The Board Game Archaeology Wing
The Table Through Time (1700–2000). Charting how board games evolved from religious moral instruction into journalistic celebrity celebration, commercial capitalism, and modern systemic engines.
Morality & Religion
Games used strictly as pedagodical instruments to reinforce Christian virtue and avoid dice.
Travel, News & Commerce
Rise of chromolithography; shift toward journalistic celebration (Nellie Bly) and capitalist aspiration (Milton Bradley).
Property, Systems & War
Birth of Eurogames, wargaming hex networks, and the modern game-theoretical mechanic explosion.
The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive, Moral & Entertaining Game
W. & S.B. Ives (Salem, MA) / Anne W. Abbott
The quintessential Victorian moral instruction game. Dice were considered sinful instruments of gambling, requiring the use of an 8-sided numbered spinning top (teetotum).
Spaces reward virtues (Truth, Sincerity, Temperance) by advancing tokens forward, while penalizing vices (Cruelty, Dishonesty, Sabbath Breaking) by sending tokens back to Whipping Post or Prison.