Tag Archives: games

All the World’s a Game and All the Lords and Captives Merely Players

cribbage

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

“Shall we play a game?” Her jailer placed the elements of Charlotte on the table between him and Ciara with notable mistakes. Ciara recognized what Isom had taken from her brother’s style but only a barbarian would have so clumsily arranged the dice on the left of the cards and the board.

“You bested my brother one game out of thousands and now you would play with me, Lord Governor?” It was difficult for her to keep disdain from her voice.

“One game between us, Princess. You win and your brother goes free. You lose, and I execute you both.”

Continue reading →

The Time Travel Game

tt

Image from the box top of The Time Tunnel board game

I’m putting this here mainly to keep track of it. I like the idea of time travel as a game, maybe like a scavenger hunt, but I’ve got too many other projects going to sufficiently develop this one now.

When I was a kid, I loved all of those Irwin Allen television shows such as Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The Time Tunnel (1966-67) was high up on my list, even if it only made it two seasons. As an adult, I find all of Allen’s shows to be excessively cheesy, but I can tolerate some limited exposure.

I do periodically re-watch the Time Tunnel’s pilot episode Rendezvous with Yesterday, which introduces how our heroes get stuck jumping from one part of past and future history to another, and probably where a significant portion of the special effects budget was blown.

Continue reading →

Rube Goldberg Doesn’t Live Here

wheels

© Ted Strutz

“What’s it do, Mikey?”

“Beats me, Lynn.”

The eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister stood contemplating the strange series of discs constructed in their Grandpa’s backyard.

“I’ll take a picture and do an image search.” Moments later the boy’s handheld yielded a result. “I think it’s called a Rube Goldberg machine, a really complicated machine that’s supposed to do something really simple.”

“Like?”

“Can’t tell.”

“That?” Grandpa called from the back porch. “Doesn’t do anything. Built it outta scraps ’cause I was bored. Hey. I found a game I used to play with your Dad. Anyone up for Mouse Trap?

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields weekly writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for writing a flash fiction story no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

I was really stuck on this one. If it really were a Rube Goldberg machine, I’d think its purpose could be derived from looking at it, but nothing came up for me. The best I could do was think of the game “Mouse Trap” which I played as a kid.

Yeah, the story’s weak, but it’s all I could think of.

To read other (and probably better) stories based on the prompt go to InLinkz.com.