Meeples used in Carcassonne
A large follower, or "meeple", on a Carcassonne tile
Different figurines used in more advanced variants of Carcassonne, including standard meeples and non-humanoid figurines such as Pig and Dragon

A meeple is a small board-game piece, usually with a stylized human form.[1][2][3] They are usually made from wood and painted in bright colors. Meeples have been called an icon of German-style board games ("Eurogames").[4] The word is a contraction of "my people".[5][6]

Meeples are more anthropomorphized than pawns. Whereas pawns have a stylized head and body, meeples have a more humanoid shape, with limbs.[3] They have replaced pawns in many modern games, making the latter a rarity outside classic games.[5]

Meeples are believed to be introduced by the 1984 game Top Secret Spies. Carcassonne, published by Hans im Glück in 2000,[2][7] has been credited with popularizing the modern concept and shape of the meeple.[5] They have since become a popular component of many modern board games.[2][5][8]

The modern meeple was likely designed by Bernd Brunnhofer, German game designer, entrepreneur, and founder of Hans im Glück. Although the figures were initially referred to as "followers", Alison Hansel, an American gamer, coined the name meeples in November 2000.[9][10] According to Alicia Nield, owner of the company MeepleCity, Hansel accidentally combined the words "my people" during a game of Carcassonne.[11] The term was popularized through the website BoardGameGeek.[5][11][12] On November 27, 2000, Hansel made a post on the Unity Games forums proposing the term meeples to describe these figures.[13]

Some companies offer hand-painted, deluxe meeples, and meeples in some games are customized in various ways; for example, Tiny Epic Quest has customizable meeples that can hold various items such as weapons.[14] Some games, including expansions to Carcassonne, have wooden figurines shaped in non-humanoid forms that are sometimes called meeples; for example, Dixit has rabbit-shaped meeples.[5] Farm animal meeples are sometimes called "sheeples", monsters "creeples", and robots "bleeples".[5] The term meeple has occasionally been used for wooden board game pieces representing inanimate objects like vehicles.[12] More elaborate miniatures used in gaming, such as the ones used in miniature wargaming, are not usually called meeples.[12]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Heron, Michael James; Belford, Pauline Helen; Reid, Hayley; Crabb, Michael (2018-06-01). "Meeple Centred Design: A Heuristic Toolkit for Evaluating the Accessibility of Tabletop Games". The Computer Games Journal. 7 (2): 97–114. doi:10.1007/s40869-018-0057-8. hdl:10059/2886. ISSN 2052-773X.
  2. 1 2 3 Smit, Dorothé; Maurer, Bernhard; Murer, Martin; Reinhardt, Jens; Wolf, Katrin (2019-03-17). "Be the Meeple: New Perspectives on Traditional Board Games". Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. TEI '19. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 695–698. doi:10.1145/3294109.3295657. ISBN 978-1-4503-6196-5. S2CID 83458650.
  3. 1 2 Podrez, Peter (2022-08-27), Beyond Pawns and Meeples: Material Meanings of Analog Game Figures, transcript Verlag, pp. 279–314, doi:10.1515/9783839462003-010, ISBN 978-3-8394-6200-3, retrieved 2023-11-08
  4. ↑ PrintMag (2008-06-01). "Extraordinary Meeples". PRINT Magazine. Archived from the original on November 8, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wallis, James (2023-03-14). Everybody Wins: Four Decades of the Greatest Board Games Ever Made. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-83908-191-0.
  6. ↑ "Different kind of gaming gets home in Meepleville Board Game Cafe – Las Vegas Weekly". lasvegasweekly.com. 2015-12-22. Archived from the original on February 9, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  7. ↑ DeWyngaert, Emilia (2019-05-13). "Behind the Tiles: Mathematics of Carcassonne". Across the Bridge: The Merrimack Undergraduate Research Journal. 1 (1).
  8. ↑ DeWyngaert, Emilia (2019-05-13). "Behind the Tiles: Mathematics of Carcassonne". Across the Bridge: The Merrimack Undergraduate Research Journal. 1 (1).
  9. ↑ "What is a meeple? – Happy Meeple". www.happymeeple.com. Archived from the original on November 11, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  10. ↑ Montgomery, Matt (2021-02-16). "Issue 17: History of the Meeple". Don't Eat the Meeples. Archived from the original on November 11, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  11. 1 2 "Playing around: MeepleCity bringing game night to town | Texarkana Gazette". www.texarkanagazette.com. 2022-12-05. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  12. 1 2 3 "What are meeples and meeple games?". Wargamer. 2022-11-18. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  13. ↑ Hansel, Alison (2010-11-30). "New RioGrande Games". Archived from the original on November 30, 2010. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
  14. ↑ "The Evolution of the Meeple". Nerdist. Archived from the original on November 9, 2023. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
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