‘Non-linear’ game tours city landmarks
Around these parts, the term BYOB takes on a new meaning: Build Your Own Beacon.
At the moment, it’s a card game wrapped in a complex, ambiguous concept that could tax the minds of people versed in the immutable rules of poker, bridge or gin rummy.
According to creator Chris Sanders, “it’s a non-linear board game played with cards. The rules are flexible. No two rounds will ever be alike, and you can play it how you want.”
Sanders released a 25-card starter deck on Nov. 15 and at least two add-ons are coming, along with a five-panel board featuring 3-D game pieces and dials at each station that deliver prompts.
She offers one, with a touch of sarcasm: “The New York Times publishes an article about how cool Beacon is, and everybody gets a game piece because here come the good times.”
Sanders, an animator, scientific illustrator and textile and visual artist for film and television, designed the cards last year to showcase something new for Beacon Open Studios.
She sought advice from her friend’s son, Eoin Williams, 12. “He told me that they could be used for a deck-building game, like Magic: The Gathering, where each player builds a deck that gets more complicated as it accommodates more players’ cards,” she says. In the same way, BYOB can be played with multiple decks, “so the game gets richer and becomes a full idea that never ends.”
Sanders and Eoin (pronounced Owen), aimed to combine elements of The Game of Life (1960) played on a 3-D board; Sim City (now The Sims), a video game that first focused on building infrastructure; and Yu-Gi-Oh!, perhaps the most popular card game ever created.
Now that the card design is complete, the goal is to structure ways to use them and convey the concept to others with clarity, Sanders says.
“No one knows how to play [the card game] Pokémon,” says Eoin. “We just make it up.”
For Sanders, Eoin has been instrumental in the game’s development: “He’s a smart problem-solver who asks, ‘What about this?’ ‘Where does that go?’ or ‘How do we get to the end?’ ”
The images on the cards look like architectural drawings and the logo printed on the verso shows a transmitter protruding from the peak of Mount Beacon.
Other obscure categories group the city’s history into nicknames for four neighborhoods — River Rats, Ridge Runners, Mountaineers and Swamp Angels. “I saw pictures of people in a canoe,” Sanders says. She figures the swamp — located behind what is now Rite Aid on Main Street — got drained before the Works Progress Administration completed the post office in 1937.
The fine print on some cards conveys inside jokes, like the statement accompanying the Bicycle Christmas Tree card: “Check with the transfer station for components.” The microscopic font on Pete Seeger’s banjo reads, “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
Sanders’s dummy light card includes the comment “No Yarn Ever,” with an arrow pointing to the concrete base, a reference to the Yarn Bombing of 2015. Are those googly eyes on the edifice?
On another card, a chicken is described as a “breakfast dispensary.” A dozen artisanal eggs “equals valid currency, way better than zucchini.” Chicken coops “may be simple or ridiculous,” as needed.
Though Sanders can be sardonic, she adopted the lighthearted approach with purpose. “I want it to be enjoyable on many levels, so that 5-year-olds to 50-year-olds to grannies can make it fun,” she explains. “But there’s still some editing, honing, perfecting and morphing.”
The Build Your Own Beacon starter kit is $25 at agoutistudios.com.
