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

Focus On: Live Roleplay

It has been a long while since I last posted and a very long time since I said I was going to write a Focus On: post about Live Roleplay. Having spent the last 2 weekends away at LRP events I am taking the chance to write a bit about what LRP is.

Live Roleplay, or Live Action Roleplay (LRP or LARP for short) take the basic premises of tabletop roleplaying games of players taking the role of a character but rather than describing the characters actions and calculating an actions success using cards or dice, the players act out actions in real time.

Greek Shield Wall at Profound Decisions Odyssey LRP

Photo © Tom Garnett used under a CC-A license

 

LRP covers a wide range of different settings from traditional high fantasy using foam weapons to decide combat, entirely non combat modern day horror events, games based in historical periods to Sci-Fi games using NERF, Lasertag or Airsoft. In the UK the first LRP was Treasure Trap formed way back in 1982, which generated substantial press coverage including this feature on Blue Peter.


  



Troops marching to battle at Empire LRP

Photo by Charlotte Moss © Profound Decisions.

Used with kind permission from Profound Decisions

There are now many different LRP groups in the UK from small local systems often based around University clubs to large festival events attracting several thousand participants. The two largest games in the UK are The Gathering run by Lorien Trust and Empire run by Profound Decisions.

There are a variety of different ways a LRP game can be organised . Linear adventures in which a group of heroes work their way through a series of encounters planning by a Games Master with the antagonists played by a team of crew are common at small to medium sized events. Social events without any combat, or an abstract combat system without weapons, is common in modern day horror such as Minds Eye Theatre (MET).

Large scale systems often have very small crew teams and primarily revolve around interactions between the player characters. Most large scale LRPs have massive battles with hundreds of participants on each side, whether these be between differening player factions or teams of enemy monsters depends on the setting.


Many games are run with limited props and costume, though there is a current trend towards high levels of production value to enable players to more easily suspend disbelief and improve the immersion within the game environment. One event that is at the forefront of this is Mythlore: New Lands which utilises the talents of professional props makers and special effects companies to produce a truly cutting edge LRP game.



Mythlore New Lands 3

SFX by LarpFX

Photo © Tom Garnett used under a CC-A License

The UK LARP Facebook page is a good point to start if you are interested in playing LRP games as well as the LARPevents listing page.



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.

Call of Cthulhu Summary: Part 2

May 7^th 1933

Bedford, Gumshoe and Hemingway arrive at the Ocean House estate at 10 am, to find that the gas lamps outside the hotel are lit; as they trio approach a lamp explodes, showering them all in glass. Bedford tries to open the main doors to the hotel but finds them locked and so the Bedford and Hemingway decide to search a workman’s hut nearby for the key; neither of them find a key. Gumshoe decides to join the other two in the workman’s hut but is injured by a rogue lumber cart - using a strip of his clothes and alcohol in his hipflask, Gumshoe bandages his injured leg. Afterwards Hemingway remembers that Miss Vixen had given them a key beforehand and so she unlocks the main doors and the trio enter the Ocean House hotel.

As Bedford, Gumshoe and Hemingway enter the hotel, the main doors slide shut behind them, locking them in. Hemingway slaps Gumshoe for having forgotten to get the key from the lock as he entered last and therefore Gumshoe decides to climb out of a window to retrieve the key. However when he gets to the main doors, the key is nowhere to be found and is perturbed to find he can no longer find the window which he climbed out of.

Gumshoe resolves to use a stick of dynamite to blow open the main doors of hotel but actually sets off the dynamite too early, vaporising his right hand. Howling in pain, he wraps his coat around the stump which used to be his right hand and stumbles off to the workman’s hut, where he slides down into a corner and slowly exsanguinates to death.

 Bedford and Hemmingway are unaware of their colleague’s death having only heard the explosion of dynamite.

 

 

No further information is known

Piers

Call of Cthulhu Summary: Part 1

Our latest guest blogger, Piers, with a summary of Saturdays Call of Cthulhu game. I recognise a lot of the names in this one and if it was inspired by what I think it was this should be a cracking game.

Darren

*****************************************

Incident Report

Anna Vixen (singer, actress and entrepreneur) hired 3 individuals to investigate the claims from her building contractor that the Ocean Hotel estate was haunted. Having invested a lot into the estate herself, Miss Vixen would be facing financial ruin if the workforce refused to return. The following are the 3 individuals hired by Miss Vixen:

Dr Warren Bedford     -           Professor of European History at Bournemouth University

Artie Gumshoe            -           American Private investigator

Rachel Hemingway     -           Freelance journalist and writer

 

May 6^th 1933

Bedford, Gumshoe and Hemingway decide to meet with each other to discuss their first line of investigation into the haunting claims. It is decided that they need to gather as much information regarding the history of the Ocean House estate as possible.

