Subject:
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Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.gaming
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Date:
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Mon, 25 Feb 2002 13:17:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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9 times
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In lugnet.fun.gaming, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> MOCs took up the available space. I wouldn't be surprised if the
> fleet provision falls to me this coming Brickfest year; I've been
> buying on BrickBay and retail with that exact concern in mind since
> before I heard you (Frank) might be heading out West, but I accelerated
> that process afterwards.
Oh good! I was wondering what we were going to do.
> > I would also like to seriously suggest Brickfest change how the outlet
> > shopping runs. Having everyone trek out to the store Sunday morning
> > effectively kills Brickfest for Sunday.
>
> I don't know when else it would be possible to do it, though--
> unless we were to do it *after* hours, which might raise protest
> from those who normally have to leave at a decent hour of the day
> to get home for work on Monday.
They could bring any special sale stuff and a cash register out to the con site
and people could otherwise go whenever they wanted. I too would volunteer to
(un)load the truck.
> And I'd feel much better without the pressure of building closing
> deadlines,
Yeah! (should we by xposting to WAMALUG?)
> Ideally, if there could be one or two enormous ballrooms/convention
> halls, that would be perfect. There's something about being in one
> place where *everything* is going on, separated only by linear
> distance, that I find attractive.
I agree, but as Frank pointed out there is a substantial noise pollution
problem in such a venue.
> See above. If the spatial layout can be improved, a lot of the
> desire for intermittent wandering can be accomodated without "shifts"
> of GMs. Personally, if we can have the equivalent of our peak Pirate
> Game attendance at BrickFest 2000 (I think it was 16), I don't think
> 3 or 4 GMs is a problem--especially if two of them are also running
> ships, or if the "neutrals" are parceled out among them for role-
> playing.
>
> (I still like that latter idea--one GM is the blue Imperials, one
> is the red Imperials, one the independent Merchants, and one "master
> GM"--others taking over new roles as breaks are taken, etc.)
>
> Having a dinner hiatus with ordered pizza also helps break up any
> exhaustion. :)
I would hope for greater participation than 16 at a game-themed event. That is
in part why I mentioned having multiple games. I agree that GMs playing roles
is a good idea unless the players are going to play those roles. I'm not
convinced that all players should be pirates. Short official meal breaks is a
fine idea.
> > > I'd like to see a central staging supply area, with -- when demand
> > > suffices, more than one game going on based out of the central supply
> > > pool. The whole thing secured appropriately.
> >
> > Hmm, do you foresee multiple simultaneous Pirate Games? Or were you more
> > thinking of multiple simultaneous Brickwars games?
Both and either. We are intermittently discussing a current and future event,
so it's somewhat nebulous, but I was imagining a future LEGO-game event that
would draw a couple hundred folks and thus we'd probably have multiple
simultaneous pirate games. I think it would be distinctly clever to have two
games being run with a way for players to travel between the two (maybe sailing
from the carribean to the coast of Africa or something).
> I'd bet more like one Pirate Game and one BrikWars concurrently--
> though BrikWars can probably fit three or four scenarios into a
> weekend, some themselves overlapping. (Also: One should try to get
> general security that doesn't pick its toes on camera.)
>
> But what would you (Chris) see as the nature of this supply pool?
> Just a place where gear is kept, or things that may be used in common
> by both games?
It would depend on the nature of the event(s). In the case of the simultaneous
distinct, but related pirate games, there's no reason that the supply depot
couldn't represent European shipyards and be available to more than one game.
I remember at one of the first couple GenCons after it moved to Milwaukee
noting a game that was Starfleet Battles and based on the results of that game,
and how many ships got through to the planet, an Ogre miniatures game took
place. A similar idea for a LEGO game event would be cool. Maybe a Brickwars
game determining how a Pirate game was set up which in turn determined how
an other Brickwars game (or several little skirmishes, like island treasure
races or something) would get set up.
Anyway, at an event revolving around LEGO games, there would be lots of
flexibility.
> If my experience playing BrikWars with NELUG is any indication, the
> amount of time needed to get people up to speed with that system is
> a lot less than you'd think. Now, we *did* have a balance problem,
> but that wasn't a matter of not taking enough time to fix it. We
> took maybe four hours to get everything ready to go, set-up, table
> building, and everything included.
That could be done by the most hard-core participants and still allow generic
players to show up at the designated start time and more or less just start
playing, right?
> A benefit to a lot of the BrikWars that has been played, though,
> is that the "brought armies" have been discussed between the players
> before the con, and most everyone knows the rules (or defers to the
> assignments of those who do, because they want to learn).
I kind of like the idea of just having a half hour or an hour to grab stuff
from a common pool and build, and then everyone fights with whatever they
managed to throw together.
On a side note, I've been thinking that the setting of the Weird West
associated with the Deadlands RPG family of games (Doomtown, Rangewars, Great
Rail Wars, etc.) would be a fun Brickwars scenario. It alows for cowboys and
indians and wierd gizmos and magic and terrible monsters all rolled into one
game.
