4 posts tagged “play”
Just so that I don't loose it, Philip Trippenbach hads been blogging about games and Journalism for a while now. Lots of interesting posts here.
Apparently WarHammer, the tabletop fantasy battles game is 25 years old this year. The game is published by Games Workshop which has over those years changed itself quite considerably.
As a kid my friend and I would often get the bus from Kingston to Richmond and then the District line to Hammersmith with a short walk to what was then, as far as I know the only Games Workshop shop in the country. It was always busy on a saturday. At that time they sold all manner of games, as the amount of stuff that they published was much smaller.
In fact I had one of the first sets of rules for the game, though I never really got to play it. I think I was a sucker for collecting rules and never following through enough in actually playing. Still it always looked great fun when you saw a game with all those figures. (In fact, my real desktop battle game of choice was Car Wars).
Sadly these rules did not survive the many moves and growing up that happens, unlike a number of other games which I recovered from a loft earlier this year.
Still the other day I picked up a copy of White Dwarf, GW's magazine to see how things have changed. I know the stores are all over the place now and only sell GW published material. They also host games and hobby events which I think is excellent. White Dwarf is of course just focused on material for these games, but the I suppose Imagine, which was the magazine published by TSR Uk really only focused on Dungeons & Dragons (and a bit of Star Frontiers in later life). White Dwarf at the time I was getting it was the indy mag.
Why was I interested, still not really sure. One I am interested in games again and play, two I have a six year old son, playing games like this made me what I am (not sure yet if that is a good or bad thing) so maybe he would enjoy it too. Thirdly is there new stuff we could do with such games? Could you take a game as well documented as WarHammer and subvert it? Make it a tool to play Buckminster Fuller type 'World Games', would they be worth playing and would you gain anything from them?
I have no idea on that count, but it might be fun to try (plus it involves playing with miniture figures and dice).
If anyone who reads this is playing War Hammer or similar and has any comments on this then please let me know.
The Games That Came Back:
More like re-reading. This has been sitting on my shelves for the last few years. I have delved into it a few times, the last time extensively after finishing Brenda Laurel's "Computers as Theater" (I have that in the re-read pile as well). Narrative is cropping up in so much work that I am involved in. The use of narrative in gameplay and learning, its use in both guiding a learning experience as well as making a point easier to understand.
I also have in my bag Pat Kane's "The Play Ethic".
I got this after his talk at the BBC's Design Forum conference. Again I have been reading it in small pieces. It is a dense and complex book, about play. I should sit down and digest this fully, but for the time being I am dipping in and slowly designing two services that should complement each other even though they are on different topics. One on climate change and the other on games.
