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Subject: 
Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.gaming
Date: 
Tue, 26 Feb 2002 02:28:04 GMT
Viewed: 
1745 times
  
Christopher Weeks wrote:

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.

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 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 still have to think about how to make Imperial players really work. It
didn't really work in the last game.

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).

The double game would be cool. I think it would be better though to be
running a battle game and a campaign game though.

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.

Certainly multiple games could share the same stock of ships.

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.

These are always interesting ideas, I suspect they don't generally
produce good scenarios though.

  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.

Have you ever seen Clay-o-Rama? Steve and I talked about a LEGO version
of that game. I think something could be worked out to have a cool
totally silly game.

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.

Deadlands is one of the reasons I bought Wild West stuff.

  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?

The Pirate Game doesn't have much to benefit from pre-event setup. The
ships are pretty well defined, and need to be given a visual OK just
before play anyway. The startup time necessary for the Pirate Game is:

- laying out the play area, while islands can be pre-built, the bulk of
the time is laying out the area, and spreading some foliage on the
quickie islands.

- doling out ships and crew. It really is best to use one person's
figures, so this can't be done ahead of time too well. The figure
supplier could prepare bags with 10 random pirates though. A box of
captains can be supplied or folks can supply their own captain.
Pre-bagging the 10 crew would save half an hour or more off the startup
time.

- getting the players positioned

  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.

Other than a smallish game run at someone's house, I agree a general
LEGO gaming con is the way to go. Piggybacking on an existing con would
be a very good idea, the only serious dedicated space necessary would be
a 15'x20' area for the Pirate Game, BrickWars can be run on regular
gaming tables and probably can fit into normal "slots" (though it may be
good to schedule it for two consecutive slots).

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?

I'll come. I probably won't be able to arrive early, but would help in
remote planning.

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 ;-)

Hmmm...

  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?

This may be a problem with Car Wars, though there used to be a group
playing when NCSU had a gaming club. They managed to complete games in a
long evening (probably not much more than 6 hours of play). LEGO Car
Wars would scream for some simplification. It would probably also be
best for people to build their cars before the event (with a bunch of GM
provided cars for drop in players - if you build several, the drop in
players will probably be quite happy picking one of them just because
they'll look so cool).

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!

Definitely.

Frank



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Gaming at AFOL cons
 
(...) Oh good! I was wondering what we were going to do. (...) 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. (...) (...) (23 years ago, 25-Feb-02, to lugnet.gaming)

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