Subject:
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Gaming at AFOL cons
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.gaming
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Date:
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Sat, 23 Feb 2002 20:29:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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1601 times
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We had a nice roundtable on gaming at BricksWest, but I thought I'd open
some of the discussion here.
One thing Steve Jackson asked was based on the response to the Pirate
Game at BricksWest, was it even appropriate to have gaming at an AFOL
con. Of course if the answer is yes, then what should be kept in mind to
make it go well.
My immediate reaction is yes. Based on the response to the gaming at the
three AFOL cons I have attended, I think there is definitely a place for
gaming at AFOL cons. There does need to be some planning to make the
gaming rewarding to all involved. Some thoughts are:
An AFOL con needs a significant amount of unstructured "play" time.
Gaming events should be scheduled during this time, but also scheduled
in such a way as to allow those running the gaming to still participate
in some unstructured play.
An involved game like the Pirate Game or Mike Rayhawk's BricksWest Brick
Wars scenario really requires the gaming to have a dedicated secure
space (it need not be independently lockable at an AFOL con so long as
general security covers the space). This allows setup to occur without
delaying the start of the game, and allows the game to span multiple
non-contiguous time slots.
It is worth encouraging some less structured gaming. I think all the
Brick Wars games at BrickFest have been less involved scenarios which
could be quickly set up.
There needs to be management of expectations for the gamers. Somehow
Steve was expecting 25 players or so. I hope I wasn't the source of that
expectation, the 8 we had the first night was a "good crowd" by my
thinking, though we could easily have had more in a different situation.
There is a lot of interest in LEGO gaming, but there are so many other
things going on to draw people's attention away. There is strong value
in broad advertising of the gaming, especially if a well known person
like Steve will be running the game. If you attract a few gamers who
aren't particularly AFOLs then you have a dedicated player base which is
not dividing their attention.
I would also like to see a dedicated LEGO gaming con. One way to do this
might be to have it in conjunction with a normal SF or gaming con. Such
a con would have a full track of LEGO gaming (including a panel or two).
It would be really nifty if such a con could be convinced to have a
separate LEGO gaming only admission, but if the overall con registration
is low enough that needn't be an issue. One must realize that at any con
with any sort of diversity at all, all the registration fees are being
pooled together, and re-distributed to bring in a variety of guests and
provide venue space for a variety of activities. If done well, it can be
done for less than a very targeted con since there tend to be volume
discounts for hotel space, and of course a multi-faceted guest can be
shared among many tracks. For example, a con which books Steve Jackson
primarily to run the Pirate Game the whole weekend, could still schedule
him onto say one panel and one autograph session, and not overly burden
him.
I do suspect that AFOL cons are not yet big enough to have a significant
number of paid guests and this is something for con organizers and
potential guests to consider. I'm not sure that Steve Jackson draws
enough additional con membership to buy an airline ticket, meals, and
hotel room (input from Matthew and Steve would be appreciated here). The
good news in the case of the Pirate Game is that there is also a strong
fan base which is capable of running the game. Also, Steve is an AFOL,
and having now attended one AFOL con, may feel more comfortable in
attending as a fan, who also happens to be the author of the Pirate
Game.
Frank
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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| "Frank Filz" <ffilz@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:3C77FBB9.FA7EC7...ing.com... (...) Yes, but noting your overview of BricksWest in "Frank's Big BricksWest Adventure" the gathering may need to be longer. (...) Planning for events will be (...) (23 years ago, 24-Feb-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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| (...) I've been thinking about this since last summer's Brickfest, actually. I don't want to miss out on the other stuff, but I'm really there to play LEGO games. I think that the length of time that we played was on the border of being too little (...) (23 years ago, 24-Feb-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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| (...) ...Just a note on this. I'm reading the thread (and passing along things to BrickFest :-) I don't have much time to respond to things at the moment (damn customers want me to _work!_ go figure). But I can say a couple things: ...Scheduling: (...) (23 years ago, 25-Feb-02, to lugnet.gaming)
| | | Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
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| Whew. Back from Ireland - which was the trip AFTER BricksWest. Only now am I catching up on both reading and writing. I have just read the whole thread but will cast my comments as a reply to Frank's original message, with additions at the end. (...) (23 years ago, 1-Mar-02, to lugnet.gaming)
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