Know any good games?

[Adan Lopez]

Care to share any fun games that you play on the trail? My family enjoys playing games and It would help them during zero days in camp. Maybe a game that can be played in the tent using pebbles and leaves? Or perhaps a "field" game that has teams and all?

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

Here you go! This should keep you guys busy for several days.

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=30901

[Nate Davis]

We have a 2.5 oz magnetic version of Scrabble that we'll take now and then. We only use it on short mileage days or when it's rainy, though, so we've learned to leave it behind on some trips. That said, it's about as much game as you could possibly want for the weight!

A more recent and exciting find was the game Cosmic Wimpout. My mom bought it for us for Christmas because she thought it'd be great for backpacking. I haven't weighed it (sorry!), but it can't be more than 1.5 oz. It consists of 5 small dice in a plastic tube and is a ton of fun. We haven't taken it backpacking, but it should be great because it's easy, light, and there are no small pieces to lose (unlike the magnetic travel scrabble.)

Aside from that, sometimes we'll play some mental games like six-degrees of separation with movie stars, 20 questions, etc.

[Beau Beveridge]

You could easily draw a chess/checkers board (or any other board game) on the back of your sleeping pad and use rocks, leaves, pine cones or any other objects as pieces.

You could take some extra rope and have the kids try to lasso something.

You could hang an empty pack from a tree and try to toss pine cones into it playing any variety of basketball games.

A stick and pine cones give you a baseball game.

[Anonymous]

How about playing follow the leader rock hopping up/down streams or talus slopes? We used to do it for miles/hours and never got tired of it. Or rock skipping contests? Or placing a bear bagging rope? Fewest tosses wins. Point being the props are all right there; no need to bring anything extra from the front country.

[Adan Lopez]

Keep em coming. Especially those that can be played at night or in the tent. One that my 8 year old thought of just now for around the campfire, she enjoys Mancala. we can just dig little holes in the ground and place pebbles in them, UL version of Mancala. it's a great game for youngsters. Only good for use in highly impacted sites of course.

[Nate Davis]

No weight:

Pick-up sticks
Thumb wrestling
Shadow puppets on tent walls
Rock, Paper, Scissors
20 questions

Minimal weight:

Pen and paper games (hangman, tic tac toe, etc)
Knot tying (not a game, but a fun family learning activity. Just bring a photocopied sheet of paper with a couple of knots on it)

And seriously, check out Cosmic Wimpout. It's less than $5 on Amazon and weighs nothing. Plus, you'll have dice with you so you can spend some quality time teaching your kids Craps too!

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Wimpout-101-Dice-Game/dp/B000F9WKX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1271217041&sr=8-1

Edit: Just got off my butt and weighed the thing. 1.3 oz for the complete set including case and instructions. 1.0 oz for just the dice (which is all you really need). $5 for an ounce that's worth hours of entertainment? This should be a staple in all of our backpacks!

[Adan Lopez]

So this Cosmic Wimpout. i checked the game out online and it seems interesting, been around for 20 years or something like that. Could be fun, i'm gonna give it a go.

[Joe Clement]

Get one of the tiny Farkle games.

[David Lutz]

Balsa wood dominoes – 1 ounce…..

[W I S N E R !]

Chess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ross Williams]

Cheek darts: Squeeze a small object, such as a penny, between your butt cheeks. Walk 4 meters and drop the object in a bowl or mug. Vary the size of the bowl, require drops from larger distance, and go for speed records.

[Adan Lopez]

Thanks guys, I'm going to collect some of these games and mix them in with some of the zero-weight games suggested to keep things interesting. I dont play games much except board games with them so I just forget what's out there and what kids like to play. Balsa wood dominoes, i like that too. And there are probably a whole variety of games that can be played with dice, that's worth looking into.

One question about Cheek Darts though. You mention varying the distance of the target. As the target gets farther away I'm assuming we'll need to prepare for the game by eating the proper food, like bean burritos or something like that?