Bedford, Gumshoe and Hemingway all squeeze into Bedford’s vehicle and make their way to the local library.

At the library Hemmingway searches newspaper articles whilst Gumshoe pursues police reports and Bedford tries to find the public records room.

Hemingway’s search through old newspaper reports revealed that Marcus Vӧrman built and opened the Hotel in 1851. Over the course of 7 days, 5 people were randomly murdered and 5 people burned alive in a mysterious fire. It was thought that the deaths were random and as such, none of them were solved – all becoming cold cases. Mr Vӧrman passed away elsewhere 3 years later in 1854.

Bedford failed to find the public records room after having been distracted by an ivory ornament.

Gumshoe found that the murders where mysteriously cruel and all took place late in the evening except the fire which started in the early afternoon. The three prime suspects were Mr Osborne, master Richards (a guest at the hotel) and the owner Mr Vӧrman.

After realising that Bedford was useless, Hemingway led both gentlemen to the public records room where trio discover Maria and Jeanette (born 1901) are the surviving descendants of Mr Vӧman who live at 14 Greenwell Street in Dover. After a brief phone conversation with a servant of Maria and Jeanette, it is decided that the trio will visit them the following day at midday (per the request of Maria and Jeanette).

The trio arrive at the Vӧrman house and meet Maria and Jeanette in a room with a rather large painting that depicts the Ocean House prior to it almost burning down. Maria and Jeanette give the trio their great grandfather’s journal upon being asked for more information. As the trio are about to leave, Hemingway and Bedford notice that the painting has changed from when they first arrived; both are mentally disorientated. Bedford, Gumshoe and Hemingway decide a goodnight sleep before entering Ocean House hotel would be a good idea and allow them to adequately prepare supplies.

Piers

Coming Soon...

Another week rolls by and yet another successful session. We have hit 70 individuals having attended the club and have reached 32 official members (if your not yet a member ask a volunteer or member of staff for a membership form). The average number of people attending is steadily increasing, the average for the 2nd quarter of last year was 6 and our average for April and May this year currently stands at 23. We are reaching the limit of the space available, especially when the large room is not available, and Lyndsey and I are going to have to chat to see how best to accommodate the increasing numbers.


By Mette Aumala

Used under a Creative Commons License

Scheduled for later in the week we have a new guest blogger, Piers, who has written a game report for last Saturdays Call of Cthulhu game and a I have written post detailing the progress with my Mordant army.

The session on the 17th May represents the anniversary of our first Saturday afternoon session of the gaming club. I won't be with you for this momentous event (I'm going to be in North Wales) but I'm sure you'll all manage to have fun without me.

Looking further ahead, the coordinator for our WW1 commemorations has suggested we think about games with a Great War theme that we could add to the clubs growing list of games. I think Wings of War would fit nicely but anyone have any other suggestions? The American Libraries Association in partnership with the Australian Libraries and Information Association and Nordic Games Day* have just launched International Games Day 2014. I hope we can run something even bigger and better than last years event.

This years Summer Reading Challenge is the Mythical Maze and I'm looking at ways to add some gaming content into the activities that we run here. For those of you who don't know the Challenge is aimed at maintaining literacy skills amongst school children by preventing their reading dipping during the summer holidays. I hope to attend a training course in writing games for increasing information literacy in the middle of June and to bring some of those ideas from that course into both our Summer Reading Challenge activities and to making some new games for the club.

That's it for now. I'll see you all when I get back off my gallivanting (I'll have visited North Wales, London, Buckinghamshire and Salisbury by the time I'm back at the club).

* anyone think its a bit rubbish there is no UK presence in this list

Only War Session Trois

After the surviving troops manage to hold back the Ork advance they take stock of themselves. Unfortunately the Operator and the Medic expired in the aftermath of the attack, the surviving members of the team manage to patch themselves up as best they can, before radioing high command. They get through after a few minutes and after a sit-rep command informs them that they are being relieved and flown back to base.

Relief arrives in the form of three Valkyrie troop transports, that unload imperial war machines and troops as well as a number of Xeno experts to study the Ork technology. After informing the new forces of the countermeasures they installed they quickly away back to base.

They have a few days R&R before their talents are once again needed, in this time they are given new recruits and comrades to bring them back up to full fighting strength. After their time is up they are requested to report to the command tent for a briefing.

