Author Archives: gmdirect

Ways to Choose Who Goes First in a Board Game (Part 1)

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Every tabletop game starts somewhere. Once the box is opened, the pieces distributed, and the board set up, all that’s left is figuring out who goes first.

There are a few traditional ways to sort this out. Sometimes, the oldest person at the table goes first, showing the younger players how to proceed. Sometimes, the youngest player goes first, getting a chance to dive right in. Sometimes, a simple roll of the dice or a few rounds of rock-paper-scissors determines who goes first.

But there are plenty of board games that have their own idea of how to start.

So please join me on a deep dive into the many, many, MANY ways you can choose who goes first in a board game!

Birthdays are a frequent topic when it comes to choosing the first player.

It can be whose birthday is closest to a given date, like in Duck Dealer, where the player born closest to November 24, 1967 begins, or in Agatha Christie: Death on the Cards, where the player whose birthday is closest to Agatha Christie’s begins.

Closest to The Year of the Rat (Fruits Basket: Friends of the Zodiac), February 12th (Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot), or the next equinox (Equinox) all come to mind. In The Stars Are Right, it’s the player whose birthday is next, while in the card game Quixx, it’s the player whose birthday is furthest from the day you play.

Many games determine who goes first by physical characteristics.

In Takenoko, it’s the tallest player. In Guillotine, the player with the longest neck. In Titus Tentacle, the longest arms. In Small World, the person whose ears are most pointed. In Pyramix, the person with the most triangular nose.

The longest hair, the largest shoes, the hairiest, the smallest, the huskiest voice… these are all on the table.

In the cat-themed Hot Tin Roof, it’s the player with the longest whiskers. And if there’s a tie, it’s the person whose breath smells the most like fish. (That one might cause a fight, honestly.)

Other games rely on something more conditional, something that could change from game session to game session.

Who is the hungriest or thirstiest, when the game’s gimmick centers around food. In Roll to the South Pole, it’s whomever has the coldest nose. In Snowblind: Race for the Pole, it’s the player with the coldest hands begins. In the Rick and Morty: The Ricks Must Be Crazy Multiverse Game, the player with the lowest cellphone battery begins.

Or it’s based on the last time you did something related to the game.

Please make sure your sheep consent to caressing before you proceed…

In Sheepland, it’s the player who most recently caressed a sheep. Yes, they use the word “caress” specifically. In Steam Works, it’s the player who most recently built something.

In The Lady and the Tiger, it’s the person who last opened a door. In Golems, it’s the last player who built a snowman. In Flip City, it’s the last player to have flipped a table. (So the person who most recently played Monopoly, I’d bet.)

Who last went hiking, or helped someone, or last petted an animal. Who last visited a museum, watered a plant, read a book, fed a duck, dug a hole, made tea, drank tea, rode a train. Who most recently experienced deja vu, who woke up earliest, who woke up latest. (Each one of these examples showed up multiple times in my research!)

A lot of them involve choices or actions, but some games use a starting criteria that’s out of your control.

In ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo, it’s the player who most recently had a cat hiss at them. In Let’s Make a Bus Route, it’s the player who recently spent the longest time as a bus passenger.

Were you the person who most recently saw a firefly (Smile), or a full moon (Catch the Moon), or a shooting star (Astra)? Maybe you were the person most recently burnt by the Sun (Solar Storm).

In Copper Country, the player with the oldest penny begins. In Good Cop Bad Cop, the player who was most recently shot (!) begins. (Apparently, it can be in a game or real life.)

A lot of board games have location-specific starting hooks. Often it’s which player has been to the game’s setting most recently.

(At least in Merkator, if you haven’t been to Hamburg, it can instead be the player who most recently ate a hamburger.)

This is especially common with water-based settings. Who lives closest to water (Le Havre), who was most recently on an island (Forbidden Island), or has been deepest in the sea (Nautilus). Builders of R’lyeh gets very specific about this, asking for the player who has been the closest to 47°9′S 126°43′W / 47.15°S 126.717°W in the southern Pacific Ocean.

