I will be appearing tomorrow night at Wild Rumpus #3 at Cargo in London. There will be music, dancing and of course a few games; I’ll have Kurt Bieg and Ramsey Nasser’s Swordfight, in case you missed it at the Weekender. There’s also Mega-GIRP, an epic Super Hexagon tournament that I’m looking forward to losing, and lots of other good things. See you there!
Hide and Seek have revealed the line-up for their Weekender festival on 14th–17th September, and I’m proud to announce I’ll be running not one, but two games.
First, there’s a party on Saturday night, at the Old Vic Tunnels. There will be several games to play, and I’m bringing Kurt Bieg’s and Ramsey Nasser’s Swordfight, which was a huge hit at New York’s Come Out And Play festival. I think I could most politely explain it as a very adult form of jousting; or perhaps we could call it a game about pushing your opponent’s buttons. There will be lots of other great games here too, including Margaret Robinson’s Drunk Dungeon, which has the best play mechanic I’ve seen in the last year or so.
Then, on the Sunday afternoon, Close Ties is making another appearance. This time it’s running inside, in the Clore Ballroom. We’ve got some interesting plans for playing it without the aid of trees, and it will be bigger and bolder than before. Sessions start at 1pm and run throughout the afternoon on the hour.
I’m really excited about this festival: when I’m not running games, I’ll be playing every other game here that I can. I hope you can make it too, either to play Swordfight or Close Ties, or just to say hello. See you there!
I can’t believe I didn’t get around to posting this until now, but I ran another game at Hide and Seek’s third Sandpit of the year in Holland Park. This one was a collaboration with Nicola Read. The theme was “movement and spectacle” and we both thought of ribbons, so we decided to work together on something. Nicola is much better than me at aesthetics and making and crafting things.
The end result was Close Ties, a game of teamwork and cooperation with hundreds of ribbons hanging from a pair of trees. Players cooperate to find ribbons with similar colours while remaining connected to a loop tied to the trunk. We played several variants, and it’s a work in progress, but there’s the seed of a good idea there. This may see the light of day again if we get the chance.
Thanks to Nicola for working with me on this project, Niall for his assistance on the day, and the British weather for throwing us a day of sun in a month of torrential rain.
Friday’s Political Football at the Southbank Centre was a success! It was a first public appearance and not everything went exactly to plan, but when you let the audience change the rules, there really can be no plan. The players came up with three new sports during the night: Trickey, Ménage-à-trois Ball and Where Are You Guys? Rules for all three will appear here shortly. I’ll also put the rules for Political Football itself on Ludocity when I get chance.
Political Football will probably make another appearance at Camp Fire, a whole weekend of games at a camp site in Ruislip. There are still a few tickets left. If you want me to run Political Football elsewhere, get in touch.
The next Sandpit is on Monday 18th June, with the theme of Performance. I’ll probably be a volunteer at that one, so come and say hi!
Hide and Seek have announced their Sandpit events for this summer, with the theme “Games With Audiences”. The first event is on Friday 25th May, and I’ll be presenting Political Football, a sport where the audience can change the rules as the game goes on. It’s free at the Southbank Centre, starting at 6:30pm. I hope to see you there!
There are plenty of other Sandpits running through the summer, culminating in the Weekender from 14–16 September. Hopefully I’ll be running more games at some of these events, but they’ll all be great.
