Dark,

Good questions.  You're right, there aren't many accessible board games - which is part of why we're doing this.  Whenever we get a game, we have to figure out how to make it accessible...so why not share that knowledge (and the labor of making the necessary modifications) with the world?  I guarantee it can be done - sometimes it just requires thinking outside the box.  One of our favorite games is a massive fantasy adventure board game called Middle-earth Quest...the game is beautiful, and takes up about our entire dining room table.  It took a lot of work, but now my wife and I play it regularly, either just the two of us, or with friends, and my gameplay experience is the same as everyone else's, except for occasionally having to ask a question about something on the board (which could be remedied with a lot more work that just isn't necessary for us).

So anyway, if you visit the shop you can see what we currently offer, but I can tell you right now: we have currently listed Clue, Apples to Apples, Story Wars (a lighthearted fantasy-themed party game of making stuff up), Uno, and regular playing cards.  We have also brailled our personal copy of Citadels, another fantasy card game of strategy and resource management, but haven't listed it yet.

But like I said, we're just getting started, and we're always looking for new inventory to add.  So I will definitely check out Talisman and Tokyo battle and see if they could be made accessible/what work would need to be done...and if you have a specific request, you can always submit it directly through the shop.  We can't make any guarantees - there are some games that will always be inaccessible...but I've found that we can make a way for almost any card or board game to be playable.

Regarding your second question - with our current listings, there hasn't been a need to have separate print and braille cards, because we simply braille directly on the cards.  Our technique is to put identifying information in braille on the card, and then (if necessary) include supplemental information in a digital text document.  So for example, in Apples to Apples, you have "noun" cards which contain a word, but then the card also has flavor text that isn't required for gameplay, but can be pretty entertaining.  So we braille the word on the card, and then include a document containing the flavor text for all the cards if you want/need to reference it.  This works best for games like Apples to Apples, where all players draw from a communal pile - if you had separate braille and print versions of each card, the gameplay would be broken.  However, for instances where this wouldn't be an issue, we'd be open to brailling separate cards...just know that it'd drive the price up a little bit.

I'm curious - how does braille Monopoly handle the community Chest / Chance issue?  You can't have two identical decks, one braille and one print, and just have the blind players draw from the braille deck, as that would give them the possibility of drawing a card that's already been drawn from the sighted deck.

Oh, that gives me an opportunity to expand on the "fully accessible" versions.  So, if we were to make a braille Monopoly, we would offer two versions.  One would not have braille on any of the Chance/Community Chest cards, because there is no secret information on these cards, nor is there information blind players need to reference frequently - in other words, they could draw their card and simply have a sighted player read it aloud, without in any way affecting the fairness or balance of the gameplay.  However, we would also offer a fully-accessible version (more expensive because of the added time it takes to prepare), wherein these cards would be brailled so that a party of blind players could enjoy the game without any sighted help.

Hope that sufficed to answer your questions.  Sorry that it was a bit rambling...honestly the specifics will vary from game to game.  Feel free to ask any more questions you may have!

Yeah, Settlers of Catan really started a new wave in independent, high-quality "nerdy" games.  Which I have no problem with ^_^

With something like Talisman, what we'd probably wind up having to do is putting the basic reference information on the card in braille, and then the card instructions in a separate document that would be accessible with a screen reader.  (That's assuming that the cards are drawn from a communal pile, making separate print and braille decks an invalid option).  So for example, in Middle-earth Quest, there are "Shadow" cards that have a certain cost, and specific effects/requirements for activation.  I have the name and cost brailled on the shadow cards, and then go to my document and find the shadow card with that name to read the effect/requirements, since those wouldn't fit on the card.  It's not the most streamlined solution, but it is the best one we've found that allows me to play without anybody knowing what's in my hand, and without giving anyone an unfair advantage or disadvantage. And of course, now I rarely refer to the document because I have all the effects committed to memory.

As for the pieces of the board that get added on, how we'd address that sort of depends on the information that players will need to know - whether we add braille labels or some other tactile source of information to the board, or what.  We really have to figure things out on a case-by-case basis.  But it doesn't sound like it'd be impossible.  You always have to be prepared for a little bit of a learing curve, but at the end of the day, being able to fully participate in the game is reward enough.

Ha, "Compatibility" sounds fun - sort of in the "Apples to Apples" family of party games.  There are a variety of games like that we'd like toget and braille eventually, and in general they're pretty easy to make accessible.  So if you ever want to place a custom order for something like that, just email my wife through the shop and we can probably make it happen.

