Game Collection, History, and Preservation

Are you a games collector? No doubt! But do you number your collection in the dozens, the hundreds, or the thousands? Do you have anything that’s really old? Do you take any special precautions with it?

This panel will introduce four people who think about preserving the history of our hobby in both a personal and a museum context.

Tony Boydell is an independent board game designer (Snowdonia and many others: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/1086/tony-boydell), daily BGG blogger, and the Curator of The Museum of Board Games in the Forest of Dean (UK). It opened in 2021 and holds over 1,200 items dating from early-Victorian and Edwardian to the modern day. The collection includes war games (WWI, WWII and modern), RPGs (including an early DnD), parlour games, family favourites (including a 1913 Landlord’s Game), prototypes, magazine series and books, abstracts, TV & movie tie-ins, TCGs and other gaming ephemera.

Colm Lundberg lives in Co. Kerry in Ireland and appears to have become a writer and a games designer by mistake. His writing and design credits include the Love2Hate card game series, Pathfinder Gamesmastery Guide and Bestiary 2, and The Munchkin Book, where he is often startled to see his name alongside those of real-life writers. He has founded the Museum of Games in Ireland, dedicated to the preservation, conservation, curation, digitisation, and presentation of books, games, and associated paraphernalia relating to the modern tabletop gaming hobby.

Izzy Bartley is a Learning Officer at Leeds Museums and Galleries, the largest council-run museum service in England. She is in her third year studying for a PhD at the University of Leeds. Her PhD research uses playing colonial-themed board games as a form of decolonising work. Through the gameplay experience, players discuss and explore colonial histories and legacies, and museum practice past and present. Izzy is interested in developing closer links between board game publishers and museums and archives, helping to create more historically accurate and diverse games.

And lastly, our moderator is Steve Jackson (US) who has been playing board wargames and RPGs since college – which was the early 1970s – and publishing them

professionally for almost as long. He is probably best known for Munchkin, Illuminati, Car Wars, and GURPS. A great many games have fallen into Steve’s hands over the years! His company library takes up more than 40 feet of shelving, higher than he can reach, and he wants to make sure it outlives him . . .