Scott Tepper: Gathering of Friends 2008 Part III / Kit-Con

Even though you may be tired of hearing about The Gathering of Friends, one of its events, the annual Gameshow, is so interesting that I can’t resist one last column about it.  This year’s production, which was run by Friedemann Friese, Andrea Meyer, Valerie Putman, and Dale Yu, seemed to have drawn more participants (at least 120 people in teams of 4 people) than even last year’s gameshow.  My conjecture here is based solely on the high temperature to which the room rose as a result of being packed with so many people.

While each Gameshow that I’ve witnessed varied in content, this year’s occurrence was unlike any other.  First off, each team was handed several blank sheets of paper and a large marker.  It was explained several different games were going to be played over several rounds.  The first two rounds were “What is wrong with this picture?”.  In the first round we were shown a picture of a game of Settlers of Catan in progress.  The teams had two minutes to write down all the errors that they could find in the photo.  The mistakes were things like too many houses on a tile, or port tiles placed incorrectly, or more roads being placed by a player than are available.  Given enough time, I’m sure that most gamers could find most of the errors, but in true game show fashion, when you’re under the gun, it is much more difficult. 

The second round was similar, but this time, the photo projected up on the screen was of a game of Power Grid in progress.  As fewer participants were regular Power Grid players, this round was a little more difficult for the teams.  The mistakes were things like power plant cards in the wrong auction order, and resources filled in incorrectly on the market board.  I have to admit that I am not good at spitting out answers in a time crunch, so I wrote down the answers while my teammates hunted for the errors.

Round 3 consisted of a psychological group think game and needed to be explained a few times until everyone understood the rules.  A list of letters with numbers next to them were displayed: A=100, B=200, C=300, etc…up till N=1500.  All the teams had to do was write down one of the letters on a piece of paper.  The teams would receive the corresponding number of points.  BUT there was a caveat.  If a letter went unchosen, then any subsequent letters would become worthless.  For example, if a team chose A, then they’d get 100 points.  Any teams who chose B would get 200 points.  But if no one chose C, then all teams who chose D-N would get 0 points.  So choosing a higher letter would give better payout, but would be riskier.  As the teams revealed which letters they chose, the tension in the room became thicker and thicker.  When subsequent letters were announced, the whoops and hollers became louder and louder.  Round 4 was exactly like round 3, except now, more teams were willing to take a risk by choosing a higher letter.

The game for rounds 5-7 seemed ordinary, until the scoring of it was explained.  In these games, a category would be announced and the teams had to write down a number of answers (in round 5 it was 3 answers, in round 6 – 2 answers, in round 7 – only one answer) that fit the category.  What made this game unusual, however, was the scoring.  If your team was the only one to come up with a particular answer, it would score 0 points.  If only two teams chose an answer, it would be worth 600 points for both of them.  If an answer occurred 3 times, it was worth 400 points, 4 times: 200 points.  If between 5-10 teams chose the same answer, it was worth only 100 points, and if 11 or more teams answered the same way, they would receive no points for their answer.  So now, the players had the challenge of coming up with answers that were rare, but not too obscure.

The first category was carefully worded as “Moon Games”.  This drew a few laughs, since the host of the event was Alan Moon.  So games in this category could be games that were designed by Alan, or games that had “moon” in the title, or that involved the moon in some fashion.  Most teams went with games that had “moon” in the title.  The next category was games “Set in Egypt”.  The last category, which drew groans from the teams, was “Published by Haba”.

The next game was match the bits to the games.  Pieces from 5 different games were shown alongside 5 different game titles.  All the teams had to do was match the pieces to the correct games.  The challenge with this game was that not only were the piece very similar from game to game, but one set of pieces displayed were actually not from any of the listed games.  The games shown were Scotland Yard, Drunter und Drüber, Sagaland, Barbarossa, and Amazing Labyrinth. 

Round 9 was just like the previous round except this time the players had to match the chits to the appropriate games: Titan, Dragon Pass, Wizards Quest, Dark Emperor, and Wizards.  I’ll admit here that I was absolutely, 100% useless to my team during this round since I’d played none of these games.

The final part of the Gameshow was another unusual game of psychology.  A large board was brought out that had a bunch of colored construction paper sheets taped to it.  On each sheet was a letter and a number.  A was 100, all the way up to O which was 800.  One more letter was available.  X was 0.  All the teams had to do was to choose a letter.  Any teams that chose the same letter would split the value of the letter, and then that letter would be removed from the board.  The game would be played over 2 rounds, and if a letter wasn’t chosen, it’s value would double.  Players choosing “X” were deferring their choice until the next round. 

So in this game, you had to weigh the decision of choosing a lower valued letter which would likely guarantee that you’d be the only one choosing it, versus choosing a higher valued letter that would risk being split between multiple teams.  You could choose to defer your choice till the next round when the values of the remaining letters would be doubled, but this was also risky as you didn’t know how many letters would be removed from the choices made by the other teams.  As to be expected, most of the teams chose “X” in the first round, although a few teams played it safe and “got out” early.