> The Pirate
> Game is a little different in that regard, but if the rules are made
> available and a census taken, and people talk about it, we can shave
> some time off of startup.
What are you imagining having to work out?
> A Pirate 'con would increase the percentage of people who would
> play the Pirate Game, but it might not give us much more than
> 12-16 people. A lot of AFOL go to Brickfest/Brickswest because
> of the overall draw; they might not bite on a Piratefest, because
> their weekends are already spoken for. A general LEGO gaming con
> would be one possible solution, though.
The more we discuss it, the more I think a general LEGO-game thing is the way
to go. But getting it started is going to be tough. Probably piggybacking
onto an established game con (rather than trying to work with a new brick con
or go it alone) would work best. I'll see what I can do for the next NJ game
con and report back.
How many people out there reading this would come to NJ for 3+ days of LEGO
gaming? How many people would help set it up?
> A BrikWars/Pirate Game gaming 'con would indeed threaten to attract
> folks from NELUG (at least the Mass/Conn/NY contingents) and LUCNY
> (and of course the loveable GardenSLUGs); who knows, maybe we could
> even drag folks from the Toronto community down. It's only 9.5 hours'
> drive!
Do you actually know people who would come or are you speculating? It's only
15 hours to Chicago, maybe midwesterners would come too! And only four hours
from LAX, SFO, etc ;-)
> The downside, from a LEGO viewpoint, is that I may be in South Africa
> from August until God-knows-when.
Oh...is it likely to be more than a year? I've had a bunch of friends go off
for international scholarship experiences and they were usually metered in
semesters (typically 2-3 of them).
> I've already passed the US side
> of the Fulbright competition, so if South Africa finds nothing
> objectionable about me or my application I'm going to be off on
> Fulbright this coming year.
Good deal!
> Back to the storage unit with you, LEGO. :(
I'll take 'em ;-) I mean, you know...just to help out a fellow SLUG.
> We'd have to figure out where to have it--if it were much more than
> 20 people, Chris's long room might not do (and his cats would probably
> go insane).
They can be locked out of that section of the house. But I'm not sure that my
place could reasonably support a single game with 20 players. Maybe 13 at a
big game in the family room and 7 in the sun room where my LEGO and games (and
our GardenSLUG meetings) are, but 20 in one room would be tight!
> > I think Car Wars would be an ideal game to adapt for LEGO play. Steve
> > Jackson actually mentioned something about a group using LEGO for Car
> > Wars. My thought would be to do it in super mini-fig scale (like do most
> > cars as 8-wide) so that the models can be decently detailed (6-wide
> > might be enough and certainly would be smaller).
I have a silver champion ready to go...let's do it at that scale. We could
play on the local middle-school track ;-)
> That would be an interesting thing to explore, if not for the fact
> that I really don't like Car Wars. I'd suggest Ogre, but if you know
> anyone who can build 160 armor units' worth of vehicles in scale,
> then you're more well-traveled than I.
Car Wars is a game, that I think is dying to be fun, but is just a little too
slow. Every turn is what, 1/10 of a second and takes 20 minutes to resolve?
I'm not sure I see the scale issue with Ogre, but it's been like twelve or
fifteen years since I last played. Are you saying that if the Ogre was a
reasonable size, the GEVs and such would just be 1x2 plates? We could use
landspeeder sets (are they still half off at KB?) for GEVs and build an Ogre to
scale.
> > It would be nice to feature some of the simpler LEGO games also (heck,
> > even have some tables running some of the commercial titles, and perhaps
> > some computers with the computer games running).
>
> I dunno about that. Too much distraction, to my mind.
If it were a larger event, like an already established game con with 1-2000
participants, then a whole LEGO room would be doable with Bionicle card and
board games, computer consoles set up, a couple of Brickwars fields, and a
Pirate game too. All that stuff would be too much for an event with 20-50
players for sure!
> > Yes, we were close, but recall that that was also based on being able to
> > get free space.
>
> Yes indeedy do. I'd be inclined to write off importing Steve for the
> first gaming 'con or two--the revenue just won't be there (sorry Steve!),
> but if he wants to come anyways, we'd surely be hospitable (I'd be willing
> to foot free pizza!).
Again, if we work with a game con, the cost (and his time) can be spread. He
can showcase new GURPS stuff, run Pirate games (and CarWars or Ogre?), sit on a
panel, etc. The last time I saw him at our local Shore Con in Cherry Hill, NJ,
it seemed that they were not using his time well. He did a fair amount of
sitting around and chatting with geeky folks. We could do better!
Space is once again essentially free if we're part of a larger con.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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| (...) Like I said, I should be able to bring a decent amount of toys. You and Lindsay should be able to bring enough yourselves. Other folks will bring a little bit also. (...) I still have to think about how to make Imperial players really work. It (...) (23 years ago, 26-Feb-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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| (...) That's definitely true. If we'd had more cargo space, maybe I could have brought some useable ships--but in the event our islands and MOCs took up the available space. I wouldn't be surprised if the fleet provision falls to me this coming (...) (23 years ago, 25-Feb-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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