A couple of weeks ago, the gaming world lost one of it most influential designers who ushered in the era of popular modern gaming, Klaus Teuber.
Teuber wouldn’t be considered the father of modern board gaming (I’d give that title to Sid Sackson) but he certainly was a major purveyor with his Settlers of Catan.
That, however, doesn’t tell the true story of Teuber, originally a dental technician in Darmstadt, Germany. It was during the 80’s that Klaus became disillusioned with his job and returned to a favorite hobby from his youth, board gaming.
His very first game, Barbarossa (1988) won the Spiel des Jahres. Unlike his later designs, Barbarossa was a party game, based on Phillip McKillip’s fantasy series The Riddle Master, where players used use clay to mold a secret item, wanting to make it abstract enough that it won’t be guessed early in the round but not so abstract that it takes a long time to identify.
Two years later, he won the award again with Hoity Toity (1990, originally known as Adel Verpflichtet), a game where you play English noblemen who are collecting antiques, displaying them, thieving to get a better collection and sending the police to arrest the perpetrators.
Teuber won a third time a year later with Drunter & Druber or, as known in the U.S., Wacky Wacky West (1991). The concept of the game is that a town has been burnt down and rebuilt with a different type of building secretly owned by each player in the game. Unfortunately, they forgot to account for roads, rivers and city walls so players are laying these items down, sometimes even over other buildings. At the end of the game, the player with the most buildings still standing wins.
Finally, he won a fourth and final time in 1995 for Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan or, as known today, Catan). The game became a sensation, crossing the Atlantic and becoming, for many people, the first title of which they were aware in “German Gaming”. While some of the mechanics have aged and the luck factor of the dice roll is criticized by some, the game remains of favorite of millions around the world.
The success of Catan monopolized Teuber’s career for much of the rest of his career. Klaus has 222 listings in the Board Game Geek database of which 175 are variations, maps, promos and expansions for the game.
Still, with all that Catan activity, Teuber was able to design a number of other notable games over the years including Entdecker (1996), Löwenherz (1997), Domaine (2003, a reimplantation of Lowenherz), and both Anno 1503 (2003) and Anno 1701 (2007).
Teuber died on April 1 after a short illness.
