And now for something completely different.

Its amazing what a hashtag can do. I tweeted about my last blog post on the games for libraries workshop using #libraryplay and I immediately get 3 times more views than we normally do. I'll have to some more promoting of our blog on Twitter.

As part of our activities for Mythical Maze, the Summer Reading Challenge 2014 I am going to running a couple of family boardgame afternoons with our Children's Librarian. Recently I have been investigating the possible uses for games in libraries including listening to the "Games in Libraries and Schools Podcast", reading Scott Nicholson's Everyone plays at the Library" and the International Games Day Blog.

I'm not going to discuss the benefits of gaming in this post, more look at the reasons we are looking to run something slightly different to Worlds Away, with a different target audience and organisation. One of the particular area that is mentioned within Scott Nicholson's book is the advantage of providing a gaming experience over simply providing games. Bournemouth Libraries already provide examples of both methods of provision. We provide games and play items to lend through our toy libraries at Kinson, West Howe and Winton Libraries and some of our libraries also have jigsaw puzzle swap schemes. We also provide a gaming/play experience via Stay, Play and Takeaway sessions at our Toy Libraries, a jigsaw group at Charminster, a junior Boggle/Scrabble club at Kinson, a Scrabble club at West Howe and our club at Bournemouth Library. When providing games rather than gaming experiences customers will often, quite understandably, be conservative in their approach. They will pick games that they are familiar with and avoid games that look complicated. By providing a gaming experience we can direct customers to games that we think are suitable, exciting or educational.

The gaming club is a gaming experience but the games are not not chosen by library staff, the primary goals of the club (as far as the library service is concerned) are to provide a welcoming social space that attracts people who would not necessarily utilise the library. Essentially to provide a club that has a social value with increased footfall, borrowing and any educational benefits as an added bonus. During these family games afternoon staff (primarily me) will be selecting the games available such that they fit in with the themes of the Summer Reading Challenge and with specific learning goals e.g. Once Upon a Time for storytelling skills, The aMAZEing Labyrinth for spatial manipulation/non-verbal reasoning. The aim with these activities is to be fun and educational. To highlight the library as the prime place for informal education, a place to learn things and a place to have fun, which is not what always come to mind for many people.

We are also aiming for a distinctly different age group. The gaming club is aimed at adults and older teenagers, whereas these board game afternoons are aimed at children from age 5 and their parents. We shall see how successful these are and then look at the potential for widening our provision of gaming experiences.

Games for Libraries Workshop

Just over a fortnight ago I attended a workshop in London about designing games for teaching information literacy. Information literacy is defined by CILIP (The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) as "knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner".


A quote from Neil Gaiman on the carpet of

Gungahlin Library in Canberra

© Australian Capital Territory

Information literacy is one of the key skills for those of us who work in libraries; we don't need to know everything but we need to know how to find it. There is a great quote from Neil Gaiman "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a Librarian can bring you back the right one", which certainly contains more than a grain of truth.

Games and play are used extensively in education for a number of reasons. In early years education, play is central to much of the learning process; with open ended play being particularly important in procducing creative and imaginative learning for the under 5s^(1,2,3). More structured games are also used to teach a wide range of topics either through specfic educational games or indirectly via more mass market products^(4,5,6).

The aim of the workshop I attended was to design and prototype a game with the purpose of teaching a specific area of information literacy. The workshop started with each table playing short games (e.g. Bananagrams, Pass the Pigs, Zombie Dice, Flowerfall). These were used as ice breakers but we then went back to these games to analyses the game mechanics that were involved in the games at a later point in the session.

After a short presentation on some educational game design theory each table was given the task of coming up with a educational goal and some practical constraints for the design of their game. Our group decided to base our game on the CRAP checklist for resource evaluation (CRAP stands for currency, reliability, authority and purpose). We settled on writing a game based on evaluating resources displayed on cards against categories on the checklist decided by a dice or spinner. The winner of the game would be the first individual or team to collect the word CRAP with their cards.

There is a video explaining the CRAP game at the Games for Libraries blog along members of the teams explaining their prototypes. I am planning on making a version of the Dewey or Die! game for use in family boardgame afternoons we are planning for this summer's Summer Reading Challenge. I also have some improvements to our CRAP game (which I am renaming Cut the Crap).