In Iceberg, it’s the player who most recently was at the South Pole is the start player. (If none was there, the player who got closest starts.) Contrary to Iceberg, in Nanuk, the starting player in this game is whoever has been the furthest north!

Were you the last person to stand on a balcony (Council of Verona) or the last person to travel to a place with less than 100 inhabitants (Boonlake)? That one sounds exotic, until you remember traveling to your home, which hopefully has fewer than 100 inhabitants.

In a nice reversal of this trope, the game Coney Island states that the player who has NOT been to an amusement park for the longest period of time begins.

As you can plainly see, fellow tabletopper, these starting criteria can get very specific. How specific? Well, check out some of these Who Starts prompts:

  • The Voting Game: The player who most recently called their mother begins.
  • Tawantinsuyu: The Inca Empire: The last player to harvest a vegetable begins.
  • Valentine’s Day: The last player to have been pricked by a thorn begins.
  • Mech A Dream: The player who has most recently dreamt of robots begins.
  • Wakanda: The player who last uttered a war cry begins.

These last two deserve their own spotlight for different reasons.

In Tales & Games: The Pied Piper, the player who last saw rats in a bathtub begins. We’ve all been there, amirite?

In Cascadia, the player who most recently saw a bear, elk, salmon, hawk or fox begins. (I love how many options Cascadia allows for!)

Of course, hardcore board game fans know the rules of their favorite games. With some games and their Who Starts rules, this means a devious host might be able to rig who goes first in their favor.

In Railroad Dice, the player who owns the most railroad games begins. Unless you’re in a model train club, odds are the same person will start every time here.

Sucking Vacuum is among the games where the player who owns the game begins. I can see this being a groanworthy moment when trying to decide what game to play, and someone keeps pushing for the game where THEY get to start, heh.

A little bit of foreknowledge comes in handy with these games as well:

  • Antics!: The player who has carried the heaviest item today (stomachs do not count) begins.
  • Dragon Farkle: The player who brought the most snacks begins.
  • Legacy: Gears of Time: The player whose watch is currently set the furthest back in time begins.
  • Step to it: The player with the most colorful socks begins.
  • TacTile: The player with the most colors on their shirt begins.
  • Welcome to Sysifus Corp: The player with the lowest amount of unread emails begins.
  • Plague Inc.: The player who washed their hands most recently begins.
  • The Nacho Incident: The player who has the most interesting thing in their pocket begins.

At least with Dragon Farkle‘s rules, you’re guaranteed snacks!

I’d originally intended for this to be a one-post topic, but the field was so overloaded with noteworthy examples that I’ll be continuing this topic both tomorrow AND Thursday, so be sure to come back for more board game-specific fun later this week!

Do you have any favorite Who Starts rules for board games? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

A Puzzle in Honor of Claudette Colvin

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Claudette Colvin passed away this week.

On March 2nd, 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat. This was nine months before Rosa Parks would become synonymous with the civil rights movement, sparking the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the United States.

Claudette is part of a proud history of defiance and resistance, but was unfairly pushed aside by black leaders for being unmarried and pregnant during her defiant act, making her a less desirable public image for the civil rights movement.

When asked about her actions and how Rosa Parks was chosen over her as the face of the boycott, she said:

I feel very, very proud of what I did. I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on… I’m not disappointed. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation.

I wrote this puzzle a few years ago during my Eyes Open series. I constructed it in honor of the sixty-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott. I wanted to highlight Parks, Colvin, and Pauli Murray, another woman who refused to be treated like a second-class citizen on a segregated bus.

I hope this puzzle serves to both engage you as a solver and encourage you to learn more about these events and those names that are often overshadowed or cast aside by history.

[Click this link to download a PDF of this puzzle.]

A Rubik Kerfuffle on World Logic Day?

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Yesterday was World Logic Day, a holiday that I must confess I didn’t realize was a holiday until yesterday.

It was started by UNESCO in 2019 as a way to get people invested in logical concepts and their practical applications to the world at large, celebrating humanity’s great successes through reason, knowledge, and logic.

Of course, as a puzzle guy, I’m all for a celebration of logic. I could’ve marked the day with a discussion of different logic puzzles, highlighting the marvelous human ability to make deductions from limited information and snatch unexpected revelations from a few simple clues or facts.

