“You started off last weekend telling us about the game convention, Al,” you say, “and then you go back to bug and snake pics. What happened with the convention, Nimrod?” Which is a little rude, I must admit, yet deserved nonetheless. So here’s what happened:
As I said, Dan Palmer (the driving force behind the Gnomon Deck) and I had two tables; Friday evening and Saturday midday, but we’d also spent a little time before that on Friday poking around and getting an impromptu playtest going. Friday’s table was a little slow, and we were speculating as to the cause: experienced gamers were looking for a more challenging or elaborate game, people were tired of card games, and so on. And there were some truly elaborate games there, looking somewhat daunting to me since I’m not into games that take a long time to learn. Actually, the games that other people had ran the gamut – some simple, some complex, some very professionally created and looking like they were already in production, some hand-drawn from household materials. One, called Lucky Starch, had the most homemade look yet demonstrated that a lot of thought had gone into the design and gameplay – you can’t judge on appearances.
Saturday was much more encouraging, though – I don’t think there were ten minutes all told that someone wasn’t at the table trying out the game. And everyone had valuable input, even though Dan is uncanny at determining the stumbling blocks of games before he even gets them on paper. We developed some new rules and variations, with me contributing more than aesthetics for once, and got to see how some of the games worked with varying numbers of players and experience. Very few people had problems with the rules or gameplay, and the deck seemed to hold its own in regards to being clear and self-evident.
My apologies to anyone I missed or whose name is misspelled – contact me and I’ll correct it immediately. And for anyone who’s developing their own games, I can’t stress enough how much value extensive playtesting has. You’ll find the little things that never occurred to you, or the odd situations that might prove frustrating to the players, or the unresolvable conditions, or new variations or gameplay options that improve things noticeably.
Also (and this applies to damn near everything that receives criticism, which I’ve addressed more than once before,) don’t give too much weight to single data points. In venues such as this, some players feel compelled to find every small detail that might detract from the game experience, which is a large part of the value of such gatherings – you just can’t put too much weight behind them, and instead focus more on the overall trends among player feedback. No game (photo, essay, motorcycle, garbage disposal) will be perfect and no one should feel compelled to seek that, and while potential problems should always be recognized, one should also recognize that in many cases these may affect very few players, or aren’t serious issues to begin with. Notably, the feedback forms provided by the Unpublished Games Network, the host of the convention, asked a specific question therein: “Did you win?” They know that winning or losing can easily color one’s overall opinion of the game.
From a photography standpoint, I have to mention that trying to get everyone equally in a shot, while they all look enthusiastic, is challenging – getting them all in a flattering manner is damn near impossible, at least for me, but that’s also why I don’t shoot people. Flashbacks of wedding photography with round tables at receptions – what a pain in the ass those are! More backs than faces. But yeah, timing it just right to catch smiles and enthusiasm and above all faces takes a bit of effort and speed on the shutter.
The biggest negative that I have, and it comes up frequently with conventions and seminars of all types, is choice of venue: far, far too many organizers think that getting into a metropolitan hellscape is somehow better for the participants, and this was no exception, being held in Baltimore (well, Linthicum, which is indistinguishable from Baltimore in any way.) By itself, not too bad, but it required too many attendees like myself to pass through the DC region, which is easily the worst urban planning that I’ve ever seen. I purposefully scheduled the drive up for late Thursday night and still caught oppressive traffic, to say nothing of ridiculous spaghetti-junctions with confusing signage. On the return leg I extended my trip by an hour, with nearly $30 in tolls, to come down the Maryland/Virginia peninsula instead and cross the Chesapeake Bay bridge/tunnel, which dodged all of the ultimate stupidity that is DC. I’ll be avoiding all conventions in future where the organizers choose absolute shithole cities.
But back to the positive aspects, which was how valuable this was to the development of the deck and games, and once again we offer our sincere thanks to (in chronological order,) Cary, Natalia, Chris, and Trista on Friday, and Josh, Ethan, John, Liam, Jen, Robin, Maria, Jessie, Mariah, Ronald, Steve, Susan, Gavin, Dan, Sam, and Calvin on Saturday! All of you were both great and helpful, and we gained a lot of information from you all! And for the record, the site for the Gnomon Deck can be found at gnomondeck.com, with all current information therein and the ability to sign up for breaking news.
As for the player with the pink carnation and the suspiciously light pocket change, we’ll be holding you to your promise… ;-)