Seize Your Turn™

First, a listing of some of the entries that caught my attention:

• @dicehateme
• GamerChris
• @gamewhisperer
• Gamewright Games
• Ian Foutz

I pulled out five six-sided dice and started rolling.  The person with the highest number in the roll-off was…

Ian Foutz! Congratulations, you have won a copy of Homesteaders and Terra Prime from Tasty Minstrel Games!  I’m sending your information to Michael Mindes (Founder) of Tasty Minstrel and he will be sending you some loot!

For the rest of you, keep entering and keep playing in public!  Many of you will be traveling for the holiday in the coming weeks; use this as an opportunity to bring games along and share your hobby.  The next giveaway is right around the corner.

Thanks to Tasty Minstrel Games for sponsoring this giveaway.  As our sponsor, here is a little bit of information about them:

Tasty Minstrel Games is, simply put, a game publisher. We concentrate on board games, card games, fun games, addicting games, family board games, and any non-video game that can be imagined. Our criterion for publishing a game is that it must be a fun, intuitive, and an addicting game. A game must be replayable and have good value compared to other entertainment such as video games and movies.

Every Friday, Tasty Minstrel gives away free games.
Click here for more information!

Here is the current calendar of giveaways proposed:

• 8/24 – Tasty Minstrel Games, a copy of Homesteaders and Terra Prime
• 9/7 – Tasty Minstrel Games, a copy of Homesteaders and Terra Prime (the prior holiday weekend is a great opportunity to participate!!!)
• 9/20 – Fun Q Games, a copy of Triplica and Smash or Trash
• 10/1 – Fun Q Games, a copy of Triplica and Smash or Trash
• 10/11 – Michelle Spelman has offered a copy of Jukem Football
• tentatively 10/27 – Gamealogical Institute has offered up copies of Scarabs & Scorpions and Tacticum
• TBD – Gamewright has offered items

The baseline assumptions for giveaway entries are as follows:

• Entries must be submitted by photo through the Fan Page, or Twitter.
  • If they are on Twitter, they must include the #PiPCampaign hashtag.
• Winners will be selected at random for the specified giveaway time range unless otherwise stated for that giveaway.
• Winners must live in the United States, unless otherwise stated for that giveaway.
• I will select a winner randomly and contact that person via whatever channel they entered.
  • If I can’t reach them within 24 hours, I will pick another person and so on.
  • All I need is a name, address, and contact (email or phone) to pass to the publisher, the publisher will take responsibility to coordinate and ship the giveaway to the winner.
• Giveaway dates are the end of the time window to enter.  Giveaways will be announced shortly after the date once I hand off the information to the publisher and coordinate with them.  If the dates seem odd, it is because of my travel/availability.

Good luck!  Participate in the campaign, raise awareness, and try to win some games!

While working through the logistics of the recent giveaway, I mentioned to Danforth that I was very curious about the cards his group made to explain the games being played to observers.  He offered to write up an explanation, and here is the post he sent me to share with all of you!

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When CSniezek told our gaming group about the Play In Public campaign, it raised a lot of enthusiasm, but honestly, it raised more questions than answers.   Being geeks, we do love to argue about the best way to implement even something as simple as playing a game.  So, while we were able to agree on a friendly local pub at which to give this a go, we couldn’t agree on what type of games we wanted to bring, or how to make them eye catching and friendly.  The one thing we could agree on is that we wanted things that didn’t look like Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit.  I wanted to play loud and quick filler games, where people could sit in for a hand or two. Grayskale was really itching to play Hansa Teutonica, which has great artwork and was new to our collection. CSniezek was somewhere in the middle, suggesting games that we knew well enough to explain quickly to passers-by, but that had some meat to them.

So, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, we headed down to the local pub for brunch and games. Our initial plan to play at the outdoor sidewalk tables was quickly scuttled due to table umbrellas limiting the useful space on the tables. When we finished eating, we headed inside and commandeered a couple large tables right by the door to set up. We ended up with what I think was a great compromise, with one table playing filler games, and another playing meatier fare (and one brave soul standing between them playing both at once!) We did get a couple of nibbles at both tables, but while the passers-by did seem interested, I was less than convinced that they would remember the correct name of a game long enough to remember to look for it.

Grayskale and I are big fans of the temples of excess known as Las Vegas casinos. Perhaps their second cleverest invention, after the “free” cocktail, is the game card. On nearly every table game, you can find a display of glossy fliers explaining the object, play, and basic strategy of the game being played. After our first Play In Public attempt, we decided that having cards like this at the table would make it a lot more likely that people would remember the game and maybe seek out a copy themselves. CSniezek and I threw together a couple of drafts and ideas for links, and hammered out a couple of examples, which I showed to Grayskale. “You know,” he commented, “that looks a lot like an I don’t know, what do you want to play? card.”

