Two Weekends of Games

The next two weekends will be full of games. This Saturday is International Tabletop Day, and next weekend is PAX East. I'm thrilled to pieces to be doing something for both events. I created an RPG scenario designed to run from business cards at one or both events.

International Tabletop Day
It's an excuse to reach out to fellow gamers and invite them to play something. I'm organizing an event at my church in Shrewsbury, MA. Feel free to stop by between 10 AM and 5 PM if you're in the neighborhood and want to get your game on. We'll be playing games all afternoon, so bring a game you'd like to share.

Growing Up Gamer

The purple/blue d20 is her favorite.
Yes, she's in Fairy Form here.

I grew up a gamer. I played chess with my father until I fought him to a draw when I was about 10, then we never played again. I used to read his Games Magazines when he was done with the World's Most Ornery Crossword, and I got hooked on cryptograms. In 5th grade we played board games at school sometimes, and they gave me Stratego and Careers to keep at the end of the year. I still have them.

I got my first D&D Basic set (Moldvay - now available in PDF!) in 1981, and a multiverse of possibilities opened up. RPGs gave me a structure around which to build worlds, and to tell stories in those worlds. Sometimes the story came first and begged for a world, sometimes the world spawned stories on its own. In any case, the creativity genie had escaped the bottle, never to return.

And now, I'm a father. I have an intelligent and precocious daughter, who sketches books and designs outfits and willfully has trouble listening sometimes. We build robots and play chess and read stories.

And we game.

It started with Princess Ruth when she was 4, which was an interactive bedtime story. We still have some of the story yet to go, since she still has to find the Dark Cave to destroy the Heart of Darkness. She told the story. I just provided details and challenged her occasionally with NPC reactions and information from her research.

Recently, we've moved on to actual RPG play with her and her friends. I chose to go with Warrior, Rogue & Mage, since task resolution requires rolling a d6 and adding a modifier to beat a target number. I went into the first game with very little prep, and we all had a grand old time. I need to limit handing out Luck Points, since getting 2 6s in a row seems fairly easy. Maybe 3 6s in a row instead? Take a look at other lessons learned from the first game, if you're so inclined.

All diced up and ready to roll.

Santa got her a pack of 4 Hello Critty dice in her stocking. Last week we went to our FLGS The Whiz to pick up a full set of dice and a starter dice bag. She picked through and got different colors that she liked, and now she has dice that are all hers. She's outfitted and ready to go for the next game on Saturday. She's excited. Her friends are excited. Hell, I'm excited.

I've started a Game & Potluck Night on the second Saturday of the month at my church. We had over 50 people come out for the first event in January. I hope to do at least that well for the next Game & Potluck Night in March. Eventually we'll put out a tip hat and see if anyone wants to chip in for new games. And we may have a table for RPGs before long. We'll see what the market will bear.

That's the glory of gaming. It's discovering something new to pique the interest. It's allowing everyone at the table to create or change the world or story in some way so everyone is invested in the game. It's keeping everyone coming back for more to build on the pieces they've invested in. It's sharing a table with people you like and making memories that get better with every retelling.

I hope to infect future generations with the gaming bug.

I think I'm doing fairly well so far.

The Low-Key Potluck

This past Saturday, it rained. While ideal for staying inside and playing board games, it also limited attendance as people were understandably reticent to travel. We hardy few tried out the new table protector and talked and ate and gamed.

We broke the ice with Bananagrams.
Does that make us predictable?
Also, hilarity ensued, thanks to Steve.

We tested Belle of the Ball by Daniel Solis.
It's definitely a beta, but I think it's got potential.
My biggest issue? Very few cards actually score points.

I typed up some feedback and sent it to Daniel, the game's designer. And the next day I had a few more ideas for optional rules that I sent along. Daniel posted those ideas on his site to generate some more discussion about the game. For those of you interested in reading my email or joining the discussion, jump through here. And yes, having beta feedback published by a game designer makes me feel almost famous. (Insert a brief pause for fanboy squee-ing.)

We broke in Ticket to Ride Europe.
Tunnels, Ferries, and Stations add a
whole new dimension to the basic game.

Kim asked about the differences between Ticket to Ride and Europe, so I've made some edits here to talk about that.

Ticket to Ride Europe adds a few new elements to the basic game.

1. Ferries require a locomotive or two to buy the route, so they're harder to afford.
2. Tunnels introduce a little randomness into building. When you buy a route with a tunnel, you turn up the top 3 cards of the deck. For each turned-up card that matches the color of the set you just played (including locomotives), you need to play an additional card from your hand to afford the route. If you don't have any matching cards in your hand, you take your cards back and lose your turn.
3. Stations let you "claim" a city and borrow someone else's route out of that city to score your tickets. If you don't use your stations, they're worth 4 points each at game end.

