UK Games Expo

For some time I have been interested in attending the UK Games Expo but typically it clashes with the first big ultimate tournament of the outdoor season meaning that I haven't been able to attend before. This year was no different but with a change in location of UK Ultimate Tour 1 from London to Nottingham I was intending to make a brief visit to UKGE on my way up to tournament. Somewhat unexpectedly, however, Bournemouth Ultimate didn't enter a team, meaning that I was free to spend all weekend playing boardgames.

I arrived in Birmingham on Thursday afternoon after a fairly uneventful journey, despite my SatNav trying to direct me into an industrial estate rather than to my hotel. After picking up my pass and grabbing some very expensive chilli, I headed to the Coiledspring preview event to try and get a look at some games before they get released. The room was already packed with gamers and after wandering around for a while I got collared for a game of Codenames, a brand new prototype from designer Vlaada Chvátil to be published by Czech Games Edition. A very simple party game that I suspect will do very well when it is released. I then had a chat with Roger who runs Coiledspring games about games based learning and played a couple of games they sell (Chickyboom and Sushi Go!). Sushi Go is a set collecting card game that uses a drafting mechanic to add some tactical decision making to the process. It is a quick and effective little game and winner of the Expo's best card game award 2015.

Friday morning was horrible and rainy so I stayed in my hotel doing some work for my CILIP* chartership before visiting the brand new Birmingham Library. After a couple of hours strolling around the rather impressive building and their huge selection of books I hopped back on the train to the NEC Hilton for the first proper day of the Expo. There was much to see, as I perused the vast quantity of trade stalls, here are a few things that caught my eye. Shadows of Esteren is a really pretty medieval horror RPG inspired by Celtic mythology (which is right up my street), but I was put off by the fact it seemed to needs multiple rulebooks to play and certainly wasn't cheap. Another RPG that I noticed was Faith, a Sci-Fi game that blends RPG and boardgame elements. This one is probably not for me as I'm more into rules light, freeform games these days, but it does have some very good artwork and an interesting mechanic for resolving test with cards. Pedion Modular Battelfields currently have some foot square modular terrain tiles on kickstarter, which would be great for anyone who has a lack of space to store bigger wargaming boards. Before I dashed back to my hotel to avoid the impending rain that was forecast for the evening I played a demo game of Fell, a new cooperative game that is being kickstarted by Grimejack Games. The idea is that you play a group of adventurers who fight against a randomly generated monster. The game is OK but lacked the kind of tension and urgency you get in a good coop game, like, for instance, Dead of Winter.

I was up bright and early on Saturday, only to find that there was a massive queue for breakfast. No worries, I thought, I'll head to the Wetherspoons in the NEC and get breakfast there.....

.....Wetherspoons was closed. One Cafe Nero coffee and croissant later I headed to the launch of the boardgame redesign competition, where you take an existing boardgame and use its component to create something completely new. I have entered the competition, so some of you'll inevitably be roped into playtesting my creation. After the competition launch I decided to go to the playtest area to see what new games I could play. The game I ended up playing was called Touristico (I think), a Euro game in a similar vein to Ticket to Ride. You play as London Tour operators trying to get tourists around specified routes to gain points. Each turn you gain coins which you use to bid on the ability to use certain types of transport and also to visit locations. You have to carefully plan which cards you need and hope your competitors don't block you off. Whilst the game was very much still a prototype the mechanics were well thought out and it was a really enjoyable game to play.

Once I finished the playtest I attended 2 (and a half) seminars. I joined Eric Lang's (designer for Fantasy Flight Games) talk on the game industry from a professionals viewpoint halfway through and then attended talks on representation of minority groups in games and on how to design and publish RPGs. By this time it was mid afternoon and after a quick break for lunch I wandered back to the playtest area where I tested another new game called ConTRAPtions. This was a game of memory and bluffing, trying to collect cards to complete a steampunk device without others being to guess what you are building. The game already had some nice artwork and very simple rules but we were able to suggest a number improvements to the layout and design of the cards. I wanted to head back to my hotel to watch the FA cup final so just had time to play a couple more games, the first being The Spoils, a collectible card game, and the other Om Nom Nom, a simple family boardgame. I'm not a massive fan of CCGs and The Spoils didn't change my opinion on this but I'm sure some of the club's members would be interested in it. On the other hand Om Nom Nom is unlikely to join the selection of games played at the club but is a well designed, quick game for playing with kids.

