Numbers : 47 and 54 for the last two weeks
New Games : None. But some never before seen at NoBoG
- Kill Shakespeare a game from 2014 based on the comic book of the same name where all the characters of Shakespeare have come alive and are fighting for supremacy
- La Granja another game from 2014 that has you building your farms to deliver goods to the local village
- Monopoly. Yes. This is what happens when something is talked about too much. Monopoly actually gets played.
Anything else interesting : A regular Mice and Mystics group has started up with two Bens, Joe and after much waiting and anticipation Sam. They successfully completed the first chapter, including beating the cat, are tooled up and ready for the next 11 chapters of the base set ! One of the Bens is due to disappear longterm to Japan in several weeks, so the group will need a stand in at some point.
What else : Jarryd reports that work on the NoBoG app / experience is coming along nicely and there should be a prototype to look at this week. This app will hopefully address issues of how to provide a better game organising experience as well as offering better pub night game wrangling. All being well the app will be made available to everyone in due course. Exciting !
And finally : Rex made a return visit to NoBoG. Richard IV managed a crafty win as the Xxcha, or Bene Gesserit if you prefer. A prediction of a default win at game end - not so difficult. Dwarvish Sam engaged in full on warfare on turn one against myself, and then spent the remaining 2 odd hours regretting his life choices.
TIME Stories was postponed - and in the meanwhile a nice game of Tragedy Looper was put on. Which was all very good and we somewhat fluked a win against mastermind Hal at the end by literally guessing the final characters role.
The Gallery :
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| Kill Shakespeare |
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| La Granja - David's go to game at the moment |
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| Small World |
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| A long running game of Battlestar Galactica |
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| Epic wizards |
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| Castles of Mad King Ludwig |
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| Rex ( formerly Dune ) |
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| Tragedy Looper |
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| More La Granja |
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| Uh huh |
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| Smash Up |
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| Chris turns up with Red Dragon Inn |
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| Mice & Mystics group kicks off |
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| Boss Monster |
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| Lords of Waterdeep returns |
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| Cthulu Wars - Revenge of the plastic fumes |
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| Isle of Skye |
5 comments:
also played Istanbul that week..
I'm intrigued by the idea of an app for a game group. What functions are you planning on it having? I'm wondering if it could have wider applications beyond the Norwich group.
With my weekly group, we tried a system where everyone nominated two games and then we voted on the results to see what was played (with anything that has shown up on the list for consecutive weeks getting some added ranking, so if you had a game you wanted played badly enough it would eventually make it to the top regardless). This worked for a while and led to some surprising and interesting games getting played, but took a lot of management.
As are group has grown in size I'm interested in finding ways to manage game selection. Will this be part of the app y'all are developing?
Jarryd is making the app as part of his Uni work - and the scope is somewhat up to him, however...
The app needs to address several problems. And when you get into it, there's a lot of user requirements, issues and yada for our group. There's a balancing act of allowing people to organise tricky to get to table games with known players and also being welcoming to new people and not just having a cliquey Youre Not From Around Here cold shoulder thing going on, AND addressing social anxiety issues, and unfamiliarity, and yada yada yada. ( Headache ).
But basically game organising that is -
1) Inclusive of *everyone*. Particularly new people and those who want least fuss.
2) Allow good organisation of pre-arranged games.
3) Allow good organisation of games on game night.
Also the point of all this is to let the system / computer do the management. If someone is having to babysit a process it's a failure.
All you really need is a central list of available games, and people can vote on what they want to play. The particulars of that list break down into pre-arranged games, so games that go up on a list before game night. And then games that turn up adhoc on game night and are visible to everyone - either via their mobile device, OR, and here's the kicker, available through a large public display.
Ideally what you want is an app that allows a given user to keep a record of whatever games they have. Flag them to be pre-arranged or not. Or flag them as games I am bringing with me this week. Voting to play a game is as simple as clicking on a game in the list, which will mark you as voted, and on game night when the process is resolved, the system will tell you what you're playing based on a bunch of voting weights.
On game night the whole thing should be available from a large public display ( via hooking any device up to a chromecast ) - which allows new people to see whats available to play as well as those who dont buy into the app process to still interact with whats going on.
Effectively you move game organising into an on screen digital space. To the refuseniks or new it will be better than a roll call - no having to shout what you have or failing to hear what others have. To those who do buy into it they will get a way to browse whats available AND - cool thing - be able to read what a game actually is if they dont know ( which is most of the time ) via a click.
As for being available for other gaming groups, yeah, sure, very possible in theory. Development is somewhat Jarryds thing atm as he's doing it to fulfill course requirements. So. It may or may not be a workable prototype. Plus theres an issue of user buy in - if no one is interested its not going to work out, but, casting it onto a big screen guarantees its at least somewhat fit for purpose as it will replace a game roll call.
Well said... ;-)
The goal is to allow for different groups and it would be good if other local groups wanted to test it.
The backend is coming along and I'm starting on the frontend (it's not as rapid as I'd hoped for, because there's a lot of complexity to make the uni work worth it)
Hopefully will have something to show soon. Probably not Tuesday, but soon :-)
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