In September I set out two "challenges" for myself. One was to Draw More - a page a day in my sketch book. The other was to Play More Games With the Kids - at least one every day for the month.
The Sketchbook Challenge went pretty good. I think there were two days that I actually didn't draw at all... and a few days where my daily drawing was scribbled out just before going to bed at midnight... or sometimes just past midnight (but I reasoned it was still the previous day SOMEWHERE in Canada!?) There were other days where I was far more productive so I did far more then 30 pages worth of doodling. Overall, I'd call it a success. Now to keep it going for the rest of the year...
The Game-a-Day Challenge went ever better. We DID play at least one game each day - though on a few days it was a quick game of For Sale (which takes 10-15 minutes to play) before the kids went to bed. But Other days we played lots more - averaging just over 2 games per day in September. Here's what we played:
For Sale x10
Montgolfiere x7
Song of Blades and Heroes x6
King of Tokyo x5
The Hanging Gardens x4
Crocodile Pool Party x3
Habitat x3
Quicksand x3
Smash Up x3
Ra x2
Small World x2
Ark x1
Cave Troll x1
Drakon (third edition) x1
Give Me the Brain! x1
Gouda! Gouda! x1
The Hobbit: The Defeat of Smaug x1
Ice Cream x1
Lord of the Fries x1
Munchkin Conan x1
Munchkin Cthulhu x1
Scrabble x1
Star Munchkin x1
Starbase Jeff x1
UR x1
Tale of Blades and Heroes x1
Montgolfiere x7
Song of Blades and Heroes x6
King of Tokyo x5
The Hanging Gardens x4
Crocodile Pool Party x3
Habitat x3
Quicksand x3
Smash Up x3
Ra x2
Small World x2
Ark x1
Cave Troll x1
Drakon (third edition) x1
Give Me the Brain! x1
Gouda! Gouda! x1
The Hobbit: The Defeat of Smaug x1
Ice Cream x1
Lord of the Fries x1
Munchkin Conan x1
Munchkin Cthulhu x1
Scrabble x1
Star Munchkin x1
Starbase Jeff x1
UR x1
Tale of Blades and Heroes x1
Of those The Hanging Gardens, Crocodile Pool Party, Habitat, Quicksand, and Ra none of us had played before. I also haven't played Starbase Jeff or Give Me the Brain! in over 10 years (and the kids had never played either).
I don't know if we're going to continue playing a game EVERY day for the rest of the year - but hopefully it's got us back in the habit of busting out board and card games and playing them. If I do set one game related challenge for the rest of the year it would be to play at least one new game every week. That wouldn't actually require BUYING any new games - I went on a bit of a spree five or six years ago when a distributor was going out of business and blowing out board and card games on ebay for $5-$10 each (original retail values ranging from $20 - $60) I bought a LOT of games - mostly with historical or scientific themes that I thought I might work into what the kids are studying...
Actually so far in October we've only played one game of Smash Up (with our new "Awesome Level 9000" expansion) and a game of Small World (with our new "Be Not Afraid" expansion)... (our Friendly Local Game Store - Dragon's Den Games and Hobbies - is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week with a 20% off sale... so we went out and got ourselves a few expansions for a few games we have -and played over the last month!)
Tonight I think we're going to try out Mutants and Death Ray Guns. Stay tuned for the game report...
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Sounds like a gamey september. Hope you had a lot of fun :)
ReplyDeleteDon´t forget the miniatures though!
Thanks!
DeleteYes... Miniatures... We did get in a few games of Song of Blades and Heroes, but I do feel like the miniature gaming has fallen off a bit - and role-playing games have almost entirely disappeared from out repertoire! Perhaps those should be my next challenge - but I doubt I'd be able to manage a miniature game or a role-playing games every day for a month (though I somehow managed to do nearly that in High School!?). Perhaps just make a commitment to starting a role-playing campaign and running it once a week. I could also challenge myself to run a skirmish campaign - the "Song of" series of games from Ganesha Games take under an hour to play so we could bang off a 5-6 game campaign in a month. Or perhaps play a day long campaign on a free day (if ever we had one!?).
The real trouble with RPGs is getting OTHER PEOPLE to commit to coming. I've been trying to get them going for years but it's hard when on any given night only half the players show up. Running episodic adventures (where each session is a complete adventure/investigation/mission) seemed like it might be an answer, but it rarely seems to works out either.
The only players I CAN get to commit to showing up for EVERY session are my kids - which perhaps is a sign that I should just prepare and run a role-playing game just for them....
I wish I had 1. the game collection you do, and 2. people to play with on a daily basis. Although I recently picked up Flying Lead, and might be able to get some games of that in with my young brother in law.
ReplyDeleteI do count myself extremely fortunate to have a family that 1) allows me to buys lots of games and 2) is totally excited to play them with me!
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