G: There was
a First Friday on April 4, and we went to Dorian and Amethyst's. I made
the
Vegan Cheese Ball and it was a huge hit. I had a lot of fun -
hanging out, talking, drumming, dancing.
Can't remember the weekend...
Tuesday we got ready then left for The Gathering of Friends (a small, invitation game convention hosted by
Alan Moon), driving to Columbus, Ohio. We left before 2pm and got into the Ramada
after 9pm, cranky and tired. But after settling in and having something
to eat, we joined our friends who were already there - Jake, Dave, and
Kory. I met a couple other friends of theirs that night; Stephen Glenn and
James Kyle Drocha. We played some party games that Kory and Dave are developing.
The first one was Dave's Friend Facts, where you make up trivia
questions about yourself. Kory's Guess What Happened was fun too; you
tell a story about something that happened to you, leaving off the
dramatic ending and your friends try to guess what happened next. There
are scoring systems and points for both of these of course, but I won't
get into that much detail.
We also play tested a prototype game
of Kristin Matherly's that Jake brought along. I think I might have won
all three games that night...!
I saw
Dominic and Satish
the next day, and that's the sum of people I already knew, but I met a
lot of nice, neat people and played games with them. There were a lot
of folks there who live in MD and VA too.
It would take pages
and pages to talk about all the games I played from Tuesday night to
Sunday afternoon. So I'm just going to list them and perhaps
intersperse some other things here and there.
Wednesday - At
some point on this day I met Elizabeth but she let us call her Lizzie.
She's a very cool and fun young woman who works at a game store in DC.
We ended up in a lot of games together. It looks like I might have
played the most games this day, but I didn't start taking notes until
later so I may have some mixed up with other days.
Quirkle (with Satish "Quirkle, bitches!" and Kory and others)
Exxtra (with Lizzie and others)
Crokinole (w/John, Dave, and Jake)
Personal Preferences
This was a homemade copy where everyone wrote down random things
on cards (avocado, fire, peeing in public), they were shuffled and 6
were dealt out. The "judge" secretly ranked the items from their
favorite to least favorite, then the players guessed at the rankings.
We played with 6 people and it was loads of fun.
Say Anything!
Prototype that I've playtested many times, but is now close to being
published, and I can't wait. I love this game! By my friends
Dominic and Satish.
Pandemic (with Jake, John, and Anne)
Take Your Best Shot I was really tired and bad at this, but I liked it.
Loopin' Louie (
World Championship tournament) - I lost my first game and didn't go back for more.
Top Dog - a prototype of a protogame John is protodeveloping.
Electronic Catch Phrase - Music Edition Turf Master Thursday
- After getting up late we went to visit Koraleen and Victoria who live
in Columbus now. Brian wasn't home. We toured their large, mostly empty
house, Koraleen fed us tons of hummus and veggies, we walked around the
yard, kicked a soccer ball around in the basement, played
UNO, looked at a little dice game called
Cinq-O, and then made our way back to the Gathering, where I played:
Fluss Piraten (with Jake and Lizzie)
Hop Hop Hooray! (
Hüpf hüpf, Hurra!) (with Dominic and Lizzie) - a cute, silly game of bouncing marbles into a tray and trying to get 3 in a row.
Ticket to Ride: The Card Game (not quite yet released) I played this twice and lost both times - badly!
Ingrid (Jake's fiancee) showed up this day, and so some of these games were played with her...
The
Gathering Poker Tournament - I came in 29th of 80 people. I had one big
heart-pounding hand. The first time I raised half the people called -
and no one had been doing that before then. But I had trips on the flop
and kept betting at it - wound up going all in with a full house on the
river, last guy folded but I raked in quite a few chips that I then lost
slowly - then lost the majority with 2 pair to a straight.
Another
round of Friend Facts with a bigger group, including the usual suspects
and Lizzie, Satish, and James (I won again!) and then also Guess What
Happened. Both were a blast. It helps to play with funny, creative
people...
Friday
Escalation R-Eco Rattlesnake (twice, won second time)
Aquaretto (with Lizzie and Richard)
I was wearing my
Visit Beautiful Skullcrusher Mountain
shirt and when I finished this game and turned around I saw a guy
wearing the same shirt. So I went over and chatted with him (Kurt) and
it turned out he and his wife were at the
Birchmere show.
On Sunday I saw another person wearing the same shirt, but didn't end
up going to talk to them because we were busy getting things ready to
leave.
