Huh, this blogging thing can take some discipline, what with all the other stuff I have going on. I think I’ll be trying to write something every night for the foreseeable future, just to keep to some sort of pace, and to catch up with the events of the game design project I’m involved in. This weekend I won’t be blogging, though, as I’m going to an apartment-convention. One hosted by myself, to be exact.
The Finnish Boardgame Association (or however you want to translate Suomen lautapeliseura) is the brainchild of Stefan Engblom, a boardgaming hobbyist from the Helsinki area, and yours truly, from when I was involved with the Finnish Diplomacy Club, a Diplomacy player’s association that was active in the late ’90s and early this decade. The club was in pretty bad shape administration-wise in -03 or so, and I’d been arguing for heavy reform for a while. Stefu (those wacky Finnish Swedes with their wacky two-syllable pet names) had the vision for a new, more generic and national boardgaming association, which we implemented in short order on the ruins of the Diplomacy club. At this point it’s pretty easy to say that the new association has met with great success; I’ve never had any reason to look back, at least, what with all the conventions, tournaments, forum activities, local game clubs and such we’re busy running.
But that’s history, and mainly pertinent because this apartment convention thingy I’m hosting is specifically for association activists (a generic catch-all term we use for folks who do the annoying scuttlework of running the association). The original idea I had last year was to take a weekend off with all the association folks to, you know, associate a bit and get to know each other without the usual pressures of running an open convention. The activists were quick to adopt the idea, though, and now the convention (“Activist convention”, as we call it) is an annual “reward” for activists. Not exactly what I had in mind, but that’s life.
Anyway, today I’m busy with crafting a healthy meal plan for the weekend, including shopping and such. Tonight the convention starts and I’ll be busy meeting friends, cooking and hopefully, playing games as well. I’m notoriously bad about initiating games at these meetings, tending to hang back and just chat with people. This is not limited to just boardgame association meet-ups, but in their case it’s partly because I’m not really that well-versed in what’s currently “hot” in boardgames, so I’m shy about suggesting anything or pushing my way into a game I don’t know. I hope somebody makes a point of asking me to play, so I get around to actually doing some of that as well. My enjoyment of the convention doesn’t actually depend on that, as I’m plenty entertained by just meeting people and getting to play host, but I always feel a bit foolish after a long gaming convention if I never get around to play anything.
As for what I’d like to play… I don’t have any strong ambitions in that regard usually. Must be my slow self-esteem that I don’t even make any wishes on the forums for games. This is partly because I don’t know most of the games people own anyway, so I’m best off just seeing what they bring and adapting to that. I’m vaguely hoping that somebody brings one of those pretty and flavourful procedural adventure or strategy games, like Shogun or Lost Valley, but really, I’m open to anything. And I wouldn’t even know what the flavor of the month is in regards to faux-roleplaying board games, so I’ve no idea what to ask for in terms of new games.
I would like to see a continuation of the topic