How to Create a Personalized Board Game

For a special occasion, bring out a game you have invented just for your family or group of friends. Imagine how delighted everyone will be at seeing their names, likes and dislikes, street addresses, favorite restaurants and lots of other customized details on a game board.

Things You'll Need

• 2’ x 3’ sheet of white foam core board
• Black permanent marker
• Assortment of thin tip permanent markers
• Yardstick
• Pencil
• Scratch paper

Instructions

How to Create a Personalized Game Board

1. Start by brainstorming ideas for your game board. List the names of players and under each write down interesting tidbits of information about their lives. Come up with approximately 20 items. Example:KimHas seen “High School Musical” seven timesHates fishBuys expensive shoesMiddle name is NoreenWants to become a pharmacistDraws pictures of turtles on everything

2. Next, brainstorm a list of things that everyone has in common. Come up with around 20 items. Example:AllBest restaurant: Manny’sPerfect afternoon: Cabin at the lakeGreat movie: JunoExcellent dessert: Banana splitsWorst Thanksgiving: 1997 (the turkey was raw inside)

3. Set up the board—which you’ll do by modeling it after typical board games such as Monopoly. In other words, there will be a border of squares all around the edges of the board. Use a pencil and a yardstick to create these squares; a good size for the squres is approximately 2 1/2 inches, as it allows you plenty of room to write inside. Once you’ve gotten the squares drawn in pencil, go over the lines with a regular black marker.

4. In the center of your board, write the name of your game. You could use your family name, like “The Clarks Get Back Home” and the object would be to be to land back at your house. Or you could use a name such as “The Lottery” in which the first person to go all the way around the board is the “winner” of a million dollars. Use your imagination.

5. Fill in the squares on your board. It is assumed you will be playing a version of a game in which you roll a die and move your marker the appropriate number of spaces. Each space needs to have some kind of message. One square will be designated as “Go” or “Home.” Others should have messages which reflect the players—as a whole or individually. For example, “Kim stops on the way home to buy three new pairs of sandals. Go back three spaces. Or “It rained all weekend and we didn’t even unpack the swimsuits. Miss one turn.”

Tips & Warnings

• Small photos of each player attached to square erasers make fun tokens to move around the board.