The Beaver Coat board game: Be A Wolff!!

Our project is a board game about the Wolff family, and how they go about their everyday lives "somewhere in Berlin”. They supplement their existence with stolen goods from various people in their small village, and seem to be totally connected and in sync with each other as they commit their crimes. They will go to great lengths to protect their small enterprises.

The players assume the roles of members of the Wolff family in a game similar to Monopoly. Our game has two cards piles that different spaces will prompt players to draw from - the Stolen Goods pile and the Hustle-n-Bustle pile. Hustle-n-Bustle activities are pretty straightforward; they are a random assortment of things the Wolff family members do during their day. For example, activities might be stealing logs, which earns money; alternatively, one might get caught out drunk late at night and need to pay a bribe to avoid being caught. The Stolen Goods pile is more interesting and ultimately more important to the outcome of the game. The objective is to gather the pieces of the Beaver Coat, which will be in this pile. In addition, this pile contains “commodities” - high value cards that can be traded in for their price at the end of the game. When a player lands on a Stolen Goods space, they can either draw from the pile or steal someone else’s goods; drawing from the pile, however, can have serious consequences in the form of going to court. When one player acquires all pieces of the coat, the game ends and each player counts their total money, including cash received for commodities. Each time a player is sent to court, they are penalized a certain amount at the end when the values are being tallied.

Our game displays the primary themes of The Beaver Coat. The players, much like the Wolffs, steal from those around them in the hopes of not getting caught. Justice is repeatedly subverted in the play; if justice occurs in our game, then the players are penalized. The various things that could happen when drawing from the Stolen Goods or Hustle-n-Bustle pile represent the element of chance in both criminal activities and justice itself. A benefit of playing this game could help familiarize players with basic economics-the more players work (steal), the more benefit gained in the end. People sometimes have difficulty managing finances, and this board game could also help them learn important lessons about spending and saving. Fraud happens in everyday life to non-suspecting victims, and people need to be concerned about protecting themselves. The game also promotes a very healthy environment for competition.

Carol Abney
Matthew Brissette

The Broken Jug: Tell the Truth

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  Mark Twain

As I was reading this play and watching Judge Adam scramble to keep his story straight, this quote popped into my head.  Adam tells multiple stories of how he acquired the cuts and bruises on his face and head.  He tells several different accounts to explain his missing wig.  He claims to be well acquainted with Martha, but then states that he rarely visits her at her house.  He attributes his nervous attitude to being sick, then changes his story to worrying about his sick hen.  Eventually he is caught in his lies and runs off to the hill like a scared little boy.

I found that the social implication of this play is that it is better to tell the truth in a sticky situation rather than try to lie your way out of it.  (Of course, not doing something shady in the first place would be ideal.)  In several of the plays we have read, a character attempts to lie and deceive the people around him all for personal gain.  We have seen this in Celimene, Dimple, and now Adam.  Things do not work in favor of these liars. 

Rather than approach the topic of lying and deception in a straightforward and matter-of-fact manner, The Broken Jug has a comedic setting that allows for a lighter discussion of the repercussions of lies.  As Emily said in her post, we have talked in class about how comedy shines a light on character flaws.  Deception is definitely one of those flaws!  Have you ever heard of a time when someone greatly benefited from telling a lie and did not experience any consequences?  Probably not.  Lying just does not pay off.  The benefit of examining these flaws in a comedy setting is that lying is not directly condemned and we can find humor in the liar’s actions, but when we stop to think about it, the audience is left to make the conclusion that no good can come from lies and deception.