The Enduring Impact of Klaus Teuber's Catan on Board Games.

Klaus Teuber, the German designer who created The Settlers of Catan (now just Catan), died on April 1 at age 70. Teuber developed Die Siedler von Catan in the early 1990s, playing with ideas of Icelandic settlements, tinkering in his basement while working full-time at a dental lab. Catan changed the world's expectations for board games, offering a face-to-face, objects-on-a-table counterpoint to a culture rapidly accepting online chatter and screen-based gaming. The game is relatively easy to learn yet offers many layers of deeper strategy for those who keep playing, and it typically doesn't let players be removed from the game before the final score tallying.