September Schedule for the GODS

For those of you who responded to me that you were interested in periodically participating in my weekly tabletop games club (to be held at my home in Enola PA), you'll want to make a note of this. What follows is the Schedule of Gaming Sessions for September 2007 for the GODS (aka: Games On Darius Society).

I'm going to list the DATES/TIMES for the September gaming sessions first, and then follow that with several comments.

SEPTEMBER GAMING SESSIONS:

• SEP 9 (SUN @ 7 PM) = Ticket to Ride
• SEP 12 (WED @ 7 PM) = Feudal
• SEP 16 (SUN @ 7 PM) = Pirate's Cove
• SEP 23 (SUN @ 7 PM) = Cash N' Guns
• SEP 26 (WED @ 7 PM) = HeroScape
• SEP 29 (SAT @ 7 PM) = Citadels

The Schedule of Game Sessions

The session dates and games listed above could change. I will notify the game group at least 4-5 days in advance of an upcoming session if the date, time, or game to be played is going to change. I will do my best to limit the changes, but as everyone knows unexpected events always crop up from time to time and affect your best laid plans.

Inviting People to Play in a Game Session

I'm still contemplating how to best accept players for each particular gaming session. For now, I'll handle things as follows:

• One week prior to each game session, I'll post here regarding the upcoming game to be played, a quick synopsis of what it's about and a link to its entry on BoardGame Geek (for those wanting detailed info), the maximum number of players, expected playing time, and anything else that I think you should know.
• I will then accept players on a First-Come, First-Served basis for that particular game. All you need to do is email me saying you want to play in the upcoming session.

I'll do some more thinking about this simplistic system. My concern is to be fair to everyone and make sure different people get to play and join in the fun. I may even consider doing an "invitation only" thing for certain games. If anyone has any great ideas on this, I'd love to hear them!

Length of Gaming Sessions

Some games (such as simple card games like Guillotine or Saboteur) are so fast-playing that we may be able to play 2 or 3 games of them during a session. Other complex games may run into the 3+ hour range (especially during a 1st time play where the learning curve comes into play). I'll do my best to accurately gauge the expected playing time (including rules explanation) in each of my pre-session posts. That said, you should expect to set aside 3 hours for each game playing session to be safe.

If I expect a given game to take longer than 3 hours, I will likely set an earlier Starting Time for that game session, including scheduling some sessions for SAT or SUN afternoons.

Concurrent Games

I know some game clubs have so many people in their club that they run multiple games at the same time. I hope that we can get to that point some day. I do have two 6' x 2.5' foot tables in my house and could probably handle two small games going on at once. I'm not sure, however, of how the "noise factor" would work out in that case. We might try it sometime down the road to see what happens. Anyone have any input on this?

I know that I really don't have adequate space for 10 people to show up and play 2 large games at once. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I'm not going to schedule two games to be played at the same time. We'll start with the One Group / One Game philosophy.

That's it for now. I'll have more later on this week. Stay tuned!