North Star Games

Little-Known Board Games Get Their Turn

Monday, December 5th, 2005
By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer

Emily Owens and Matt Freedman, both graduate students at University of Maryland, try out a new board game at the Holiday Game Festival in College Park. (Photos By James A. Parcell -- The Washington Post)

Wanda Chappell is a big fan of board games, and family time at her home often finds her and her two sons competing in Scrabble, Monopoly or the game version of the popular television show "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

But the two boys apparently have had their fill of those standbys; the 16-year-old seems more interested in his cell phone and the 10-year-old, his Sony PlayStation.

Yesterday, Chappell, who is determined to keep alive the weekly tradition of game night around the family table in Baltimore, came to the University of Maryland in search of cutting-edge board games that could hold the interest of the cyber generation. "We're looking for creative games, not just games you find in Toys R Us," said Chappell, who is a project manager at a medical clinic and has a 6-year-old daughter in addition to her two sons.

Chappell found plenty of innovative games on the College Park campus at the second annual Holiday Game Festival, where local inventors showed off their creations while also trying out the latest European board game imports.

The names of the games were unfamiliar to Chappell: Aquarius, Cartagena, Dry Gulch and Lost Cities. But it didn't matter. "Sometimes you just get tired of the same old games and you want to do something that'll make you think a little more," she said as she walked around a ballroom at the student union, where more than 20 tables were set up, each with a different game and instructor.

The event -- organized by local company North Star Games, the YMCA of Metropolitan Washington and the university -- drew more than 200 people, some, such as Chappell, novices to the alternative-game culture, others old hands, such as Jeanne Kramer-Smyth.

Kramer-Smyth, who is pursuing a master's degree in library science at Maryland, called herself a "gamer." Her hobby began when she played Scrabble with her parents as a child. She married a gamer. And she wants her son to become one. "It's the next generation," she said.

She's been to game conventions. She has friends over to her Silver Spring home weekly to try out games. Her game collection has taken over her bookshelves.

"We need more," her 3-year-old son, Eli, declared as he crawled on the ballroom floor.

"I created a monster," his mother said jokingly.

Dominic Crapuchettes, founder of North Star Games, said he is trying to spread the word that big manufacturers such as Mattel Inc. are not the only game producers. "We're trying to figure out a way to make people realize that there are other great games out there," he said.

Too many American board games are driven by Hollywood, he said. For example, there's the Sex and the City Trivia Game and several types of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings board games. Many of the games could be designed better, he said. He said many take too long to play and fail to allow all players to participate to the fullest.

A growing number of U.S. game designers, inspired by a European board game industry that relies more on individual designers than huge corporations, are creating alternatives. They consider their creations works of art and liken themselves to authors of books.

"We're actually not geeks," Crapuchettes said.

Crapuchettes began designing board games at 10. He went to the University of Maryland's business school to learn to turn his hobby into a career. North Star Games became a company in April 2003. Since then, he and his business partner have created two board games: Cluzzle and Wits & Wagers.

Yesterday, Chappell and her sons learned how to play Cluzzle. Each made a clay sculpture, and then the others tried to guess what it represented. The aim was to guess theirs before they guessed yours.

Chappell turned white clay into what looked like a ball. Satish Pillalamarri, co-manager of North Star Games, made a head with ears out of his red clay. It took Chappell just one round of questions to guess that it was Mickey Mouse. It took two more rounds for one of Chappell's opponents to guess that she had made a bowling ball.

Even a hands-on activity couldn't convince Chappell's 10-year-old son, Wesley, to join. He opted to entertain himself with his PlayStation. "I don't like making stuff out of clay," he said.