Board Game The present invention relates to board games and the like.
Board games are well known in which there is B plurality of spaces forming a path along which the players have to move respective tokens. The path may be a single continuous path or it may be branched. The movement of the tokens may be controlled by the throw of dice. However, the game presents an additional interest and challenge if the movement of the tokens is also controlled by the players' success in answering questions on cards drawn from a pack.
The possible field for such questions is vast, but the questions are necessurily written and the answers ere also written.
A major object of the present invention is to provide a game in which the questions are not confined to being written.
According]y the present invention provide, a gdme comprising a board wit a plurality of spaces forming a path thereon, a set of tokens movable over the puth by the players, a record medium on which are recorded information packets in audio and/or video form and playable by an audio and/or video player device, and a pack of cards each having a code identifying a corresponding information picket and answers to one or more questions relating to that information packet.
Ttk questions may be carried on the cards, or may be the same for all information packets. The game may be played using d conventional player device, or a special player device for the record medium may form part of the game.
The record medium and the player device.rer.preferably rr nged to cooperate in permitting the information packets to be accessed randomly or semirandomly. For this, a compact disc and a player for it are desirable if the information packets are recorded in audio form. Such players normally have track locating facilities which enable random accessing of tracks; some also have track indexing facilities which enable random accessing of sectors in tracks.
Preferably, each track is divided into several sectors, and d die is used having numbers corresponding to the possible sectors. Each answer card preferably has a track identifier on its back and has its face divides into a number of portions corresponding to the number of sectors, each portion having information relating to the information packet in the corresponding track and sector.
Preferably the path on the board is formed by a plurality of spaces arranged in concentric loops such that the players can move their tokens from space to space in individual loops, with selected spaces in adjacent loops being interconnected by gates such that players can move their tokens from one loop to the next only through a gate. (Obviously, a player can only move through a gate if his move or sub-move starts on a space with that gate.)Preferably also there are packs of chance and hype cards, and a suitable proportion of the spaces on the board are distinguished as chance and/or hype spaces.
Further significant aspects of the invention will become apparent from the following description of a game in accordance with the invent ion, given hy way of example only, and with reference to the drawings, in which: Fig. 1 shows diagrammatically the main components of the game;Fig. 1A shows some of the smaller components, much enlarged; andFig. 2 shows in more detail the layout of the board for the game.
Referring to Fig. 1, the game is played on a board 10, on which a number of other components are placed. Also required for playing the game is a compact disc player ii and loudspeaker 12, and a compact disc (not shown). The board has a path layout 13 at its left-hand end, and the other components are. shown arranged on its tight-hand end. (Obviously these components can be placed for example on a table, with the board itself bearing only the path layout 13.)The game components on the board are as follows. There are two dice 14A and 14B and s cup 15 for throwing random numbers; there is a box 16 containing tokens (not shown in Fig. 1); and there are 3 packs of cards - chance cards 17, answer cards 18, and hype cards 19. All cards are normally kept face down.
The die 14A is an index die used for question selection, and preferably gives random numbers between 1 and 4 with equal frequency; a convenient shape for this die is a tetrahedron, bn octahedron, or a dodecahedron (either regular or rhombic), so that the numbers 1 to 4 can each be placed on the same number of sides. The die 14B is a move die used to determine how many spaces to move a token, and is preferably a standard cubic die giving random numbers between 1 and 6 with equal frequency. The tokens, as indicated in 'Fig. 1A, consist of a set of pieces such as piece 21, and a set of discs such as 22 which fit onto the pieces. The pieces are distinctively coloured with a different colour for each player.The discs are also distinctively coloured to correspond with the colours of the loops of the path layout, as discussed later; for each loop and colour, there are as many discs as there are tokens for the players.
The board layout 13 is shown in detail in Fig. 2. The spaces are arranged in 6 concentric loops or circles 25 to 30. The outermost loop 30 has 30 spaces 30A, 30B, 30C, etc; the loops 29 to 26 have 24, 18, 12, and 6 spaces respectively as shown; and the innermost "loop", loop 25, has a single space forming the centre of the layout. The loops are coloured with distinctive colours, matching the colours of the discs forming parts of the tokens,The spaces in each loop are contiguous, being divided from each other by thin lines only.Successive loops are divided from each other by walls :35, but between successive loops, there are a few gates 36 in the walls, arranged at generally random intervals, so that-the two spaces on each side of a gate, one in edch loop, are contiguous and separated by a thin line only. Preferably the number of gates in a wall is roughly 15% of the total number of spaces in the two loops separated by the wall. In addition, certain spaces 37 are marked distinctively, e,g. by shading, by having their colour brighter or darker than the colour of the rest of the loops they are in, or by having some form of icon or picture printed in them; these spaces are termed "hype" spaces. Certain other spaces 38 are also marked distinctively, these being termed "chance" spaces.