These steps work on a Windows machine; apparently nanDeck is available for Linux, which means it can probably work on a Mac if you know how, but I’m not sure what tweaks will be necessary. There’s a tutorial for the Windows version available on the nanDeck site with images, and you may find this more useful. Here’s how we did it.

1. Signed up for a new BoardGameGeek account.  We stocked ours with 9 copies each of the 11 games we wanted to bring to the pub. Having multiple copies made the IDK deck print multiple copies of each card, so that we could have plenty to hand out.
2. Downloaded the BGG2NanDECK “complete pack” and installed it.
3. Run BGG2NanDeck.
   • specify the user name of your dummy BGG account and hit “Load from user” at the top.
   • hit “Load games” at the top.
   • specify output script: IDKdeck_Solamar.txt (at the bottom – our preferred option, although we modified this script later)
   • specify “Create PDF” on the right
4. Hit the big “run nanDECK” button on the right.
5. This was the tricky part for me: wait. On my computer, the “creating PDF” window was behind everything else, and didn’t automatically open when done. But when I looked in my bgg2nandeck folder, I had a spiffy new PDF named “IDKdeck_Solamar” which had all the cards I needed to print.

When next we headed down to the pub, we had handy little cards with key information about each game ready to hand to anyone who looked interested. We also made table tents to let people know it was OK to interrupt, and additional cards with internet resources. These are the ones we picked.  For future events, we plan to put these links on the backs of the IDK cards.

• Play in Public Campaign
• Board Game Geek : reviews, play session reports, trading, and finding other gamers
• Unity Games (Yahoo! Group) Eastern MA gamers
• Board Game Prices: what to pay and where to buy them online

We had a lot of fun, posted a few pictures, and got a couple people interested in board games. This seemed like reward enough, so I was especially thrilled when Seize Your Turn contacted me to let me know our group had been selected as the recipient of the first Out of The Box games drawing for the PIPCampaign, and we can’t wait to play our new copy of Pirate vs Pirate in public!

– The Gamers of the Unnamed Condo
Dan4th, CSniezek, and Grayskale

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I want to thank these guys for sharing their approach with us!

It would be out of line for me to ask everyone to play in public and not do it myself, right?

This past weekend’s weather was beautiful, so my wife suggested we take the kids to the local park and burn some energy off.  She packed us a nice picnic and I packed a few games.  My son was excited to go out and do all of his favorite activities at once (playground, picnic, and games).  Since I was focused on gaming with him, my selection was going to be geared towards him.

We started with a game of Dweebies.  A couple of kids from the next table saw us playing and I could tell they were curious.  It wasn’t long before they came over and played a full game with us.

After our picnic lunch, we pulled out Kids of Carcassonne.  A couple of good photos later, and we packed up and went off to the playground.  Because of the good weather, a bunch of people were in the park to see us game.  Playing with my 3.5 year old son didn’t dispel the “games are for kids” stereotype, but it definitely helped expose people to games they aren’t used to seeing.

My wife and I are looking forward to our Vermont vacation in a few weeks.  We plan on gaming in public just the two of us!

Click here for an explanation of the PiP Campaign!

First, I want to start by thanking everyone supporting this campaign.  It started as a simple idea, but I’m surprised at how quickly it is spreading.  Here is a list of just some of the people who entered in this round by posting on Facebook or Twitter:

• Andrew Stingel
• Dan Mazur
• @dan4th (also posted on Facebook)
• Gwendolyn C Fogel
• John Moller (also posted on Facebook)
• Mark Handler
• Tony Ripley

I have to honestly say that I rolled the dice between Danforth and John.  Both put up valiant examples for the rest of us.  John posted a great description of his event at a Chick-Fil-A in Delaware on his blog.  Danforth posted some great shots on Twitter and followed up with an explanation of his support materials on Facebook.  He made sure that observers were engaged by having information about the games being played on the table to read.  I’m going to try to get more information about this and blog about it in a future post.

So, the winner is…  Danforth Nicholas.  Congratulations!

Out of the Box Games will be sending you a gift for supporting the campaign.  As our sponsor, here is a little bit of information about them:

Out of the Box Publishing creates innovative party, card and board games that provide fresh, fun and engaging ways to enjoy time with friends and family. Games that:

• can be learned in minutes.
• are colorfully illustrated and fun to play.
• can easily be played in less than an hour.
• inspire fun for all players
• feature dynamic player interaction from start to finish.

From party to strategy games, we produce a gamut of games to please virtually any game enthusiast. Because our games are carefully designed and crafted, you can be confident that your game playing experience will always be enjoyable – right out of the box!
www.otb-games.com