The Game of the Goose and its significance

The Game of the Goose is one of the simplest of games: it is one of a great family of race games, played with tokens to represent each player that move along a track according to the throw of dice, striving to reach the winning space. In the classic Game of the Goose, there is no choice of move or other mental input from the player. This might be thought to lead to a dull game, as indeed many race games are. However, the particular rules of the Game of the Goose (set out in an appendix to this chapter) cleverly combine to produce an exciting and lively game, which even adults can enjoy until the novelty wears off.

The game is played with double dice, adding the points on the two dice together, which leads to fast movement. In its classic form, the track has 63 spaces, most of which are undifferentiated and non-active in playing terms: a playing token landing on such a space remains there, unless it is already occupied by another, in which case the tokens change places. Some spaces however are hazards, each with its own characteristic penalty. Of these, the most feared is ‘death’, usually showing a skeleton, demanding that the player begin afresh. Other spaces bear the image of a goose, from which the game gets its name. These goose-spaces are generally favourable, since the player landing on one must move further on by the number of points thrown. However, an important part of the playing interest of the classic game is that, if the winning space 63 is overthrown, the player must count off the excess points by moving backwards from the winning space – only an exact throw wins the game. If, after counting backwards in this way, the player is unfortunate enough to land on a goose, the player must move further back by the amount of the original throw; and of course landing eventually on a hazard space will exact the prescribed penalty. There are also two ‘dice’ spaces, which come into play when a particular initial throw is made.