Eindhoven meet: Report

From: Leo Breebaart <leo@lspace.org>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: [F] NL Gamesmeet 1.0 Meet Report
Date: 19 Apr 2001 00:45:34 +0200
Message-ID: <9bl5ee$kkr$1@falcon.pds.twi.tudelft.nl>


NL Gamesmeet 1.0 Meet Report
----------------------------

Date:

    Saturday 14 April 2001

Locations:

    LaserQuest, | Chez Eelco,
    Eindhoven   | Geldrop
        The Netherlands

Players:

    Eelco Giele
    Rolf Milde
    Uwe Milde
    Laurabelle
    Cybercat
    Flexor
    Maarten Kreuger
    Gerbrand
    Arwen Lune
    Jeroen Burger
    Boris Bret
    Kimberley Verburg
    Jos Dingjan
    Patrick Dersjant
    Michael "The Roach" Janszen
    Leo Breebaart


This past Easter weekend saw the first ever NL Gamesmeet, proposed,
organised and hosted in a most excellent fashion by Eelco Giele, may his
Empires never go into decline and may his Wokkel always be curled.

We rejected the usual afpmeet pub/cafe/restaurant environment in favour
of the more comfortable ambiance of Eelco's residence, where everything,
from the rain, hail and snow hitting the windows, to the large
quantities of available food and drinks, to the fact that his parents
had thoughtfully ran away to New Zealand when they heard we were coming,
conspired to create an atmosphere suitable for enthusiastically loud
sessions of gameplaying that lasted until deep in the night.

As agreed beforehand, we all met up at the Eindhoven train station on
Saturday in the early afternoon. The meet drew a satisfyingly decent
number of attendees, and was especially above average in terms of
infusing the benelux-meet community with fresh blood. It was, for
instance, a first afpmeet for Maarten and for Gerbrand, a first
benelux-meet for Laurabelle (over from Germany), and a welcome return
after almost a year's absence for Boris (back from France).

From the station we proceeded on foot to the nearby LaserQuest venue
(already familiar to most of us from previous afpmeet shootouts), where
for the next twenty minutes we ran, dodged, and occasionally stumbled
our way through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, while
bearing large weapons of infra-red violence with which we discriminately
tried to blast each others' cybervests into flatliner purgatory, all
this to a pulsating soundtrack of loud techno, running footsteps, and
muffled cries along the lines of "Back! Back! Back!!" and "Don't shoot
me you idiot, I'm also green!"

The Red Team soundly trashed the Green Team, that much is known, but
computer error and/or staff incompetency denied us the expected hardcopy
score sheets afterwards. This was unfortunate, as half the fun of
LaserQuesting is spending the rest of the evening analysing the results
in excruciating detail, but I suppose those of us who didn't
participate, or who, say, ended up in 19th place out of 19 (I will name
no names) may have secretly been somewhat relieved. At least we got
compensation for our loss in the form of a price discount.

After this -- literal -- warming up exercise, we found our way to the
cars, distributed ourselves, and caravanned to Geldrop for the second
and major part of the meet: the actual gaming sessions. These, I should
explain, explicitly did not include computer games, but only concerned
h2h interactions aided by dice, pawns, safety pins, and many, many, many
pieces of betexted and bepictured rectangular cardboard.

Since there are not too many games one can play with sixteen people at
the same time, we split ourselves up into smaller subgroups of
fluctuating membership for the rest of the meet. Games played included
_Machiavelli_/_Citadels_ ("No Leo, you *can't* be King more than twice
in a row"), _Carcassonne_ (which I didn't play myself, but the chief
virtue of which I understand to be that it is a *short* game), _Settlers
of Catan_ (another one I didn't play, but which I believe primarily
revolved around sheep), _Talisman_ (a very complex role-playing
boardgame that outlasted all others in terms of duration), and _Vinci_
(not quite _Risk_, not quite _Diplomacy_, but great fun -- that is,
until your budding empire gets wiped off the board in a single turn by
the Evil Bitch Slave Trader Queen From The USA, not that I'm bitter or
anything).

Smaller games perpetrated on the fringes of the big stuff included
attempts to untangle (or retangle) Roach's bronze Snake & Star & Keys, a
sizzling USA - Netherlands match of _Rock, Paper, Scissors_ (after some
initial confusion over whether American or European rules should be
followed, this ended in a draw), a New-Zealand - USA bout of _Thumb
Wars_ (won by the USA who had a clear thumbal advantage), and of course
the party game of mystery and detection that never ceases to amuse:
"Which One Of You Snored So Loudly Last Night?".

As already indicated, Eelco and his +5 Fridge of Holding did a brilliant
job of keeping the masses fed and quenched, even if the sugar-poisoning
we nearly inflicted on ourselves with the puffed rice manna was only
barely compensated for by judicious applications of the more salty
Wokkels. Eelco's pasta dinner was a treat as well (Danish feta cheese
notwithstanding), and afterwards everybody heaved big content sighs and
redistributed themselves for new rounds of gaming, with the exception of
Laurabelle who was tired and went to bed, thus continuing the slightly
worrisome tradition of American females spending large parts of their
benelux-meets in various states of hibernation.

Although this was a gamesmeet, some of the more traditional afpmeet
activities happened as well: fluffy toys were deployed, with as most
noteworthy newcomer the Confederate WASP (the P stands for Pig). The
book _Mammoth II: Longtusk_ had slid its way back into the Netherlands
again. Attempts to actually set fire to it were not successful, but
ensured that the book now smells bad physically as well as
metaphorically. It was finally rewarded to Cybercat, which means it will
probably show up again at the next meet -- if only we had thought to
hide it in Laurabelle's bag while she was sleeping...

Moderate amounts of the usual PDA geeking took place, meet virgins were
presented with the benelux-meet newbie alien finger monsters, and this
meet's brown-paper-envelope moment came courtesy of Hypatia and Penny
Parkin who had felt that Eelco's new-ish motorcycle license and
accompanying red BMW were happy tidings that needed to be made known to
a wider audience, and what better way to ensure this than to have a
minion present Eelco a "Made in China" bike, with, according to the
English blurb on the box: "talking 2 sentences with siren sound and
blinking blue lights blinking front lights with friction motor"?

Around 3 a.m. most of us had finally finished our gaming, and we
unfurled our sleeping bags, hoping to catch at least a few hours of
sleep. This was made slightly more difficult by (a) the Talisman players
over in the far corner still going at it and continuing to fill the
night with intriguing chatter of the "the thieves steal all your gold
coins and hide them in the oasis" kind, (b) Eelco standing in the middle
of the room and for some reason giving a lecture on the dehydratory
effects on the human body of drinking too much water, and (c) the
already touched-upon loud snoring by person or persons unknown, but
suspected to be Flexor -- but we managed.

The following morning we very gradually allowed ourselves to become
sentient. Our numbers already thinned by now, the remaining attendees
were nevertheless enthusiastic enough to start a final round of gaming,
after which we helped Eelco clean up, admired the bike (the real thing)
and finally went our separate ways. Boris, Jos, Kimberley and myself
boarded the train northwards, and we spent the final hours of the
journey in pleasant if slightly yawnful conversation, some of which was
even about Terry Pratchett (and some of which was about Hermione's
anomalous anemones -- but never mind).

In conclusion, I think it's safe to say that the first NL Gamesmeet has
been a terrific success, and I can only hope that we have witnessed the
beginning of another benelux-meet tradition, and that the Gamesmeet will
take its place alongside such established entries as the Videomeet and
the pre-Clarecraft meet.

Eelco, when were your parents thinking of taking their next holiday?

-- 
Leo Breebaart <leo@lspace.org>

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