We’d managed to get the little sods to bed, ordered a beer and sat, looking out into an alpine night, the jagged mountains softening into the night sky. I was working at a kid’s camp, teaching English, and after we’d drunk in the hush of a kid-free room we had to fill a couple of hours before we went to sleep. There was drinking, of course, but that was more of a background ubiquity at that point in my life, we needed something a bit more engaging that would save us from the awkward challenge of having to actually speak to each other. One of my colleagues, an incredibly forthright Australian woman called Tamara, pulled a rectangular box from her bag and asked if we wanted to play a game. We nodded our assent(we daren’t say no to her) and there, in the echoes of the canteen in an outwards bound centre in the Salzburg mountains I played my first game of CATAN.

As cities are built on the foundations of older cities so art forms are fashioned out of what came before. There are creators that collect the inferior resources around them and, from them, create magic. Every society and niche within that society has those who encapsulate for them what it is to be a conscious being, what it is to live, what it is to be more than a machine for the transformation of food into movement. The little city that we live in, the one populated by meeples, vikings and things from the cyclopean depths lost one its formative cultural architects on April the First 2023. A person who brought a parochial yet brilliant ethos of German game design to the world. A person who kicked open the door of analog play to millions of people, designer and gamer alike. A person who, it wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say, created much of what the modern board gaming landscape is today. A vibrant landscape, exciting and diverse. A landscape bursting with innovative outcrops and when we step into that landscape we are brought together with those of like minds, all of us submerging ourselves in that one activity that marks our species out as unique, playing with pre-agreed rules. Without this person our little city would be a whole lot smaller and a whole lot less exciting and while there is no doubt that he did very well from his most successful game, we all profited a great deal more, revelling in the joy that he and the hundreds who followed after him have given us through the products of their beautiful minds. On April the First 2023 we all rolled a seven because Klaus Teuber, the creator of Settlers of Catan died.

Klaus Teuber was born in the tiny German village of Rai-Breitenbach in West-Germany on the 25th of June 1952 with the walls of the 13th century Castle Breuberg towering above him. Inspired by these grand surroundings, the young Klaus Teuber developed interests that would accompany him through his life. Playing games set in mediaeval times and cartography. It was from these dreams of foreign lands that his art would explode out of rural Germany and spread around the world.

A close friend of Klaus’ and CEO of CATAN Studio, Pete Fenlon recognised that adventuring spirit within him,

‘Klaus…loved the sunrise. CATAN is all about going over the sunrise and finding out what’s there.’

Pete is convinced that it was the twin loves of history and geography that fuelled his creativity,

‘He loved to dream…he was a romantic man. He loved storytelling, he loved geography because there was a story there. He was forever dreaming of distant worlds, be they in history, be they far away in time…be they far away in space.’

If you look at the list of games that Klaus Teuber designed, so many of them deal with the land and the history of that land. Games like Entdecker and Löwenherz. He was consumed with bringing these lands to the fingertips of the players.

Recognising the obligations of fatherhood he turned his professional aspirations into something more stable but anything he learned in life would, eventually, be channelled into the singular passion of his game design. This included the technical skills he’s learned in his day job as a dental technician. Pete Fenlon expands,

‘He made some of the most beautiful prototypes you’ll ever see.’

He would continue to design even though he was holding down a full time job, his growing family helping with the development of his games,

‘There wouldn’t be a CATAN but for Klaus’s family. Claudia(his wife), and his sons playtested CATAN…It was the family that enabled him to do what he did. That drove him to do what he did.’

He was at the top of the board game world before he designed his most famous game though. He designed three Spiel des Jahres, the most prestigious game design prize in the world, before winning it a final time with CATAN in 1995. Barbarossa, Adel Verpflichtet and Drunter und Drüber all walked away with the prize. There is no doubt though that Settlers of CATAN cast a huge shadow over his creative reputation. A shadow that he would have to work at to accept. Pete Fenlon explains,

‘I think it was a struggle for him…He had a lot of design ideas he felt warmly about but he understood that games touch people in different ways and CATAN touched more people and, therefore, deserved its success.’

