Ethnography Results, Week 3

This week, I was not able to make it to the D&D session with my group members. However, I did attend ConDFW, a Science Fiction and Fantasy convention in Dallas. ConDFW represented an interesting place to observe tabletop gaming, because most of the attendees were complete strangers with one another.

Rather than play a more traditional role playing tabletop game such as Dungeons and Dragons, the con goers played more traditional board games, or strategy games which required an amount space and attendance which made it prohibitive for a casual, weekly setting.

The two games I observed in particular was a Battlestar Galatica board game, and a massive Heroscape session. The Battlestar board game is a relatively simple espionage game, using characters from the TV show. One of the characters is randomly dealt a "cylon" card, which tells them that they need to work against the other players, rather than working with them. The players dealt a "human" card spend most of the game attempting to figure out who is the cylon working against them. The rules of the game are relatively simple to learn, and the play time it short enough where a group of strangers mingling around the game room could start a game, despite not having met before.

The other game I observed was played on a much larger scale. Heroscape is a strategy game played on a massive board, spanning across several tables. Unlike D&D, there isn't any role playing in the game. It focuses more on strategically moving your troops around, using their abilities to coordinate better battle strategies than your opponents. When I talked to them, the group was taking a lunch break, and looking for an additional player. Two of the players owned the equipment, and had brought to the convention, two of them had played the game before, but didn't own any equipment, and finally they had a fifth player, who had never played the game before. The fifth player would often leave, and so the Heroscape players would coax fellow convention goers to jump in mid session and play, even if they were new to the game.

Unfortunately, my observations were fairly limited at the convention, people paid to attend and have a good time, not be pestered by CHI students. Still, it was interesting getting to see tabletop gaming in a new light. The convention atmosphere was much more conducive to complete strangers getting together to play a game. In our weekly sessions, the new players generally come in one at a time, invited by the pre-established players.