Steve Jones
Celebrate Steve Jones’ Legacy
Steve was on the ManorCon committee since the late 1980’s, becoming the chairman in 1999. As well as chairing the convention committee, he also managed the Convention finances for many years, and ran the 18XX Tournament at ManorCon. Steve had been involved in all aspects of ManorCon 2025 planning prior to his passing, including the move to Northampton. This year will not be the same without him.
Steve was originally from Australia and came to the UK to study at Cambridge followed by a long career as an Industrial Mathematician for Unilever. He enjoyed the heavier analytical games, which was obvious from his choice of games.
Vital Lacerda was his favourite boardgame designer with Steve being keen to teach anyone who wanted to learn, at ManorCon and many other conventions throughout the year.
We’d also like to give a huge thank you to Paul Grogan and Dranda Games; Paul organised a charity giveaway of Steve Jones’s copy of Galactic Cruise, raising nearly £2,000 for Cancer Research UK.
Heartfelt Memories of Steve
Discover Steve Jones’ journey and how his passion shaped ManorCon into a beloved community event.
Teaching Games
Steve would often volunteer to teach people how to play a game, but his explanations would always take a long time. As it was once described to me, he would read each sentence from the rulebook, out loud, and after each sentence, would then describe what that meant. The ultimate case of this was from CastleCon, where it is said that after breakfast, Steve taught a group how to play Starfarers of Catan. Then they had lunch, and then they played it!
Trip Hazard
During one of our April visits to Leicester, we were sat on the soft cushion seating, waiting for the meeting with the University. Steve decided he wanted a cup of coffee, so went to the coffee machine in front of him. Finding it switched off, he turned around to go to the one on the other side of the room, only to fall over the soft cushion he’d been sat on only moments earlier, but had forgotten was there. For several years thereafter, the programme booklet marked the location of this in various ways, including a “trip hazard” symbol, or the words “acrobatics display area” in small writing.
Puerto Rico
At a games convention, Steve asked to borrow my copy of Puerto Rico. Borrowing games to play is common practice, although you can’t be sure how well organised the bits will be afterwards. My game came back better organised than before, with neatly labelled ziplock baggies for the colonist tokens required for three, four, or five players.
Welcoming
I first met Steve at Airecon 2022 where he taught me how to play Underwater Cities. We played a 2 player game that we couldn’t finish in time, so Steve suggested we leave the board up and resume first thing in the morning. That was my first ever convention. After we finished the game, Steve suggested we play another game together, this time Terraforming Mars, which he kindly was happy to teach my friend who hadn’t played before. We spent much of the con together, it was great. He was so welcoming and kind. Such an interesting individual too with rich life experience. The subsequent cons I went to I always made it a point of trying to find the legendary Steve Jones.
Just one more game..
I was heading home from a Con and passed Steve and two friends on the last turn of a game. It was a boardgame I was interested in, but hadn’t had the chance to play. They finished the game and I explained my reason for watching. ‘Well,’ said Steve, ‘the game [first edition of Great Western Trail] plays better with four, would you care to join us for another game?’.
He went through the rules whilst setting it up, effortlessly teaching it so I knew what I was doing by the time we started. We played through, finished and totted up the scores. It was a really close game, and everyone had a great time. Steve started to collect the game together to put it away, paused, looked up and said ‘How about one more?’ And that’s how I ended up not getting home until 1am.😄 There are many gaming sessions that you remember, that one will fondly stay with me for a while.
Organised
Someone once borrowed a game from Steve and, knowing how fastidious he was, made a great effort to return the game as he found it. Steve came over and thanked the man for doing a good job on putting the game away but did note that he had not colour-matched the elastic bands with the colours of the cards enclosed in the elastic bands, i.e. yellow band around the yellow deck and so on. Classic Steve.
Darwin’s Journey
Steve taught my wife and I Darwin’s Journey late 2023, played Mosaic with him too. I think of him when I get our copy of Darwin’s Journey out as we liked it so much playing it with Steve we bought it soon after.