Showing posts with label party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label party. Show all posts

24 August 2019

PinkFae Archive #45: How to GM Part 6: Beginning a Campaign or Session

Today we have another entry from the PinkFae Archives. This one is another installment in the 'How to GM' series. It was originally published on 10 December 2016.

A road, beginning at the bottom of the image and stretching away from the viewer into the background, fading in the distance. In the foreground, the word 'start' is stenciled on the road in large white letters.

Last time, we talked about running a game session. However, there is an important corollary that goes along with this idea. That is the the understanding of how to begin a game session. But this concept of a beginning doesn't apply exclusively to game sessions: the beginning of a campaign is just as important (in some ways, more so!). So we're going to talk about beginning things in today's session.

For those less familiar with gaming, a trope exists about most campaigns beginning in a tavern. The location of the beginning is less an issue than the nature of the characters themselves. I wrote an in-depth discussion of the concern on my other blog. In short, the first session of a campaign often starts with the characters, who have never met, in the same tavern. There are problems with this approach, which we will discuss later in this article. The important point here: the beginning of a campaign or game session is very important.

11 June 2016

Large Group Games

The Dork Spouse and I haven't had a board game night at our house in several months now (with the exception of that dinner party the Dork Spouse hosted some weeks ago as a thank you to some people who helped her out at a big event). There are many reasons for this; we're super busy with other things; we're currently on Smart Hours for the summer which makes timing difficult, many of the people we invited often don't show up, etc). But one thing that always bothered me about Board Game Night when it did happen was that, on those few occasions in which more than a couple of people showed up, there are not very many games that accommodate a large number of players.

In our current inventory, the following games are the only ones that permit more than six players:
  • Bananagrams (2 or more)
  • Cards Against Humanity (2 or more)
  • Citadels (2 to 8)
  • Gloom (2 to 7, if you don't mind slow game play)
  • Tsuro (2 to 8)
  • Uno (2 to 10)
  • Pictionary (3 to 16)
  • Slap .45 (3 to 7)
  • Superfight! (3 to 10)
  • Winter Tales (3 to 7)
  • Apples to Apples (4 to 10)
  • The Resistance (and Avalon) (5 to 10)
  • Guesstures (4 or more)
  • Werewolves of Miller's Hollow (8 to 18)