We had a geek birthday. To be precise, three of them in one day. My Merry, and my friends: Tycjan and WC. Three geeks, three birthdays, one party. How cool is that?

And since we are all geeks, among the bottles of wine, there were also a geek presents and gifts.

What is a difference between present for gamer and present for geek? You, boardgames geeks know it, right?

Gamer gets boardgames.
Geek gets unique boardgames.

Unique stuff like print and play treasures that are unavailable in stores and you can’t have them unless you spend two nights printing, cutting, sticking…

Unique stuff like pre-production copy of Portal Games games that will be released for Essen 2013 and right now they are unavailable in stores and you can’t have them unless you have birthday and I am invited…

Yeah, geeks birthdays can be superfun.

***

For a past few years we spent summer vacation with other geeks. Our kids have fun together on playgrounds and swimming pools etc, while we have great time playing boardgames. One or two weeks of playing card games (on beach) and big boardgames (in rooms). No time pressure, no going to work in the morning, you can put Twilight Imperium on the table and feel no pressure. You have two weeks ahead!

Few weeks ago I discovered however that there is a difference between gamer’s vacations and geek’s vacations. And what is worst, I discovered that I may be in the gamer category. You know, it seems I am not geeky enough! I, Ignacy Trzewiczek were spending gamers, not geeky vacations! They must be kidding me…

So what’s the difference?

Gamers go with their friends to play boardgames on vacations.
Geeks go further…

I discovered website http://boardgametravel.com/ where you can sign up for a geek vacation. What they offer? Library of 400 games available for you. Tournaments. Prototypes sessions. And special guests, just in case it was not geeky enough yet – you will spend summer vacations with Touko Tahkokallio (author of Eclipse boardgame) and Rahdo (from Rahdo Runs Through).

Yeah, geeks vacations can be superfun.

***

New Year Eve! The crazy night! All people around world dance and drink, and we geeks can play boardgames! I spent great nights running boardgames marathon for the past few years. We were playing as many party games as possible. Superfun, but…

But my Merry said this is enough. She wants to dance.

So, my friends, I am in trouble. I have six months to explain her that dancing in the New Years Eve will ruin her geek’s reputation.

She must understand – in the true geeks world dancing is not acceptable!

When I first heard about the fact that Avalon is different from The Resistance with Merlin character I shrugged and sighed in resignation. ‘Merlin, novelity my ass’, I thought. Then came the time to analyze the rules and the first signs of rebellion against the new rule. ‘What a nonsense!’, I complained. “Good characters are playing the game, analyze, trying to figure out who is Mordred servant, and then bam!, they kill Merlin, the end, good guys lost!’

Yeah. I didn’t like the rule. Before we move on – short explanation of the rules.

During a game of Avalon players are divided into two teams, Arthur’s loyal knights and traitors serving Mordred. The identity of the players is a secret, each of the players only know their own identity, the rest you have to guess during game.

Merlin is a special character. A player who is Merlin knows the identity of the traitors. Right from the beginning he knows exactly who are the ones who serve Mordred… Huge advantage for good guys, so there is a balancing mechanism – at the end of the game traitors have the right to attack Merlin. If they guess who among the good guys is Merlin, they kill him, Merlin dies, and evil triumphs…

I didn’t like it at all. Stupid final of the game. But even that I tried to play. And soon after it turned out that I am a complaining idiot.

What we know at the beginning? We all realize that Merlin should not play with open headgear. If bad guys figure out his identity, they will kill him at the end of the game and they will win. Merlin should play subtly and not attract attention.

Well, unless he plays va banque. He plays ‘sheriff style’ and he is hoping that the bad guys will think that no Merlin is so stupid to play so openly! They will think he is just pretending being Merlin and that someone else is Merlin.

Well, unless one of the good guys will try to get attention of bad guys and pretend to play carelessly, pretend to unintentionally reveal himself… Yeah, then bad guys will kill him and that is how Merlin is saved!

Unless, a player who is Merlin will play like a moron to lower attention of bad guys. He will do bad decisions and will judge wrong people during whole game just to – at the key moment of the game – accidentally save good guys?

Or maybe…

It turned out that in practice the rule of Merlin works superbly good and give you extra room for a bluff, to set traps in the traps, it gives a lot of new emotions.

And me… well … What can I say… I have to apologize Don Eskridge. I apologize that I have lost my faith in his talent and that I have complained about the game before I even played it.

Mr. Eskridge, I’m a jerk.

I have never had a boomerang but I always believed it is kind a cool stuff. You throw it and sooner or later it comes back. Well, at least that’s what I saw when I was a kid and watched cartoons. Anyone here tried it in real life?

This week something ‘boomerang style’ happened.

In 2012 I published Robinson. I spent countless hours designing the game and finally it got released. Thrown into the world. I got feedback very quickly, first ratings on BGG, first reviews, emails from players and meeting them on convention. That was awesome. Every hour, every night, every weekend spent on Robinson did pay off. Every time I receive geekmail from Robinson’s player, every time I meet players at convention I feel that it was damn worth it.

You know all of that. I write about this on my blog all the time.

This week however something extraordinary happened. New scenario for Robinson was published. Scenario designed by game’s fans. This was like a hit. That was exactly boomerang thing. I released the game and now it comes back with new content. Amazing content, to be precise.

I may be one of the best writers among boardgamers but this time it is hard to fully express my feelings about that unique experience. Reading great content created by fans for my game. Priceless, as Mastercard marketing would say.

This very first time I will just shut my mouth up and I will do something else. I will act. Here is my idea.

This weekend, 11th of May I am gonna play Robinson. I will play it first time in my life just for fun. I will not test new stuff. I will not balance it. I will not run demo game. I will play it for pure fun. Very first time in my life.

Please, join me this day and play Robinson. Take your copy from shelf and play The Naturalist scenario. Let’s play it worldwide, as many of you as possible. I will be on twitter for whole day (@trzewik) and I will report how many points I managed to get. Look for #naturalist hashtag.

Let us all say: ‘Good work, thanks!’ to the team who developed The Naturalist scenario. This is amazing gift I was given.

11th May. I will be there, on the Island. Be there with me.

Here is a link to scenario: http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/90628/the-naturalist-8th-s…

Here is a link to STORYonBOARD magazine where Robert and Marion published awesome article about creating this scenario. You have to ready this story! http://files.neuroshima.org/sob_008.pdf