Watch Me Say

One of my favourite board gaming related YouTube channels is Watch It Played, a channel designed to teach you how to play board games without needing to pour over a long instruction booklet. I've been a fan and supporter for a few years now.

Occcasionally, the host, Rodney, will pick a topic to discuss, share his thoughts on it, then ask viewers to share their opinions on the topic, either in the comments, or via a short video. Reccently, he did one on ties in games and how you resolve them or not, and I thought I'd record my own feelings on the matter. It made it into his follow-up video, embedded below.

Terminal Gaming

In a previous post I talked about my favourite weekend of the year, Terminal City Tabletop Convention. I discussed why I love it, mentioning that I get to play lots of games. Now I want to go into detail about the particular games I played.

This year I hit the ground running, jumping into a game of Inis as soon as I walked in the door. Inis (pronounced "Inish") is an Irish mythology themed area control game that I've been interested in since I first heard about it. Thanks to new friend Marc (phone contact Marc TCTC) I got to learn and play it, and then went home and ordered it online. It was really quick to learn, and has a wonderfully clean ruleset, with only combat causing us some initial head-scratching, but once we had a fight or two, we totally understood it. The components are nice, with the armies having a handful of different models for their units, adding nice variety to the board. The art on the cards and tiles is gorgeous, all done by aclaimed Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick.

After Inis, I taught three other players Quantum, the dice-as-spaceships strategy game, which I love, and they seemed to enjoy as well. I'm pretty terrible at Quantum, and usually I'm on the receiving end of another players epic final turn, where all their upgrades fall into place for some bonkers cool victory. But this time, I managed to pull off just that, dishing out a dramatic turn to drop my final colony onto a planet and secure galactic dominance.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was getting to play four games of submarine themed team game, Captain Sonar, each with a full player count of eight. Well, technically, I played two games and "GMed" the other two, answering questions as they arose. The first one was on Saturday and went a bit longer than hoped, and I was upset that maybe the game wasn't as much fun as advertised. But the three games on Sunday were amazing! Each lasted under thirty minutes, and we're jammed with hilarity and tension! They were exactly how I hoped the game would feel, and now that I've played it properly, I feel I know better how to teach it in the future, and what elements beyond the rules to draw attention to. I'll do a full review of Captain Sonar soon, but the games I played at TCTC definitely taught me a lot about the game.

Super Motherload was being taught throughout the weekend, and I jumped into a game on Sunday, falling in love with it immediately and grabbing the last copy on sale as soon as I was done.

I played many more games over the weekend, but these were just some of the highlights. Terminal City is a great convention every year, but my bank account always suffers during and after.

Not that I'm complaining.

 

How To Make Friends And Crush Your Opponents

When we first arrived in Canada, tabletop gaming was integral in how we made friends. It was through RPG.net that we met the lovely couple who took us in that first week, and showed us around this strange new city. Once we got our own place, the first thing I did was Google local game stores and went directly there, where I met many of the friends I still have today. And I still use tabletop gaming as an ice-breaker for making new friends.

So when I discovered a new tabletop gaming convention was having its first event back in 2014, I knew I had to be there. And I've been going every year since.

Terminal City Tabletop Convention, or TCTC, is a weekend long tabletop celebration started by one man, and has been my favourite annual event of the year four years running. This years TCTC was March 4th and 5th, and I'm already looking forward to next years. Every year I anxiously await the chance to playing with friends I only get to see at the con, as well as making more new friends every year. My phone contacts list is filled with "John TCTC", "Michelle TCTC", and so on, and my group email gaming list grows every March.

TCTC is a great opportunity to play old favourites with new opponents, try brand new releases, classics that you missed, or just something different. Better yet, there has been strong support since the very first year for independant local developers to show off their in-development creations and get feedback on them. Prototype Alley is always a busy corner of the convention floor, and this year, there was even a new award and prize for the most promising prototype submitted, backed by support from Panda Game Manufacturing. I played a bunch of stuff all weekend, and taught a whole bunch more, but I'll leave those details for another post.

One of the more popular areas of TCTC on the Saturday is the silent auction, which started in 2015 with just a few small tables on the stage area, grew last year to fill every inch of space available on the tables, to this year where the stage quickly burst its banks and flooded onto several overflow tables off to one side. The auction gives attendees the chance to bring along and sell games they no longer play, and pick up games they might be interested in second-hand. I've sold something at every auction to date, and usually buy sometihng as well, but this year I was way too busy playing games to bother with the stress of trying to outbid others that I just didn't bother.

