Sunday, April 6, 2014

Happy International Table Top Day!

My partner, Rocky, and I regularly host gaming nights which we call FTC Nights (named after The Office’s book group called the Finer Things Club, because “it is very exclusive.” Hehhe.) So happy to be listed in Table Top Day's website.


For International Table Top Day, we’ve done the following:

1) Got someone who has never tried a table top rpg to play one.

2) Invited around 10 guests in our tiny condo unit to try board games. Two haven’t really tried board games before. The others have learned to enjoy the hobby ever since we got them to try them.



We have the following games for tonight:
Love Letter
Settlers of Catan
Settlers of Catan: Seafarers
Galaxy Truckers
Gloom (with two expansions)
Smash Up (with all expansions except for Science Feature)
Fluxx
Monty Python Fluxx
Munchkin
Star Munchkin
Carcassonne (with most of the expansions)
Star Trek Catan
Space Alert
Star Trek Catan: Federation Space
Cosmic Encounter
Last Night on Earth
Last Night on Earth: Growing Hunger
Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak
Fortune and Glory
Kill Doctor Lucky
Takenoko
Dixit (with most of the expansions)
Once Upon a Time
Pandemic (with all expansions)
The A-MAZE-ING Labyrinth
Tsuro of the Seas
Mage Knight
Level 7: Escape
Shadows Over Camelot
Dominare

I’m sure its nothing as fancy as others out there. But given of our guests, only one of them was actually into board games before we started the FTC events, we feel happy to be getting more people into the hobby and joy of gaming.

This was a personal event, so we aren’t really welcoming others to join up but hey maybe starting next year we can have others join up too.

Happy Table Top Day!

Actual Report:
So here's what came down to it.

First, had Che and Darius, two friends over to try a table top role-playing game.  After much deliberation, and given this was also intended to be Che's birthday game (I always offer friends who celebrate their birthdays to have a one shot of their choice under me) and for Darius this was to be his very first ever table top role-playing game, we settled on going for something set in the modern day with a touch of powers.

Wanting to go system-lite for ease of play, I decided to let the two take a taste of John Wick's Wicked Heroes.  The write-up for that session is to follow.  I did find myself a bit frustrated that supposedly there's  a list of Curses to check to find out what weakness you have but that table seemingly is missing from the game.  In the game, Darius played a young Indian man who worked as a photographer for a tabloid who stumbles upon the existence of people with powers on the same day he breaks his spine.  He later discovers he too develops some kind of  power to "Find the Answers" to questions he poses himself.

Che plays a young Filipina-Chinese student in Harvard whose twisted upbringing has her unconsciously using her powers to create what ends up as a growing cult of personality.  A small, but growing, sphere of influence around her confirms to her desires and soon becomes instrumental in convincing herself that she's some kind of deific figure.


After that story ended with a sufficiently traumatic narrative, we afterwards kicked off the board games with a session of Takenoko.  I promise you, there's a truly satisfying feeling to growing the Emperor's Garden and feeding the Panda all the Bamboo you can!  I won the game with a score of 35 points.   It was a smaller score than our usual scores, but hey, I'm not complaining.

Then, Che had to head home, but more friends showed up to join the fun.  Lanchie, Miguel, and Jade then showed up and we continued the fun with a session of Love Letter (with Rocky collecting four red cubes before anyone else did for the win.)  We were expecting a few more guests but some had to rain check on the last minute.   A quick peek on the social networks revealed how disappointed or frustrated they felt about not being able to go, so we opted not to further tease them about missing on the awesomeness of tonight.


Shadows Over Camelot was our next game, with Rocky and I eager to get the guys to try it.  The concept of the Traitor was explained and the game was begun in earnest.  Deep into the sessions, my first accusation was wrong as it turned out the guy I suspected to be tactically making things harder for us, was just someone who didn't quite grasp the rules yet.  The second suspect Rocky and I saw was this guy who spent three turns just moving back and forth from Camelot.  But that, as it turned out too, was a misread.  With two black swords in, the group hurriedly resolved quests until Lanchie finally revealed he was the traitor by playing a Black Special that unleashed three more cards at us.  In the end, Lanchie was the sole survivor in the game... and thus won as the Traitor.

Munchkin Deluxe followed, with Lanchie once again stealing the win from all of us by using a Transferral Potion to face off against Level 1 Crabs while at the 9th level slot.  By this time, every one had thrown crap to stop my 3 Level win, as well as a few other players' attempts.  And even better, Lanchie had a tinfoil hat on, stopping any Curses cold.  So the Crabs gave Lanchie the win.

We then followed that with Fluxx, and my gosh.  This game. Just...   I will leave it at that.  However, Miguel won since I mistakenly took away my War Creeper when Rocky played a card that allowed us to trash cards.  I failed to notice Miguel still had Peace and thus gave him accidentally the win.

Then, Jacob showed up, and with the additional player, Rocky and I pulled out our copy of Bang!  With Darius being Sheriff, roles were given out and Darius was lucky enough to be Paul Regret, so for a long time no one could Bang! him due to range.  Since I was a Deputy I did my best to shot the others down until finally the game ended with us him and me surviving!

And afterwards, we opted for one final game since Rocky and I had to sleep for the play we were catching later that day.  We brought out Settlers of Catan and used the Seafarer's expansion.  We chose The Six Islands scenario for our game.  In the end, I stole the prize with a deadly use of Development cards.  It was only afterwards, though, we realized the win would have been delayed a few more turns since you can only use one Development Card per turn.

All in all, it was a fun and satisfying mini-celebration of International Table Top day.   I hope in the coming years Rocky and I will have time to take part in other celebrations as well and maybe even run a few role-playing games for others during the future Table Top days.


Here's to another one next year!

P.S.
As always, thank you to Rocky for the pictures.

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