They are given a mission, the Orks are using the wreckage of the processing plant they visited earlier to make a huge war machine, they are instructed to destroy it. For this mission they are given a number of pieces of tank hunting gear, A Lemun Russ Vanquisher, a crate of Det-Packs and a Orbital Relay to blast the thing from orbit.

Unfortunately somewhere in the pipeline these gifts morphed into a Salamander Variant scout vehicle, two Missile launchers, a Melta-gun, a barrel of acid, and a bag of dirty laundry.

The squad was familiar with the operational area, of course,  having been present when it became a blighted dot on the landscape and somewhat of a firework surprise for the Imperium, so they found it again with a minimal amount of fuss. Once there, however, they were greeted by quite a view. The wreck of the Chimera was gone, as were the to wrecked Ork Trukks in front of the gates, as a result they could see right inside the ruined refinery.

Lurking in the blacked out ruin was a gigantic battlewagon, covered with guns and launches and covering it like a living carpet was a swarm of Gretchin. Over the vast squabbling sound of the mob, one voice could be heard, an Ork Mek shouting from a large command tower built on the ruins of one of the holding tanks.

The squad divide themselves up, a few men take a launcher and a Auto-cannon to the wrecked Hab-block nearby and another man takes a launcher to the rubble that used to be a shopping promenade.  They come up with the idea that they could roll the barrel of acid towards the tank and blow it with a missile so that the acid splash hits the tank. Unfortunately the thousand or so meters from the salamander to the Ork Compound was strewn with wreckage and rocky lumps so that when the barrel got to the last few hundred meters every jolt echoed loudly, a solution was invented, wrapping the dirty laundry around the barrel muffled it enough to close the gap, they were almost there, and then, they were spotted.

The Orks delight in a bit of target practise and spotting a lone barrel rolling slowly towards them made a game of it, unfortunately for the guard. Orks are terrible shots, but they make up for it with lots of guns and enthusiasm. The Orks eventually managed to hit the barrel and the splash of acid only grazes the guardsmen pushing the barrel, unfortunately wounding them and forcing them to strip off there armour to rid themselves of the acid. The other guardsmen take the opportunity to start firing missiles at the Battlewagon, managing to damage to drive system and take some guns online.

The Ork Battlewagon slowly crawled out of the compound to engage the guard, taking shots and the ruined building that some where camped in and causing a small amount of remodelling to the superstructure but otherwise nothing else. 
Until Next time!

David

Fire in the Hole: Planning the Mordant 303rd

Having decided to build an Imperial Guard army and decided the armies theme, I have to decide upon what models to buy and what to arm them with. I'm not all that fussed about creating something that is completely legal to use in 40K games, more about creating something that fits the background and looks cool. I need to create an army that appropriately represents a force that is a veteran of five long campaigns against mutant rebels, Hrud infestations and Genestealer cultists. An army that is designed to fight in close quarters against the Imperium's many enemies, to cleanse the narrow sewers of ruined cities and corridors of spaceships.



No Tanks!

The first thing that is out for my army is tanks. Tanks don't really do narrow tunnels, so the mainstay of many an Imperial Guard army sadly isn't suitable for mine. Somewhere at home I already have a Chimera, so that may get used but anything else is out of bounds. Equally unsuited for small tunnels are Rough Riders and Ogryns so I won't be having any of those either, or any of the now ubiquitous flyers.



To fit the theme of a force designed to board a spaceship I'll have some troops with equipment for breaching bulkheads (las-cutters, melta bombs, demo charges etc) but the bulk will be armed with weapons aimed for short range combat. Primarily these will be weapons that wouldn't cause structural damage to the hull of a ship (so shotguns, las-carbines and flamers). For some more heavy support I'll have some rapid firing sentry weapons (heavy bolters and heavy stubbers). The troops will be festooned with grenades so that they fit with the background for the regiment that I created in Only War (I am currently running a prequel to the long standing Dark Heresy campaign that I played in, charting how my character became an Inquisitorial Agent).

One of only three bits of artwork for the Mordant

Acid Dogs. Copyright Games Workshop.

There are only a handful of pieces of artwork for the Mordant Acid Dogs these show the troops being armed with a variety of equipment but broadly dressed like Cadians with a vest rather than a sleeved top. The conversions I've seen so far of Mordant troopers use Cadian bodies with Catachan arms, however I'm not a fan of the ridiculous body builder arms of the Jungle Fighters so will be looking elsewhere for some sleeveless arms. I'm also planning to use a variety of head swaps to emphasise the rag tag punky element of Mordant Troopers.

I've already stocked up on a selection of models and bitz to make my conversions but you'll have to wait until my next post for the details.