Thanks everyone!

[Jon Hancock]

For something a little different you might try Sherpa, a role-playing game designed specifically for playing outdoors and even while hiking. More information can be found over on the author's website: http://www.panix.com/~sos/rpg/sherpa.html

[Ben Smith]

Here is a link to Sherpa.

[JOHN ZENNER]

Poke the trout in the lip game…

[Adan Lopez]

I find that if I start fishing, daddy disappears alot and kids wonder how this qualifies as family time. BPing is supposed to be something to keep me from falling off the wagon again and going on a flyfishing binge. The way my wife looks at me when I'm going on yet another BP trip tells me that it has backfired a bit. :)

Anyway, I'm especially digging the small games that can be played at night around the campfire or in the tent. I'm thinking specifically of my kids, so role playing games dont work as well because everyone is on different levels intellectually. Games like Farkle are mostly luck, then when they have trouble with the strategy part daddy can just help out a bit.

[JOHN ZENNER]

I'm a fishaholic as well, but backpacking tends to meet everyones needs pretty well. My kids will fish with me for about five minutes and then go off exploring on their own which is really what they want to do anyways and this tends to be the one place (great outdoors) where as long as I can see or hear them I don't worry too much about them (as opposed to in the city, near Oakland…)!

We do bring a set of "micro" cards, and those get used quite a bit too.

[Adan Lopez]

I took some dice. Farkle was alot of fun and was perfect for playing in the tent after dark. My daughter especially liked that everytime daddy messed up she got to yell "you farkled! ha ha you farkled! you're a farkle head!" and other such nonsense like that. She thought it was a very funny word and used it liberally. We also played 1-2-24 which also requires 6 dice. thanks for your help everybody!

[joseph peterson]

Here is a game you can play. It is a strange game. You can play it solo, or with friends. If you play it once, you will play it every minute of every day for the rest of your life. You can never stop playing the game. There is only one rule to the game, if you think about the game, you lose!

Oops I just lost arrrrg

[Jack H.]

To broaden the topic further than just games for families…

I know of lots of games. Word association games weigh nothing and can be quite fun. I was in a group that learned Contact last week, it was a big hit. We also liked playing a hackysack game we invented.

Word Games on Wikipedia

[Joe Cangelosi]

+1 on cards – i have a mini set that weighs less than an ounce, and it's SUL since it's a pinochle deck- only 48 cards :-D

I come from a big card playing family. A shared game (especially an idiosyncratic game like pinochle or hearts) added a lot to our closeness over the years: in some ways because it's fun, and also because we were in pinochle prison :-D

[Matthew / BPL]

My son and I enjoy playing Pente and Othello at home and when car camping. We don’t spend much time hanging out in camp while backpacking but I started wondering how compact and light I could get the games down to.

The plan is to Sharpie the Othello and Pente boards onto a GG Thinlight pad that gets carried already. We then tried different size washers and decided on #10 aluminum washers were comfortable to flip. Othello requires 64 double-sided pieces. Pente requires 74 pieces. Here is 75 washers on a piece of line with a double-ended mitten clip.

Total weight is 13g. I haven’t spray painted one side of each washer yet. I figure that will add another gram or two of weight so we might be up to 15 grams by the time this project is done.

[David Thomas]

Spot It is one of a new breed of very-multi-generational games (Farkle and Set are some others).  What I mean is that a 7-year-old may well beat their parents.  Among the smart middle-school students I coach in math, it’s one of their favorite games (Boggle is another, but it doesn’t travel as well, and it favors the player with a larger vocabulary).  I have a mini version of Spot It (smaller cards, smaller tin), but I’m not finding that now in my google searches.  $10 at Walmart or Amazon.

[MJ H]

I had no idea aluminum washers were so light. You could probably make a chess set (stack of five for king, four for queen, three for bishop, three but somehow marked for rook, two for knight, one for pawn) with 66 of them, some paint, and glue. Would be easier to grab and move the pieces than the travel sets.

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