1. Understanding young children's learning through play: building playful pedagogies by Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt
2. A child's work: the importance of fantasy play by Vivian Paley
3. Child care and development by Pamela Minett
4. Games in schools and libraries podcast by Giles Pritchard and Donald Dennis
5. Everyone plays at the library by Scott Nicholson
6. Using games to enhance learning and teaching: A beginners guide edited by Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley

Stak Bots: Review

Our latest guest blogger is Taz, who has written us a review of the card game Stak Bots

Darren

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Stak Bots:

If you're stuck in Sheffield near Castlegate, I'd recommend popping into Patriot Games, a nice gaming shop that's often open in the evenings. I recently did just that, and couldn't resist buying something. I'll admit there weren't any specifics with that intention. I stumbled upon Stak Bots, a little deck of battling robots. The week before last the deck saw its first glimpse of conflict at Worlds Away.

Initial perusal left me distinctly unimpressed with how skill or fun could enter into the game, but I was pleasantly surprised when the bots were wielded. Stak Bots consists of 60 Bot cards, some that are dealt out so all the players have a "stak" face down, a small hand and the rest in a draw deck. The top card on the stak always has to be turned face up and shows a cute little robot, a strength, and any special conditions or entry effects. There are a selection of robots, with different strengths, abilities and graphics.

The first key point is the simplicity. One bot fights another bot, the one with the highest number wins, the other is consigned to the scrap heap. If the discarded robot leaves a face down card on the top of the stack, then it's flipped over, and any entry effects takes place. This is where it can get complex, although not difficult. One entry effect may effect another stak, causing another entry effect, which may cause another, and another, each having to be resolved before play continues with whoever started the chain of events for the rest of their turn.

A turn is very flexible, and can include scrapping your own bots, laying bots from your hand, or attacking. The only limitation is that only one specific bot can attack each round, although it can attack multiple times. Damage does accumulate, but only during that persons turn, meaning combos are useful, but keeping track of health isn't an issue.

The game is built for flexibility which is great for a club like Worlds Away where people can pick it up and adapt it to the crowd. We had a group of 6 and managed to get several interesting games with all sorts of combos and effects happening, with winners and losers changing place too often to keep track. It's also great for quick games, so with an hour left, there's still plenty of gameplay to be had and minimal setup unlike many of the standard games.

All in all it's a great quick, flexible game that anyone can join in with, and as it's just a pack of cards can easily be brought along without prior planning. It has one of the best fun to size ratios!

Hopefully this will make many more appearances in the coming weeks.

Taz

June club dates

Evening ladies and gents

All being well I should be along for the start of tomorrows session but I'll have to leave you early as I'm going karting later in the afternoon.

We will be in the smaller meeting room and 1st floor office again this week as the Bournemouth Society are holding their monthly talk in the large meeting room. Flirt is also hosting a couple of events that might be of interest. Tomorrow daytime they have a comic book event with award winning writer and artist Fwah Storm and in the evening Bag of Holding are running their monthly games night.

Next weekend the gaming club will be starting a little later than normal as we have the Coda Fiddle Orchestra playing a concert. This combined with a language course and writers event means we won't be able to get into the large meeting room until about 1:30. Obviously you're welcome to turn up early and listen to the concert, but there won't be any space for war games until later. I may be able to wrangle some space for boardgames or roleplaying earlier than 1:30 but I can't guarantee I'll be able to fit everyone in.

We are back in the large room for the 21st and 28th, though there are other bookings immediately prior to the club so be nice and let them sort their stuff out before piling into the room!

Its been ages, so I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow.

Focus On: Roleplaying Games

Its only taken me four months, but here is the second of my Focus On series of blog posts, this time on roleplaying games.

Four Commedia dell’Arte Figures: Three Gentlemen and

Pierrot by Claude Gillot

The basic concept of roleplaying games, that of taking the role of a character and acting out or describing their activities is as old as human civilisation. From the games of Cowboys and Indians played by children all over the world to the improvisation theatre of Commedia dell'arte, roleplaying has ubiquitous to society for centuries (possibly even millenia).