The Europe board has longer routes (1-4, 6, or 8! cars long) that fit together much more tightly making it much easier to get cut off, so stations become much more important. I got lucky with my tickets and didn't use any stations, so I ended up winning by the largest margin I've ever seen in Ticket to Ride. Ouch. I will gladly play again and have my pants handed to me.

We had a ball. Stay tuned for the next one!

All articles in this series so far:

- The Low-Key Potluck (See above.) (11Jun11)
- What we played this weekend (14May11)
- What have we played lately? (30Apr11 and prior)

What we played this weekend.

We had another Potluck Game Day this weekend, and we broke out a fresh pile of gaming goodness and a couple of old favorites.

Bananagrams in now a go-to game.
Sue us.

We played Carcassonne for  the first
time in a while. It's hard to remove all the
expansions once they're in the tile bag.

Lost Cities is a 2-player game we played
as a warm-up. Find the solitaire version on
Facebook and kiss productivity goodbye.

I'm not sure which youthful variation of Scrabble
we broke out for the kids, but yay for spelling words!

We've created bean-heads with Bohnanza.
Dunk, we'll keep your copy safe 'til next time.

This is the latest FFG version of Cosmic Encounter.
We played the 1977 version. Massive Old Sk00l, yo.
And after 34 years, it's still a great game.

And sadly, Mi Gato Se Incendia (created by Ben from Troll In The Corner) isn't on Amazon. Even sadder, the promo copy we had only had 1 Net card in the deck instead of 10, so nobody could capture the cat and win the game before the poor beast expired.

What games have you played recently? Would you like more details on how any of these games play? Any requests? We can certainly mine the game shelves and put things in the queue if you want some feedback. Please write a comment and let me know!

Per Chris J's suggestion, I've added links to Board Game Geek for each game. BGG has a pile of reviews and pictures for each game, and I really need to get my profile cleaned up over there. Do you find links to BGG helpful?

Each of these posts will be tagged with "potluck" for easy searching. And now you're informed.

Stay tuned for more hijinks as we play more. Thanks for reading!

What have we played lately?

My wife and I have gotten tired of not having time to play games and socialize, so we started hosting potluck gaming nights. Bring a dish, bring a game, hang out and play while the kids run the batteries down in our Wii controllers. Though I must say our kids have played a pile of board games as well, possibly more than the adults. If there's interest in games for kids, I'll get a separate post together with that list. Just let me know in the comments or any other method you know to contact me.

We've had 2 potlucks so far, and everyone seems to enjoy it. I live in a cape, so I fear when we get more than a dozen adults in attendance (three game tables in three different rooms, Bwahahaha!), but we have the deck for seating and socializing as long as it doesn't rain and the bugs don't carry anyone off.

I want to list the games we've played so far, or at least the ones I remember. For those of you who were wondering what that game was we played and where can I get a copy, here you go.

Mmm... Beans.
Takes a while for an 8-player game, but still fun!

Great deck-building game.
The randomness makes for easier setup,
but the group prefers Dominion's customization.

Bananagrams Rocks.
And now we have a set. 

Yes, this perennial PAX East favorite
visited our table this past Saturday.

Ticket to Ride - a great, fast rail game.
It took us some time to get up to speed,
but we had a great endgame - 4 players within
4 points until Longest Route was awarded. W00t!

On the Wish List for games to play in future potlucks, we have...

I only have the Dominion base set.
Even so, you can choose available cards for
several different styles of game. Very cool.

Tasty Car Wars in card game form.
Now with even more mindless violence!
Brought it to PAX, but well worth playing more.
Dear Steve Jackson: MOAR CAR WARS PULEEZ!

Tikal, the game of dueling archaeologists.
Another fun one I haven't played in a while.

Ben (of Troll in the Corner fame) brought over the prototype of Mi Gato Se Incendia (read more about it over here), but we have yet to try it out. Soon, Ben, soon. One of these days I'll print out Daniel Solis's Belle of the Ball and give that a whirl. Yay for printable PDF games!

And I've still got a half-room full of board games to play. Truth to tell, I don't care what I play as long as everyone at the table is having a good time. Friends trump games, but they make the games we play that much better for everyone. And eating piles of great food halfway through doesn't hurt either.

So if you're interested in any of these games, the images above are links to Amazon. If you click through and buy something, they'll give me a buck or two through the Amazon Associates Program., and I'll give you my unending thanks. Or at least a couple of bucks' worth of unending thanks. Or a lollipop, your choice.

As always, thanks for the eyeball tracks!