We had guests scheduled for Sunday evening—guests whose interests in games is probably low—so we tried to figure out how to deal with this project. A game while Wendy naps? Assume that our guests will leave early and get a short game in after? Invite them into a game? As we near the end of the project and get closer to the school year beginning, the tension between career, job, and gaming heightens. And I’ve very much enjoyed sitting down at our dining room table after we’ve picked up the little toy people, stowed the trucks and Mr. Potato Heads, stuffed the plushies back into their bags. The rule books come out, the felt gets drifted onto the table, we snap the boards down, and Dana and I build stories together. And one of us wins.
But Sunday was a problem. We have a couple of Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS) in Lincoln, and I felt sure that there must be a game day—or something like game day—at one of them. One store, Gauntlet Games, has open boardgaming on Sunday (Hobbytown USA caters to the collectibles crowd, and Comic World…is it’s own little demesne). A little after noon, then, I thumped the hood on our Scion Xa (to startle any feral cats that might have crawled up into the car—I’m sure the tune-up guys laugh at the cat prints on our engine block), rolled down the windows to let the hot(ter) air out, and left Dana and Wendy to read books and go for a walk.
Gauntlet Games is in the corner of a working class neighborhood strip mall. Also in the strip mall is a slowly asphyxiating IGA, a tattoo parlor, a Chinese take-out place with an LED sign telling me that it’s July ;1, [291 and 8:20:29 AM, a New Age bookstore, a coin-op laundry, an insurance agent, an auction agent, and a pub—set way back in the elbow of the L-shaped building. To sum up, the mall is not inviting. The game shop itself is a bit dusty, particularly around some of the more elaborate models and standees that are carefully placed around the store. The front third or so is devoted to commerce: boardgames, RPGs, Warhammer 40k, a few books and used magazines from the heyday of print RPG extras. The next two-thirds has a couple of tall tables with miniatures games terrain, several conference tables with battered folding chairs, a games library, and many forgotten cubbies along with an abandoned, beige computer tentacled with wires. A door in the back wall leads to a split level. Up takes you to the Warhammer room, down takes you to mops and the water closet.
The website said that gaming started at noon, but the one really friendly guy (whose name escapes me) said that the store opens at noon and it takes the guys a while to settle down for a game. So I drifted around, chatting with the guys about games. I was introduced to Brad, Martin, Marty, and Scott. Around twelve thirty, one of them settled at a conference table with a copy of Kingsburg, a game I like, and we started to parcel out the bits for a game (full game shot by endou_kenji).
I’ll admit to you here that I played innocent. “Do you know this game?”
“I’ve played it, but it’s been a while.” (True)
“Do you need a refresher on the rules?”
Martin saved me, “I do.”
And so we began. These were all very nice men. All in their fifties, or close to it. One or another might have been about my age (we attracted an audience member toward the end who looked about Dana’s age or younger, his quiff suggested maybe a bit younger). They were all heavy-set and had managed to lose their hair in exactly the same pattern. One or more might have had a moment or two of AP during the game, but mostly we moved pretty steadily. And they were quite generous. Not in their play; if they wanted a position that would disadvantage another player, they
just took it. The generosity came when a player knew they’d been blocked—‘hey, that’s just the game’—or if someone saw a better move just after they’d moved their piece—we let them change their play. I ended up in a respectable second place, and we spent a couple of minutes talking about the flow of the game as we put the pieces back into their bags and then into the box.
Two things to talk about: first, the game. Second, the group.
Kingsburg is a dice game, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun (dice and small board photos by BaSL). The game has a similar mechanic to Airships. Dice are your gateway to resources. In this game, each of you has a set of dice in your own color. Everyone rolls simultaneously with the lowest roll then going first. You have a chart of eighteen characters (numbered 1-18) on which you can place your dice; once you’re on that spot, you get that resource, and you block anyone from getting that resource. You can combine your dice however you see fit: the grand total, or any group of two, or a series of solo die. You then collect resources, maybe build a building, and you do all of this in order to push up your victory points. The design of the game is such that if you don’t get the extra tasty bits offered by the high end, you can get a lot of basic resources at the bottom end (that is, single die generate a lot of basic stuff, or you can combine them for a bit of the more subtle stuff—like information). It’s a lot of fun as long as you don’t get too committed to one course of action.
Now the group was pretty much exactly what you’d expect for this hobby in the States. But a couple of interesting other people wandered in. An African-American man carrying a large custom bag jingled the front door while we were playing and zipped past us into the Warhammer room. An Hispanic man followed him a little later. A couple of families came in for Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! play. But mostly it was white men. Now, as a white man, this is blindingly comfortable. But as someone who values interaction with people not like me, the situation felt odd.
I don’t think that this demographic was arranged by the store owner, his business partners, and regular customers. The people I met were all very warm. The children were cooed over and bantered with—and, tellingly, never talked down to.
“Hey, Cameron, you’re back. I guess your mom found you last week.”
“It wasn’t my mom. It was my aunt Joanie.”
“Oh. Cool. But you’re back.”
Cameron proudly hoists his Pokemon box.
People bought snacks, drinks, new games, new figures, and brought their stuff by the table to talk to the guys I was playing with. The space felt like a loose community built, as most are, by shared interests. It might have been church, except for the dice and swearing. And like church, the people wanted to make sure that you shared their convictions. Or at least were in the same time zone of dogma.
As I think about gamers and communities of gamers, I think of the iconic images of African-American elders playing dominoes, of old people of all kinds playing Bingo, of my mom and our neighbors playing Yahtzee by the hour, of groups of Chinese people gathered around Shogi, of my former mother-in-law and her Bridge group. And this is before we talk about Mahjong, Chess, Checkers, Go… It’s a question—about communities and other groups and what they play—that I would like to know more about. I don’t have time to do the research now, but if you have any leads, would you let me know?
No leads, but two things:
One - You should check out the PvP for today, if you haven't. It's all about Francis' need to dominate gameplay.
Two - I've been trying to teach my African-American lover a few games, but he insists that it is I who must learn how to play Dominoes, first. This lack of Domino knowledge apparently accentuates my pale exterior. :-)
Posted by: Ellen | 08/03/2010 at 12:26 AM