Noble Pursuits: Game Day at Work

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Game Day at Work

I waited about a year for this event at my new workplace. On this day I introduce my hobby to my co-workers. This is apparently the standard delay time I've set myself to follow for the last three (?) companies at which I've been employed. Usually I get a good balance of men and women. This year my three male coworkers were joined by a female one.

Overview

These were all boardgame enthusiasts but I would classify them as Eurogamers because they've had little exposure to wargaming or tabletop miniatures gaming.

I brought in most of my ready material and gave a history of tabletop wargaming, my pursuit of the hobby since childhood (some 45 years ago) and why this sort of pastime is interesting to me. I explained the concepts of thematics, verisimilitude, crunch, fiddlyness, and heavyness.

thematics - game design and game-play which tightly conveys theme. Desired.
verisimilitude - game-play which seems "real enough". Desired.
crunch - simulation of process in support of verisimilitude. Need to minimize.
fiddlyness - over-design of components or labor-intensive game-play steps. Need to minimize.
heavyness - large amount of decision making opportunities. Need to balance.

The Games

I showed a few of my wargame designs; Barbarian Suns, Barbarian Suns II, Swashbuckling, Giant Robots of World War II, and then MEST Tactics. This show-and-tell portion took about 90 minutes and I think my colleagues were impressed, which makes me happy.

MEST Tactics Demonstration Game

This is where I set up the MEST Fantasy Gladiators demo session.

The Participation

There were 4 players, and I gave each about 600 BP worth of characters which comes to 3 models each. I estimated about 90 to 120 minutes maximum, but it took about 150 minutes. I think this is because I didn't factor in multiple newbie players. Lessee ... 12 models x 10 minutes for 2 new players = 120 minutes.

The Response

I think the players were shocked that the game involved so many rules. However, the game did make sense to most of them. One of the questions was why did players have to "roll-to-hit" and then also "roll-to-damage". That's fair, and I stated that it was tradition to know the difference between accuracy and effect since MEST Tactics is a tabletop wargame with it origins in simulating combat.