A long while back, I invented a board game. It wasn’t one of those games where you become a millionaire overnight (though I’m still not averse to the idea) – but it was an okay game nevertheless. Ber Kessels has kindly posted an editable version of Dugi online. Download it, print it, play it, remix it.

Somewhere there’s probably a list of things you should do in your lifetime. Number 1,743 or thereabouts is ‘invent a boardgame’. So while I haven’t composed a symphony, bungy-jumped out of a helicopter, fought an oilrig fire or seen the film ‘Titanic’, at least I can say I’ve done that one.

Nobody was going to buy it. Well, almost nobody – I hand-made and sold a few copies on order to a Dugi addict who gave it to some friends he was visiting in some far off country. He was really good at it. I can’t remember ever having beaten him. However, that was probably the extent of its retail life.

Figuring there was nothing more to do with it than simply give it away, I put it up on The Wireless in a post (erroneously, it turns out) labelled The first open source board game, and it got a little bit of notice from ‘Boing Boing‘ which, naturally, drew a lot of traffic. My stats went up by a factor of hundreds.

A lot of people came and had a look, some liked it, and as a result, there are now a few online versions you can play (here, here and here) with a number of both board and rule variations.

I still quite like it, but unsurprisingly, my family’s long been thoroughly bored of it – and I have nobody to play it against. So if you fancy a game sometime, give me a shout. Having said that, it’s worth noting that I may have designed it – but that doesn’t mean I’m any good.

As far as play goes, the rules are dead simple. It’s strategic and you need to keep your eye on a few things at once, but it’s just black counters and white counters – and you try and capture the other person’s pieces. It can take anything between a pint of Guinness and two pints to finish a game. A slow game’s a good game.

Now, thanks to Ber, there’s a version at Remix Commons that will hopefully spread Dugi farther and wider. He says ‘watch it get remixed’ – so I think I’ll do just that.

Once I made a figure-8 version of the board that made it last more beers, and that had its own special appeal. Maybe someone will come up with a 3-D variation.

Give the gift of free. Download it, print it, and give it to someone you care about almost enough to spend actual money.

Links:
Remix Commons
Creative Commons
Free Culture

Tags: game, Creative Commons, Remix

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