To amuse his children, struggling fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut in 1956 devised a boardgame he called HQ, short for Headquarters.
Wait, a pacifist invented a war game?
True enough, the reasoning perhaps being that playing at war bore no resemblance to the real thing.
Vonnegut knew a guy who knew a guy.
He showed it off to his friend John H. (Mike) Handy, a local gardener whose brother was a well-known sailor at the Barnstable Yacht Club. The game employed textbook military maneuvers and tactics.
Handy suggested Vonnegut send the board game with instructions to his cousin Henry Saalfield of the Saalfield Game Company. So, just before his 34th birthday, Vonnegut pitched his board idea in a letter of inquiry. He boasted that the game was easy enough for a nine-year-old to pick up, but also ought to captivate ex-soldiers like him who wanted to satisfy their inner general with fancy maneuvers.
Saalfield failed to bite, and there the game rested until August of 2024. The Kurt Vonnegut Museum & Library obtained the rights and offered HQ sets to the public for $35.
Sorry, slaughterhouse not included.
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Lost Game” HQ (Headquarters) Now on sale
