0155B: The Holy Weekend of Gaming

More than anything else, this Holy Week holiday period was best defined by tabletop gaming of all sorts. Starting with the weekly Philippine Tabletop Gamers meet on Maundy Thursday, introducing non-gamer friends to the joys of various board games during International Tabletop Day on Black Saturday and of course finally running my very first game session as a GM on Easter Sunday, it's certainly been a great weekend.

So the relative irony is not lost on me that the first work day of the week after that awesome weekend is also April Fool's Day. Oh joy. I'm not particularly eager to return to work (not that I think anyone ever feels this way like EVER), but I'm pretty ready for the week ahead. I expect things will be busier than ever, but we'll certainly roll with the punches as best as we can.

And speaking of April Fool's Day, I've also contributed my little spin on a prank to the social media sphere. I don't know if I should be amused or disappointed that some folks are actually falling for it.

Our little International Tabletop Day celebration at the Sietch on Saturday was a lot of fun. We got to invite long-time online friends Al and Sol to drop by the Sietch to introduce them to the fun of board game nights with friends. Sure you can think of different social activities to help break the ice with such friends or you can enjoy a truly social experience like gaming. Plus a little competition always helps the banter and conversation flow a lot more freely.

It's a shame that Lanchie wasn't able to come as well given he was too tired to wake up in time. Still, we made the most of the night and played a fun mix of different games. In total we got to play one round of Munchkin Bites, Smash Up, and Settlers of Catan and actually two rounds of Mythology. Such a fun gaming night indeed.

Come Sunday I finally broke my RPG Storyteller cherry by running the first session for our home-brewed Magic: the Gathering inspired game, The Gossamer Saga. It's kind of crazy that Tobie had even created a game trailer to celebrate the geek event so I just hope things turn out well. The feedback from the first session was generally positive, which is definitely a nice boost for my motivation to continue on.

What I am enjoying most beyond steering a game at all is the fact that I'm finally seeing this particular story unfold in a manner that is far more dynamic than anything I could have created on my own. The Gossamer Saga is based on story that I had been co-developing with a friend back in Grade 7 and just never let go of over the years. I could never seem to get myself to really sit down and write out the story in earnest. And so it seems fitting that I found a way to finally do the story justice - in this case through the shared storytelling experience of a narrative RPG.

The system is still in need of further testing and so I'm curious to see how things will pan out. The group is nicely supportive and provide some great feedback on what Tobie and I had come up with thus far and so I can see us further refining this system as the sessions progress. With luck, we'll actually be able to release this as a formal game via PDF distribution and see if people enjoy it as much as we do.

Then there was the craziness at O Bar Ortigas last night but I don't know where to begin in discussing things. I had not danced like that in quite a while so it was nice to really cut loose and just enjoy. Everyone should have a dancing buddy of sorts, hahaha!