Wikipedia:WikiProject Board and table games/Sources

This page contains a list of

For accessing sources, see also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Board_and_table_games/Resources#Reliable_reference_archive.

Web sources

Printed sources available online

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Board_and_table_games/Resources#Reliable_reference_archive

Listed here are only reliable published secondary and tertiary sources that include a broad survey of games, and are available at the Internet Archive (some public domain, some requiring free registration).

Mostly historical board games

• ISBN 0-486-23855-5
  .
  • Although a reliable source by Wikipedian criteria, note that Bell is much like Wikipedia itself: a good place to start, but you should back up what you find here with another source. Beyond the fact that knowledge grows over time, Bell's aim is often to concoct a playable game, which can conflict with the transparent presentation of his source information, which is what we might have preferred. Fortunately, Bell provides very full documentation of his own sources, another feature making this a good place to start. Also note that since the revised Dover edition is a republication of 2 separate volumes without re-pagination, all page references must also specify volume (e.g. "Vol. 1, page 63"), as page number alone will be ambiguous.
• Culin, Stewart (1895). Korean Games, with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania.
• Culin, Stewart (1898). Chess and Playing-Cards. Washington DC: US National Museum.
• Culin, Stewart (1907). Games of the North American Indians. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.
  • All of Culin's books are old but foundational. They consist chiefly of ethnographic descriptions, still of use. On his elaborate and somewhat philosophical historical speculations, however, note that later scholars have called into question our ability to assign historical precedence among randomizing activities such as divination, impartial decision-making, gambling, and game-playing, and that elements of his monolithic genealogy of games have been called "absurd". Other books by Culin are available too, but these 3 present the lion's share of his work on games (with 1 exception, below).
• ISBN 978-0-7141-1153-7
  .
• Murray, H. J. R. (1951). A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Probably the most significant books in this category that are not currently available online are Finkel & Mackenzie: Asian Games: The Art of Contest (2004) and Parlett: The Oxford History of Board Games (1999; updated 2018 as Parlett's History of Board Games).

Mostly historical card games

• Foster, Robert Frederick (1922). Foster's Complete Hoyle. New York: Frederick A. Stokes.
  • Many, many "Hoyles" are available; only a handful from the mid-18th-century have anything to do with Hoyle. This is perhaps the best edition to have fallen into the public domain.
• ISBN 978-0-19-214165-1
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• ISBN 978-0-14-103787-5
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  • Several more of Parlett's books are available from the Internet Archive; these 2 are almost certainly the most useful for Wikipedian purposes.
• ISBN 978-0-13-683003-0
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Probably the most significant books in this category that are not currently available online are Dummett & Mann: The Game of Tarot: from Ferrara to Salt Lake City (1980) and its partial replacement, Dummett & McLeod: A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs (2004, 2 volumes + its 2009 supplement).

Mostly historical dice and/or domino games

• ISBN 978-0-85263-532-2
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• Culin, Stewart (1895). Chinese Games with Dice and Dominoes. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.
• Kelley, Jennifer A. (1999). Great Book of Domino Games. New York: Sterling Publishing.
  ISBN 978-0-8069-4259-9
  .

Several "Hoyles" have small sections on dice or dominoes. More comprehensive is Reiner Knizia: Dice Games Properly Explained (1999).

Additional printed sources available online

• Costikyan, Greg; Davidson, Drew, eds. (2011). Tabletop: Analog Game Design. Carnegie Mellon University.
  ISBN 978-1-257-87060-8
  .

• A large collection of scanned magazines is available at the Internet Archive's Game and Gamer Magazines Archives.

Printed Sources

Individual user collections and collections from other WikiProjects can be found at the following locations:

• WP:VG
  )
• WP:VG
  )
• Ares collection (via User:BOZ)
• Imagine collection (via User:BOZ)
• Games International collection (via User:BOZ) - general games magazine that later transitioned into Computer Games Magazine
• The Games Machine collection (via User:BOZ) - video game magazine that also covered tabletop games early in its run
• The Space Gamer collection (via User:BOZ)
• White Dwarf collection (via User:BOZ)

WikiProject Board and table games collections:

• Miscellaneous print sources

• ArtStation Magazine (www.magazine.artstation.com/) [1]- Website without editorial policies.
• BoardGameGeek (boardgamegeek.com/) [2] - User-based content.
• Board Game Quest (https://www.boardgamequest.com//) [3] - Self-published source without editorial control.
• Jedisjeux (https://www.jedisjeux.net/) [4] - The website does not have information on editorial policies or their editors, and is considered to be generally unreliable.
• Meeple Mountain (https://www.meeplemountain.com/) [5] - The website has a list of editors, but its coverage is routine. Its editorial control is also unclear, with no indication of expertise for the editors.
• RPGNet (https://www.rpg.net/) [6]- There is weak consensus that the user-generated forum RPGNet is unreliable. See discussion
  .

Printed