Then it was Sunday. In an attempt to play as many games as possible I headed back to the main halls to see what else was available. Before heading to a couple more seminars I managed to play Camelot: The Build, Oddball Aeronauts, 27: Five Elements and Push It. Camelot the Build is a simple tile placement game where you are looking to maximise your own scores but minimise opportunities for your opponents. Oddball Aeronauts is a great little card game that doesn't require any table space; picking attributes to attack and defend with and simply turning cards over in your hand to form a discard pile. 27: Five elements is a fairly low budget and low cost card game of risk and reward, choosing between taking points now or letting them increase but risking your rivals taking them. Finally Push It is a game that has just been funded on Kickstarter featuring wooden discs that you push or flick towards a jack at the centre of the table.

After attending some more seminars on the secrets of game publishing and on creating games for licensed properties I made a dash around the trade halls to finally buy some games before my carparking ran out and I had to drive home. After some deliberation I managed to keep my spending in check and bought copies of the Seafarers expansion for Settlers of Catan, the Breakin' Atmo booster for Firefly and Sushi Go!. I also backed Push It on Kickstarter, and then won a copy of it in the prize draw! I had a great time and hope to be able to attend again next year given it is a week later and therefore shouldn't clash with throwing a piece of plastic around a field.

*Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and that Santa brought all the games you were hoping for. I got a copy of the excellent card game Dixit plus expansions for Race for the Galaxy and Settlers of Catan. As usual my Christmas Day and Boxing Day were spent mostly eating too much food and playing games with the family.

During January the large meeting room is in use by external groups on quite a lot of Saturdays. The location of the gaming club during this period is as follows.

3rd January - Large Meeting Room
10th January - Second Meeting Room +  1st Floor Office
17th January - Second Meeting Room + 1st Floor Office
24th January - Second Meeting Room + 1st Floor Office
31st January - Large Meeting Room

I should be attending this coming weekend and will be working the 10th and 24th. I cannot make the 17th as I will be in Crawley trying to help my Ultimate club qualify for Indoor Nationals and will be at the Conception roleplaying convention on the 31st.

See you all in the New Year!

- Darren

International Games Day Programme

International Games Day is finally upon us and we can reveal the line up for this Saturdays events.

10am - 12noon Junior Chess Club

Things will kick off with Poole Chess Club's junior chess session from 10-12. This will be on the 1st floor and is open to children aged 7-11, costing £3 per session. There are two sessions each week, 10-11 for beginners and 11-12 for improvers.

10am to 4pm Heritage Zone Quiz

All day we will be giving out quiz forms to find out how much you know about Bournemouth in WW1.

12noon - 4pm Worlds Away - The Bournemouth Library Gaming Club

At 12 noon Worlds Away will be offering the normal range of boardgames, cardgames, roleplaying and wargames. In addition to our normal output we will be running introductory games for wargames and roleplaying. The gaming club will be in the Large Meeting Room and will feature the online cardgame Hearthstone.

1pm - 3pm Wii Sports Tournament

From 1 we have a big screen Wii Sports Tournament for everyone in our second meeting room.

1:30pm to 2pm The Global Gossip Game

Once again we are taking part in the global gossip game. A secret message will be passed across the world via 80 libraries in 16 different countries, starting in Australia and ending in the USA 24 hours later. We will be receiving our message from The University Library Svetozar Markovic in Belgrade, Serbia and will be passing on our message to RAF Croughton Base Library near Brackley in the UK.

2pm to 3:30pm Children's Stay and Play

In the Children's library, using toys and games from the Bournemouth Toy Libraries, we have a stay and play session for our younger visitors and their families.

International Games Day

We are near to finalising our content for this years International Games Day. Earlier today I took a phone call from Phil in Australia, who is organising the Global Gossip Game, and we should have all the details with us in the next couple of days.

If all goes well we will be offering the usual mix of boardgames and wargames for our regulars as well as introductory games for new players, junior chess tuition (via Poole Chess Club), the global gossip game, a stay and play session for children and their parents, a Wii Sports tournament, the online card game Hearthstone and a selection of traditional boardgames and card games.

