SethWorld Game History

by Yvonne M. Buonamici

I’ve been asked how I was inspired to make SethWorld and how it’s creation came about.

The simple answer is that I channeled SethWorld in 1998. I didn’t realize it was channeling at the time, though. I simply woke up one morning with the game fully formed in my head, grabbed a pad and started writing. In about an hour, I had the game concept down, a suggested format for play, an initial design for the board, and a list of the concepts I wanted to use. All that remained was the fleshing out, so to speak.

Of course, that answer is just one layer of how the game came to be manifested. Basically, see, I’m lazy. A Sethie since my college days (though not a “rabid” Sethie until about 1995), I believed that exploring my beliefs would greatly benefit me. I had been using a variety of ways to do this—meditation, workshops, filling out charts and diagrams, muscle testing, etc., but …it was just so much hard work!

Time not being linear, we now move into the future a bit. My friend, James Thames, had hooked me up with a computer and I joined the on-line Seth community, where I met Richard from New Zealand, who hooked me up with Pulse. Simultaneously, I’d been going to see Kay Shinol (Awakening Tribe) channel Peter. Peter told me I needed to replace the word “work” in my vocabulary with the word “play.” Kay was “given” to offer channeling classes to certain individuals, of which I was one. During her classes, I began to channel that part of my larger self that the Pulse group named EVE.

So, maybe this is how it worked: I sent a need and desire out to the universe, which formed a probability of somehow exploring beliefs through play, which floated around the probability spectrum, pulling events from past and future, waiting for me to pluck it out of F2. That’s as good a scenario as any other, don’t you think?

The original board design for SethWorld was a 3-dimensional board. It was three poles of different heights, each with a circle on top, each circle divided into 10 pies, or playscapes. I made a styrofoam and cardboard mock-up of the board and began to test it with family and friends, both Sethies and non-Sethies, over a period of 2-3 years, tweaking and editing it. I found that people had a surprising amount of difficulty with the concept of a game that had no winner and no rules, so I added 6 sample “moves” to the pamphlet. Some of these I made up, and some are from actual games that were played during the testing phase.

I sent the game to Robert Butts and to Lynda Dahl. Both approved of it, but at the time, Rob’s publishers were not accepting anything new and Lynda was only publishing books. I did not want to offer the game to a large corporation, and all the smaller, alternative presses seemed only to deal in books or cards. Manufacturing a 3- dimensional board was not something they were willing to undertake. So I shelved the game for a while, pulling it out only occasionally for local Seth meetings or gatherings with friends.

A few years ago, I went to a Seth gathering in Houston, Texas, and while there, I met Rich Kendall. The game came up in the course of conversation and I promised to send Rich a copy of it, which I finally did a year later. He liked it, and so the process began again, with the same results … the small publishers all loved it, but none would undertake to manufacture it because it was a game and not a book.

It became obvious I would have to use a flat board. I decided I would find an artist who could create the suggestion or illusion of a 3-dimensional board and I would take the risk of self-publishing the game. I looked first among friends and family, with no luck, and then hit upon the idea of actually asking someone in the Seth community! (I know! I know!) Enter artist extraordinaire, Annette Shacklett.

Annette had an image pop into her head while we were speaking, and agreed to undertake the design of the board. She has been invaluable. She is not only a talented artist, but she knows all the computer things that the printer needs.

Not only did I want to find a way to explore beliefs through play, but I also wanted to make a contribution to the Seth material. I believe SethWorld accomplishes both of those goals. I’m very proud of it.

SethWorld is a totally open-ended game, with NO RULES. It is designed so that the players can create the game in the same manner we create our realities — individually and en masse. I believe it is totally unique among board games and will enrich the players in their conscious creation.

SethWorld — You’ve Never Played Anything Like It!