Best Results Organizing

Allstate Insurance runs a commercial where the deep baritone of Dennis Haysbert (yes, the former president on 24) intones, “In the last year, we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned that meatloaf and Jenga can be more fun than reservations and box seats, and who’s around your TV is more important than how big it is…”

Sure, he’s selling insurance, but Dennis is not entirely wrong about Jenga, or games in general. Media outlets have noted that millennials are driving a revival in board games. Throughout the country – indeed, the world, board game clubs like GRAB, the Grand Rapids Area Board Gamers, are on the rise, and game nights are popping up in living rooms, bookstores and coffee houses around the country. There are even Play-a-Thons, game-playing events for raising charitable donations. Playing games with family, old friends, and new contacts who want to join you in conquering Risk’s Oceana can be an inexpensive diversion.

The Games

So maybe you’ve decided to dig out those beloved games. The older they are, the more likely the boxes have crumbled. Safeguarding games and game pieces isn’t difficult. Zip-type plastic baggies can house game cards, tokens, and faux currency and make it easy to see what you have at a glance. For a less D-I-Y approach to keeping things together, there are nifty and durable blue, orange and purple Game Savers boxes to save the day (or at least the game).

The structural integrity of my own family’s Scrabble set, circa 1954, which resides at my sister’s home, gave out a while ago. The tiles are corralled in a lovely Crown Royal bag.

The cracked and lid with the fading rules and all of the requisite pieces, is housed in a drawstring linen handbag cover. The wooden letter tiles, and maybe even the game board, might last anothehalf-century. The instructions? Not so much!

In the past, we’ve found online solutions for misplaced appliance manuals, so it seemed likely there would be some good online options to help game lovers, as well.

The Rules

If you’ve lost your board game rules and other game instructions, or if you’ve been dithering over whether to toss old coffee-stained rules with lime green Play-Doh ground into the stapled crevices, it’s good to know there are 21st-century alternatives for resuscitating mid-20th-century games:

Hasbro maintains an alphabetical (though not easily searchable) database of over eleven thousand downloadable rules for toys and games standard-bearers like those of Milton-Bradley and Parker Brothers, as well as newer members of their game family.

Hasbro’s customer service section not only covers game rules and instructions, but information on recalls as well as order forms for replacement parts for everything from Ants in the Pants to all the variations of Yahtzee. Did you know there was a Yahtzee Deluxe, Toy Story and Spiderman versions of Yahtzee, and even Yahtzee Texas Hold ‘Em? Similarly, you can find PDF rules for about 80 different versions of Monopoly, from the 1935 classic, to French and Spanish language versions, to Star Wars and Spongebob editions.

Mattel, otherwise known as the House that Barbie Built, is a repository for many of your favorite games that haven’t come under the Hasbro umbrella. While their huge database is overwhelmingly given over to dolls, action figures and toys, you can still download the instructions for all their games, including card-based UNO (in its various incarnations), Apples-to-Apples and Skip Bo, as well as the Othello-like Reversi.

 
Board Game Capital is an excellent source for over 100 games. The links connect to a panoply of rules, ranging from traditional games like checkers and chess, to historically popular board games like Monopoly and Scrabble, Payday and Life, Stratego and Risk. There are modern favorites like Trivial Pursuit and Cranium, children’s classics, like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, and even board games based on television shows, like CSI and Friends.

Non-board games also share space in the collection, so if you’ve been dying to prove your spouse has been bending the rules to Balderdash or Battleship, Othello or Uno, Connect 4 or Jenga, here’s your chance to set the record straight.

  
 

 
LoveToKnow offers rules and background information for board game novices, veterans and even collectors. Their database divides games into categories for searching by type, in case you remember the general gist of a game, but not the name. For example, you’ll find strategy board games (Stratego, Mastermind), abstract strategy games (Mancala, Crokinole) and even adult-themed games (but please don’t blame Paper Doll if you get injured playing Naked Twister or are overserved playing a version of Monopoly that replaces real estate with alcohol).

The Spruce Crafts has a massive section of the website devoted to a mega-blog of posts on popular board game rules and strategies. Monopoly or Mancala, Crokinole or card games, you’re sure to find something to pique your interest in becoming a better gamer.

 
Fundex is another option for game rules and instructions, with a database of PDF rules for some of the wackier three-dimensional games, like Gnip Gnop, as well as traditional games like Tiddly Winks, Hangman and Pickup Sticks (who knew Pickup Sticks had rules?), and even Spanish language games like El Chavo Loteria.

The Versions

Sometimes, missing rules aren’t the problem, but missing, or at least conflicting, memories of the rules of the game. Recently, a friend bought her nieces the newest version of Clue, a game she and her sister loved as a child. As she began regaling her nieces with the rules, she realized that the instructions printed with the game set varied widely from the procedures she recalled. No, her memory wasn’t faulty. Clue (originally Cluedo in its 1948 UK debut) recently got a makeover as reported on NPR: new rules, new weapons, and a first name for Miss Scarlett! (Colonel Mustard would be shocked, I’m sure!)

Many board game companies update the rules periodically, whether to provide alternate forms of enjoyment or to speed completion of the game to maintain player interest (which, if you’ve ever spent hours in Monopoly’s version of Atlantic City, you’ll probably appreciate). So, the online versions don’t just provide the rules, but often the historic versions of the rules. For example, with some deep downward scrolling at Board Game Capital, you can find original Scrabble rules, as well as various classic and speed die rules. So, before one of your players throws down a challenge to another’s gamesmanship, do not pass Go and do not collect $200; make sure everyone is playing by the same version of the rules.

Bonus Points

For those of you who can’t get enough of board games, you might also like to meander through the following:

The Game Cabinet is a low-tech hobbyist hideout mixing the old-timey (Parcheesi, jacks and marbles), modern classics (Life), non-board 3-D games (Battleship) and the bizarre (Kids of Catan, O’NO99). Scroll down to the bottom and get lost in the options.

Drumond Park is the UK’s leading game company, carrying adult and children’s titles. If you’re an expat or just a fan of UK games like Articulate, Rapid Dough, Pig Goes Pop or The Logo Board Game, Drumond Park has the rules online.

Board Game Geek has an extensive wiki (i.e., a collaboratively created informative site) of rules for board-style, electronic and other games in English, German, Dutch, French and other languages. To locate the rules, click on your preferred language in the Links column (rather than the name in the Game column). Board Game Geek is also a rich source of forums and discussion on various North American and European game topics.

House Rules

Once you’ve printed out the rules for your favorite games, be sure to keep them with the associated game’s paraphernalia to avoid having to go through this search all over again. Real game aficionados (or parents of sticky-handed tots) may even want to slide each rule page into a plastic sheet protector, or upload the rules directly to Evernote with each game document tagged as “board game” to allow for easy access.

And if your family has developed some interesting or wacky “house rules” for playing a favorite game, take time to commit them to paper or a digital archive so that future generations will know how and why you played it that way. 

Let the games begin!