I'm away at Indiecon this weekend so I won't see you this Saturday, but you'll be in Lyndsey's capable hands. I hope we'll see you all at IGD

The Long Summer

It has been some time since my last past, things get quite busy here over the Summer so no chance to procrastinate about gaming. Since my last post we have held 2 Summer Reading Challenge children's board game session with 10 children and their associated parents attending across the sessions. We played a lot of Jenga and the Mythical Maze game as well as Chess, Downfall, The aMAZEing Labyrinth and Creationary. Unlike the gaming club these sessions were very staff intensive with 2-3 staff and a volunteer on hand to show the children how to play the games. Whilst they were well received it may not be possible to run these more frequently given the amount of staff time that needed to be dedicated to them.

We are in the early planning stages for International Games Day, so far we are looking to add Chess and Minecraft to the activities on offer. Watch this space...

The new look newsletter should be on its way shortly so keep an eye out for that. If you don't get a copy check whether you are a member with one of the staff or volunteers.

Hope to see you all soon, though I won't be at the club to play anything for some time (I have a very busy September and October)

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

In the Game of Thrones You Win or You Die

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Game of Thrones, and whilst it doesn't quite make it to my favourite TV show (that would be Firefly) it sits up at the top along with Rome, the Borgias and the X Files. The show does everything right in my eyes, to suspend your disbelief and make a fantasy show feel like it is all real life. I was put off reading the book as it's pretty long, the kind of doorstop that makes Lord of the Rings look like a bit of light reading.



Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Available ftrom Bournemouth Library

When the copy of the book I ordered from the library arrived on my desk with a waiting list, meaning I would have to read it in 4 weeks, I was sceptical that I would finish it. I don't read much fiction, I get bored with it quite easily and find all the weird names in fantasy novels impossible to keep up with. Unless it's easy to read I get frustrated, the book feels like a chore and I go off and read a research paper instead (I know, who reads research papers for fun - I sound like such a nerd). What a surprise when I started reading that:-

a) it's really easy to read
b) the chapters are short, so great for picking up when you have a couple of minutes spare
c) its the best thing since sliced bread. Hear that kids, its almost as good as bread!

Its the best fiction I have read since The Shining by Stephen King, I'd go so far as to say it is shaping up to be one of the best novels I have read.

Also on the subject of Game of Thrones, last night my regular gaming group played the board game for the first time. I played as Lannister and got horribly slaughtered by being caught between the Starks in the North and Barratheon in the East. After a few turns of mustering our forces, the battles begun with a series of bloody conflicts over Riverrun between myself and the Starks and between myself and Barratheon over much of the centre of Westeros. At the end of turn eight a Barratheon victory was secure as he had control of six castles and had pushed me out of Harranhal, which he was then able to secure without any fighting at the start of turn nine to win the game.

A Game of Thrones Boardgame by Fantasy Flight Games

Overall we felt it was a good game, though one which was probably overly complex and with some balance issues (the Roose Bolton, Eddard Stark combo is horrible).



Boardgames, Beer and Badminton

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice I wasn't around last weekend, this was because I went to Devon with a massive group of friends from Uni. In addition to all the sensible mainstream things that we did like archery, air rifle and pistol shooting, badminton and eating far too much cake, we played boardgames... a lot of boardgames. At last years trip I was introduced to BSG, Ticket to Ride, Race for the Galaxy, Cthulhu Gloom, Monty Python Flux and Wiz War. This year, as well as playing some old favourites, I also got to try out Robo Rally, Firefly, Game of Thrones, King of Tokyo, The Big Bang Theory Party Game, Yggdrasil and Red November for the first time.


Yggdrasil: A cooperative board game

In no particular order. Yggdrasil and Red November are both cooperative games where all the players play against the game rather than each other. They have a very different flavour though, Yggdrasil you take the role of Norse Gods fighting to stop the destruction of the universe at Ragnarok. You get to make a number of actions each turn to fight back the monsters advance or to power up your characters for later in the game. Red November is a bit less serious, you play the crew of a gnomish submarine desperately fending off various crises abroad the boat. The game mechanic basically leaves you trading off taking more time to increase the chance of succeeding, against the greater number of crises that time generates.

