Eva Longoria Parker of Depserate Housewives’ fame was on the receiving end of a surprise birthday party give by her husband, professional basketball star Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs.

The party’s theme was Clue (Cluedo to you Brits), the couple’s favorite board game. The board game character parts, including Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard, etc., were played by actors hired for the occasion.

The night ended with a real game of Clue played by the party-goers. It was Miss White in the library with the wrench.

(source, image)

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On the road between shows, Nate Mendel and Talyor Hawkins of Foo Fighters keep things sharp with rounds of Gin Rummy.

Playing cards is really big on the road. (Drummer) Taylor (Hawkins) and I are always playing cards and it’s a vicious, cutthroat game, so outside of the show, it’s probably the card game. … I wish I could say poker but it’s gin. But it’s not your granddad’s gin game!

(source, image)

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The New York Times reports that a pilot program to teach second and third graders Chess in Donnelly, Idaho, will enter the curriculum throughout the entire state as of next fall.

Tom Luna, the state’s superintendent of education, said, “One of the things that we hear is that too much of what we do is based on rote memorization. The part I really like about this program is that kids are thinking ahead.”

Participation in the curriculum is voluntary, but reaction to the pilot program has been good. Teachers do not need prior experience with the game to participate.

The cost to implement the program is estimated to be “about $200,000 to $250,000 a year, although it could run as much as $600,000″ if all schools join immediately.

(full story)

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Galactic Emperor from Crosscut Games is scheduled for shipping June ‘08. If you pre-order now you can take 10% off the MSRP and get flat rate worldwide shipping. And if you follow the instructions in this forum article on Board Game Geek you’ll get another 10% off.

You can read the game rules here (PDF). It appears to be a role selection game ala Puerto Rico, but set in space with some dice-based combat.

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As a companion to the previously released 100 Science Fiction Adventure Seeds, Postmortem Studios has released 100 Planets on DriveThruRPG. This generic supplement for any science fiction roleplaying game describes (you guessed it) one hundred different worlds, each with a unique geography and society, and several adventure seeds.

If you find this type of publication useful, you might also check out 101 Cargos, 101 Corporations, 101 Governments, 101 Lifeforms, 101 Patrons, 101 Plots, 101 Religions, 101 Rendezvous, 101 Starcrews, and 101 Travellers, all from the British Isles Traveller Support (BITS) organization.

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Northern Geek shows us OS Risk, a home-made Risk variant based on computer operating systems. Instead of armies, players control zealots. Other components include processor, memory, and hard disk.

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InventorSpot reports on The Fitness Challenge a so-called “reality board game” intended to motivate people to loose weight and exercise. Developed by Vicki Sorenson originally in preparation for her wedding, the game offers a wide variety of workout choices and adds a dose of fun with competitive wagers.

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Football Resurrection is a new CCG by Scott Shea combining sports and apocalyptic sci-fi. The game play is pretty straightforward:

Cards represent football players with attack and defense values and special abilities. Play one card each round into either an offensive or defensive squad. You can make one attack per round using an offensive squad into which you just played a card. Your opponent can block with any one defensive squad, and can also toss two more cards from his hand. If offensive has a higher value, a goal is scored; otherwise it is blocked. Either way, all offensive and defensive squads involved in the attack are discarded.

The game continues once until both players are out of cards (halftime) and then another game is played. All cards have special abilities which adds flavor and tactics. Total game time looks to be about 20 minutes per game.

The game was launched on Mar 15.

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The Eagle Tribune covers the Windham Nesmith library game group. The article makes the phenomenon of playing board games seem like an activity for the ADHD:

The young people hop from table to table, game to game, playing until boredom descends. This takes an average of 40 minutes as Jimmy Buffet and assorted pop music plays from a small boombox in the background.

…

The group, including Kevin Raison, 16, laughed, prattled and teased each other as they moved from one game to the next.

(source)

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Another Castle weighs in on the phenomenon of German board games going digital, especially on the XBox. There sure seem to be a lot of them.

Board games on the XBox are available via XBox Live Arcade, Microsoft’s online game service for the XBox and Games For Windows services. Along with board games, XBox Live Arcade has a large collection of classic and modern family video games.

Click here to see the list of games currently on, or scheduled for, XBox Live Arcade.

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