And maybe I will do that in the future.

But today, instead, I have a minor grievance to share.

The built-in search bar for Microsoft had this little logo there for days. I didn’t notice because, honestly, I never use that search bar. But I happened to spot the Rubik’s cube yesterday and I was very confused.

Green, orange, white, yellow, dark pink, light pink, dark blue, light blue…

This cube has too many colors!

So naturally, I went onto Reddit to see if I was the only one with the same complaint, and I wasn’t. There was a lively discussion about the viability of this Rubik’s cube.

Many commenters pointed out that the colors are probably the result of shading to create the three-dimensional effect. Several even proved the pattern was legitimate by posting their own Rubik’s Cubes to match. (Although at least one was a tongue-in-cheek posting of a cube with the stickers moved and reattached.)

The cube appears to be modeled on the World Logic Day logo from 2024, based on the color choices, but the shadow effect really makes it look like a child had a coloring book page with a blank cube and just scribbled in it willy-nilly.

So maybe, in the future, on World Logic Day of all days, we could avoid making one of the most recognizable puzzles on the planet look weird?

UNLESS.

gasp

Unless it was intentional.

Unless this was all a master plan to raise awareness of World Logic Day by provoking neurodivergent thinkers with an image practically guaranteed to annoy them, thereby causing them to click on the image, driving more attention to World Logic Day!

DIABOLICAL.

I fell right into their trap.

And now, you have too.

Happy Belated World Logic Day, fellow puzzlers!

A Look at Ambigrams in Honor of John Langdon

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Symmetry is nothing new to puzzle enthusiasts.

After all, diagonal symmetry is one of the fundamental rules of crossword grid design. (Along with the occasional example of vertical symmetry.)

Puzzlers are used to linguistic symmetry as well. A well-constructed palindrome, the same message reading forward and backward, has delighted and challenged many a puzzly mind. Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.

Ambigrams scratch the same itch, combining artistic flourish with clever letter placement to create a message with rotational symmetry, allowing you to rotate the image 180 degrees and see the same message.

The curious thing about ambigrams that they feel ancient, like an artistic work steeped in history from centuries past, but in reality, they’ve only been around since the 1970s! (The term itself was coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1984.)

The four elements as a single ambigram.

The creation of Philadelphia painter, writer, professor, and graphic designer John Langdon, he always envisioned his ambigrams as a visual presentation of words intended to present a familiar concept in an unfamiliar way.

In an interview in 2006 with Newswise.com, he said, “In the early ’70s, I tried to do with words what Dali and Escher did with images.”

Most famously, he created several ambigrams for Dan Brown’s book Angels & Demons, adding a mystical aura to Robert Langdon’s adventures involving the church and the Illuminati.

Oh, yeah, you noticed that, did you? Yes, the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code and several other bestselling works is named after John Langdon.

In an interview, Brown shared the story of his father, a math teacher, showing him Langdon’s book Wordplay, and he was instantly hooked. “John’s art changed the way I think about symmetry, symbols, and art.”

We sadly lost John earlier this year at the age of 79, but his lasting influence in the world of wordplay is alive and well, not only with his literary legacy and namesake, but in the work of other ambigram artists.

The YouTube channel Write Words – Make Magic has gone viral over the last few years by creating ambigrams for viewers’ names, as well as other cultural touchstones, and it’s absolutely worth a watch. They happily show off their techniques for creating ambigrams, and it’s a true delight.

Ambigrams, and Langdon’s art in general, are all about revisiting one’s perspective. “Ambiguity makes people uncomfortable. But the lesson of Taoism is that if you have only one vantage point, you’re not seeing the truth.”

Puzzles are often about viewing things from another angle. Wordplay, punnery, manipulating language to surprise and playfully mislead… these are hallmarks of crosswords and crossword cluing.

A “very strong sense of legibility but also a marvelous sense of esthetics, flow, and elegance.” This could easily describe a great crossword puzzle, but it’s actually Douglas Hofstadter’s description of John Langdon and his work.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Insight and wordplay, lurking within the symmetry.

If you just know how to look for it.