King of Tokyo

In King of Tokyo you take the role of a monster movie style baddy trying to take control of Tokyo. The game involves dice rolling which provides you with attacks to damage your opponents, healing to remove damage you have taken or power to purchase upgrades for your monster. It is easy to pick up and quick, therefore likely to be a great game for our club. Robo Rally is a bit like the classic TV show Robot Wars, you race your laser wielding robot across a factory floor in the aim of winning the race or destroying your opponents. You programme your moves at the start of each turn and then each robot takes each part of its move in turn, potentially disrupting their opponents as a result. With a low number of players its very quick but becomes a much longer when played with the maximum number of players (we played for several hours without getting anywhere near the end). The Big Bang Theory Party Game works by each player choosing an amusing answer to a category or description, e.g. the category "Often Leads to Disaster" could be answered with "Killer Robots". It is basically a toned down version of Cards Against Humanity, I'm not sure either game is particularly suited to our club as the potential for causing offence is pretty high.

The two big long games that we played were the new Firefly board game and the Game of Thrones board game. In Firefly you are captain of a ship looking for crew to complete jobs in order to make cash. The overall objective to win changes each game depending on a story card, ours was to simply make the most money. Each turn you get to make two actions, for example you can buy goods, take new jobs or move. Moving slowly has no risk but making a hard burn to move further comes at the risk of encountering the Alliance or Reavers. The game captures the feel of the Firefly/Serenity universe well and if you're a fan of the show you'll probably like this game. Game of Thrones is a bit of a beast of a game, the rules are fairly complex and it takes a long time to play. We played for 3 hours and got to the halfway point. You take control of one of the houses of Westeros and battle for control of the castles and citadels of the continent. The game has a variety of different mechanisms in place from placing orders for your troops, blind bidding for one of the positions of power and card drawing for random events at the end of each turn. Whilst it took a while to get into it felt like a well designed game and it was a shame that it took so long with half the players never having played before.

Conception Report

So last weekend I went off to Conception, a local roleplaying convention held at Naish Farm Holiday Village in Highcliffe. I had made fleeting visits to peruse the stalls the previous two years, but this was the first time I had been with the intention of actually playing. Having been asked if I wanted to share a lodge on-site, by a group of friends I knew from my time at the University of Bath, I had jumped at the offer.

Despite living the closest to the site I was the last of our group to arrive on Wednesday evening, just in time for the start of the pub quiz. Our team (whose name was wholly inappropriate to repeat here), faired moderately, finishing in mid-table mediocrity. By the time I had arrived most of Thursday's games had been already been  filled but I managed to get myself into slots for Savage Worlds Sci-Fi, Modern Day Cthulhu and Traveller scenarios.

Up bright and early on Thursday morning I headed to the muster with a little trepidation, this was the first time in eleven years that I was going to roleplay with an entirely unknown group of people and the first time I had ever played at a convention. First up was the Savage World game, in which we were playing intergalactic criminals on the run from the law. It was quite a nice ease into the whole convention roleplaying experience, a fairly standard kind of plot and not too serious in tone. In the afternoon session I played an Icy Reception, a Call of Cthulhu scenario based on the premise of 4 scientists and 2 helicopter pilots heading to a remote research base. I am a big fan of Cthulhu, its probably my favourite roleplaying game and I was very much looking forward to this scenario. It didn't disappoint and was full of suspense and mystery, ramping up the conflict between the characters until the big reveal of the "monster" and then the desperate race for survival. As this scenario overran by half hour I decided to bail on the Traveller game and instead made a trip to Sainsbury's for some much needed food supplies.

On Friday morning I played S.L.A Industries, a cyberpunk game set in a dystopian future where you are the agents of the shady mega-corporation in the games title. The scenario was heavily based around the latest Dredd film, with the player characters suppressing a gang fight inside a massive tower-block and stumbling across a greater conspiracy of mutants and rival corporations. The GM for this game was excellent, producing wonderfully dark and evocative descriptions of not just the setting but the characters' actions as well. After heading back to the lodge for some lunch, I, and 3 of the guys I was staying with, were booked into a WWII Cthulhu game. Sadly it didn't really match expectations, with very little connection to the Cthulhu Mythos and being basically a WWII special ops scenario it ended up being a little dull. The final game of Friday was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which like S.L.A. Industries I had never played before. This didn't matter as we weren't even given character sheets, which I personally found a bit odd. It was an OK game but it suffered a bit from a mismatch in the type of game that I like andthat which the rest of the players clearly enjoyed. I'm not a fan of jokey roleplay and unfortunately this slot was awash with it.

