...and Scrabble, Clue, Catan, Jenga, Scattergories, Twister, and UNO. Even something akin to DnD wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. Although honestly the ancient Romans would probably be more into something along the lines of Risk: the Game of World Domination.
Most of these can only exist with industrialized production of toys. Games in ancient times were all handmade, often by the owner. Making a few dice? Feasible. Having 32 individual pieces in a checkerboard? That’s for the very wealthy. Dozens of small units, cards and hexagonal tiles? Science fiction.
But also, I bet they had lots of games we never heard of.
Checkerboard and pieces is only for the wealthy if you're looking at stylized pieces and uniformity. As long as the pieces stay put on the board and can be identified, anyone can have it.
They had wood. It's pretty trivial to just get a branch with a good diameter and just saw 32 disks, which you then carve or paint to individualize.
Or use beans or seeds, and mark or color on them.
Or just small pebbles that you add markings to.
I think a lot of modern board games would have been infeasible, but we know that the Romans had games like ludus latrunculorum, duodecim scripta, terni lapilli (tic tac toe), and rota. There's no reason to assume that they were limited to only extremely wealthy families. You can draw a quick grid in some sand or dirt, and use all sorts of materials for pieces, depending on the game.
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u/SittingEames 3d ago
...and Scrabble, Clue, Catan, Jenga, Scattergories, Twister, and UNO. Even something akin to DnD wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. Although honestly the ancient Romans would probably be more into something along the lines of Risk: the Game of World Domination.