With the spring semesters wrapping up and flowing into the summer break, our Pathfinder group has started up again now that schedules are freer. In our first session back, our son joined our merry band of adventurers, which brought back my early days of exploring D&D.

I do not remember exactly when I first learned of D&D, but I remember obtaining the beginner’s box of D&D, the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Player’s Handbook. I may have received them as Christmas gifts one year. My friends and I did not know how to play, but I do recall experimenting with some of the game’s concepts, like staging combat scenarios on a chessboard, using the pieces to mark our heroes and the foes we faced. Chopsticks marked the boundary’s walls and dominoes marked the doorways. That was my earliest memory of using other stuff as game mods, which is what I decided to blog about.

The dice came with the beginner’s set. In the days where miniatures were too expensive an investment, my friends and I improvised with other game pieces or things found around the house. Back then, I had no idea such improvisation would continue throughout my life well into adulthood.

Introduction to Inspiration

Games have always played a big part of my life. Those same friend and I would play Risk throughout New Year’s Even night. We would play travel scrabble, chess, and cards on school trips. It was not until after college, when I started my first “real” job, that new friends introduced me to Cheapass Games.

Cheapass Games has been around for decades and had a wonderful philosophy about making cheaper boardgames that borrowed pieces from other games. They figured most people already had dice, pawns, fake money, and other bits from other games, so their more affordable games (at least, back in those days) focused on the different pieces, like the game board and card decks.

On their earlier website, James Ernest said not to send him game ideas, but try inventing it yourself. His words are what inspired me to start Pegamoose Games. To this day, he is still inventing new games under Crab Fragment Labs, while ye olde Cheapass Games are now licensed by Greater Than Games. I completely understand what James meant. Once I started coming up with ideas for one game, I started thinking of ideas for other games. This flood of game ideas eventually led me to design Peggy, a game engine for tabletop games.

Many of those ideas centered around how I would modify an existing game, or if I were to make my own, somewhat similar game, how would I modify it? In a way, it related back to those earlier days of playing D&D with things we found around the house. At that time, wWe knew we did not play it the way it was intended, but we improvised, essentially inventing our own way to play it. As far as playing D&D our own way, I remember hearing about someone playing an RPG using a standard deck of cards and poker hands instead of dice rolls.

This kind of game improvisation reminds me of one of the classic episodes of The Simpsons where the family combines pieces from the remains of various lacking games into their own improvised board game. This leads Homer to declare, “You sank my Scrabble ship!”

Enhancing the Existing

My son introduced me to video game mods, especially the world of Minecraft mods. Before that, as I tweaked the earlier versions of Snipe Hunt, I had been pondering how to modify some of the more traditional games I had played.

Monopoly particularly interested me. There are so many ways in that game draining money from players, I pondered ways to give players a bit of a break (even though this would prolong an already long game). Before diving into this blog, I dug up my notes on modding Monopoly. These helper cards were to be their own deck and are only drawn on doubles. Players could opt to take another turn, or draw a card. Here are a few of the ideas I entertained:

• Train Delay – Landing on one of the railroads, the player plays this card to pay nothing to the owner, claiming the train’s cancelation.
• Speed Train – Play this card to jump from one station to the next train station, and then pay the owner of that next station, instead.
• Natural Disaster – Play this card when landing on one of the utility spaces. The next player to land on the utility rolls the dice and received 5x the amount as a power-outage refund.
• First Month’s Free – Play this card on any one property. The next player to land on that property does not pay rent to the owner. The card stays there if the owner lands on their own property.
• Meter Maid – Each time the player with this card passes Free Parking, they receive half of the money collected there. The card is discarded when anyone lands on Free Parking.
• Certified Public Accountant – The player with this card, when landing on one of the tax spaces, receives a $100 refund instead of paying their taxes.

I do not remember all the details, but I think I decided not to take this idea any further, because I did not want Big Parker Brothers suing me and my tiny game company into oblivion for even considering a mod add-on for their cash cow. Still, I can always quietly mod my own game sessions. They probably also would not care for my suggestions for improving upon Clue.

I have encountered one game company who has a mod for chess. Steve Jackson Games released decks of cards called Knighmare Chess (LINK) to enhance a game of chess. Chess has been around much longer, and SJG has nothing to fear from Big Parker Brothers and their legions of lawyers.

Mods through Merging

Speaking of SJG, Munchkin has been a family favorite. For those who have not played this, it is a stripped down version of a role playing game into its most basic form: kick down the door, defeat the monster, loot the room. Be warned, there are many add-ons and flavors of sets, which could be a gateway drug to other RPGs.

I have been pondering merging Munchkins with another recent favorite, Dice Throne. A co-worker introduced me to this game and it is another fantastic game series to invest in. Basically, it is like combat by Yahtzee. Each set comes with unique characters, each with their own dice rolls and abilities. Any character may compete against any other character.

As I have said, I have been pondering merging the two games. Instead of Munchkin characters, play with Dice Throne characters instead. It could be played as a cooperative dungeon crawl, or as an arena game each taking hits on a line of monsters charging into the arena. The levels of the Munchkin monsters relate to the health of the dice thrones. Maybe players roll for initiative to see who faces the next challenge.

I have not worked out all the details, but it is something I am pondering. If I ever nail down the how-to for this, I will happily share via this blog.

Have you ever mixed and matched games? If so, what crazy game have you come up with? Please share in the comments below.