I love teaching games. I bring a few bags filled with games I'd like to play or teach, and I do end up spending a lot of time sharing out my collection and teaching others to play while I play something else, or even go teach another game and drift between both as the group play their first few turns. TCTC has a Game Steward system to help attendees pick out and learn new game. Seeing as how I love teaching anyway, it made sense to sign up and help out. I ended up teaching probably over half a dozen games, including Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Tsuro, Onitama, Tak, Patchwork, Santorini, and four different games of Captain Sonar!

One thing that struck me as odd was the number of requests for two-players games. I forget that although I'm there to play with as many people as possible, some folks are there to find new games to play with their partner. It made me wish I'd brought my copy of Quoridor along.

If I had one complaint it was that it had become too popular for its current venue. I'm delighted to see it grow and grow, because that means more people for me to become friends with, but it's outgrowwn it's current space. In previous years, numbers have been limited to comfortable levels and I felt that everyone had a table to be at all weekend. This year, Saturday especially, there were plenty of folks wandering the hall looking for a corner of a table to set up and game on. People seemed to be on top of each other, careful not to knock into the gmae beside you with your elbow while you played your game. At one point, we had to move out to the hallway and use two tables in the public access area. Thankfully, while I was writing this post, it has been annouced that TCTC 2018 will take place in a much larger venue! Woot!

Year after year Terminal City Tabletop Convention has been a great experience, meeting and making friends, playing a bunch of games and having a great time. It's the kind of thing I wish we had more often in Vancouver, but it's extra special because it's only once a year.

Roll on 2018!

Related Posts:
Terminal Gaming

 

Canals On Mars

"Hey Burke."

Burke pushed her hat barely an inch off her face. "Yeah?" From under the brim, she could just see her partner pointing to the skies above.

"See that star, right there. The red one. That ain't a star. That there's the planet Mars. You can tell, because it ain't moving like the rest of the stars. And it's red."

"Is that so?" she said, and let the hat slide back over her eyes.

John shifted on his coat, and Burke could tell by the sound of the grit underneath that he had rolled onto one elbow. "Yup. My dad told me all about it. Was readin' in the papers the other day that some fella in Italy seen canals in its dirt! Imagine that. Canals on Mars!" The excitement in his voice was boyish enough to remind Burke how young John probably was, despite the thick beard he chose to sport.

Burke kept her hat low. "What's a canal?"

"'What's a...'? Are you serious?" John said, and Burke heard him sit upright. "When you'd leave school? A canal is one of them manmade rivers for moving water and boats around. Manmade, Burke!"

Giving up on getting to sleep any time soon, Burke took off her hat and sat up, turning to the warmth of the dieing embers. "You're telling me there's men on Mars? Well that's great, 'cause there's too many of you down here already." Behind her, John was getting increasingly excited.

"No, dummy! There's aliens up there! Little folks that don't look like you or me, but have towns and carriages and probably cows too, I'll reckon." He paused, and Burke imagined him scratching at his beard they way he always did when he was thinking hard. John was great to play poker against. "Maybe not cows. Bugs. Big 'uns. Big enough to ride around on."

At this point, Burke had heard just about enough, but before she could say anything, she heard a loud ping from her coat. She turned to see John starring into the moonlit sky. The red "planet" had suddenly shifted and was now falling through the sky.

"That's weird. What do you-" John said, but the rest of his words were lost as his ashes drifted out on the cool night air. The ship came to a silent hover above the grass.

Burke holstered her raygun. "'What's a canal?' You fucking dumbass."

Goodbye My Friend

I'm pretty terrible at saying goodbye.

Moving to Canada was difficult, because my friends are incredibly important to me, but I knew I could always come home, I could text, Skype or Twitter. And I have done all those things and more. But eventually you have to face the reality that everyone has to say goodbye at some point. The forever goodbye.

Last year I lost a friend to cancer. I didn't know him nearly as long as I do many of my other friends, but he was amazing and funny and taught me that it's not over until it's over. Saying goodbye to him when I moved to Canada was especially tough as I knew it might be the last time we spoke. As it turned out, happily, it wasn't. We got to see each other when I was home in 2013, and, most especially, when I was home with Ada in 2015. I got to introduce my daughter to him, and the photo of the three of us together is still a treasured memory to me.

