A Million Ways to Play Marbles, at least

A Million Ways to Play Marbles, at least, was originally published in 1978, as an appendix to The Well-Played Game. I wrote it because I've found - in these many years of showing people how important, healing, inspiring fun can be - that it is extremely helpful for people to see games not so much as "things" but much more as "processes."

Generally, we think of a game as having a certain set of rules involving certain objects and aspects of the environment. But, if we take the time to remember, we discover that most games, especially the "good" ones, can be played in many different ways, with many different combinations of things and surroundings and people. Once that is understood, any game can become something that brings people together, regardless of the range of ages and abilities, because there really is no one way to play it, because we can change it in, well, a million different ways.

If you'd rather not read the whole thing, you can listen to me read it here.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith