Robert Charles Bell

Author of several books on board-games. Most importantly, Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations.

R C Bell was born 1917 in Sudbury, Ontario and came to England in 1928. Educated at Haileybury College, Hertfordshire and St Bartholomew's Hospital by 1941. He became a consultant plastic surgeon. His first work was Board and Table Games of Many Civilizations.
In addition he produced Discovering Backgammon, Discovering Mah-Jongg, Discovering Chess and Discovering Old Board Games for Shire Publications.
He was on the editorial board of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. He later produced many articles on coin collecting for World Coins. He died after 1980.
[details taken from back cover of Shire Publications Discovering Backgammon]

Publications

*Bell, Robert Charles. "The Boardgame Book". London: Bookthrift Company, 1979.
*Bell, Robert Charles. "Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations". Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1980. ISBN 0-486-23855-5
**Reprint: New York: Exeter Books, 1983.
*Discovering Mah-Jongg - Shire Publications.
*Discovering Chess - Shire Publications
*Discovering Old Board Games - Shire Publications #182 ISBN 0 85263 235 5
*Discovering Backgammon - Shire Publications #201 ISBN 0 85263 263 0

Bell's main categories of board & table game

Bell gives origins, history and some game-playing details for some 180 games in the 2 volumes of his main work. He divides the majority into three main categories Race, Place or Chase/War or combinations of the three.
A Race game requires the pieces to move from a start point to a finish point usually based on the throw of dice.
A Place game requires the winning player to form a pattern or shape by placing pieces on a board.
A War game involves both placement and movement with the additional factor that pieces can be captured. Each of these terms can have a more specific game-related meaning.

Three examples suffice :- Ludo is a simple Race game with a Capture ie Chase element. Both Tic-Tac-Toe and Go are games of strict Placement with no secondary moves. The majority of computer-based strategy games are of the Chase or War or abstract Strategy or Role-playing category and were not considered by Bell.

Both Robert Charles Bell and Harold James Ruthven Murray use these major categories. Bell separates Mancala games from the Race category and also has Dice and Domino categories. In addition, there is mention of the sub-genre of Solitaire and Puzzle games.

Much of Bell's work is based on his own research and the books of H.J.R. Murray, Scarne, Dudeny and others.

A significant number of games within Wikipedia have a reference to Bell's books.

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"In the sections on games within Wikipedia, Board games is a sub-section of Tabletop games which also includes Card games, Dice games, Paper and pencil games, Miniature games, and roleplaying games as sub-sections.

"The phrase Table games is currently given as Tabletop games. There is a recent casino-based intervention that Table games are a variant of casino games as opposed to 'slots'."

Modern Games and Variations

Bell did comment on the use of house rules and how games could evolve further. Although he did not comment on the huge changes which had already begun with the arrival of computers, video-games and other late 20th century innovations even though these were occurring at the time of publication of his later books.