The Games We Play

The Games We Play

A repository of reports on the Wednesday night sessions of the club and anything else related to the club or boardgaming in general, which may be of interest to anyone who may be passing by.

Saturday 12 April 2014

Future Games Days

A week ago, we held our first Saturday Games Day and it went down well, so there has been some discussion about when we do another one.

My thoughts are that 2-3 a year is probably about right and it's probably a good idea to stay away from the Summer months to reduce the chance of clashing with people's holiday arrangements. On this basis, I think that September or October would be a good time for Games Day 2 and perhaps in future years we could look at something like March/April & September/October or if 3 per year then January/February, May/June, September/October.

Those are my thoughts and the purpose of this post is to provide a forum for discussion, so please everybody chime in if you have thoughts either agreeing or disagreeing.


15 comments:

  1. I'd welcome a Games Day more often than 2-3 days a year. I'd turn up to most of them even if I had to pay a pound and didn't get a free drink! Though, to my regret, I'd probably only be able to attend in the afternoon.

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    1. In truth, I'd also be happy with more than 3 in a year, but I suspect that others with more commitments than me, might have difficulty in getting to all of them so the attendance may be spread out thinner than with a smaller number of events.

      As for the entry charge and free drinks, I think we can keep that up at least for the next one.

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  2. 2-3 sounds good. My one suggestion is that we plan ahead more definitely what ppl want to play cos if we're going to be playing the longer games you wanna make sure everyone who wants to come will be involved? Also helps plan for food/if ppl can only come for part of the day

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    1. I think that that's a good idea for the longer games. I think that some such as me would like to use the days as an opportunity to play longer games, whereas others are happy just to play more of the shorter ones, which perhaps lend themselves more to deciding at the time as happens most of the time on Wednesdays.

      I certainly think that if there is a particular game that someone wants to play and they can find the players, then they should go ahead and agree to play in advance. This is what happened with the Battlestar Galactica game and I had a good idea (not absolute certainty) that there would be a Britannia game.

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  3. At most once a month (I would love this but as u said numbers would probably suffer) or at least once a quarter

    Ideally a set date (e.g first Saturday of the quarter) so people can plan ahead and less likely to forget.

    I agree with trying to plan what to play but not sure how. We finished our very long game (apparently) of eminent domain but had to wait a hour before we could change players

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    1. A good idea to set a schedule. I think I'd go for a 4 monthly schedule rather than quarterly in an effort to cut out the the summer months.

      Planning is a little problematic as in my experience, games can't be relied on to play in a fixed time and the longer they potentially are the more potential variation there is. I think the best idea would be to plan the major games and have plenty of medium length games and fillers on hand to fill gaps.

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  4. I think that 4 "game day"'s per year is a balanced number. One "game day" every 3 months is enough for not making the event too routine but you don't need to wait a desperating time for the next one.
    I agree that planning the games to play in advance would help to make the event to run softer, but not need to be mandatory.

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    1. This is approximately the way I feel, although I think that if we went for 4 days we'd still want to have a break in the summer.

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  5. I think we need to keep these days 'special' , the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt can kick in if we're going for more than say between 3 and 5 a year. With that in mind, perhaps once every 2 months with a gap where July/August happen? I just hope I can make all of them!

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    1. I honestly think that 5 a year is probably too many. I think I'd go for January, May September, possibly with another in November after Essen.

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  6. I quite like the quarterly approach that a couple have mentioned (Though I'd happily come to more if they happened, I appreciate the possible decline in numbers idea), with one per season.

    I get what you're saying about Summer, so I'd suggest that the 'summer' event is a little different and we hold it outside, hoping for either no wind or sticking to games that have heavier components! I think it would be a refreshing change to see people from the society outside the standard games room once a year too ^^.

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    1. That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure that how it would work. We'd need a venue where we could move inside if need be or we could be looking at a potential wash out, giving the unreliability of British weather. I'm also not sure what games we have that would fit in with such an event as even a bit of wind could cause havoc with most of the games we tend to play.

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  7. Did we manage to get any further on this?

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    1. No, I've been meaning to bring it up again and will raise it tomorrow evening. I would suggest a date in September for the next one.

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