This is why Klaus Teuber is so central to all of us that follow this weird, little hobby. That his work has touched us, and if not us, the people that have been inspired by his work and designed games of their own. We are here because games touch us. They help to propel us through our drab work weeks. They give us something to look forward to, an adventure in a box. Not only that, in a world in which we are being encouraged to pull away from others, to form digital cocoons around ourselves, these games help us to reconnect with real people around real tables and drink in the society of others. It is only through others that we can really see ourselves and it’s games like, CATAN, that facilitate that.

Why are you here? Why do you game? It is to be with others and this is why CATAN is special. It is one of the central pillars of the hobby board game world and it has brought so many of us to this place. This place that has offered us shelter. Where we have met so many people central to our lives. People that have become our friends and lovers. Board gaming is more than ideas rendered in cardboard, plastic and wood, it is a community, it is a home and Klaus Teuber built the walls of that home.

Why CATAN though? Why is it this one that burst out of our little niche and is being played by Hollywood stars and Green Bay Packers quarterbacks? Pete Fenlon has his theories,

‘It had a certain familiarity…the tactile experience of rolling dice brought you into the gaming experience in a tactical way and a physical way that more abstract games might not. The idea of building something together. There were a lot of emotional elements that bonded people. There was a lot of luck in CATAN that meant even a new player could win.’

Playing CATAN recently made me realise that there is no riddle to its success. It is a game that compels the players to talk to each other. It is constructed to keep the players fully engaged during the whole round and how revolutionary that must feel to those unfamiliar with the world of board games. Yet, the rolling of those two dice is delightfully familiar, a trope so entwined with games that it has become instinctive. CATAN is a bridge between those commercial board games of childhood and the hobby as it is today and many have crossed that bridge. It’s true that it is nowhere near the acme of what the hobby has to offer. There are many of its contemporaries that feel fresher and have survived better but in so many ways Settlers of Catan is responsible for this hobby of ours. For its proliferation. Without CATAN this hobby looks very different, it would certainly be much smaller. Not only that, so many game designers of today were introduced to this world through CATAN. It was the propellant that caused the lift off of modern gaming.

It has become a familiar trope, a badge of gaming honour to denigrate CATAN in recent years. There is no surprise in this. You can’t build on the foundations of edifices without knocking them down first. Still, there is still magic there, a magic that is much more apparent for those who haven’t become jaded by years in the hobby. CATAN is not a game of rigorous calculation, though there is some of that. Primarily CATAN is a catalyst of social interaction. The frequent requests for wood or sheep being the springboard for conversations. It’s almost effortless to understand, roll dice, blag and then build something, but, and this is fundamental, it offers a depth of choice that is absent from mainstream games. It also offers a story. A little patch of land of your own and in an age of ever growing inequality, with the rungs of the housing ladder having been smashed, that is a story that appeals. Also, for all gamers may sniff, CATAN still remains a great design that most of us have experienced, mostly in those nascent times of our gaming careers. Klaus Teuber created so many gamers and designers and because of that his legacy is incalculable.

That is why we shouldn’t mourn the death of Klaus Teuber. We never knew him. We will experience enough grief in our lives by the death of those close to us. It is our job, as gamers, to revel in his life. A life that has bequeathed us so much in the form of his beautifully wrought designs. Game designers deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as film directors, painters and writers as their work helps us to construct a picture of who we are. Game designers take their ideas and form them into objects that bring people together. There is no more noble work than that. Games usher people into our lives and CATAN has brought more people together than most. We should leave the profound and scarring emotions of grief to those who knew Klaus Teuber, and loved him. Who he was as a person means nothing to us, we should rejoice in his work. It is because of his work that we’re here.

Settlers of CATAN changed the world of games, it changed the world we inhabit and it changed it for the better. This is a legacy and by playing his games or the games of those he inspired we can keep that change going. His legacy is a legacy we can all participate in, simply by doing the thing we love, playing games. I asked Pete Fenlon if there was anything we could do to honour the memory of Klaus Teuber and he said,

‘Share fun with others. This is what Klaus, I think, would want others to do.’