How To: Gaming Weekend Edition!

 How To: Gaming Weekend Edition!

Orchestrating the perfect gaming weekend can be tricky. There are obstacles, pitfalls, and (sometimes) worst of all: enough title indecision to waste time that you could have spent playing even MOAR games! But don't sweat it! I've made those mistakes so you don't have to.

Know Your Group

I seriously cannot stress this enough. It sounds pretty basic, but it's essential to the success of your weekend. You've got to be honest about what kind of gamers you are. What gets you frustrated? What keeps your interest best? I game with a lot of different types of people, but have only had a gaming weekend with two of those groups. My primary group here in Missouri is relatively small (used to be 4, now we're 3), and we're big into strategy games. We've spent weekends role-playing, as well as playing Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Twilight Imperium, and Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth. We love talking strategy, optimization, and really just analyzing the hell out of what went right, what went wrong, and what we love about the games we play. But we've also learned that none of us like losing when we've done something to screw ourselves over. When dice go wrong, we can handle that. When we make mistakes that the others can exploit to win, we beat ourselves up. Each of us knows that we're not angry at one another, but that frustration still seeps into the weekend. Once, it was just two of us playing a single Imperial Assault campaign all weekend. The plan was to finally finish a campaign in one go. It. Was. BRUTAL. I was playing as two Rebel heroes, he was playing as the Imperials, and I could not buy a single victory. It just made for a crummy, stressful weekend. Because we had this plan to start and finish the campaign, and we had committed to doing just that, come hell or high water.

HUGE mistake. We knew my frustration was sucking the fun out of our weekend, but we kept at it because of our pride. Don't do that.

If you play on Tabletop Simulator, you can actually flip the table, and I kinda love that.

The second group that I've played with a couple of times now? They know their limits, what they like and don't like, and tensions almost never ran high. Because everyone seemed to have a good handle on their limits. The only moment that frustration peaked was when I taught the group Red November. I enjoy the hell out of that game, but I go into it expecting to lose. But each of the players in this group felt as though they didn't have any real agency because the game was really out to murder their gnomes. There were also some other games some of us wanted to get into, others didn't, and so we simply moved on. No stress, no pressure. It makes sense and seems pretty obvious when it's laid out like this, but that's not always the case when you go into your weekend planning to play something, and it turns out that something about which you were excited is actually sowing discord.

Plan Out What Games You *Need* to Play

Here's the thing: you should absolutely go with the flow, read the room, listen to what people feel like playing. But I can say from experience that if you brought 10 games, but really only *needed* to see one of them hit the table to be happy, and it never does? That'll sour you on the weekend. You may still have a great time! Maybe you don't get frustrated while you're playing good games with great company! But after the weekend is over, as you're unwinding, you'll be at least a little upset that you didn't get around to the game that you really wanted to play. Make things easier on yourself and others: let everyone know you plan on getting Quacks of Quedlinburg or Dominant Species to the table. Let them know you'll be familiar with the rules, that it'll take x amount of time, and you're happy to teach. And remind them that if nobody is having fun with the game, there's really no reason to finish it. Then, you know, stand by what you said.

This, to me, is just common courtesy. A whole weekend of gaming feels like a lot of time, but it can also be less than you think. Some games take longer, if someone brings a game nobody is familiar with and so it takes double or triple the time to play because you're reading the rule book the entire time you're playing, time spent eating or sleeping, or maybe just time spent catching up! With the groups of friends I am likely to spend an entire weekend gaming, these are folks I see sometimes only once a year. We spend time catching up. At least if you know what you really want to play during the weekend and you let everyone else know, too, y'all can have realistic expectations of what you're likely to play, as well as what you're unlikely to get to.

Drink Lots of Water and Eat Some Decent Food

If you don't know what this is from, stop what you're doing and go watch We Bare Bears. Seriously, don't even finish reading this post - that's how important this is.

One of the most common gamer stereotypes is that we live off of Doritos and Mountain Dew. I'm not saying there's not truth there. I am saying that as we age, we're just as likely to live off of fried chicken (while calling it "real food") and whiskey or beer. I'm not saying don't do this. I AM saying that if you are more conscientious about what you consume, you'll have a better time. Staying hydrated and eating some fruit and veggies while taking time to prep a real lunch or dinner means you're less likely to start tilting and become a grumpy player at the table. It also means your head will be more clear while you're playing games, so you're less likely to make stupid mistakes that frustrate you or impact how much fun you have. Plus, overall, you'll feel better, and thus have a better time. I've done gaming weekends both ways, and I promise that it makes a difference.

Leverage the Notion of "Work Sprints"

If you're not familiar with "work sprints," it's basically the notion that you can be more productive if you have smaller, set blocks of time during which you're going to complete specific work assignments. These work sprints often come with a clock and encourage frequent breaks to stretch and reset your brain. I like implementing something similar when playing games for a decent stretch of time. I love big games like Twilight Imperium or Dominant Species (which I still haven't played, but I really want to, and I know it's a ridiculous time sink!). But I've made the mistake of trying to play these several times in a row, and it never works out.

Take a time out! Games are supposed to be fun, and I love the ones that are a brain drain! But at some point, taking a breather makes sense. Honestly, it can sound ridiculous, but I'm always fried after an Armada tournament. Because each round is 135 minutes, and most tournaments are 3-4 rounds long. It's why when I am invested in doing well competitively, I generally bring a fleet I can fly in my sleep. Because by the fourth round, I start making stupid mistakes. Those mistakes are generally smaller and less frequent/obvious if it's a fleet that I have been practicing with for months and months.

When I think of work sprints in terms of games, I consider which longer and which shorter games are on the table, and I try to self-regulate. If we just finished a particularly long quest in Descent that was made longer by a lot of careful consideration and maneuvering, then my impulse is often to jump into the next mission to either avenge my loss or build on my momentum. But the smart thing to do is set aside for a bit and play something else. It's not going anywhere! But I'll almost certainly enjoy it more after a couple of hands of Coup or Skulls, or perhaps a game or two of Boss Monster. Even some sort of mid-length game like Puerto Rico is a good idea. Again: take a breath.

Follow these pretty simple rules, and I think you can have a better weekend than if you don't!