TableTop Day 2015 is coming!

TableTop Day 2015 is coming!

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.

TableTop Gaming Day 2014 Report

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.

Remember - play more games!

TableTop Day success!

I'm aware that as I post this, in the USA TableTop Day is only about half way complete.  But here in the UK, it's evening and we've finished our session of gaming.

It went great!  Had a few guys round, played Cluedo, Chez Geek, Hare and Tortoise Race Game, and finished off with Cards Against Humanity.  Everyone had a great time and hopefully we can arrange something like this again in a couple of months.

Our characters tended to stick together in Cluedo - like in this picture, where we're (almost) all in the bedroom together.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out http://www.tabletopday.com/ and play more games!  Seriously, it's a massive event.  2000+ events in 50 countries (including places like the South Pole), all people getting together to play some games.  It's fun.

Mike post-event looking a little bit like a lumberjack.

More pictures:

Unpacking Cluedo

About to kick off Cluedo. It's hard to believe that only one of us is a murderer.

Getting to grips with Chez Geek.

 

Dave surveys his slack in Chez Geek, crippled by an unwanted person resistant to die rolls.

The surprisingly tactical Hare & Tortoise - everyone is convinced that they can play it. We're all wrong.

Cards Against Humanity.  Great care was taken to ensure all the readable cards in this picture are relatively inoffensive.

Why do bags of revels include the nasty ones?

Why do bags of revels include the nasty ones?


Surely you want to make your product as attractive as possible to buy?  But revels flavours comprise of   raisin (nice), maltesers (good), chocolate (good), toffee (favourite), orange (can take it or leave it), and coffee (just wrong and already once voted out in 2008)

Very strange.

Have you prepared for International TableTop Day?  This Saturday, play some board and card games with your friends and family, whether it's at a big public event, or just around the table at home.  Looking forward to mine.

I've been getting some good feedback about my slanket video - if you've not seen it yet, why not watch it below:

Finally, have you tried Wolfram Alpha? Wolfram Alpha isn't a search engine, it's a computational knowledge engine, and it's designed to answer questions in free-form e.g. answer questions asked the same way you would ask another human.  I tried it out...

It doesn't know how tall Justin Bieber is.
It does know who Wil Wheaton is, and how tall he is (and lots more about him)

So far I'm liking it.

Unfortunately if you ask "who is Justin Bieber" it is able to answer that.

I asked "how many pounds do you get for 100 dollars" and it said that it didn't understand my question, but then said that I'd get £65.86 for 100 dollars, so I assume it's basically (in a computer way) said "What did you say again?  Oh hang on I know what you mean..."

I then asked "what is the best cheese" (which I'd accept mature cheddar, wensleydale, or a stilton) but it answered that it didn't have any data available, and showed me an advert of a land rover.

The best question to ask is "Are you skynet?" - see the answer here.

Have fun!

And lo...

 I've just eaten more sausages!  We bought three different types from Fields of Anlaby at the weekend, and my other half didn't like the ones that she thought that she'd like - so I get all the others!  Very tasty!!  These ones were all peppery and made a great toasted sandwich.

Are you doing anything for International TableTop Day?  Don't forget it's just over a week away.

Okay, tonight I'm handing over to my dad for his guest post!

...

 And lo, the lady of the house did need to speak with her friend Carolynn to arrange an exchange of presents as they both had birthday celebrations in the near future.

Ring – ring, ring – ring (etc)

“Hello … tattle, prattle, mattle, rattle, gossip, mumble, bumble, rumble, whiter, bitter, mitter, ditter critter and whitter, mumble, she said what?

Mumble, mumble, prat, lat, bat, gnat, tat,

oh I know,

oh I know,

oh I know,

whitter etc”

(add liberal pauses, ‘yeses’, ‘reallies’, etc etc

30 mins later, an agitated male character takes the phone in a forthright manner and speaks –

“Hello Carolynn, are you well?”

“Er.. yes, quite well”

“Excellent, so am I!”

(puzzled laughter at other end of phone)

“It’s birthday time soon, are we going to meet up or shall we send stuff through the post?”

“Oh meet up, that sounds much nicer”

“Excellent!”

Male hands phone back to female partner and then wanders away muttering -

“There you are, 30 seconds chat, essential information exchanged .. all good!”

Needless to say it took the ladies another 15 minutes to decide what day the meeting would take place, but I was pleased to have advanced the process somewhat.

Tabletop gaming day is coming!

Are you ready for International TableTop Day?

On Saturday 30th March 2013, YouTube channel Geek & Sundry (home of shows such as The Guild and TableTop) asks you to go play some board games.  Basically go on the website - http://www.tabletopday.com/ - find an event (or set one up), have fun with your friends and family, and maybe meet some new people, and get some photos etc posted on the web about it afterwards!  I think it's a great idea and I'm definitely going to do something for it - not quite sure what, I'll host an event but not 100% sure whether it'll be a public one or just something for family & friends that fancy it (probably the latter unless a handy and free venue springs up).  Great excuse for me to finally go and buy Munchkin :D

Just been watching some Ross Noble standup whilst playing FTL (and for the second day in a row losing a chunk of my crew by accidentally destroying an enemy ship without teleporting my boarding party back in time), I recommend his Unrealtime show - just one bit as a teaser.  Ross has four people in fishing hats in the audience, and can't help commenting on the fact.  It turns out that they are all mathematicians, and the hats are "maths hats".  Pressing further on the fact, the four folk are in the "UK Maths Squad" (presumably whenever a equation can't be solved, they get sent in), and when asked why they have the hats the answer was:

 "We were issued them in Hungary."

 I'm going to use that as a reason for everything in the future.