Game Depot – Guest Blog

Denise MacIntyre

I ran the Game Depot gaming event for Tiffany Branum because she was out of town. Ran meaning that I asked other GMs to show up and help play games.  I also picked up the game and swag supplies (buttons and lip balm) and set up the table.

The store hours are 10-7 on Saturdays, but we were scheduled 11-6 for their “Let’s Play More Games” event.  I got there about 10:30 to set up and was almost immediately asked about each of the games: the premise, how many people it’s for, and the optimum number of players for each game.  Once set up, our table had people playing at least one game pretty much the entire time.  Battle Gnomes was expectedly very popular, and we ran at least two games each of Nocturnes, Parks, and Book Collectors.  I took pictures throughout the day whenever I got a chance and posted them to our Twitter and Instagram accounts and in our Facebook event page.  If you’re not following us on social media, you’re missing out!

The people seemed to really enjoy the games.  They gave us feedback on the games and occasionally hilarious commentary.  Two quotes in particular stood out for me, and they’re both related to Nocturnes.  When setting up the game, one player wearing all black with black nail polish chose the black game marker because “It’s black like my soul.”  Also when the “Burning Alive” tile was placed another player commented that it reminded him of Mary Winchester from the tv show Supernatural.  Both of these made the table laugh and I’m glad they enjoyed the macabre humor in the game.

Overall it was a great experience.  The store owners, Dave and Patty, were very friendly and accommodating.  Patty wore one of our buttons and kept bringing people to our tables to play the games!  She was a great promoter for us throughout the day and I’d love to go back there and do this again sometime.

I read a book

So lately, a lot of what I’ve been doing includes research. That’s been for the last year, but it just occurred to me that I have no idea how many hundreds of articles I’ve read and videos I’ve seen so far. I still glean new things, so that’s important.

Since the updates from the last blog, I took a trip to Louisiana that was fairly time-consuming. In my spare time, I did manage to read a book that prompted a lot of ideas and plans. I brainstormed a couple dozen pages of new material that I plan to incorporate in what I do. Some of it was evaluating the themes I want for my games. There were several things that I think are crucial to games. Just an example,  creating a compelling theme is crucial in my opinion. Otherwise, it’s just “here’s a card with a number, and it overrides your card with a number.” Although that’s what is happening, with a theme players can think critically while enjoying themselves, rather than feeling like they’re taking a test.

The book itself had several holes in it, typos, and concepts I didn’t entirely agree with. I kept reading and being frustrated with the repetition of the author, almost putting the book down, but then I would come across a piece that stimulated a useful thought process in me. It’s interesting how that worked out so I just kept reading. But yes, read a book, wrote down ideas. Have done things since returning to Phoenix, mostly following up with people and solidifying Kickstarter plans.