September Game-a-thon

The SWA sponsors eleven one-day Game-a-thons each year. We schedule these every month (January through September, November and December). October is reserved for Council of Five Nations. We usually shoot for the second Saturday of the month, but we're flexible in consideration of Studio availability and other regional conventions. We generally have 6-10 events, scheduled into two time slots (11am-4pm, 5pm-10pm+). We can easily accomodate games that run longer than a five-hour slot. You only pay for the games you play in. No registrations fees at the door, and no badges. GMs don't pay, and they play for free in the session they're not running.

Our next scheduled Game-a-thon is Saturday, September 13, 2008.
Here are the details.

By Greg Hanigan, Ronald Lundeen. Powerful residents in the Gem of the Flanaess suspect that someone on the Directing Oligarchy may be working with Greyhawk's greatest enemy. As their hands are tied and their moves are watched, it falls to a group of heroes to uncover this plot and follow wherever it leads. Parties skilled in stealth, guile, or force welcome. A one-round core adventure set in the Domain of Greyhawk for characters levels 1-15 (APLs 2 to 12) and the second intrigue of ‰¥þHonor Among Thieves.‰¥ÿ
This adventure is set in the Living Greyhawk shared campaign, using the normal Living Greyhawk character creation rules. See http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome
More information at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome

The Wastelands are no picnic. They are dangerous and own their reputation. The advance of strange growth spurts in the plant life recently has caused some hope, but it must be considered cautiously. Dust devils and electrical storms still ravage the land and there seems to be no pattern to the new life emerging.

The seers and tellers are proclaiming a time of great hardship ahead. One such seer has called for an expedition to the Wastelands. He says that there is an event in progress that will determine the fate for the entire 18. He wants you investigate his visions and, if necessary, ensure that they never come to pass. He has asked that you leave within the day. The pay is 10,000gp each, if you return.

More information at http://www.firstduty.com/add/league/events.php.

This event will follow the guidelines for the FCS Gaming League. It is rated at Novice level and players may bring their pre-generated teams. If you are new to Edition 3.5, we will review the rules as we go. This event is RPGA & FCSGL sanctioned!  You do not need to be an RPGA member or an FCSGL member to play.

what2bring: Dice, books, figures. New players should bring an 11th level character.

Ranked #1 on BoardGameGeek. In Agricola, you're a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. On a turn, you get to take only two actions, one for you and one for the spouse, from all the possibilities you'll find on a farm: collecting clay, wood, or stone; building fences; and so on. You might think about having kids in order to get more work accomplished, but first you need to expand your house. And what are you going to feed all of them? There are countless strategies, some depending on your card hand.
there are countless strategies, some depending on your card hand. Sometimes it's a good choice to stay on course, sometimes you better react on what your opponents do.
Follow this link to the BoardGameGeek entry for Agricola which includes reviews, pictures, player aids, and rules.

The Prussians, Hanoverians, and British square off against Austria, France, and (eventually) Russia in this card-driven wargame of the Seven Years War. This scenario covers the action in 1757, the second year of the war. Each player directs the effort of one of the major powers, plus their minor allies, using the card-driven operations and point-to-point movement system of many of GMT䴜s most highly-regarded games.
GM will play Russia (which starts neutral and doesn't enter until the 2nd turn). If potential players need a set of rules, please e-mail Mike Haggett or post in the SWA forums and he will send them.
Follow this link to BoardGameGeek entry for Clash of Monarchs which includes images, designer notes, links, and other info.

Imagine that you're a supercomputer. Now imagine that you're bored. So you dream up a little contest for you and a couple of your supercomputing buddies. Your task is to move one of the stupid little robots out on the factory floor through a series of checkpoints scattered throughout the factory. The wrinkle, however, is that the factory floor is filled with all kinds of inconvenient (if not down-right deadly) obstacles located in various locations: conveyor belts, crushers, flame-throwers, pushers, teleporters, oil slicks, pits, et cetera. But the real fun comes when the robots cross each other's path, and suddenly your perfect route is something less than that...
Follow this link to the BoardGameGeek entry for RoboRally which includes reviews, pictures, playing aids, and rules.

Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure game themed around H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Players choose from 16 Investigators and take to the streets of Arkham. Before the game, one of the eight Ancient Ones is chosen and it's up to the Investigators to prevent it from breaking into our world. During the course of the game, players will upgrade their characters by acquiring skills, allies, items, weapons, and spells. It's up to the players to clean out the streets of Arkham by fighting many different types of monsters, but their main goal is to close portals to other dimensions that are opening up around town. With too many portals open the Ancient One awakens and the players only have one last chance to save the world. Defeat the Ancient One in combat!
Follow this link to the BoardGameGeek entry for Arkham Horror which includes reviews, pictures, rules summaries and other playing aids.

The Spice must flow! Play DUNE, Avalon Hill's classic game (1979), and fight for control of Arrakis as House Atreides, House Harkonnen, the Bene Gesserit, the Emperor, the Fremen, or the Spacing Guild. We will play with all Optional Rules except Longer Game, and none of the Advanced Rules.
Please at least read the rules prior to the game; a nice rewrite of the rules is available for download at the link below.
Follow this link to the Dune rules rewrite.

Location

As usual, this Game-a-thon will be held at the Studio of Bridge and Games, in Schenectady, NY. If you need directions, you can click here, or send an email to: mailto:directions@swa-gaming.org An automatic reply will immediately be sent to you with detailed directions.

The number at the Studio is: (518) 346-3773

Session Fees

Show up and play one game session = $4.00

Show up and play both game sessions = $6.00

GMs play all day for free.

Full-time students get in for free. For our purposes, "full-time students" are people in Kindergarten through college. Our intent here is to help allow younger games/"new blood" to participate at SWA events, and the gaming hobby in general.
The student discount does not cover working adults who happen to be taking a Continuing Education class. Please help us fulfill the spirit and intent of this policy.

Registration

Our Game-a-thons have generally been pretty casual events; people stroll in and sign up for the event of their choice on-the-spot. Lately, however, attendance has been increasing and more events are filling to maximum and beyond.

If you would like to greatly increase your chance of getting into the game of your choice, you can now formally pre-register online. Payments will be handled through PayPal. If you do not have a PayPal account, you can still pay with your credit card.

Online pre-registration is not required. You can still just stroll in and get into a game. But pre-registering is now an option for those who want to take advantage of it.

Follow this link to go to the online registration page. We'll sign you up, but your spot's not guaranteed until we get your payment.

Swap Meet Tables

If you've got merchandise you'd like to sell, please consider renting a table or three at our Game-a-thon.

This is meant to be more of a Swap Meet / Garage Sale atmosphere, and not really intended for full merchant setups.

Each attendee can rent a maximum of three tables. The first costs $2, two cost $10, and three cost $20. As you can see, the price structure encourages individuals to rent few tables. We will have a maximum of eight tables available at each Game-a-thon.

Each table is (2.5' x 2.5'); a standard card table. Some of them are kinda old and thus not very sturdy. Please keep this in mind when planning what you'll bring for sale.

You can reserve your table(s) ahead of time by using the online registration form. You will see the prices repeated there. Please list your table request in the 'Comments' field. Please also note that you have to pay the Game-a-thon registration in addition to the table rental fee.

You can also rent tables on a walk-in basis, but please remember we'll have no more than eight available for the day; first come, first served.

We suggest that you use our Forum discussion boards to announce what you will/might bring. We suggest posting in the "What's happening this week" category where the Game-a-thons are announced.

(Here's our secret agenda... Not only do we want to help you get rid of gaming stuff you're not using, but we'd also like to see this generate some more walk-in traffic.)

Questions or Comments?

Events at Future Game-a-thons

If you'd like to run a game at a future Game-a-thon, please click here to submit your event online.

You can also email us at your convenience.

You can even call Bill and tell him about your event over the phone - we're flexible!

If you'd like to see a particular game run at a future event, let us know by filling in a Game Request Form here.