Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share Read Online Free PDF

applied against or by your opponents), all dressed up in a motif or idiom to evoke the imagination. The Buildrz game deconstructs the board game to those bare bones and lets you create your own theme and rules.
     
    NOTE: Full instructions with printable boards and cards in various file formats are available on the Web site for this book, www.geekdadbook.com . There are also forums where players can suggest their own modifications to the game.
    What’s most important about the Buildrz game is what you do with it. At its basic level, it’s a fun little game you can throw together with parts you already have, and spend a few enjoyable hours playing. But it can also be a project for the whole family to build together and come up with new themes, new cards, new tweaks to the game play that make it all your own. Maybe it will even become a family tradition of yours: You’ll take it along on trips to the family cabin or bring it out for entertainment when the power goes out. Then it’s no longer my game, it’s yours.

BUILDING THE GAME
    First you need to make the game board and playing cards. To make a small board, you could draw the board out on an 11-by-17-inch piece of paper, though that might be tight. It would be better to tape a number of sheets of paper together, or use butcher paper, to make a larger board. Alternately, you could print the board out from the file available at www.geekdadbook.com to a very large size, broken out onto multiple sheets of paper, and tape them together.
     
    HELPFUL IDEAS: A pool table, Ping-Pong table, card table, or other large working space is a good place to set up a large-scale version of the game. One excellent resource for large sheets of paper is construction projects. Old construction drawings have the plans printed on one side, and blank white spaces on the other, which make for great drawing. Using a yardstick or other long straight-edge is handy for segmenting the board.
    Then you draw the following on the board:
    A Home circle in the center of the board
    Around that is the Inner River. This is a metaphorical river, and depending upon the theme you choose for your game, it could be a force field, a gorge to be spanned, or the mystic space between worlds to be bridged.
    A ring around the Inner River
    On the ring is the Inner Path, with twenty-four spaces, four brown bridge Abutments to the Home circle, and four brown bridge Abutments from the Outer Path. Four of the spaces on the Inner Path are Toll Spaces (shown in yellow), and four are Card Spaces (red or green), which are explained in the rules.
    Around this is the Outer River.
    Around the Outer River is the Outer Path, comprised of thirty-six spaces, including a yellow Toll Space adjacent to each of the outer bridge Abutments, and eight (red or green) Card Spaces.
    From the midpoint of each quadrant of the Outer Path are the Trails that lead to each player’s starting space. There are thirty spaces along each player’s Trail to the Outer Path around the Outer River, including ten (red or green) Card Spaces. This is a guideline number, based upon the idea that the roughly average roll of a six-sided die will be a three (actually 3.5), making for about ten turns to get from the Start to the Outer Path. If you want to use a different die, or make a quicker or longer game, you can play with these numbers as you like. Also note, if you have more or less than four players, you could build a board with more or less than four Trails. Just keep in mind the symmetry that helps create the balanced game play.
    Every third space along each Trail is a Card Space, where, if you land, you pick up a card from one of the two decks. The spaces alternate green for Defense Cards and red for Offense Cards.
    There are also numbered Number Spaces along each player’s Trail that will play a part in special moves during the game. Counting from the first space on the Trail just off the Outer Path, and working back toward the Start of each Trail, put