Things didn't get better on Saturday morning with Dark Heresy (I think it must be something about games set in GWs worlds), which again was full of running gags and jokes. As a fan of the dark brooding horror of the 40K universe an action comedy game wasn't my cup of tea and jarred quite a bit with how I envisage the setting. After lunch, in a last minute change of plan I decided to drop out of a Serenity game and play Traveller instead. Traveller is another game that I had never played before and unlike WHFRP and S.L.A Industries I didn't really have much idea about the games setting, aside from the fact it is sci-fi. It turned out we were playing dog-men in space. I'm generally not a massive fan of anthropomorphic animals in fantasy or sci-fi settings but this worked quite well especially in terms of mechanics around pack organisation. I started off playing the group leader, which was a bit of a roleplaying challenge as I had no idea about the game and ended up being supplanted as alpha dog by one of the other characters. I really enjoyed the dynamics of pack loyalty and competition created in the group and though I'm not sure I'd run Traveller myself these themes are something I'd definitely like to explore. I didn't roleplay on Saturday evening instead we played the board-game War on Terror back at our lodge. The game is a bit like Risk but with more UN weapons inspections, pre-emptive strikes and a horribly sweaty balaclava with the word EVIL sewn across its forehead!

Sunday morning, after packing up my stuff to make a quick escape, I head over to play in another Cthulhu scenario. This one was set in the First World War with the players characters being members of the Royal Flying Corp. After four hours of crashing bi-planes, characters going slowly insane and numerous uses of the words "chocks away old chap", some noble self sacrifice ended my time at this years Conception.

It is hard to pin down the best game of the weekend the modern day Cthulhu, WWI Cthulhu, S.L.A Industries and Traveller were all excellent. I'm sad I failed to play any of the many Firefly/Serenity games that were run or manage to get into a Cyberpunk 2020 game. Overall it was a great (long) weekend and I'm looking forward to next years convention, I may even try and make it to Indiecon or Consequences which both run at the same venue later in the year.

Storytelling and Narrative in Games

Here is the first more serious post concerning why libraries should support the playing of games.

This week is National Storytelling Week which aims to increase public awareness of the art, practice and value of oral storytelling. Story is integral to many of the games that we play at the club, whether this is oral storytelling in roleplaying games or an implied narrative created in wargames. This inherent bond between gaming and storytelling is one of the reasons that we feel that libraries are a perfect location for promoting the playing of these games - I'll put up a post about the other reasons why libraries should support the playing of games sometime in the future.

There is a spectrum of disciplines that are used to tell stories, from acting, storytelling to roleplay. Actors typically play a single character having learnt a script with the fourth wall separating them from their audience. Storytellers will typically play multiple characters and interact with audience, typically reading their script. Roleplayers, with the exception of the Games Master, will normally play only one character without any script or audience. There is considerable overlap between these from improvisation theatre to storytelling with multiple storytellers. The only thing which is usually a constant is the fact the roleplaying will very rarely have an external audience.

Roleplayers are often familiar with the concept that the games they play are a form of interactive storytelling and whilst this view is most prevalent in players of rules light and diceless games the creation and telling of a story is integral to almost all roleplaying. Often storytelling games are considered to be a subset of roleplaying games, but I don't subscribe to this school of thought, even something as rules heavy as rolemaster is a game which tells a story no less so than something rules light like FATE. Roleplaying games do not have a single narrative, they have multiple characters each telling their own story. Though the skeleton of the game is created by the games master there is no single narrator, each player narrates their own storyline each affecting the direction of the others.

