Go There Rather Than Here

After yesterday´s general dissing of blogs, I´d like to counter by pointing you to one of the best wargaming blog posts ever: Sidney Roundwood´s ideas on creating a game that feels like being there. Very much enhanced by excellent pictures and illustrations.

Herr Dr Jonez, I prezjume? A great participation game

Went to the Ducosim convention on Saturday. Mainly to pick up a few boardgames I was looking forward to (one of them a present). I felt that was the best way to support the club now that they seem to be in a bit of trouble.

Three teams racing to catch the Lost Ark of the Convenant

I got to join in Jan-Willem van der Pijl's excellent Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark participation game. The game was simple enough to be picked up in 5 minutes, there was enough action to keep your attention and enough chaos to prevent the game bogging down. The teams were assymetric (dr Jones and sidekick, Nazis, Wu Manchu clan, Corto Maltese, rocketeers) with good differentiation between expendable minor characters and your stars. A simple stats chart kept it all together.

My team, led by General Stahlhelm, dr Kriepstein and herr Flick

There's movement, long range fire and close combat stats, but more important are the stunt stats (crucial for jumping from one speeding truck to another, but also for dodging bullets, cars and fists). In case you were doing something really dangerous (eg jumping from one speeding truck to another) a cojones test was required. I also liked the 'oneliner' ability which allows main characters to bluff their way through.

Jan-Willem kept it all together, maintaining the pace and firmly but politely deflecting distractions from the players. He rewarded creativity and guts and kept weak players engaged.

Team Stahlhelm's final but unsuccessful attempt to wrest the Ark from their competitors

Of course the action hero movie type of game allows for memorable actions and grotesque events, and it is surprising how quickly you warm even to bad guys like general Stahlhelm. Before you know it it's International-Talk-Wiz-A-Fake-Zjerman-Akzent-Day.

The game terrain: providing an arena, some props and little cover

The miniatures, accessories and terrain were an eclectic mix from different manufacturers, handicraft and Queens Day free market shopping. I'd say maximum effect with relatively limited effort. Hats off!

The Joy and Art of Participation Games

A couple of weeks ago I told you I was excited about two projects which I couldn’t tell about yet. And now I can reveal the first one: we’re going to make an e-book on participation games.

Mummy participation game, 2003. Photo Rob Koppendraier

So who are 'we' and how did this come about? We are wargaming club Murphy’s Heroes from Delft, the Netherlands. In 2014 our club will be 25 years old, no mean feat for any organisation and especially so for one that’s only based on the spare time of its members. So naturally this is something we want to celebrate.

As committee of the club, but more so because most of us have been a member of this club from the start, or a very long time at least, we wanted to do something special. Something that:

• we could give to he members to celebrate this milestone
• we could give to non-members to show what an awesome bunch of people we are
• would show our creativity and the things our club is best known for
• would engage lots of people in creating it

A-Team participation game, 2010

We came up with participation games. The club has a long tradition of games designed to attract strangers to our tables and engage. This made us a well known presence in the Dutch and international gaming scene and a welcome guest at shows of other clubs. It is also a source of great pride.

Participation games are different from just demonstration games because they don’t focus on the beautiful terrain and miniatures (although that can also be an important part) but on getting people to join in and experience the fun of playing. This requires an extra effort to design rules and make them work towards speed, action and fun.

But while staging a participation game is fun and rewarding, we feel it would be even better if we collect our experience and give it away, This will not only remind people of what we’ve done, it will also encourage them to join in. Because that is what we want to do the most: persuade people to do participation games themselves.

FRAG participation game, 2005. Photo Rob Koppendraier

So in 2013 we want to create Murphy´s Heroes Cookbook for Participation Games. We want to do this with our club members, but also with those from outside. Many clubs have designed successful participation games and we would like to include that experience and those examples into the cookbook. For example, I´m thinking of the legendary Breakfast at the Bastion game that was based on a scene from the Three Musketeers and which the Pike & Shot Society used to run,.

I hope that those of you that follow this blog and have experience with participation games are willing to come forward with examples, ideas, experience or even gaming materials and pictures of games they’ve designed and run. Or the games that you will design this year out of inspiration.

It is our intention to collect these throughout 2013 and publish the full version of MHC around May 2014.

Maybe you can understand now why I was so excited.