Smokers Wild (1978)

In this anti-smoking game, the players try to accumulate money while avoiding addiction to cigarettes. At the start of the game, each player picks a profession likely to benefit from the smoking of others (Doctor, Undertaker, etc.) and then starts moving around the board. If a player lands on an advertising space, there's a chance that he or she will begin smoking. When a smoker ends up sharing a space with another player, there's a chance he'll pawn one of his brand habits to him. The more a player smokes, the faster they advance on the Life-O-Metre, which ends with death. The game ends once the first player dies (in the short game) or when only one player remains alive (in the longer game).

The game is extremely simple to play and is filled with all kinds of horrible (but sometimes amusing) puns. The game's claim that it has the power to cause smokers to quit and to discourage people from ever picking up the habit is rather questionable, but since it's easy enough to be played by young children, its anti-smoking message might actually be able to reach an audience that hasn't heard it all before. Unfortunately, the game's simplicity may well work against it; for some players, once all the jokes have been heard (and there aren't all that many), there's really not much reason left to play the game. On the plus side, there's a lot of player interaction as your profession gets called upon or when you pass your cigarettes to another.

Smokers Wild seems related to Drinkers Wild so it may have been originally published by Gamma Two.

• Drinkers Wild
• Lovers Wild