Fun Times

[selenite0]

Last night was game night. We got a bunch of people from ORAC and the Browncoats board. sandy_tyras came with her whole family. artcat81 and Morgan (Lost_thought) came up from Houston. We also had arcbat, brigand13, tasllyn, Holly (SerenitySprings), and Craig, who’s going to have to create some online alternate identity if he’s going to keep hanging out in this crowd who's DnDFreak, but I'd missed that on first introduction.

In keeping with Celtic tradition we made sure we had enough food on hand to feed twice that many. Most impressive was celticdragonfly’s Castle Cake. She also figured out what combination of pizza toppings would satisfy everyone from vegetarians to obligate carnivores, without using Excel.

Oh, yeah, games. Lots. We had two tables going at once, and a third one that got used for a chess match. The fourth table was used for the pizza since everyone wanted to combine for big games instead of splitting into 3-4 player groups. The games: Fluxx, SPANC, Chez Dork, and maybe Ivanhoe (too much going on for me to see everything).

We also had three rounds of Keep Flying, my Firefly card game. This was testing a new rule limiting how many cards you can get after losing your ship. I’d been having a problem with it being too easy for losing players to leapfrog over the ones who’d been in the lead. Kind of like the unintended consequences of the SCA’s fight-kneeling rule—I’d made it so the best strategy was to lose your ship as soon as you can. I think that’s fixed. Only one of the three games was won by someone who was grounded and came back. That’s about the proportion I’m aiming for, so I’m happy. I’d be even happier if I had a statistically valid sample, but that’s going to take lots more games. The Browncoats had a lot of enthusiasm, so hopefully we’ll play more soon.

Maggie and Jamie were wonderful kids. They were playing nicely with each other and letting celticdragonfly and me play most of the time.

Thanks to everybody for coming over and being wonderful guests! We’ll have to do this again soon.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Yay! (How'd SPANC play? Did you get to try it?)

[gridlockjoe.livejournal.com]

You know artcat81 and Morgan? Cool. I'm in the Bayou City Browncoats with them down here. :)

I had sucha blast!

[artcat81.livejournal.com]

Lost and I just got back to town, well ok we got back to town around 3pm and hung out wtih redfeather and renfield007 (in town for the weekend)
soo this whole weekend (starting Thursday) was jsut one shindig after another , what a shiny way to spend my time.
Thank you again for hosting us


OH,
and after talking with some of the Houston crew, is there anyway we can get a copy of Keep flying in its current state? They are chomping at the bit to try it, we could continue testplaying it with browncoats and non browncoats, experienced gamers and those not so much
we would take copious notes on anything we ran into wtih the game and we would either call you on the spot or e-mail you anything we ran into and anything else we think of.
houstonshindigs@yahoo.com if your interested in that idea. Houston crew loves to shinndig and no doubt would love getting to be guineapigs as well :)

Re: I had sucha blast!

[selenite.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome!

Yeah, I can probably get you a copy, especially if you're going to send me updates. That makes the difference between "useful product testing" and "unlawfully saturating a potential FOX market" in the eyes of the lawyer-sharks. I'll probably have some questions, variations, upgrades, etc. for y'all to check out.

Heck, if we get far enough I might even do up the Advanced Game pieces.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

First time we ever met--it was a shindig for Dallas Browncoats and they came up to join us. Hopefully there'll be many more. :-D

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

The two of us had played it together once. I liked it, it was a bit odd but enjoyable. At the game night, ended up with 4 others playing, so I was acting as referee/teacher and keeping things flowing. I think some of them liked it, although I think one of the 4 didn't and wished she wasn't playing. It flowed better with more players, I think.

Sorry, this isn't a whole lot of helpful, I suspect.

Re: I had sucha blast!

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Email address bounced.

More thoughts--I can toss a print-out in the mail, or if someone's
travelling I can send it with them. I've got a backup set of
printouts so I just have to get some time with a papercutter to get
the cards cut out. That could be a pain at work though--when's the
next shindig?

I'll also stick in a little questionaire for playtest data. More data
would be a big help.

that would be really shiny!

[artcat81.livejournal.com]

the e-maila ddress is houstonshindig@yahoo.com i wrote it wrong above :)

lol!

[artcat81.livejournal.com]

try houstonshindig@yahoo.com or you can catch me on yahoo im or aim my sn is artcat81


and i could cut them out thats not a problem! the group is soo excited about your game!

[archangelbeth]

I'm mostly curious. O:>

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun.

Re: I had sucha blast!

[arcbat.livejournal.com]

brigand13 and I also had a blast. Chez Dork was a lot of fun, and it was very cool being able to playtest your new Firefly card game. You've got good game mechanics, nicely designed cards, and a fun and very playable game. Though I got a sound thrashing my first time out, I really enjoyed playing as Dick Cheney in the second game. And Holly and I almost won, gorram it.

Many thanks to selenite and celticdragonfly for hosting. Hopefully we can do it again sometime, and maybe you'll be able to make it over to our side of the 'plex someday. We'll definitely keep you posted on the Thanksgiving RG. It was great meeting artcat81, Lost_Thought, and all the other cool new people. Hopefully we can keep in touch. To stay in the Dallas Browncoat loop, sign up at dallasbrowncoats.com. I, for one, love the road trip, so I can see some Austin and Houston shindiggery in my future. And definitely a TRF shindig - third weekend of the faire.

So, here's to good times, past, present, and future!

[(Anonymous)]

What an awesome time. Thanks again for hosting!

~Holly~