Yesterday and today saw the eleventh and, alas, final
Now Play This games festival at Somerset House in London. I've always found them to be better than merely good; some landed for me better than others, and happily this one - while probably a little smaller than most of its predecessors - was top-tier, by my sense of taste. Not every game at every event has been a hit, but in terms of fun
ideas and
people, this was a regular highlight of the calendar, and I'm prepared to forgive a lot more misses than there ever were for the odd big hit.
This year, over the course of an evening and an afternoon, I enjoyed two video-game-derived musical performances, clapped along vigorously to one, played movement games in front of a crowd, listened to some talks, caught up with two old friends, met some splendid new ones, made a tiny 'zine in ten minutes flat, devised a silly game, playtested other people's games and read three books.
Three books in a weekend is probably as many, or more, books than I have read in three years, but these were books with descriptions of (and often rules for) games. Some people love reading cookbooks for the recipes, I love reading party game books in very much the same way, because of the way they fire my imagination. I'm glad to see that publishers still produce them, from time to time, and the ones of the 2020s are just what you'd hope for from them. Often the games are familiar, but the descriptions and the context in which they're presented are ever more relevant and just as delightful.
In that tradition, and in keeping with this year's festival's theme of folk games, I commend my barely-playtested party game to the world. My interpretation of it is released under creative Commons 4 BY-SA, so share, remix and enjoy. (I am not aware of it having been published and played elsewhere but very probably it has.)
The walk of PERIL
Folksonomy tags: co-operative, indoor/outdoor, easy, walking, counting, guessing, OK for adults and kids aged probably about 5+, party, about 2 minutes to learn and about 5 minutes per round to play, playable by as few as 2 but probably most fun for about 5-10, good-naturedly stoopid.
This game is played by a group, who win or lose together. One player is selected as the walker. The other players agree among themselves on a lucky number without letting the walker know. (This should be a natural number, probably between 5 and about 15.) The other players should then agree among themselves on an unlucky number, again without letting the walker know. This unlucky number should be either two higher or two lower than the lucky number. (Hard mode: one higher or one lower. Easy mode: three higher or three lower.)
Once the lucky and unlucky numbers have been decided, the group then communally agree upon a location to which the walker should walk. The walker will walk to that location, using large steps, small steps or dance steps as the spirit moves them, by a reasonably reasonable route of their choice. Everyone should count the steps taken along the way out loud.
Again without telling the walker what the lucky and unlucky numbers are, the number of steps taken is compared to these lucky and unlucky numbers. If the number of steps taken is the lucky number, everybody wins! If the number of steps taken is the unlucky number, everybody loses. If the number of steps taken is neither lucky or unlucky, the group communally decide on a different location and the next walk is taken from the ending-point of the previous one.
Once the group have either won or lost, pick another walker and another pair of lucky and unlucky numbers and try to win again. Repeat until everyone has had a turn as walker and/or the novelty has worn off.
My memories of Now Play This will be very fond. I always enjoyed reading and thinking about Come Out And Play, Hide and Seek, The Sandpit and other such festivals, almost always from afar; Now Play This was the one where I happened to be in the right place at the right time. These things do tend to chew up and spit out their organisers over time, at least in this capitalist world, but the demand for them is surely growing rather than fading. Many thanks and much love to everyone involved with Now Play This over the years.
Only very recently did I learn of the existence of the brilliant-sounding
Strange Games Festival, the format of which is a cross between a games con and a camping festival. It's not really talked about in the board game convention circles I frequent, but it probably fits the description; maybe it's a bit more RPG-ish and a bit more social-deduction-game-ish to be
exactly the same crowd, but as is so often the case, the most interesting developments are the ones at the margins, crossing over and picking the good parts out of other related endeavours. The camping festival part may be off-putting for many, and frankly it isn't a big plus for me, but I did enjoy EMF so perhaps it's worth considering for future years.
Part of what Now Play This offers, that I don't get so much elsewhere, is that when I'm with my friends and playing games, we tend to be drawn to playing
pre-defined games. Even among game-playing folk, there's a lot more playing games than there is just
play... specifically, spontaneous, undirected play. They absolutely both have their places, but I have a suspicion that my diet is a little heavier on one and a little lighter on the other than I might quite like.
This helps me refine my thoughts about what, if anything, I might want to do to celebrate my big birthday this year; it's only a bit trickier in that
play party is a bit of a, well, reserved term with...
specific implications and connotations. (Not negative ones
at all, I hasten to add, but it seems to me there is likely to be wisdom in the saying "don't try to make your friends into swingers, try to make the swingers your friends".)
One other unrelated but innocent question that Now Play This inspired in me. I thought I knew how music notation works. Specifically, I thought I knew how music notation works with triplet notes. However, one thing I don't know (and haven't been able to find in a quick search) is how rests work in triplets. Imagine you want something that would effectively be quaver quaver quaver-rest quaver quaver quaver-rest in 6/8 time, but in a piece written and played in 4/4 time. How would you notate that? (Crikey, even trying to describe that in text isn't immediately clear!)
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lnr
