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Educational
and Fascinating
DISTANT SEAS explores new dimensions in educational
gaming, offering both exciting play and high educational
content. In the process of transporting cargoes
around the world, you learn much about merchant shipping,
world trade, world geography, maritime history, ships, and
the sea.
Review from Gaming & Education (Autumn 1994):
- Distant Seas has players compete for cargo
in any one of three time periods: sail, steam, and
modern. The rules are clear, and the heavy-duty
world map is accurate and easy to read. This Monopoly
of the high seas allows students to learn the qualities
that made for profit and failure in each era. I
have a copy in my classroom, and while this is not the
simplest game, my students were drawn to the
eye-catching map, and they began playing on their
own. They preferred the modern era; its the
simplest to get started, but they were intrigued by the
meteorological rules for the sail-shipping game.
This game has applications in studies history,
economics, geography, and technology.
DISTANT SEAS was invented by Vernon Paul Rood, who wrote
his doctoral dissertation on German merchant shipping, and
who has studied maritime affairs for many years. His
experience in playing board games over the years has
enabled him to translate the complex world of merchant
shipping into a game that he hopes is both realistic and
playable.
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