after this (and the launch of their gaming magazine; White Dwarf) they ended up producing their own role-playing, board and wargames. This includes Warhammer & Warhammer 40,000 (originally called Rogue Trader), which are today the most popular and well known miniature wargames available.
The episode ended with the introduction of one of our modern board game companies: TerrorBull Games. Known as something of an indie games developer, they made the "War on Terror" board game, a heavily satirical game about the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Woolley, the presenter, suggests that this is perhaps where British games belong: somewhat provocative, niche and ultimately unique.
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