The first publication of what we would now term a roleplaying game was Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in the mid 70's. D&D had developed from earlier fantasy wargames Chainmail and Blackmoor with the focus moving from battles between armies to playing individual characters carrying out heroic quests. Soon after the publication of D&D a whole range of other games were published including Runqeuest and the Sci-Fi game Traveller, both of which are still have an avid following.

Since then the number of roleplaying games has expanded considerably, the website rpggeek.com lists a total of 4649 different RPGs written by 26,681 games designers. Conventions are held all across the UK including three run just a stones throw from Bournemouth, these being Conception, Consequences and Indiecon - all run at Naish Farm holiday park. RPGs cover pretty much every genre you can imagine from the high fantasy of Lord of the Rings to gritty low fantasy Saxon history, the space westerns of Firefly to the dystopian future of SLA Industries. There are also plenty of games firmly set in the real world ranging across all era's of history. There are horror games, investigative games, heroic games, political games, comedy games... you name it there probably is a roleplay game for it.

Players in roleplaying games typically take on the role of one character and act out or describe their actions in response to the situaton that is described or acted by the games master. The games master, or GM, plays all of the non player characters, writes the story that the players will be interacting with and often acts as an arbiter or referee in the game. GMs are called by a variety of names that often make reference to the specific part they will play in the game, from Dungeon Masters in D&D, Storytellers in Vampire to Marshalls in Deadlands. In most games whether a characters actions are successful or not are decided by comparing some form or random element (commonly dice or cards) against a set of characteristics or test difficulties. Some games dispense with these mechanisms entirely but these are in the minority.

Roleplaying is just one of a variety of narrative games and storytelling activities. I have already discussed some of the similarities and differences between roleplaying and other storytelling activities in this post. As described in that post, these narrative games tie in particularly well with the traditional focus of libraries.

In the next Focus On post I'll talk about live roleplay.

The Power of Play

This post is by Phil Minchin and is cross posted from the International Games Day Blog.

Phil worked in publishing, arts production, NGO governance and campaigning, and library IT in Melbourne, Australia. There he got interested in the evolving relationships between libraries, communities, games, interactivity, systems and UI design. He now presents and consults to libraries and game companies on these issues, helping to develop games & interactivity strategies that blend the best of old and new media to support intelligent, literate engagement across the full range of modern culture  Phil coordinates the Global Gossip Game for  IGD and rang me up from Australia to ensure that everything ran smoothly, that's commitment for you.

Thanks to Phil for letting us post this here.

Darren



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Play is to games what reading is to books: the underlying verb that enables the noun, but is applicable well beyond it. Reading, as a peculiar eye-based (also finger-based, and even - thanks to audiobooks - increasingly back-to-being-ear-based) subset of listening, is used for signage, notes, instructions, lists, and a ton of other chunks of information and culture besides books. Likewise, play is used for many things beyond formal games: teasing, joking, various informal contests and challenges, notional tinkering, creation, and many more. As such, it’s worth pointing out the many important aspects of life empowered by play.
Here's a list of a few key areas in which play is crucial:

• Innovation – There is tremendous value in a systematic grinding-through of possibility spaces, but the fact remains that play is a phenomenal way to apply the power of the brain to exploring new ideas. It’s telling that computers, which excel in the first kind of problem-solving, are still taking longer than human brains (at least those with an aptitude for this sort of thing) to solve questions of protein-folding, RNA-shaping and similar activities. Regardless, in an economy increasingly driven by innovation, play is only becoming more important as a life skill.
• Freedom – The essence of play is a pocket of possibility-space which may be shaped and limited by external constraints, but produces a place and time in which unconstrained action according to one’s nature is possible. (Even a formal game may have rules, but if there’s no room for individual decisions and/or skill, i.e. for a player to actually play it, it’s not much of a game!) In political-economic contexts, this quality reads an awful lot like “freedom”. This isn’t a coincidence.
• Health (including happiness) – Just on first principles, it should be obvious that play – activity that expresses and exercises one’s nature, determined by internal impulses rather than external ones – will tend to be conducive to health and general wellbeing. And there’s a ton of research to support this. At the most obvious level, physical play (fun exercise) tends to be good for physical health. Mental play sharpens memory, focus, perception, comprehension, and decision-making, hence the profusion of “brain-training games” (and see again the talk linked earlier, Your Brain on Video Games). Setting meaningful challenges for ourselves, whether through a formal game/program like Superbetter or informally, not only helps us overcome particular obstacles but trains us to expect that obstacles in general can and will be overcome. Social play (such as Werewolf) uses and expands on our connection to others.
• Learning – This is obvious from the links to innovation – which could partly be defined as “learning things nobody else yet knows”! – but if anything this is the primary purpose of play (and the fact that it’s good for our health is because learning things is healthy, is what our organism is naturally disposed to do). This is so much the case that (as I mention in the post on innovation) the quote I used for the Global Gossip Game in 2013, “play is training for the unexpected”, was not from educational theorists but from mammalian biologists Špinka, Newberry and Bekoff. Clearly the drive to learn and experiment is ingrained in us at a bodily level… hence, again, the links to health!
• Promoting activity – I’m talking here not just about physical activity, but the assumption that thought and analysis will lead to concrete action: play isn’t just about comprehending the systems with which the game’s creator has presented you, it’s about you doing something with them. That leads to better thinking and better acting, as well as more productive uses of both.
• Inclusion and community-building – In addition to being a way to foster community connectedness, play is a way for people to explore difficult issues such as discriminatory beliefs and the ways that they shape behaviour (which in turn feeds back into beliefs), and also to spend time with other folks and learn about them as actual individuals rather than instances of a stereotype, both in relative safety and comfort.

Any one of these associations would qualify play as pretty important, even by the narrow, numerical criteria which govern so much of our key decision making (except perhaps freedom, because it’s too hard to quantify). More holistic, humanistic values can only increase the value placed on play as something deeply rooted in the best of the human experience.

To be clear, I am not saying that frivolity should reign supreme and that work doesn’t matter. I’m trying to break the false opposition of play and work (they may be very much in tension in some respects, but play is ultimately a form of self-imposed, more-or-less self-directed work; the best work feels like playing; and the best workers are those who work in that playful, motivated, engaged way), the false association of play and frivolity (one can play seriously, and grimly grind away at something completely frivolous, and these are not the same thing), and the false assumption that frivolity is inherently unworthy. (See this post on fun.)

Play is central to our humanity. It has produced many of the best parts of our collective and individual experiences, and enabled us to find solutions to (and, failing that, temporary escapes from) many of the worst. For us to continue to treat it as an inferior part of culture, when it is in varying forms and ways a central part of all culture, is a mistake we should not continue to make.

Phil Minchin

Violence Solves Everything - Modelling the Mordant 303rd Part 2

I arrived back from holiday late last Saturday to see an unexpected package waiting for me, then it dawned on me the Victoria Miniatures Arcadian Rifles miniatures I had pre-ordered several months ago had finally arrived. They are rather lovely resin figures with pretty reasonable prices in comparison to Games Workshops resin products (and free postage from Australia).

With some proper female miniatures in place I now have the job of converting and painting figures to represent my long term Dark Heresy character and the PCs and NPCs in the Only War prequel campaign that I am running. In the roleplaying game roughly half of the Regiment is female, I doubt I'll manage anywhere near that in the 40K army but I aim to create all of the important players from the campaign

I am planning on making two versions of my character, Veteran Sergeant Rizpah Jair.



Female Arcadian Guard from Victoria Miniatures.

Metal Cadian with head sawp for size comparison

One will be "Riz", the fresh faced hyperactive teenage punk that features as an NPC in my Only War game, featuring Tank Girl-esque bright pink hair and a slew of tattoos showing her allegiances prior to joining the Guard. Actually in my version of the Regiment all of the Mordant troopers use tattoos to show their allegiances to gangs, mining companies and fellow troopers (They also have their ranks tattooed to their arms - if your uniform is sleeveless what better place to put them).

The second version will be the hardened veteran who faces the horrors of purestrain genestealers when her company are almost entirely destroyed whilst reconnoitring a space hulk. The bright hair is long gone, now dyed black, and her face is heavily tattooed in the style of black metal makeup. In addition to her standard regimental equipment she also now carries a pair of Triplex pattern "Fury" assault laspistols and a trophy knife fashioned from the claws of a Tyranid.

In my next Mordant related post I'll introduce the other PCs and NPCs of the Only War campaign that I intend to convert for my 40K army.