Qwirkle (again, with Jake and Ingrid, will buy this game)
Exxtra (again, with Lizzie, Jake, and Ingrid, hard to find but wouldn't mind having this)
I
participated in The Gathering Game Show - I was on a team with Jake,
Ingrid, and Dave - our number was 7 so we became the 7 Samurai's. My
only contribution was to do the writing. Dave and Jake came up with
answers to questions like "What's wrong with this game set up (photo)?"
or to name a game in such and such a category where you want to match
at least one other team but as few as possible. We came in somewhere in
the middle out of 32 teams.
Electronic Catch Phrase - Musical Edition (again)
Time's Up!
I never did play a normal round of this game, but this was awesome.
Frank from R&R games brought a prototype deck of this
Celebrities
based game but with Titles of Things: movies, books, art, etc. He also
had a new, fourth round: when you read, your partner closes their eyes.
You strike a pose, say "open" and they try to guess from the frozen
pose. Very funny! I had a very fun partner and we kicked asses and won.
Schnopp
- I can't find a link - this was more like a toy - a little teeter
totter board that you put little wooden disks with colors on one side
face down and hit the other end to send it flying. Then whoever's color
the disk it is trys to catch it. Silly fun...
$25,000 Pyramid
- (with Lizzie, Richard, and others) This was a lot of fun, even though we
didn't have the rules, we figured it out well enough to just have fun
with it.
Saturday
Can't Stop (with Jake, Ingrid, and Dominic)
ReFraze
(80's music and movies versions) This was a lot of fun, but Stephen
Glenn was a genius at it so we had to take turns in order to have a
chance.
Say Anything (again)
Hanging Gardens
This and Aquaretto are the two games that weren't more like party games
that I played. I didn't care much for Aquaretto, but I liked this
enough to consider getting it from the...
PRIZE TABLE. So every
year everyone one brings one or more new or old but special games to
leave on the prize table, then Saturday night everyone gets to go pick
something out. First various tournament winners get to choose, then
they draw names and you go up there and grab whatever you want. There
are about 300 people, but enough games that once they get through
everyone, you are called up again in reverse order to get another. And
after all that the new people get to go again (just all at once).
We
were hoping to get one of the Loopin' Louie games - Lizzie donated a
Japanese version and there was also a regular one. We watched them get
taken and Satish got the regular one. We shook our fists at him as he
walked by, but he thought we were cheering him on! Kory took a prize
from the "big prize" table (no second turn if you take from there) -
the one thing that wan't really a game or game related - a podcast kit.
He thought it was worth it for the little mixing board that comes with
it - so he can use it in his music making. John got up there and
grabbed a game he thought would have a lot of neat components for game
design (
World of Warcraft The Board Game). I wasn't called up for a long time but one of the games I wanted was still there:
Take Your Best Shot. On my return trip I picked up one of the games John had bought and donated but really wanted:
The aMAZING Labyrinth. When John got to go back he picked up something for me:
Sketchword. Then when we went back up for the newbie round, we got
Birds, Bugs, and Beans,
Drachengold, and
Good Question!
I picked this up because it was one of the few games left, but I had
tried to play it earlier without success, because even though I'd
gathered a group of willing people, I could not figure out how to play
it from the written rules. I knew it was simple from someone telling me
about it earlier, and at one point I thought I had it figured out, then
read some more and decided I didn't. I handed the rules to the fellow
next to me who gave up trying to understand pretty quickly. These were
very poorly written rules to a game that had been translated from
swedish or something.
But John and some others had it taught to
them another day, and while they weren't crazy about it, I thought it
might be worth a try, and there was little left to pick from. Later
that night I played:
The aMAZEing Labyrinth (with John, Kory, and Ingrid)
TichuA word trivia game I forgot the name of
Monster
Maller (or mauler?) I can't find anything about this game, but I think
it exists in a published form. You draw half of a person or character
on a piece of paper, and the person next to you draws the other half
without looking. Then the drawing is revealed to the rest of the
players and they have to guess who it is.
Wise and Otherwise (hilarity ensued)
As
usual, I stayed up very late and was very tired when I went to bed, but
some nights it was hard to sleep, so we stayed up giggling or tossing
and turning...
Sunday (Kory left that morning)
Nerd Trivia (with Jake, Ingrid, John, and Anthony)
So,
as you can see I played a lot of games and laughed a lot and had a lot
of fun. We also went out to eat a few times, once to an Ethiopian place
- The Blue Nile (?) and 3 times, plus takeout once, at
Alladin's Eatery.
Very yummy food, and you could get healthy stuff if you like. The
desserts looked impressive, but after trying a couple I decided they
looked better than they tasted. Our group ate there on our way out of town and Dominic and Satish joined us.
This Saturday I will be selling pottery at the First Annual
Hyattsville Arts Festival. Come on out!