Call me Ishmael. If you can make that statement than you are the lone survivor of the hunt against Herman Melville’s giant white sperm whale.
In “Moby Dick, or The Card Game”, created by Dublin native Joel Clark, players are tasked with embarking on a voyage at sea to battle Captain Ahab’s arch nemesis in a fight to the last man standing.
The game was first released in 2013 and was funded by a Kickstarter that raised more than $100,000 for its creation that allowed Clark and Andy Kopas of game company King Post to turn the literary translation into exactly what they envisioned. At least, after they decided to make a card game instead of the original idea for a video game.
“There’s a much better crossover between the board game community and the literary community,” Clark said.
And over the next week, Clark is bringing his game back to where his literary love began with multiple stops in the Monadnock Region. He will be at the Toadstool Bookshop on Saturday at 11 a.m., the DubHub on Monday at 7 p.m. and the Hancock game night at the library on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Clark will discuss “Moby Dick, or The Card Game” as well as have copies for sale, along with his other game “Beowulf”.
As you can imagine, Clark has long been a fan of Melville’s classic – something that’s not too hard to believe as the son of two educators. He served as artistic director of the project and spent years figuring out how to turn one of his favorite books into a card game that players would enjoy.
The thing that Clark found most helpful is that Melville’s 1851 novel was filled with material that he could use when creating the three decks.
“It has everything you could possibly need,” Clark said. “And everything in the game exists in the book.”
The game is for two to four players and each one is on the same voyage aboard the Pequod. The Sailor deck includes the whole cast of characters from the book and helps build your crew of four to seven for the trip to sea.
The Sea deck is essentially the time clock for the game and includes occurrences that take place on the ocean, including whales to be hunted. There are 10 chapters in the deck, which allows players to choose their length of play to provide lasting effects on gameplay, along with lands to visit, shipboard occurrences, other whaling ships, pirates, and Moby Dick himself. Once a whale card is drawn, all players enter the hunt.
“You could play for 45 minutes or we have a mode where you can play for three hours,” Clark said.
The Whale deck describes actions taken against the crews by hunted whales. These often deathful cards and must be drawn by each player attempting to harpoon a chased leviathan.
“You’re all hunting whales together so there’s a cooperative spirit to the game,” Clark said. “And you become more familiar with the actions of the whales the more you play.”
Clark said in no way does he condone whaling in any way, but finds the story fascinating and felt it would translate well to a table top game.
The game also includes custom engraved dice, raw wood whale oil tokens, original artwork and quotes from the book on every card.
The process of creating the game meant a lot of time pouring over the book and seeing what would work when creating the decks. He described it as “an odyssey from start to finish.” They originally did a 5,000 game run and there are only a few hundred copies remaining.
For those familiar with the book, it will be a trip down memory lane. But even if you’ve never read Melville’s masterpiece, it could turn into an afternoon of fun around the table.
And it just one question remains: Do you have what it takes to hunt Moby Dick?