Book 1 Project: Fan Experience

 It’s all of the fun of the famous LIFE board game with the “last year” story of Ben Wolf. This board game, based on the Chris Crutcher book, Deadline, goes through Ben’s life, and how he chooses to live his last year. The game will follow a path similar to the game of LIFE, but with different locations from various settings in the book. Just as the chronology of the story would suggest, all players will begin by going to the doctor’s visit area of the board. There will be various spaces throughout the doctor’s visit area which complicate the forward movement of the players. For instance, in the actual book, Ben Wolf makes his doctor promise not to tell his family, or anyone, for that matter. There will be spaces on the board such as “Missed your physical, go back 2 spaces” and “Confidentiality agreement was broken, lose a turn”, because just moving through the board would be too easy. The ending goal of the game is to attempt to get through the entire board, and get your street named after Malcolm X. Ben works throughout the entire novel (among other challenges) to get a street named after Malcolm X for a government project. The goal of the board game is to receive all the letters (M, A, L, C, O, L, M, and X) to name your street. After every other turn (every second turn), the player will spin the spinner. If the player rolls a 1 or 3 then they receive a letter. The game will continue until the first person can spell the street name. As another rule, any player that receives a “lose a turn” or “go back” spaces will not be allowed to spin for their turn.

The football team. Trying out for the football team is one of Ben’s first events that he decides to do after figuring out about his deadline. He is a senior in high school at 18 years old, and he has never played football. Not for the team anyways. Cody Wolf, his brother, was always the football stud. He was the football team’s starting quarter back. Ben was always a cross country player, but he wants to try football as a new experience. When questioned by the football coach as to why he decided to start football now, he utters, “’I want a new experience’” (Crutcher 18). On the board game, in the football section of the board, there will be spaces such as, “Game winning touchdown! Roll again”, “Only weighs 123 pounds, lose a turn”, among others.

After making it through the cruelty and judgment of a small player trying out for football, the players will move into the Dallas Suzuki section of the board. Dallas Suzuki is, by Ben Wolf’s terms, “…the single prey in the crosshairs of my Cupid’s bow, and she doesn’t know it because she is way, way out of my league” (Crutcher 2). Dallas Suzuki the most attractive girl in the school, according to Ben Wolf, and it is on his bucket list to date her. Ben doesn’t just get one date with her, he gets multiple. Getting Dallas is one of the bravest endeavors that Ben embarks upon during the novel because he thinks that he has no chance. But, hey, with only one year life, he doesn’t have much to lose. As Ben says in the novel, “Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose” (Crutcher). During this part of the game board, when each player reaches a certain space, they will stop. They will have to spin a spinner marked with the numbers 1 through 10 (the same as a traditional LIFE game spinner). If the player spins a 7 or higher, then they get to go to homecoming with Dallas Suzuki and move on. If the player misses the number, they will wait until their next turn to spin again. If they do spin a 7 or higher, they may roll again as a normal turn.

Other spaces on the board include: “Steal another player’s letter” to steal another player’s letter, and “Mr. Lambeer has turned down your idea, lose one letter”, to add to the challenges of the game as a parallel to the challenging last year that Ben had. This game will extend the audience of the book and attract people to want to play this game and then read the novel. This will happen because people will get general knowledge of the characters, situations, and events through the book and want to read the whole story of Ben’s life. Going through the life of Ben Wolf through a fun, active game will draw the reader into the story and will have to check out the book.