In the present example, it is assumed that the game relates to popular music. The compact disc forming part of the game has a large number of informat ton packets recorded on it, each in the form of a short extract from a popular piece of music. For each such piece, there are three possible questions, which may be summarized as Title, Artist, and Year. (The precise form of the questions may vary slightly; for example, the Artist question may ask for the first artist to perform the work, or the artist who performed it when it first reached a high place in the hit parade.) Each piece can be located for playing by means of a track number and an index/sector number in the track; there are four index/sector numbers per track, corresponding to the four numbers on the face of the die 14A.
Each of the chance cards of pack 17 has a blank back and has one or more of the questions on its face; the questions may be set in abbreviated form, e.g.
"Title and year?".
Each of the answer cards of pack 18 has a track code on its back, e.g.
"Track 06". The face of each answer card has 4 sections, corresponding to the four sectors for each track. In each section, the answers to the three questions for the corresponding piece of music are given, i.e. the title, artist, and year of the piece.
To play the game, the general object of each player is to move his or her token out from the centre loop 25 through the surrounding loops to the outermost loop 30, and then back inwards to the centre loop again. On the inward journey, each time a player moves into a new loop, he or she adds a disc of the appropriate colour to the token, so that it is immediately obvious which way the player is trying to move. (It is possible for a player to have to move back outwards again while trying to move inwards; if that happens, the top disc is taken off the token.) The first to return to the centre loop 25 is the winner.
(Alternatively, the player may be required to draw a card on reaching the centre loop.)Each move consists of one or more sub-moves, each sub-move being around a single loop in the clockwise direction. The players play in sequence, and when it is a player's turn, he or she throws the move die 14B to determine how many spaces to move on the first sub-move of the turn. If the sub-move takes the token to a gate space, the top card is drawn from the pack 18.The code number on the card is used to select the corresponding piece from the compact disc, and this is played. (A neutral person may operate the compact disc player 11.)The player listens to it and then attempts to answer a question relating to that piece, and the answer card is then returned to the bottom of the pack 18. A correct answer allows the player to pass through the gate to the next loop, and continue the turn with another sub-move.
On the outward journey, the player has only to answer any one of the three types of question. On the inward journey, the player must answer the questions set by a chance card. If the player has acquired any chance cards, he or she may choose any of those chance cards; if he or she has no chance cards, or chooses not to use one of them, the top chance card must be taken from the pack 17 and answered. The turn ends if the appropriate question or questions cannot be answered. If the gate leads the "right" way (e.g. outwards while the player is trying to move outwards) and the question is answered, the token is moved to the next ring and the turn continues; if the gate leads the "wrong!' way and the question is not answered, the token is moved back through that gate.
The other three kinds of space on which a sub-move can end are a blank space, a hype space, or a chance space. If the player lands on a hype space, he or she takes a hype card. If he or she lands on a chance space, he or she may either take a chance card from the top of the pack or return a chance card to the pack. Landing on any of these types of space ends the turn.
If a player has a hype card, then if he or she answers a question correctly, they can use that card to move the token directly to the next gate space leading in the right direction. The index die 14A must be thrown, to select the sector for the piece (musical extract) to be played.
The rules for a player's first turn may be modified slightly, so that the player throws the index die 14A to select a sector on the track, as there is obviously no move of the token in the innermost loop 25. Alternatively, the player can start by throwing the index die 14A and moving out of the innermost lop arid round the next loop 26 by the appropriate number of spaces.
It is also desirable to have special rules when a player returns to the centre loop 25, so that a player must use up any unplayed chance cards. .. The player may also be required to answer a "final question" by giving all three answers for the last piece selected.
If desired, the players may have to tackle the questions associated with the loop colours on their outward journey, but be allowed to choose any one of the three questions on the card on their return journey. Other variations and refinements of the rules are possible. For'example, landing on a gate leading the wrong way across the loops may simply be ignored. Also, the players' choice of questions may be partially but not fully restricted. on the outward and/or return journeys. Other variations of the rules are also obviously possible.
The field of the questions can obviously be varied. Classical music can obviously be used (in which case some leeway in answering the "year" question is desirable). More generally, extracts from films or radio or TV programs can be used, with the questions requiring the voice, the name of the film or program, a co-star, etc to be identified.
The principles of the game can obviously also be applied to a video system in which video sequences (still or.moving) can be accessed randomly.