Photograph by Tony Valainis
OF THE MORE than 500 new board and card games introduced to the public at Gen Con 2024—the largest tabletop game convention in the U.S.—perhaps the one with the most interesting history is GHQ, aka Kurt Vonnegut’s lost board game.
At one time, few people were buying his novel Player Piano, and his breakthrough Cat’s Cradle was still in the drafting stage, so Vonnegut thought perhaps board game designing would be more lucrative than writing novels.
He envisioned and designed, on paper, a war game played on a chess board with artillery, infantry, and other units protecting an operations base (GHQ stands for general headquarters). It was 1956, just before the release of war game classics Risk and Diplomacy, and game companies just weren’t interested. (It wasn’t Vonnegut’s only failed business effort. Thankfully for American literature, his Saab dealership didn’t succeed, either).
I first got wind of Vonnegut’s game—or, more accurately, the plans for it—at an exhibit at IU’s Lilly Library back in 2007. At the time, I wrote in a column for the IBJ, “Come on entrepreneurial game geeks: There has to be at least a small market for this one.”
Apparently, game designer Geoff Engelstein, acclaimed creator of such games as The Fog of War and the racing-themed Pit Crew, had the same idea, plus the talent, means, and tenacity to make it happen. He not only acquired the rights from the Vonnegut estate, but he also sorted through six versions of the author’s rules to give the game playable balance.
The result: About 67 years after Vonnegut gave up on it, the game had a launch party at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library the day before Gen Con officially began. It was appropriate since the game, set to go on sale to the public in October, will be exclusively sold at Barnes & Noble stores—with the exception of the KVML.
Anyone who has read Slaughterhouse-Five knows that Vonnegut, a WWII veteran who experienced the firebombing of Dresden as a POW, was famously anti-war. At the launch event, Engelstein noted the irony of this dove creating an unapologetic war game. In his brief PowerPoint presentation and Q&A session, Engelstein took attendees through the challenges of getting the right tone for the cover art, which turned out both retro and right, neither celebrating war nor denying what the game is about.
The box not only contains the board, playing pieces, and rulebook, but also a booklet with the history of the game, including the original designs and Vonnegut’s pitch letter containing his boast that it could “become the third popular checkerboard game.”
That’s unlikely.
But for players of chess, go, and other one-on-one games that rely on strategy and tactics rather than the luck of dice rolls and card draws, it should be of interest.
And, of course, for Vonnegut completists and the curious.
While the $35 game is not yet on sale, the KVML is taking pre-orders.