Do you have any favorite palindromes, ambigrams, or examples of symmetrical puzzling, fellow reader? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

Happy puzzling!

Farewell, Tim. Farewell, Steve.

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Sadly, the start of 2026 has been a rough one for the games industry, as we lost two influential voices in the span of a few days.

Please join me as I take a few moments to honor the lives and contributions of Tim Kask and Steve Dee.

On December 30th, we said goodbye to Tim Kask.

When you think of the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, there are names like Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson that many roleplaying fans probably know. But Tim Kask’s name belongs in the same conversation as those renowned voices.

Tim was hired as an editor for Tactical Studies Rules (aka TSR, the founding company of D&D) by Gygax himself, making him the first full-time employee of the company. He was already a fan of Gygax’s game Chainmail and was one of the playtesters of “The Fantasy Game” (the game that would eventually become Dungeons & Dragons).

And his fingerprints are all over the world’s most famous roleplaying game.

He edited and contributed to Blackmoor, one of the earliest supplemental books for D&D, adding rules, playable classes, and the first published adventure, The Temple of the Frog. Additional supplements like Swords & Spells, Eldritch Wizardry, and Gods, Demigods, and Heroes were also shepherded by Kask’s capable hands.

The first thirty or so issues of Dragon Magazine — formerly The Strategic Review, and then The Dragon, before settling on the name known by most fans — were part of Kask’s ongoing projects for the company as well. It remained one of the premiere D&D-focused magazines for years, and copies of Dragon Magazine are still treasured in RPG collections to this day.

Tim hired influential voices like Kim Mohan, and granted a license to Jennell Jaquays to publish her own D&D fanzine The Dungeoneer, adding new adventures for players to enjoy. (Jacquays would soon revolutionize the concept of the dungeon crawl with her multi-path dynamic dungeons, replacing the linear corridors and encounters that had defined the concept until that point.)

He was one of the first people to call the hobby “role-playing.” Magic Missile automatically hits its target because of Kask. And the Sword of Kas, one of the most legendary weapons in all of D&D, is named after him.

Kask resigned from the company in 1980, displeased with the direction of the game, but he continued to contribute to the games industry by starting magazines, making appearances at Gen Con, writing for The Crusader and Gygax Magazine, and founding game company Eldritch Enterprises. His YouTube channel, Curmudgeon in the Cellar, is a favorite of many gamers and roleplayers.

Fans remember him as straightforward, grumpy, and very very funny, happy to share his knowledge and opinions on the game he helped bring to prominence.

Thank you for everything, Tim.

Only a few days later, on January 2nd, we lost Steve Dee as well.

Steve Darlington, better known to board game enthusiasts as Steve Dee, was president of Tin Star Games, an Australian gaming company dedicated to story-driven play and creative expression. Their motto was simple:

We make games. They tell stories.

His games are endlessly repeatable player-driven fun. You’ve probably heard of his most famous creation, There’s Been a Murder (which was on our Halloween game countdown).

But I want to highlight some of his other games that haven’t received as much of the spotlight. There’s Partners, a two-player game that lets you explore the classic TV crime-solving dynamic of the straight-shooter and their wildcard partner.

There’s also The Score, a simple 18-card game that lets you tell the story of the greatest heist movie ever (at least the greatest heist movie not involving bears).

But he was far more than a mere game designer.

Steve was a huge believer in jams: events where you create something in a limited time, marrying creativity with challenge. He participated in 48-hour jams to create 3-minute short films. He hosted jams and panels at cons, teaching people how to make board games in 2 or 3 hours.

He even hosted a challenge where fans yelled roleplaying game ideas at him and he would turn them into a playable game in just one hour!

Steve’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove of hard-won experience and boundless support for gamers and game designers, shining a light on many of the difficulties of running a small game company in the modern day. His videos are loaded with personality, and his unwavering sincerity shines through in every one.

Described by friends and admirers as humble and helpful, generous and inspiring, Steve was happy to help others with advice, guidance, and encouragement. The number of anecdotes across Facebook and gaming sites was truly overwhelming, mentioning kind words, workshops, impromptu lunch-time feedback sessions, and more.

And it’s so very fitting that his last Patreon post was titled something that fit Steve’s mantra and spirit so perfectly: Just do something.

Please let me conclude this tribute with Steve’s own inspiring words…

In times of crisis, heroism often fails; great efforts come to nothing and the casual or cruel can grant salvation. However, the smallest things can still be incredibly powerful and resonate to eternity. You matter, and if you show up, you can change your fate, or someone else’s. And that is everything.

Thank you for everything, Steve.

Film and TV Moments That FEEL Like D&D!

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Stranger Things has come to its epic conclusion (planned follow-up shows aside), and it has absolutely made an impact on pop culture.

Part of the show’s lasting legacy is introducing people to roleplaying games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons. Yes, shows like Freaks and Geeks and Community got there first, not to mention the sitcom juggernaut The Big Bang Theory, but I don’t know that any of them made the experience as accessible to new viewers as Stranger Things did.

Heck, there’s been two different Stranger Things/D&D starter packs to bring those new players into the fold!

And it got me thinking about D&D moments in movies and television shows.

Not moments that mention D&D or its lore or show gameplay or anything like that. I mean moments that FEEL like someone playing D&D.

There are certain moments in pop culture that feel like a D&D solution to a problem, as if this exact scenario appeared in a D&D game and this was the solution devised by the players.

It’s hard to define exactly what makes a scene in TV or cinema FEEL like a D&D moment. Sure, you can pick any buckwild action movie like Crank or Shoot ‘Em Up or Hardcore Henry or Mad Max: Fury Road, but for all the big setpieces and chaotic energy in those films, they don’t necessarily FEEL like a D&D game.

But these scenes definitely do.

It’s only natural to start with a scene from Stranger Things. In season 4, the heroes infiltrate the Upside Down to stop Vecna and try to rescue Max, but they need a distraction.

So, naturally, Eddie performs a wicked guitar solo and blasts metal music to distract the bat creatures and help Steve, Robin, and Nancy get closer.

This feels like such a D&D move for a bard to do, performing a badass yet ridiculously out-of-place musical number in order to help the party.

In the dead zone between the films Pitch Black and 2013’s Riddick, there was the film Chronicles of Riddick, detailing Vin Diesel’s antihero adventures after the events of Pitch Black.

In the film, we’re told this prison planet is so scorchingly hot that it’s uninhabitable, and you’re surely die within moments.

So naturally Vin Diesel’s character dumps a bottle of water over his back and swings into a canyon through the direct sunlight, and the water saves him. It feels like such a D&D player solution to the problem.

Viewer warning: language.

A ridiculous big-swing attack is also a D&D hallmark, so there’s a scene from The Boondock Saints that comes to mind.

In this film, two brothers become vigilantes and begin hunting down criminals. When several mobsters show up after the brothers got the better of them in a bar fight, Connor is handcuffed to a toilet while the thugs drag off Murphy.

So, as you might expect, Connor rips the toilet out of the floor, then carries it to the rooftop, dropping the toilet and then leaping, still handcuffed, onto the thugs, saving his brother.

There has never ever been a game of D&D without at least one player throwing themselves off a high thing and leaping onto the bad guys, gravity be damned. It’s a classic trope.

I reached out to several of my fellow roleplayers for suggestions of other scenes that feel like D&D, and they had two excellent recommendations.

The first is this hilarious sequence from Three Amigos!, where our heroes (?) meet the Singing Bush and encounter the Invisible Swordsman.

It goes so perfectly wrong, and every player has seen a quest go pear-shaped in similar fashion.

There are a lot of scenes from Galaxy Quest that could fit the bill, given that you have a bunch of actors pretending they’re characters from a Star Trek-like sci-fi show.

My friend Troy recommended the scene where Commander Taggart and Dr. Lazarus pretend they’re fighting (like their characters did in an episode) in order to distract the guards and ambush them. They do an awful job, but the ruse still succeeds.

But I think my favorite is the rock monster scene shown above. The panic, the fumbling around for a solution… it’s all so D&D.

So, fellow players, do you have any favorite scenes from film and TV that FEEL like D&D play, either in execution or silliness? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!