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 OK,
so over the weekend, we ran a little gaming convention in our
house. We decided that we just weren't getting in enough gaming
time, and that the only way we'd ever play through the giant
pile of new games we need to test for ContagiousDreams.com
would be to set aside an entire weekend for that very purpose.
So, we invited the WTS
gang over for a 3 day gaming event we called ToasterCon 2000,
and it was a great success!
All told, ToasterCon 2000 was attended by 25 people, though
only about half of them actually spent the entire weekend playing
games with us. Of these, half a dozen were out-of-towners, taking
us up on our offer of crash space, and providing us with game-playing
company pretty much non-stop. As for the new games, we succeeded
in trying out 21 of them, which still leaves quite a few in the
pile, but since we all felt the need to sneak in a few games
of our own every now and then, this was all we could manage.
Unfortunately, we found a lot of the new games disappointing.
We made up little evaluation forms, which our testers filled
out after playing a new game, and after going over them tonight,
there are only 4 games that really stand out as being Great Games
worth adding to our e-store: King's Cribbage, Pick Two, Zoki,
and (surprisingly enough) a fishing card game called Anglin'
Action. (You can look forward to seeing reviews of these games
here, in the coming weeks and months.) There were about 4 others
that fell into the A-/B+ category (which means they might still
get in, after we play them a couple more times) but all the rest
fell into that mediocre center of the bell curve (with 3 or 4
coming in as total duds).
 As
for our own game playing agendas, I finally started showing off
the prototype of my new card game, codenamed Secret
Project 39-C, and it too was a tremendous success. Overall,
the concepts met with great approval, and I got tons of valuable
playtesting comments. I've already re-worked my prototype deck
considerably, based on this feedback, and now the game is better
than ever! Also, as I said, we played lots of pyramid
games, both old favorites like Zarcana
and new inventions like Kristin's Volcano and the Other Kristin's
Ice Cube. Eeyore brought along his really cool triangular
chessboard panels, which can be used to form a beautiful
3-player chessboard (as well as a 6 player board, and even a
2 and a 4 player board), and when we combined that with the forthcoming
black
and clear pieces, we were able to try out 6-player Zagami!
Plus of course, there were many great rounds of Kory's new masterpiece-in-progress,
Zendo.
Anyway, it was a totally great weekend. We played tons of
games, and even managed to do some planning for Origins and other
upcoming events and projects. Everyone seemed to have had a great
time, and although we were certainly ready to have our house
back by the time the weekend was over, we weren't even really
driven all that crazy. Who knows? We might even do it again next
year.
 So,
how was your weekend?
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