50 States

Release Date: 2009
Set Size: 50 Buttons
Designers: Kaufman
New Rules: Moody Option Dice

The United States set is a fifty button set designed by Kaufman. Each button is intended to give the feeling of the state it represents.

According to Kaufman:

I was born in Connecticut, live in Maryland, and I am a geography geek at heart. As for the 50 States button set, I was on the old buttonmen site, I think dating back somewhere into the 1990s or early 2000s (when I was introduced to it). Anyway, it had a fairly active forum and one forum involved people occasionally dreaming up new buttons or sets. I sort of over time took it as a challenge and developed the set 50 states, trying to tailor each one to the personality of the state or some aspect of it. Some of them I'm not particularly proud of -- they allude to ugly stereotypes and the like -- but there they are. I put in some clever (at least to me) easter eggs. For example, if you see a Poison Fire die, it's probably a place known for growing tobacco. Maine has a Focus die because it's the first place in the fifty states where the sun rises. New Hampshire has one in honor of Dixville Notch, etc. I didn't do the art. The art is directly drawn from the state flags. On the old site, someone had programmed the 50 states into the development section and we could playtest a few. Then the site died, there was no online Button Men for a couple years, and I forgot all about it. I'd sort of forgotten about 50 States when the current site came up. Then Irilyth approached me and asked about it, and I gave him what information I still had, and he brought them to life here. I forget who he got for the art. He would be a good contact about them as well.