Only War: Session Deux

The team dig in and quickly find and repurpose an old sentinel power lifter to be a mobile fire platform by rigging the flamethrower to the main console. They also find plenty of piping and barrels of highly volatile refined promethium which they make into murder hole like weapons and land mines. After a couple of hours of hectic work night falls and they begin to take shifts to rest for the oncoming battle.

Unfortunately for them they totally miss the Gretchin scout party and it manages to abscond with a detailed layout of the defenders emplaced fortifications and traps. The diminutive little runts are however spotted in the morning light and shot to pieces. This was the masta plan of Big Mek Lugnutz who used the diminutive Gretchin as a distraction while placing breaching charges at the rear of the compound.

Our heros take the bait and are caught completely unaware as the Orks storm the compound from the rear. A force of five Burna Boyz, Loota's ten Gretchin and one large Mekboy burst onto the scene and critically wound two characters before being pulped. The Mekboy takes on the Sentinel in single combat with his Electro wrench and almost manages to wreck it, but is ultimately pulped by the vengeful fire from the surviving imperial guard!

So, with the first wave defeated how will our brave Imperials cope with Lugnutz next wave?
Find out next week!

David

Only War Campaign Update

Here is the first in a series of posts detailing the heroics of the Imperial Guard squad in the clubs Only War campaign - Darren

-------------------------------------------------

We rejoin our heroes regrouping behind the wreckage of an old Hab block.

They have just managed the salvage the internal gubbins from a power Klaw and the remains of the wrecked chimera's vox set.  Having got a message out to a distant Imperial guard flyer, the sergeant decides that there best chance for survival lies in getting back to the imperial lines as soon as possible, so he orders the troops into marching home. After a day of forced marching they break and camp, exhausted.

Next they discover a clearing that was not on the mapslate their operator was using, and when they stop to smell the flowers they get pounced on by some six legged indigenous mountain cats. The cats are quickly dispatched thanks to a flamer burst, knife to the gut and a very precise burst of heavy bolter fire. Proceeding through the jungle they hear the sounds of heavy gunfire as a Valkyrie roars overhead and crashes to the ground some kilometres away from their position. They decide to check it out, in order to see if they can help any survivors. Unfortunately they only find one wing bearing the designation of the troop ship they came down on.

Finally they return to the imperial compound where they are berated and sent of to defend another refinery against the ork force they were supposed to have routed.

David

The Mordant 303rd - My New Army

For my sins I have decided to start an Imperial Guard army. A foolish prospect given that I have played 40K twice in the last decade. I am going to collect a Mordant Acid Dog army....

I imagine a lot of you will be scratching your heads wondering what I'm on about, you think I'm confused with how to spell Mordian. But no I'm not going insane, Mordant are a regiment in the 40K universe and I didn't even make them up myself. The Mordant Acid Dogs featured in the Eye of Terror campaign that GW ran back in 2003 and renown as tunnel fighters.

You may wonder why pick a Regiment with about half a page of background rather than one the many regiments with loads of cool background. The reason for me collecting them takes us back to 2009 and the publication of Dark Heresy Ascension.



Darius Tarrantarm: Noble rogue and

chancer (and sometimes hero of the

Imperium)*

We had been playing Dark Heresy for a year or so and had a group of miscreants that bumbled around falling upon evidence of heresy in their service to the Inquisition. I played Darius Tarrantarm a noble born chancer and wide boy, my brother played Mercutio Harrigan a drug addled former ganger turned dubious law enforcer and our friend Chris played Kaarl Raga a smelly, feral world assassin. When Ascension came out we had the chance of adding some actually competent characters into the campaign. Chris chose to play Rhoda Roskruger, a hive gang boss, my brother Navonax, a Tech Priest Magos specialising in wave research, and I Rizpah Jair an Imperial Guard Stormtrooper.



A Mordant Acid Dog

Copyright GW

I had decided I wanted to play a female guard and had a quick look through my back copies of White Dwarf to find a suitable regiment. I stumbled across this picture of a Mordant Guardswoman and I decided it fitted the bill perfectly. A tunnel fighting specialist who find herself the other side of the galaxy as part of an elite Ordo Xenos Stormtrooper Killteam, fighting against the dreaded Tyranids.

Move forward 5 years and my Stormtrooper had moved on from fighting aliens to killing an Emperor's Children Space Marine with a Fury Pattern Laspistol (Stormtoopers in Dark Heresy are pretty hardcore). So it seemed the perfect choice to bring out some of my old Cadian models and create the ill-fated force that was sent to reconnoitre a space hulk leading to much death at the hands of genestealers and the induction of my character into the forces of the Inquisition. I might even play some games of 40K with the new army I create.