The last game of the gameshow was exactly the same as the previous one, except this time there were a total of four rounds with the values of unchosen letters doubling from one round to the next.  In this final game, you could hear the giddy laughter around the room as teams argued amongst themselves about when and which letter to choose.  It was really interesting to see how the group think developed in this game from round to round.  Teams clearly became braver with their choices as they weighed the risk versus the reward.

All in all, the Gameshow was a hoot.  It was clear that the designers had fun putting such a creative and diverse gameshow together.  In the end, our team came in 4th place, which was a little surprising, since I have to admit that I didn’t contribute much more than the ability to write large block letters on a piece of paper.

Kit-Con

I find it intriguing that in general, the US cities with the largest populations are not necessarily those with the largest or most organized gaming circles.  In Chicago, the third largest city by population, we have a few scattered gaming groups, but nothing as organized as the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society (CABS) or the gaming network in Boston where you could, from what I’ve been told, play boardgames at a different house every night of the week.  This isn’t to say, though, that you can’t find people to play with here in Chicago.

Were it not an hour away from the city, I would probably be a regular at the Elgin Area Gamers League (EAGLEs).  As it is, though, I can make it only to their twice-a-year, day long event, Kit-Con.  The money raised from the low $5 admission charge for the event, as well as what’s generated by the snack bar, enables the group to rent the space at the lodge where the group meets to play games every Thursday night.

Because I had to drop a friend off at the airport, I got to Kit-Con a little late and was only able to get a good seven hours of gaming in.  That was enough time, though, for me to teach and get beaten at two games of Agricola and one of The Hanging Gardens.  From the looks of the tubs of games that surrounded the walls of the lodge, the EAGLE members were eager to play a whole range of games from quick and light to long and meaty.  Even though I left after 9:00 pm, more than half of the tables will still going strong.  Ah, well, I guess now I have six months to build up my gaming endurance for the next Kit-Con.

© 2008 Scott Tepper

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The strength of organised gaming groups in a locale is an inverse exponential function or something similarly wave like (I’m sure the economists and social anthropologists have a technical term plus a modelling function).  In a very lightly populated area notable game groups don’t have critical mass to survive.  As the population density groups start to form and sustain.  At a certain point mega-groups can form and become self-sustaining as the critical mass is present and the distractive forces are too weak.  However as the population rises there’s an embarrassment of riches and the distractive forces begin to overwhelm the value of the coherent mega-group.  Eventually, with a large enough population, gaming becomes ubiquitous and it devolves back to semi-chaos with a morass of variously private and public groups all operated as exercises of convenience.  The mega-group simply no longer has a compelling product to sell. Posted by J C Lawrence on Apr 28, 2008 at 01:43 AM | #

I was thinking the same thing… how many million people are in the Chicagoland metro area and we can only get 50 to a KitCon? And I guess I left too early… I figured you’d be Agricola’d out after the first game and wouldn’t want to do a second. That was the key game I wanted to, but didn’t get to, play. Posted by Alan Reeve on Apr 28, 2008 at 02:22 AM | #

Nice to finally get you to one of Our KitCons, Scott. (We’ve only been doing them since the early 90’s, but in fairness we’re a bit lazy about advertising them...) Our attendance for the day ended up at 68 with the last of us getting out of there at 3AM. I think JC is right about the abundance of population effect.  You simply have so many acquaintances that you don’t need to form a group with strangers to play games as you can find enough gamers in your day to day friends. As such Chicagoland is blanketed with stay at home groups that have little incentive to get together publicly for a larger Con. Now give the area something they can’t easily experience on their own (like getting the word out about a Night at Essen ;) ) and you can begin to grow a convention… Posted by Ray Petersen on Apr 28, 2008 at 09:18 AM | #

"Most teams went with games that had “moon” in the title.” I’m pretty sure it was the opposite- most people went with Alan Moon games, with the first team to say “Blue Moon” getting laughs in the crowd. Posted by Dave Chalker on Apr 28, 2008 at 01:06 PM | #

I would agree, most teams went with Alan Moon games.  Our team chose one of his lesser known games, Ticket to Ride.  And only one other team picked it!  All in all, a great time.  It was hot and intense!  Surely the team who managed to win were masters of all things game showish… TR Posted by Travis Reynolds on Apr 28, 2008 at 02:12 PM | #

Whoops!!!  Dave & Travis are right.  That was a typo on my part.  Most teams (mine included) went with games designed by Alan Moon. Where is an editor when you need one?...<laugh>.(I can laugh about this because Eric already works to death trying to make my columns intelligible) Posted by Scott Tepper on Apr 28, 2008 at 02:30 PM | #

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