Playing Story Realms at GameStorm
Day Two of GameStorm and already I’m behind on telling you about it, because I was up until the wee hours of the morning playing games.
Well, not exactly. One thing about conventions is that you never spend as much time actually playing games as you think you will. I’ve gotten to have some really great conversations with people about board games (and game design, and Star Wars, and other things) but I’ve also gotten roped into conversations about topics I’m just not really interested in (like one guy who accosted me, asked me where I was from, and then told me he hated Portland, apropos of nothing). And then there’s the waiting for people to finish conversations with other people, so that you can sit down and play a game. I know I’m guilty of this myself, and people have had to wait on me, but when you’re surrounded by so many gamers and so many games, it just makes you antsy when you feel the conversation has run its course but the other person doesn’t.
One of the most fun experiences from yesterday is the one pictured above: Story Realms is an upcoming game from Escapade Games, put together by some of the same folks who write the Growing Up Gamers blog. They’ve got young kids, they love games, and they have experience with education — and now they’ve put together a storytelling game that has some elements of RPG, inspires a lot of creative thinking and creative play, but with elements of board games and video games mixed in. Erik and I sat down and played through the first “chapter” of the story, and it was a whole lot of fun — and quick! A chapter takes about an hour to play, from character creation to conclusion, so it’s something that won’t eat up your entire day (or several days) for a campaign, but still leaves you with a fun story afterward.
Story Realms is still in beta, but Erik will be providing much more coverage later on as work progresses and they get their Kickstarter campaign underway, so watch for that.
Ok, that’s all for now — gotta get back to the game floor!
(By the way, I’ve added some more photos to my GameStorm photo album.)
