History

The original idea for SwashBuckled!™ was for Dick Bennett to keep his children from playing too many video games. To do this he came up with the idea of creating a boardgame which would be both fun and educational. An educator by profession, Dick Bennett wanted this game not only to be distributed in stores, but more importantly to be found in school libraries, available to assist in teaching children geography and other subjects.

In the family’s summer vacation in 1989, Bennett introduced his idea to his twelve year old son Richard, who was immediately interested. The two of them spent hours going through an atlas finding exotic places from around the globe and implimenting them on the map, which, at the time, consisted of nothing more than a large white sheet of paper with a world map outlined on it.

They located different ports that neither one of them even knew existed, drew them in on the map and maticulously drew dots from port to port. They then pulled out dice from an old Risk game, and ship pieces from Axis and Allies, games which Bennett and Richard were (and remain) devoted fans, and within a week had the rough outlines of their idea.

Together, they came up with the idea of having the World Reports, carrying six different kinds of Cargo, and finally Pirates and Lord Nelsons (which at the time were called John Paul Jones). They drew, with colored pencil, the different World Report Zones around the world, developed the payment system by counting the dots between ports and determining the distances between each of the ports individually and used money from the game Rail Baron.

While still on vacation, they tried the game out on Richard’s cousins to see if they would like it. It was a hit. The group would play it by the hour.

Soon family members began encouraging Dick and Richard to publish the game, but the two of them were often side-tracked and could not figure out how to do it. Years later, after moving from Canada to Utah, the two brought in the youngest son David, and recruited a family friend, and fellow board game lover, Dennis Andersen into the group. In 2005, the four of them decided to form a Limited Liability Company to produce the game, and Fun At Home Games, LLC™ was born.

They played the game constantly, experimented with a multitude of different ideas, and implimented new strategies; including symplifying the counting from port to port with a system of averaging the prices developed by Dennis. Soon, David, with a love for art and a talent for drawing, began sketching designs for the game.

The group decided to set the game in 1806 and was careful to design the map based on charts, graphs and maps that dated to that time. Thus all the ports, continental details (like the yet undiscovered northern passage in North America), titles (such as the Antartic Icy Ocean, and New Holland), etc. are authentic to the time.

Finally, after 19 years, with the help of other family members and close family friends; Scott Sargent (board designer and graphic artist) and Kerry Soper (cartoonist), the game was put on a real game board. One of the more memorable experiences during this process was, after having mounted the continents (in colored card-stock) on parchment-colored paper, members of the Bennett family took the board outside and meticulously began burning the edges, blocking the flames from the wind, and blowing out the fires before spreading too far into the map.

Another daunting task was creating the Rule Book. Putting all the ideas that had accumulated since 1989 into a Rule Book was a very daunting task. The Book went through numerous revisions as different little possibilities and ways to play the game kept popping up. It went through so many versions, as a matter of fact, that the Rule Book for the first Edition contains some minor mistakes, despite multiple attempts to edit it.

By the summer of 2007, the game was being produced in China, with an order for 1008 games to be shipped to Orem by Christmas that year in order to be sold as part of a pilot run in early 2008. The actual release date of SwashBuckled!™ is scheduled for May 1, 2008.