It isn't only roleplaying games that tell stories, every wargame in effect creates or re-imagines the story of a battle. The latest edition of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook features a series of "Forging a Narrative" boxes which deal explicitly with telling a story within its science fiction battles. In an article within White Dwarf 400 Jervis Johnson describes the benefits of playing with Games Masters. In addition to the reasons he states GMs are also able to help forge this narrative in a way that the current set of mission rules isn't able to (the 2nd edition missions from Dark Millennium were much better at this kind of thing). One area we have yet to explore in the club is story based campaigns, hopefully this is something we can develop over the coming year. Even many boardgames tell a story, though in a somewhat abstract way. For instance when we played Chrononauts at University we created stories to show how we were changing the course of history or games of Risk simulate the story of colonial expansion.

Stories form an important part of what we do as libraries, in the last 3 months of 2013 Bournemouth Library issued just over 15,000 fiction books slightly over half of all our book issues, about a third of these were to children. Across all the libraries in Bournemouth the number of issues in this period was over 150,000 for fiction, around about three quarters of the total issues. As well as supporting reading stories we have regular storytelling events for children of all ages. The importance of these kind of events in the development and education of children is well documented (see for example this UNESCO course on storytelling in education). The gaming club is another way for Bournemouth Libraries to support the telling and creation of stories and the benefits that this creates for all involved.

Normal Service Resumes

We are running as normal this week, well semi-normal anyway. The larger meeting room is being used for another group so we are going to be distributed across the smaller meeting room, exhibition space and the small 1st floor office. The plan is for wargames to be in the meeting room, board games in the exhibition space and roleplayers can use the office.

I won't be with you this week as I'm attending the local roleplaying convention Conception. This runs from today until Sunday so if any of you have a moment to spare, pop down and say hi (you'll probably find me playing Call of Cthulhu).

Next week we have a prime spot on the first floor just by the exit. We are hoping to play a variety of games that the public can join in with. It also gives you chance to practise some WH40K Killteam in preparation for the upcoming tournament (tentatively planned for the 8th March).

Sadly I haven't had chance to finish the post I was writing on the role of story and narrative in games, you can look forward to that for next weeks post.

Local Clubs and Conventions

We aren't the only gaming club in the area, in fact there are a whole host of clubs, some long running others newly springing up just like us.

If you are interested in wargaming there is a selection of clubs running locally.

Poole Gaming Society run every Tuesday evening at St James Church Centre in the Old Town of Poole. They run a wide range of different wargames from Bolt Action and Judge Dredd to Warhammer and Malifaux

Southbourne Tabletop and Boardgamers (or STAB) who meet first and third Sundays of the month at Tuckton Social Club. According to their website they run a wide variety of wargames, roleplaying games and strategy games.

In Wimborne one of the newest GCN clubs is running. Warborne gamers club runs on Monday nights at Wimborne Town FC. They run the current crop of Games Workshop games.

Even further affield in St Leonards there is Wessex Wyverns,who formed from the ashes of the sadly deceased Battlescar club that met in Branksome. They meet every Monday evening at St Leonard's Hotel and play a wide variety of wargames and roleplaying games.

There was also Dicepocalypse running in Kinson, their facebook page hasn't been updated since the Summer so I'm not sure whether they are still running.

If roleplaying is more your thing the why not try one of these clubs.

Bournemouth Berzerkers who meet in St. Catherine's Hill in Christchurch Dorset on Friday nights. Or if you are Poole based there is Have Dice who meet on Thursday nights at Poole Rugby Club.



There are also 3 local roleplaying conventions, Consequences, Conception, and Indiecon. All of which  run at Naish Farm Holiday Park.

If your a boardgames devotee then Flirt has been holding a boardgames evening in association with locally based company Bag of Holding, though no dates for next year have been announced. (NOTE These are now set to run on the second Saturday of the month - 20/2/14)

If you happen to be a student at Bournemouth Univesity they have a gaming club as well, which meets on Mondays and Wednesdays.

The Best Session Yet?

What a great turnout for Saturdays session on International Games Day we hit a total of 20 attendees (thats 3 more than our previous high attendance) and at least 10 more people were playing with the games that were left downstairs on the first floor. We are already thinking about how to do things better for next years IGD and have had contact with Poole Chess club who may be using the library for one of their weekly sessions in the future.

International Games Day at Bournemouth Library. Photo by Darren Edwards

In total we had eleven different games played on Saturday, which in order of number people playing  was Jenga, Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, 7 Wonders, 5ive Straight, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Blokus, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, Advanced Connect Four, Warhamer Fantasy Battle, Uno, Draughts.

