Greetings from Brussels – first workshop abroad

(English below)

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Et cette fois, l’article sera en anglais ! Il faut bien varier les plaisirs… Pour résumer,  le premier atelier à Bruxelles s’est bien déroulé et tout le monde était heureux. Traduction à venir… plus tard.

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I spent one week travelling in various places. The idea was to both take a break and meet people, both friends and people involved in games. It was quite fruitful : I met Francine and Nicolas from the Compagnie Caracol, working on games mostly connected to cities patrimoine, as well as Sylvain, working on a cooperative game based on superheroes, and Léo, an old friend of mine working on Honey rush, a game starring bees.

Bees. Bees everyhere.

 

And then I crossed the border.

Hello Brussels, hello… Lady gaga stage ?

This week, I work with the association Let’s play together. Based in Bruxelles, they organize several events around board games such as game evenings, conferences and so on. So they invited me to come and set up several workshops with various people.

The first workshop took place in the Flamingo bar. 4 people were here, creating games around beers. I used the new workshop version developped in Besançon : they played and analyzed Dobble and Zombie dice, added new mechanics then started to create their own prototype.

 

Everything went really smoothly. They picked the cards “Logic”, “Draft” and “Cubes” and I chosed the theme “Cactus”. They ended up creating a prototype and even testing it for a while. I was curious how a 4 people workshop could take work, but I ended up being pleasently surprised !

This is a game about water, cactus and drugs. Each player has to find drug cubes while digging in the desert. They move their pawn, roll a dice and pick as much items in a bag as the dice shew. In a bag, there is water, sand, drug and scorpios. Picking sand doesn’t serve any purpose, scorpios stop your picking operation, drug is the winning item (5 durg cubes = winning) and water allow you to move further. Each move costs you 1 water, digging also costs 1 water, each time you consume water you put it again in the bag. There’s also another bag you can only access if you dig on a cactus. Digging on a cactus uses 2 water. Also, there’s a maya temple warping you back home but granting you an extra dice roll.

What’s next ?

The next workshop will take place thursday evening in the Table food and games restaurant, rue de l’enseignement. Feel free to come !

(Actually, another one will take place today evening, but it’s quite crowded already !!)

D-35 : what’s going on before the departure

It’s been a while since I didn’t post some news about the project so far, even if the departure day is getting closer and closer. A little bit more than 1 month before the first trip, I may have some things to settle down, but there has been a lot of exciting news.

Let’s do a little recap.

 

Workshop presentation

The workshops lacked a short and clear presentation (nobody likes Walls of text). Here it is.

Feel free to use and share it to any structure which could be interested by such workshops ! 🙂

 

Translated Mechanicards

Remember the Mechanicards, those little cards describing board games mechanisms, skills and material ? Well, they are finally translated in English, so people from all around the world will be able to use them.

Feel free to use them as they are on Creative Commons Attribution. You just have to somehow mention me at some point, at least by highlighting the link to my website on the bottom of the cards !

I will put them more clearly on my porfolio as soon as possible, but so far you can download the PDF here.

 

Schedule scramble

The two first months of the project are going to be everything but what I initially planned.

* I’m starting my trip the 2nd of September. My first destination is Auxerre, where a workshop will take place the 3rd.

* Instead of reaching Besançon the 1st of September, I’ll be there the 6th to launch the project at the CRIJ. Then workshops will take place several times during the following week in different places (more information later on the post).

* I will most likely spend some days in Lille after Besançon.

* My next stop is Brussels from the 22nd of September for 1 week. Yes, Brussels – which means I’ll actually travel to 10 countries now. I couldn’t find any structure in Mulhouse unfortunately.

* Then I’ll travel to Munich to be up and ready the 6th of October.

* Finally, I’m going to the Essen spiel festival from the 16th to the 19th of October.

 

Confused ? Maybe a couple of screenshots will help you then !

 

  

 

Besançon workshops

So far, 3 workshops will take place around Besançon. I’m still looking for more (with a huge help from my friend there, Evelyne, who pretty much contacted the whole city – which for I can’t thank her enough), but for now, here are the workshops :

* Tuesday & Friday evening with the board games association Doubs you play. They are usually playing games thoses evenings, but they kindly accepted that I animate workshops at the same time. They are located here.

* Saturday, I’m going to animate a full workshop (playing then creating) at the “Maison de quartier” Montrapon, a place for young people to come and do… fun things.

 

Lots of board games material

Toutpourlejeu, an awesome company selling board game material, kindly accepted to sponsor the project ! So a pack full of board games material is coming in a few days. I’ll keep you informed (these guys totally deserve a full article).

However, I also bought some extra material on Spielmaterial to be able to do some workshops as soon as possible.

Holidays

Ok, that’s not really related to the project, but I’m going in holidays for most of August ! So I’ll try my best to leave you some scheduled articles beforehand to keep you hyped 😉