But leaving that time really did feel final.

When I got the news of his passing, I was so upset. I couldn't be home to say that final goodbye, or to be with my friends when we laughed about the amazing person he was. I never got the closure that funerals are for, the chance to see someone off on their last, great adventure to whatever. It hurt for a long time, and I wanted to post about him and what a great friend he was, but every time I thought about him I got upset again, which was not how I wanted my lasting memories of him to be.

I'm not particulary religious, so I don't pretend to believe that he's watching over us, but sometimes...

Sometimes, weird shit happens.

One night, a while after my friend died, months ago now, I had a dream. I know, I know. Just bear with me.

I was at my friends funeral, and all our friends were there. We were laughing and crying, telling each other stupid stories about how terrible he was at rolling dice when it really mattered, and how amazing he was at writing things that could make anyone laugh. We were sharing all these great tales, and among it all, I was there. But I was making everyone to promise not to mention to anyone that I was there, because I wasn't supposed to be. I clearly recall explaining to Mike that the other me was still in Canada, and that me didn't know that I had been able to come. Mike, for his part, didn't even seem to question that this was odd, and happily agreed to stay quiet. I had no explaination for how I was there, it was as if I wasn't dreaming, but instead had somehow travelled across time to be there.

It doesn't hurt that this is exactly the kind of weird story that would have made my friend laugh.

When I did wake up, I found myself profoundly at peace. I awoke with a smile on my face, and my heart beating just a touch faster than normal. I find it heartwarming to think that I still vividly remember this dream, dispite most dreams fading from memory within minutes of waking up, and certainly not lasting more than a few days. Ever since then, I've been able to think about my friend without tearing up. I remember those stories, those happier times.

I'll miss my friend, but I know that he'd rather I missed the fun times than the bad ones. So I will.

Goodbye Chris.

 

Still Shakin'

Long time readers know that I was diagnosed with Early Onset Parkinson's Disease in late 2012. When I first bogged about it in October 2013, my intent was to post about it at least once a year, on October 1st, the anniversary of my diagnosis. Clearly, that has not happened.

In fact, if I'm being honest, my PD is one of the reasons I haven't beeen blogging more. Or, more accurately, I'm using it as one of the reasons. I've regularly told myself that my tremor makes typing with my left hand too awkward, and while it is partially true; the tremor does make it more awkward than before I had it; it is, on the whole, bullshit.

The persistant tremor does not stop me from typing, and never has. Sure, I sometimes double type letters, miss a letter here or there, or transpose two adjacent letters in a word, usually from the left side of the keyboard, but I was never the fastest typist anyway, so it really hasn't affected my overall productivity. Using my PD as an excuse to not write more often is just that, an excuse, and a lame one at that.

Since my diagnosis, my condition has continued to progress very slowly indeed. I'm still not on medication, nor do I or my neurologist feel that I need to start any time soon. My left arm still has the noticable tremor, but without lose of strength, and my right arm doesn't show any signs of developing one as of yet. My left leg gets jittery when I get excited, but my walking and running isn't affected at all.

My neurologist has increased the frequency of our visits from 12 to 9 months apart, because, in his own words, it's going to get worse eventually, so we should watch out for it. Despite this, my last two visits lasted less than ten minutes each, and he was very happy with my progress. Or lack of progress, I guess.

So, all is good in the world of Denis and his stupid brain. Yay me.

The Flow

Oh. Hi. It's been a while.

In the last few months I've had lots of ideas for fresh blog posts, from board game or movie reviews, to random thoughts, to cataloging cool stuff I've done, but I've never made the time to sit down and write anytihng. I have had plenty of time to do that if I wanted, I just didn't, so, my bad.

I've heard it said that writing is like any exersice, if you don't keep at it, you start to lose the skill. Maybe not as fast as you might lose fitness by spending a few weeks sitting on a couch, but certainly after a few months without writing, you start to lose "the flow", the ability to just sit and write and be happy with what flows onto the page or screen. I can feel it even now, writing this.

But I'm going to make a fresh effort. Like I said, I've certainly had lots to write about this last year, so let's see what happens.

I've also been lax on my drawing and uploading photos to Flickr, but we'll take this one step at a time. At least I still post to Twitter... Hopefully some of you who read this thing are still around. Welcome back.