Aristotle's Stairway

Aristotle’s Stairway abstractly portrays the philosophical pursuit of human excellence, of achieving “perfect being” as envisioned by the famous ancient Greek thinker Aristotle. Players roll dice and make important decisions, developing their powers of Reason, Ethics, Wisdom, Virtue and sense of Well Being while gaining various Insights along the way. The player who becomes more fully enlightened (gains the most Insight Points) will ultimately triumph – and win the game! Generally, players will randomly select and roll three dice and use two of them to move their playing pieces up five colored columns -- sometimes taking scoring markers (IPs) -- until they reach one of the top spaces of each column. Some markers allow special modifications to a die roll. The game ends when one player has climbed all five "stairways" and thus has maximized all five powers as noted above. Playable in 30 minutes, Aristotle’s Stairway is a cerebral, two-player filler with dice-rolling, tough decisions – and, with several catch-up mechanisms – usually results in a hotly contested, down-to-the-wire game!