As can (just about) be seen from the fairly blurry photo of my calendar, International TableTop Day is on Saturday the 11th of April 2015. Make sure you free up the day to play games, be they board or card, with your friends and family - or perhaps go to an event at a local games shop. Keep an eye on http://www.tabletopday.com/ and remember - play more games!
I'd love to hear if you're planning to take part what games you're going to play. On my shortlist is Cards Against Humanity and Munchkin - I have the special TableTop expansion for Cards Against Humanity in return for helping to fund season 3 of TableTop, hence:
And in other news, I made a fortune telling video of predictions for 2015 - if you'd like to see the fortune told in response to my fiancee asking "Am I going to get pregnant in 2015" skip along to 11:32. Fortunately she found it funny.
Well, it's been a fun weekend here as my partner has filled the house with a bunch of her friends from across the country (and beyond) to hang out. We've been to laserquest, we've played crazy golf, and we've got through a significant amount of alcohol - well done to all!
Several of us also took part in the ice bucket challenge, including myself:
Whilst I thought that the hat and leather trenchcoat would protect me from the worst of the water... it didn't, really.
Pro tip: After you get drenched, change your clothes. I thought that I would "dry out" over time.
I didn't.
The other thing we've been doing is playing a load of card games, particularly the classic Cards Against Humanity and Munchkin. Cards Against Humanity I've mentioned in various previous blog posts, but briefly you have a selection of answer cards, which you use to answer questions, with the aim of putting forward the funniest answer. As the website states "Cards Against Humanity is a party game for horrible people", it's extremely simple to play and very very funny indeed as long your mind can live in the gutter - definitely adults only.
The other game, Munchkin, is a sort of parody of role playing games, and again is great fun - a little bit more complicated than Cards Against Humanity, and it's a very different game, but is brilliant fun. Basically you have to get your character to level 10, by a variety of means (typically by defeating monsters or selling loot), but you can help or hinder your opponents. If they're facing a monster that is going to kill them, you could offer to help (in return for some of the loot that the monster drops. On the other hand, if they are going to easily defeat a monster, you could make that monster a little tougher to kill. Inevitably it ends up with people at level 9 trying desperately to get that last level, while everyone else starts playing their most evil cards to stop them.
The Travelling Book Project is quiet at the moment, with all of the books now dispatched, but I am at Hull College's Fresher Fair on the 11th and 17th of September, so if you're in the area on those dates do stop by!
So, yesterday was International TableTop Day, a day to get together with people, and play all kinds of tabletop games, be they card, board, dice, or whatever. My day kicked off with a few hours manic cleaning to try to get the place up to standard before revelers arrived, as well as doing something that I very rarely do - engage with strangers on Twitter.
Twitter for me is generally about my news feed, and about tweeting. TableTop Day is one of the rare days that I go on, and actually search for a hashtag, and fire out positive tweets to anyone else I can find that is also taking part, and Twitter is great for this because it really reminds you just how big the world is, and makes you wonder at how you can get a message from you to people on the far side of the planet in an instant, and you find out fascinating things - for example, TableTop Day was particularly good in some parts of Australia, because it was the same day that their daylight savings time ended, and they all got an extra hour to game (or sleep or do whatever) - this is slightly mind-boggling for me as we've just started our daylight savings time!
It's also given me the opportunity to think of the next games I must buy, which are:
Pandemic - I saw tons of people planning to play this, and even though it's supposed to be rock hard, it's a great game
Pass the Pigs - I had this when I was a kid and lost it! But it's great fun.
Settlers of Catan - again, like Pandemic, a very popular game indeed and one I must sample.
TableTop Day is a great opportunity to connect with other geeks (not that you have to be a geek to play games!) and one that I've endeavoured to take full advantage of.
Looking at my TableTop Day, on the day we played Cluedo, Ivor the Engine, QI, Hare & Tortoise (which I messed up as I did last year!) and Cards Against Humanity (which was by far the most popular as always!)
Here's a very brief photo timeline - very brief due to the fact that I only took four photos during the whole day!
8am - got all my games out. Slightly embarrassed at the amount of dust on some of them.
1.30pm - about two hours in, and after a visit to the chippy for lunch, we got into some good old dice rolling "Snakes & Ladders" style gaming - Ivor The Engine is a game for 4 to 7 year olds, and this made it a lot easier for us to understand/
3pm-ish - I discovered a cocktail of cream soda and pretend Jagermeister, which was pretty decent, and became the forfeit drink for Cards Against Humanity!
5pm-ish - Cards Against Humanity mid-game. I spread out my successful question cards in an effort to make them look more impressive. Note how empty my glass is in comparison to the previous photo!
After the games I enjoyed some indian food and some NCIS before falling asleep on the sofa - all in all a pretty decent day, and one that must be repeated more than once a year.
We've had a busy weekend, taking the little one to Sundown adventure play park on Saturday - that went really well, I was dreading the two hour coach journey but amazingly he loved the coach trip, that was possibly the best part of the day for him! And then on Sunday people came round for a belated third birthday celebration for him which went very well and involved lots of cake.
Two particular things for me to talk about today!
Firstly, Aaron Dembski-Bowden (hope I've spelt his name right) - Aaron is a seriously good Warhammer 40K writer (amongst other things) who is responsible for certain publications such as the Night Lords books Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver and Void Stalker, as well as The First Heretic of the Horus Heresy series.
He also has a fantastic blog at http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com and his latest post, set in the style of an old text adventure, is brilliant and made me laugh out loud. Strongly recommended if only for the TINY GUARDIAN.
Secondly, Cards Against Humanity - this is a cool card game where essentially you get given a question and a set of answer cards, and you have to choose the answer card with the funniest answer. Simple to play and very fun (probably best for older players though - no kiddies), you can buy it online or download a free set to print and cut out. Find it at http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/ and if you want to see how the game operates (and help test the game to make it even better go to http://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/lab/ to see how it works.
