I Can Has Game!

So, today the mail brought a large packet that, when opened, turned out to be the copy of SOURCE OF THE NILE I'd ordered last week. This is a game I've only played once before, in the Games Library back at the old TSR in Lake Geneva. I liked it a lot, and recently when trying to think of good games to play with Janice, or solo, I thought this one might be a good choice. Of course it's been out of print for years -- I think it was already long out of print when I first played it, circa '95 or '96 -- but in these days of amazon.com and bookfinder.com &c you don't have to wait until you're at a con with Crazy Egor to get old and out-of-print boardgames, especially when it's a classic.

Which this is: it's an Avalon Hill game (from back when 'Avalon Hill' was an actual boardgame company, rather than an imprint of Hasbro). And I think the design was by Dave Wesley, the person whose attempt to interject individual objectives into a wargamer is said to have inspired Dave Arneson's creation of role-playing, which combined with Gary Gygax's rules-writing ability led to the creation of D&D, the first role-playing game.

Not that you'd know that from this box: so far as I can tell, Avalon Hill has removed the designer's name, in keeping with their house policy never to credit the people who made their games, even when they were reprinting a game that had already been published by some small press.

All of which is old water long under the bridge. I'm just glad to finally have my own copy to play, and it's an added bonus that it ties in nicely with all the Rider Haggard I've been reading for my Mythcon Paper. So, once I've had a little time to read the rules and sort things out, it'll be time for a boardgame night, I think.

--John R.