Button Men

In the summer of 1999, James Ernest was asked to design a suite of games with rules short enough to fit on business cards, coasters, placemats, and menus for a local gaming-themed restaurant. Along with several other lightweight games, which the restaurant did buy, he created a strategy dice game codenamed Killer, with coasters as collectible characters. Each character was made with a different assortment of dice, which the restaurant conveniently sold in the adjoining game shop. Sadly, the place gave Killer a pass.

Unlikely to need coasters for his own gaming-themed restaurant, James converted the characters to pin-back buttons, and changed the name to Button Men. The game was a fast hit, winning two Origins Awards for Best Abstract Board Game and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game (and forcing the awards to rethink their categories).

Now the game has more than 200 characters, including a dozen official sets released by Cheapass Games, and dozens more licensed and unofficial sets from our publishing partners. The latest collection from Cheapass Games featured 48 new characters from Fight City, printed on cards instead of buttons, and packaged with a starter set of polyhedral dice.

This is a placeholder page for Button Men, just the quickest of information for your enjoyment while we assemble the components to make this game available once again through Crab Fragment Labs. For more information about Button Men, do what we’re doing: Use the Wayback Machine to search for beatpeopleup.com, anytime between 2000 and 2004.