The Lord of the Rings game you're referring to sounds similar to MEQ, but not quite the same.  In MEQ, one player does control Sauron, but one to three players control individual heroes (there's an Elf, a Dwarf, a Rohirrim, a Dunadan, and a Gondorian) and work cooperatively against him.  So at the end of the game, either Sauron wins, or the heroes win.  The game incorporates role-playing elements, including the ability to upgrade your hero's stats and skills, and has a pretty enjoyable combat mini-game that you use to fight various monsters or minions of Sauron.  The gameplay differs dependingon whether you're a hero or the Dark Lord; heroes play more of an exploration/adventure angle, wheras Sauron's gameplay is more built around strategy and resource management.  It's an extremely deep and detailed game, and from what I'm told, visually stunning.  I love it.  The downside?  The game itself is $60, I think...  Making the game 100% accessible to a blind player would take a LOT of work, but we've been able to get it so that all "secret" information is accessible, but leave all public information in print, since I'm always playing with at least one sighted player.

themadviolinist: If you want to email me at [email protected], or email my wife via the Etsy store, we can discuss details.  For example, there are some corners we cut when making the game accessible for us because it worked fine, after a bit of a learning curve, so I'd want to explain some of the options and see how you would want things done.  One initial question - would you need the game to be playable by a group of blind players, or will you have at least one sighted player to read public knowledge information, such as cards that are read to the whole table?

Hi Joseph.

compatibility is a little like apples to apples, but more serious and more intended to actually see similarity of thought than have crazy fun with surreal humour, it can cause some rather entertaining arguements though .

As to middle earth quest, that sounds a great game and I agree with violinist, however I don't think it's an "either/or" situation, sinse even if I were playing with sighted players I'd like the opportunity to be able to read public stuff for myself.

So for public card's I'd suggest giving each a braille number, and then having a computer reference, especially if a blind player wanted to read some of the cards for himself/herself to get an idea of what some of them did.

This is very interesting. I had previously looked  on 64 ounce games with hope but am a little disappointed their chosen selection doesn't line up with my interests. I may contact your wife but I need to do some thinking and research first.

Just a little bit of shameless self-promotion - I wanted to mention to everyone that we're still happily modifying games to make them more accessible, and have made some additions to our inventory. We're currently a bit obsessed with the game "Munchkin" from Steve Jackson Games. It's a very tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted card game that spoofs everything about RPGs and a variety of genres from traditional fantasy to sci-fi to westerns and zombie apocalypse. Anyway, I play it all the time, and we're continuing to refine our system for making it as accessible as possible. The game has approximately 2,495,320,000 different core sets and expansions (give or take), all of which can be combined or played independently. If a particular Munchkin set you're interested in isn't on our shop inventory, just contact us to special order it, and it shouldn't be a problem.

And as always, we're happy to discuss special orders of other games - even ones we haven't heard of. We love finding new games to enjoy, and figuring out how to make them accessible - and we'd love to help do that for you, as well.

Okay, shameless self-promotion over. The truth is, guys, we really aren't in this for money - we just get a little bit of pocket change out of it, most of which we spend on games to braille. What really drives us is the fact that enjoying games together is such an important part of our relationship, and it means so much to be able to spread that to others. So if you need a break from audio games, definitely check us out - all our info is still in the first post.

@Joseph wow! I had forgotten about this topic I confess, however I'm also extremely! interested in the fact your doing Munchkin. Various Munchkin versions are favourites with my brothers friends and with friends of mine as well. Annoyingly the group I used to rp with who also played munchkin are not meeting regularly owing to the fact that the gm and his wife had a baby, however they do plan to start games in the future and I'll ask if this is something they'd be interested in doing for a bit of light fun particularly if the gm isn't available to create the sorts of massive campaigns he used to do when we were playing mutants full time.

I'd also be interested in any fun two player cardgames you might have, particularly more unusual or whacky ones, though those would need to be accessible to two blind players.

@Joseph munchkin would be cool, my brothers' mentioned some of the cards in different versions he's played, like the spiky paladin, the amazing power known as "Buy the gm a drink", and one of my favourites, the long eared alien which you get points for killing who's name is bottle bottle .
Do you have some information on citadels?
Storywars looked rather fun, though I think that one would require some of my friends from rp as munchkin would, sinse right now I'm not meeting for multiplayer games with anyone regularly.

One thing however, I noticed the site your using said very clearly on the description for storywars "shipped only within the united states" which would pretty much make buying anything from you impossible for myself (I'm in England of course), and for quite a few other people as well. I do hope your not limited to just one country. any thoughts on this?

Btw, you might also consider contacting Tom Lorimer the webmaster of www.whitestick.co.uk about getting your site listed on one or other of his various lists of helpful links, maybe the "games to play offline" one as 64 oz games have done.

Hi joseph.

Knowing about shipping and pricing would be good sinse while I'm sure what you are doing is awesome, I don't think I'd want to emigrate just to play them .

Which munchkin version if any I'd need I don't know at this stage sinse annoyingly as I said my rp group isn't exactly regular at the moment, though it's quite probable when said child gets beyond the stage where he's needing constant attention something will come up.

I'd have to think long and hard about how to make Settlers work - as you said, the hard part would be getting pieces to stay in place so you can feel them. My sister and brother-in-law are big into Settlers, though, so I may talk with them and try to get some ideas.

Also, for everyone's information, our listings are now up-to-date, and I believe we're now able to calculate out shipping costs based on your location anywhere in the world. As I've mentioned before, if you have any questions about one of our listings, or want to ask about doing something a little different than the way we've described it in the listing, don't hesitate to ask!