Thanksgiving Survey 2024: Game - Responses

Here are the Common Household & Extended Family responses to this year's survey. This year there were 10 participants, down significantly from last year's record high.

For those of a certain generation, please note that RPG does not stand for “rocket-propelled grenade” but “role-playing game”.  Dungeons and Dragons is an RPG, and some of us turned the school cafeteria, Parcheesi, chess, and the backyard hose into RPGs of sorts.  I am declaring The RPG the winner of this year’s survey.

2024 Thanksgiving Survey:  Game - responses

Question 1: What is a game for which you are thankful?

Responses:

A. I am thankful for Tabletop RPGs, but Pathfinder 2nd edition more specifically. TTRPGs bring me and my friends together and allow us to make great stories!

B. Dungeons and Dragons, as it became a starting example for many role playing games

C. Dungeons and Dragons - it’s helped me find friends far away from home, and given me a place to relax and be myself.

D. Guessing who wrote what Thanksgiving Survey answers.

E.  I am thankful for Writing Challenges, which sparked creativity and hilarity. No, wait, I am thankful for Pictionary Telephone, played in the way only our family plays it, which sparks creativity and hilarity.  Okay, both.

F.  Our weekly trivia nights at the local bar! 

G. Croquet.    Croquet at [location redacted] is serious business

H. Boggle

I.  Pictionary

J. The game of life. It is the most worthwhile game there is.

Question 2: Tell about a game from your childhood.

Responses:

A. I think it would be Wing Commander. I used to watch my dad at the game when I was a kid and it instilled the wonder of gaming inside me. I also remember it was a 12 Floppy Disk game! Now I can have a single hard drive with more than 1,000 games on it, I'm thankful for that as well.

B. Imaginary Scrabble, where you always play at least seven letter words, try to pronounce them, and make up a definition that sounds correct. The only rule is you can't make any real words.

Blog host’s comment:  this was a game made up by Younger Daughter and me, because neither of us could stand the rest of the family’s fierce competition in real Scrabble (™) games.  Such a happy and inventive game!

Imaginary Scrabble board at the end of the game.

C. I have very fond memories of Parcheesi - not only playing the game, but I would set the board up as a building, and narrate the four factions plotting against each other. Dad joined me once, as the elephant bankers, and the camels and the tigers competed to buy ice cream from them, if I recall correctly. 

D.  The cafeteria ladies required us to stay in the cafeteria until lunch was officially over.  In the game, the cafeteria ladies were nazi guards at a prison camp, and we were prisoners of war, whose job was to escape into the playground outside.

E.  The role-playing game of my childhood was chess.  This one-player game consisted of marching the chess pieces around the board in various formations, and may or may not have included weddings.  Another role-playing game which I played during someone else’s childhood was Dinosaurs, which involved marching toy dinosaurs and the occasional toy elephant around the living room in long lines. 

F. Hinky Pinky. I’ve recently been teaching it to my college friends and they’re all highly amused.

G. A fun game was to turn the hose on in the back yard, and then try build dams and levies with mud, bricks and boards, to contain the flood - before everyone perishes!   It’s a race - you against the hose.

H. One game from my childhood is Beyblades. It's a spinning top that you start using a launcher by pulling a cord. On the elementary school playground, we would spin several of them in a small area (often the end of one of the slides) and whoever's Beyblade lasted the longest before falling over was the winner. I have no idea how popular these are now, but I do know there was an anime series based on the toy.

I.  Sorry - we stopped by our neighbor’s house who would often have us in to play games.  No one was home, but we went in anyway and played Sorry. Somehow, we inadvertently let their dog out. We couldn't get it back in the house, so we ran home and never confessed our "crime".  We were very "Sorry" for that adventure!

J. Chess.  And bridge.  I spent many hours playing these games as a child. I played for fun. I played competitively. And then there’s tennis. Also one of my favorite games. And bowling. I really like bowling (10 pins).

My uncle was chess champion of the Maritime Provinces.

I will add that during my childhood we went on numerous loooong car rides, 8 to 10 hour drives between campsites.  That gave us ample opportunity to play Hinky Pinky.