First published at Meeple Nation on
Is it weird that I don’t have a favorite color? My brother’s play red and yellow respectively. At our gaming group, one dude plays orange, one green, and one purple (or blue if purple is not a color in the game). Me? I have no preference, at all. Really. The reason has everything to do with the board game Clue.
Which may seem weird as the characters in Clue are named after specific colors. Mr. Green, Miss Scarlet, and Col. Mustard are iconic figures of my childhood. Color Identity in Clue is even more apparent because you are representing that person in a story. So, why then do I not have a color identity, preference, or favorite.
I have many older cousins. These cousins and my older brother loved playing games and developed a strange affection for the game Clue to the point of not only claiming a specific color but also adopting the nicknames of their Clue avatars. My older brother already decided that he played Red, so he had no qualms about playing as Miss Scarlet, though he didn’t claim the nickname.
The problem was that I was the annoying younger cousin who wouldn’t go play with the little kids and kept trying to play with the older boys. By the time I was deemed worthy to join in the fun, all of the colors had been claimed. Green, red, blue, white, purple and yellow were all taken, and not just for Clue. My brother and cousins claimed their favorite colors for all games, and life in general.
And I never claimed a color, even though there was still a significant part of the rainbow remaining. Even away from the table top, when asked what my favorite color was, I would reply that I didn’t have one. Even after the release of Master Detective Clue, where new colors and characters were introduced, I found no real interest in claiming a character/color, and my younger cousins quickly claimed them. I didn’t really mind though, because not having a favorite color was something that was unique about me.
Decades later, my brother still plays red. Occasionally, my cousin still refers to each other as Plum, Green, and Mustard. We don’t play Clue much, but we all still love to play games. I still don’t have a favorite color, and I don’t mind at all. I like all colors and all meeples equally.
Paul Robbins
I enjoyed your rundown of why you have no favorite color. I try to analyze things like this in my own life to unearth the causes. I really think there may be something to players using the same color at games all the time. They start to identify with it, even if it’s not their favorite color, and tend to select it in other games, given the chance. My wife likes black for some reason. I tend to nab yellow, indigo, tan, silver, or whatever the oddest color is, but I don’t mind taking what’s left over. BTW, it looks like you will be speaking at several of the panels I’m attending during the coming LTUE. I’m a hobby fantasy fiction writer and board game designer. I look forward to meeting you.