So over the next months expect to see more posts and photos cataloguing my progress in this modelling project.

* This picture was created using this photo fit web app provided by the Open University.

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.

Roads and Rivers

Yesterday was my day off and it was spent rather productively turning a selection of bits of card that was packing the posters we sell into modular sections of river . I just need to finish covering these  in paper maché and to give them a lick of paint and varnish and we'll have some water features for John's Lizardmen to bathe in. Photos to follow shortly.

I also spent some time putting together some supports for flyover road sections bought from Urban Construct. They make some really nice stuff, I'm particularly impressed by their tunnels/sewers. Over the next few months I'm hoping to put together a selection of relatively intact urban scenery to add to our ruins so we can get a Necromunda campaign underway.

Remember David is starting his Only War campaign this weekend, get to the club for 12 prompt if you want to join in as places are first come first served. The week after the library has Chinese New Year celebrations and consequently the club is cancelled. We are back on the 1st Feb, though in the smaller meeting room. The 8th Feb is National Libraries Day and National Music Libraries day so a wide variety of activities will be occuring, we will have a space on the main library floor so bring along your best painted armies to showcase the club.

...and a Happy New Year

Hope every ones Christmas was a good one and you weren't affected by the awful weather. Did Santa bring you all the toys you wanted?

Over the next months Lyndsey and I will be discussing the best ways to improve on our impressive start with our volunteers and the rest of the club. Sometime soon we will hold an AGM so you can let us know what you think we can do to make the club even better.

We already have a few things up our sleeves for this year. Our demo copy of Deadzone has arrived and the rules are sitting on my desk as I write this, we also have the prospect of the 40K Killteam tournament to look forward to. David is planning on running some Only War roleplay, which I can confirm is great game as I'm running a campaign using it at the moment. We should have all the old favourites continuing with more X-Wing, Judge Dredd, Settlers of Catan, 7 Wonders etc., plus a load of games we haven't played yet e.g. Flames of War, Necromunda, Mordheim, Risk.

Have you registered as a book giver?

Check out their website for details

Looking further ahead we will run an event for World Book Night, held on Shakespeare's Birthday, which is happens to be the club's 1st Birthday too. I may even get around to running the Neverwhere roleplaying game I had planned for last year. Even further ahead we have International Games Day, for which we hope to be able to do something even bigger and better than last year.

But that's not it there are a whole host of other things we can do. For the younger members there is Games Workshop's School League to enter, we could run painting or scenery making workshops, a murder mystery, trips to local conventions. The list could go on. The GCN is looking to create better links between local clubs and I'm hoping to do some networking myself especially at Conception in a few weeks and at What's Your Game LRP kit fair after that.

On this blog we still need more contributors we are looking for book reviews, battle reports, game reviews or even simply your musing on games and gaming. I am planning a series of posts focusing on different aspects of gaming, imaginatively titled "Focus On - <insert type of game here>"

It should be a good year.

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.

How did you start gaming?

My first White Dwarf, Issue 201.

Its Xmas 1996, The Spice Girls are performing 2 Become 1 on Top of the Pops and I'm opening my presents, including a copy of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Quest (my Brother got a copy of Warhammer). Such was my first introduction to wargaming; that Spice Girls song is now forever linked with gaming in my head.

Though, actually, my first dalliance with wargaming came from buying a copy of White Dwarf off a friend a few months earlier. Without any models or actual rules to use, my brother and I played a makeshift game of 40K whilst on holiday in North Wales, using some dice and a load of tidlywinks counters to represent space marines. Even before that I had played Heroquest and Space Crusade in the early 90's.

After getting Warhammer 40K I played regularly for about 3 years before slowly giving up. I still played some of Games Workshops other products (in particular Mordheim and Inquisitor) but my days as a wargamer were behind me.

8 years after first getting Warhammer I was at Uni, representing the Alternative Music Society at the Freshers Fair. Sandwiched between the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Society and the Live Roleplay Society I asked which of them would be best to join to start playing some Warhammer again: "Granny" the President of the LARP society responded "You don't want to be rolling dice, join us and do it for real. Its much more fun". I ended up joining them and not playing any Warhammer but spending almost every weekend larping for the rest of my time at Uni.

I still roleplay every week, mostly tabletop these days but also at a large professionally run live roleplay system called Empire. The games of Warhammer 40K I played at our club were the first in over a decade. I enjoyed it enough that I may actually get round to finishing the Imperial Guard army I've been considering for a while.

Empire LRP. Photo by Charlotte Moss.

Used with kind permission from the photographer and Profound Decisions Ltd

How did you get into gaming?