Don't forget we have our miniature painting competition is next weekend, we will have some kind of exciting prize for the winners and will be roping some of our colleagues in to judge the competition.

Miniature Painting Competition

International Games Day is tomorrow and we are nearly set for the biggest event the club has yet run. The entrance display is complete, the rules for the boardgames have been photocopied, cards for the Round Bournemouth Game scanned and printed, emails sent to Ekerö library in Sweden and phone calls taken from Scandicci library in Italy and from the Global Gossip Game coordinator in Australia! The giant snakes and ladders game arrived in the post tray this afternoon as well. I hope your all as excited about it as we are here at Bournemouth Library.

Just look at how many other libraries are taking part around the globe.



The events are coming thick and fast and next week we are going to hold our painting competition. There are going to be two different contests, the Open category and the Individual Model category. The rules can be found below.

1. You must be a Worlds Away member to enter (i.e. you need to have filled in a membership form)
2. Only one entry per category per person.
3. Any model or group of models may be used into the Open category as a single entry e.g. a tank would be just a suitable as a squad of troopers or a single model. These can be in any scale and for any game you like.
4. Any single model in 28mm (or similar) scale may be used as an entry in the Individual model category. These models can be for any game you like.
5. All models used must be painted by the Worlds Away member entering the competition. Models for the Open category can be painted before the session but models for the Individual Model category must be painted at the library during the club session on the 23rd

International Games Day - 16th November

The time has come for us to announce what we will be offering for International Games Day and we are pretty excited about what we have to offer. We will be running games throughout the library not just in the meeting room and have a selection of traditional board and card games as well as the more  esoteric games that we love at the club.

Up in the meeting room we will have our normal tables set up for wargames (Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, Judge Dredd and X Wing) and roleplay games. In the Heritage Zone we will have a copy of the Round Bournemouth Game, which dates from 1969 and forms a part of Bournemouth Libraries' Local Heritage collection and also the game of train empires, Ticket to Ride: Europe.

Downstairs in the Teen Zone there will be a table set up for playing Subbuteo. Then in the Children's Zone we will have giant Snakes and Ladders and Ludo for the youngsters and in the main library we will have Chess, Draughts, Backgammon and packs of cards for the public to use. We'll probably end up with some of our regular favourites as well so expect some Munchkin, 7 Wonders or Settlers of Catan to make an appearance.

Between 2 and 3pm we will be taking part in the Global Gossip Game, will you pass on the Secret?

Let's make sure the rest of Bournemouth realises how much fun there is in games and maybe we'll get a few members as a result.

Events for November and December

12 intrepid gamers braved the rain on Saturday to play some 40K, Carcassonne, Munchkin and Word Thief. We've now welcomed 42 individuals through our doors and we have 17 official members in the club. If you haven't picked up a membership form yet just ask me or Lyndsey (or one of the volunteers).

This weekend we have our Halloween Special be prepared for a selection of spooky games.

Then 16th November is International Games Day. We aim to introduce you to as many different games as possible, so we'll be running lots of short games, from WH40K using kill team rules, to quick board and card games. More details to follow including a full list of the games we will be offering.

The at the end of November we will be hosting our painting competition, again further details will be announced soon.

The Saturday before Christmas we'll be having our Christmas party and then the week after we'll all be trying out the new stuff we've received as presents (including those tasteful Xmas socks you're bound to be given!)


Munchkin. Photo by Darren Edwards

PS. One of you left your gloves last week, they are in our office at the Library.

What do you want to play?

This is the sister post to the last one. This is a list of the games that members and potential members have expressed an interest in playing or running at the club.

Edited 20/02/14: Links added for RPGGeek.
Edited 28/11/13: Links added for those games who have records on Board Game Geek and RPGnet.

