Play Saves the World

Cold Opening: Through the Ages on a Doomed Spaceship OPENING GAME - Location: A doomed spaceship (from “www.can-i-get-a.com”). Game: Through the Ages - A New Story of Civilization – (#12 on BGG!) main topic Defining magic circles and liminal spaces, and how they relate to religious practice and faith. scriptures referenced Genesis 28:10-16 NEXT EPISODE: Interview with Alex Radcliffe of BoardGameCo...

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Kevin torments Daniel with a homebrewed Push Your Luck game based on Star Wars and Weird Al trivia (NOTE WE HAVE CHAPTER MARKERS NOW!). We then define push your luck games and glean some wisdom from these games: learning to take risks is good (and even Biblical, see Matthew 25:14-30); we can better understand ourselves and our comfort level with risk; we can learn to take smart risks instead of re...

The goal of the Center for Play and Exploration is to encourage adults to be more curious, more divergent in their thinking, and empowered to fail. Dave argues that curiosity and imagination are ways to dismantle anxiety and fear. We respond to listener feedback and speculate whether God does indeed play dice with the universe, because creation is God's joyful act of play. Post your thoughts, resp...

What would it mean to think of life as a game? Are games merely pastimes between serious endeavors, or is it an approach to life oriented around unnecessary obstacles and enjoyment? We touch on ideas about the meaning of life, happiness, and life as something useful versus life as something to be enjoyed. Human flourishing is ultimately found in graceful abundance, in which all we can ever really...

Daniel and Kevin tackle the obvious question: is wining the point of playing games? How does a desire to win relate to the desire to have an enjoyable gaming experience, and what spiritual realities are present when we strive to be humble and gracious at a gaming table where the object is to win the game? We consider that games might be training us to win over other people, instead of being more l...

Rev. Chelsey Hillyer joins us to chat about creating accessibility around board games so everyone is welcome to be themselves, find satisfaction with their game play, and empowered to have fun. How do board games and play in general create accessibility so everyone is welcome to be themselves? Games are partly about winning, but also about being satisfied with your game play and everyone being abl...

We make a new attempt at an episode opening – an improv skit with pirates playing Carcassone! We discuss Carcassone a bit, lionize the word "eschew" and life points in general, and wrestle with Bernard Suits' definition of a game: "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" (p. 43). Games require buy-in from participants who must agree to its rules, desire to best their competitors,...

What can, and should, board teach us? We explore didactic board games that have a message, and what sort of indirect messages board games can also give us. We discuss Caverna, Bibleopoly, the forgotten didactic orgins of Monopoly, magic circles, and the controversial game Train. Join us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boardgamefaith) and Patreon (https://patreon.com/boardgamefaith).

Our very first guest! Ali Karar (@karar2k) joins us to discuss hobby board gaming as a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. We discuss board games as a catalyst for socializing, religious limits to board games, and the role of board games in families. Ali discusses his transition from video games to board gaming, board gaming cafes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Islam's traditional prohibition aginst dice...

Toothsome questions abound. Are $5K board gaming tables worth it? Are there deeper implications of Clap-On technology? And what do we make of Bernard Suits' book The Grasshopper ch. 1, where the Grasshopper gladly dies in the winter for having played too many games? Can one game on the Sabbath, and why aren't there more games in the Bible?

After naming some recently revisited games, Daniel discusses some lessons learned at a recent conference on play. Is play essential to the human experience? How can we games be more inclusive? How does play shape our early childhood in important ways, and can this include Minecraft? The discussion moves into play as a means of grace, and that play according to rules might be an analogy of grace an...

Daniel & Kevin have … a list show! We trade our top 3 ways that board games can be spiritual and authentically human. Our lists are different, but not completely, and then there's a bonus round for a bit of hilarity. Let's hear it for new board game burps. (Also, the game Kevin cannot think of during the podcast is This War of Mine.) Many thanks to Eljiah Hilty for our theme music.

To what extent does entering the magic circle of a game, where humans play games and temporarily care about bits and bobs, define our humanity? How do games impact people of religious faith?