Under different circumstances, this would be called a “Perfect Storm”

This story as so many different strands that come together at the same place at around the time. I am apprehensive about having missed something so as per usual, I’ll set the story with a list of characters and or a mosaic of other things. Of course they’ll be listed in as close to chronological as I can possibly remember.

About a year ago, I purchased a set of Klaus Teuber games at the HRS annual auction. The game I was after in particular was called Settlers of Catan. Subsequently, I began hosting games nights pretty regularly for friends, some of them my HRS colleagues.

The Alumni Director, being that it is her job to know what’s happening in the alumni world, catches wind of the fact that some faculty is playing Catan. She promptly tells a 1993 graduate of HRS about the game being played at school. Why would this 1993 alumna (I would mention her name but I can’t remember it) care? This alumna is married to none other than Klaus Teuber’s son Guido, who is heading the small Teuber office in the US.

The 1993 alumna’s younger brother, Nick J (not the Nick J that I advised for those of you in the know enough to ask that question) graduated from HRS in 2001. In college he earned a degree in marketing. During the years in college, he worked in bits and chunks for his future brother-in-law at the Teuber office. Upon graduation, he secured a job at the Teuber office trying to develop new markets of for the game.

Nick J. and I must have had the same epiphany around the same time but totally independent of each other. The genesis of my use of Catan lay when my Economics students didn’t truly understand the concept of an Economy. The way the game is constructed and some of the dynamics that occur in a typical 2-hour game mirrors quite closely the struggle that the poorer countries of the world face in trying to move up from the third world.

I seized the moment and asked my students to come in on an evening to play the game. In compensation, they got a class period off later in the week. Nick came by and we talked shop and about how Catan might be able to open an Economics market. He came to see how I would run the game and how I would relate it to Economic topics.

The students loved the game, a true testament to the high quality fun and challenge that Settlers of Catan possesses. I’ve emailed my students some of the things I wanted them to think about and be ready to discuss in class on Monday, but you’ll find out next why I can’t be there.

There is a bonus for the HRS Math Department and that is our Department will be the recipient of a set or two of the Catan series of games. Also, Nick stated that he and his boss (Teuber’s son) are always looking for game testers. How cool is that? And more interestingly, how crazy is the path of this story. No way one could have predicted something like this.