A fire sergeant at the Inazawa City Fire Department in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, has been suspended for one month after spending half a year getting his colleagues to play board games he designed by hand. The announcement came on 10 April, and the details are gloriously specific.
Between July 2024 and January 2025, ten firefighters at a substation played board games during work hours, including during designated rest periods. The sergeant, a man in his 40s, had created over ten different handmade games, all handwritten on blank paper, based on card games and wordplay. The most enthusiastic participant played 14 times, racking up approximately 35 hours of on-duty gaming.
No money changed hands during any of the sessions. This was not a gambling situation. This was a man so devoted to his handmade creations that he made playing them a workplace expectation. Colleagues who refused were ignored. When the activity was eventually discovered, the sergeant attempted to cover it up and filed false entries in duty logs, which is where this tips from "eccentric hobby" into "actual disciplinary problem."
One of the ten participants eventually reported the situation to the fire chief. The other nine received reprimands or written warnings, and one supervising officer got a verbal warning for not catching it sooner.
There is something admirable about a person who designs ten original board games and wants nothing more than for people to play them. The execution, however, leaves something to be desired. Mandatory playtesting during emergency response shifts is, it turns out, frowned upon.
We would love to know what those games were actually like. If you have ever forced your friends to playtest a prototype at game night, you understand the impulse, if not the setting.
Sources: Chunichi Shimbun (Japanese) | Chukyo TV / Yahoo Japan News (Japanese) | r/boardgames