Boardgames and Cardgames
The aMAZEing Labyrinth
Android Netrunner
Axis and Allies: 1941
Chess
Cribbage
DunegonQuest
A Game of Thrones
Firefly: The Game
Heroquest
Kingmaker
Mah Jong
Othello
Phase 10
Pyraeus
Race for the Galaxy
Risk
Sequence
Skip Bo
Word Search

Wargames
Ancients (Phil Barker Rules)
Bolt Action
Mordheim
Napoleonic Era
Necromunda
Warhammer Quest
Wings of Glory

Roleplaying Games
Deadlands
Dungeons and Dragons
Fate Accelerated
Fate Core
Necessary Evil
Neverwhere
Nova Praxis
Pathfinder
Prime Time Adventures
Risus
Sarps
Shadowrun

What do we play?

We  get asked fairly frequently what games are played at the club, this is an attempt at a comprehensive list of all the games that have been played so far.

EDIT 29/11/14 This list is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up to date in regards to what is currently popular. Games are consequently now in alphabetical order and we'll be adding posts every couple of months with what is currently popular

Boardgames and Card Games
Advanced Connect 4
Arkham Horror
Bananagrams
Blokus
Boss Monster
Carcassonne
Cards Against Humanity
Cheat
Chrononauts
Firefly: The Game
5ive Staight
Gears of War Boardgame
Gloom
King of Tokyo
Magic The Gathering
Munchkin
Munchkin Quest
Mystic Wood
North American Rails
Once Upon a Time
Pandemic
Power Grid
Quoridor
Race for the Galaxy
Rubik's Magic Strategy Game
Settlers of Catan
7 Wonders
Stak Bots
Survive: Escape from Atlantis!
Talisman
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Trapped
Uno
Word Spot
Word Thief
Yali
Yggdrasil
Yu-Gi-Oh

Wargames
Dungeons and Dragons Attack Wing
Flames of War
Infinity
Judge Dredd
Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit
Warhammer Fantasy
Warhammer 40,000
X-Wing

Roleplaying Games
Black Crusade
Call of Cthulhu
Dark Heresy
Dr Who
Legend of the 5 Rings
Only War
Pathfinder

Dave Gorman vs the Rest of the World: Book Review

Dave Gorman vs. The Rest of the World

So this is our first book review, we should have some more soon as David is reading the two Warhammer 40K novels that we got for free from GW. You won't find many reviews like this one on the blog, the book is several years old now, but its subject is pretty relevant to the club.

I read Dave Gorman vs The Rest of the World slightly more than 2 years ago having bought it in Southampton Airport on my way to the Summer Darkness festival in the lovely city of Utrecht. I bought it along with How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (which I also heartily recommend*) and read both books in the week I was in the Netherlands†.

The basic premise of the book comes from this tweet that Dave posted.

"Does anyone play any games? Real Life, not computer games. Would you like to play a game?"

A pretty innocuous question but if you have 76,000 followers your likely to get quite a response. Indeed Dave goes on a epic journey around the UK playing all sorts of boardgames, card games and sports. Starting off with the abstract strategy game Khet (or as Dave puts it, Egyptian Laser Chess – which we can all agree sounds far more exciting) and taking in Ping Pong (or Whiff Whaff if your Boris Johnson), Kubb, Guess Who, Kensington, Poker, Darts, Settlers of Catan, Bluke, Agricola... and many more‡. These kind of oddball trips are the bread and butter of Dave Gorman's books from finding people with his name in “Are you Dave Gorman?” to trying to cross the USA only shopping in independent stores in “America Unchained”. In many ways this isn't a book about games but a book about the people who play games and the places they play them in.
 

Khet -Egyptian Laser Chess. Photo from Wikimedia.

Dave Gorman vs the Rest of the  World is a great read, it is written in Dave Gorman's standard witty style and the characters he meets remind you how generous and friendly people can be. If nothing else it will give you a whole load of new games to find out about and that is something we are all in favour of at Worlds Away isn't it?

*if you enjoy laughing out loud on planes and having people look at you oddly as a result. Though to be fair people often look at me oddly even when not laughing at books on planes.

 

†Trivia - The Netherlands and Holland are, despite popular misconception, in fact not the same thing. Holland refers to the two most westerly provinces of the Netherlands, Noord and Zuid Holland. The rest of the country, including Utrecht, is not part of Holland.

A layout catch in a game of Ultimate. Photo © Darren Edwards

‡Personally my favourite is his description of Ultimate Frisbee, as an Ultimate player myself reading his description of a whole load of people I know and have played against was very amusing.