Pick your piece. Are you the little car? The boot? The battleship — or maybe Mr. Moneybags’ distinguished top hat?
If you lived in ancient Turkey, you might have chosen your token from among the 49 carved, painted stones that were discovered nearly 5,000 years later in a burial mound there. If you hailed from what’s now Iraq or Egypt, you might have raced avatars around the board of The Royal Game of Ur — one example of which was found in King Tut’s famous tomb.
People have been playing games for as long as they’ve been people. You could say that the whole of human history has been one long game storm.
Right now, GameStorm 18 is pulling what’s expected to be a tsunami of 1,500 players into the Hilton Vancouver Washington for a weekend of dice, cards, boards, tokens, tablets and character costumes. Because gaming has evolved a bit since those ancient Mesopotamians literally were rolling rocks and bones, what GameStorm emphasizes is games of skill and “in-depth strategy,” said event vice chairman Jason Bostick.
Some GameStorm 18 offerings
• Open story gaming: Informal role-playing games based mostly on players' own imaginations.
• My Little Pony: The modern cartoon classic.
• Evolution tournament: Food is scarce, predators lurk, times are tough. Adapt your species in a dynamic ecosystem.
• Betrayal at House on the Hill: Design and explore your own haunted mansion, dodging ghosts and reading omens.
• Leaving Earth: Starting in the historically accurate 1950s, develop an aerospace industry and blast off to win the space race.
• Wings of Earth vs. King Kong: Fly your biplane to the top of the Empire State Building and shoot that ape down from there.
• Swinging Jivecat Voodoo Lounge: Mix a few drinks, cast a few magical spells, crown yourself king of all the hipsters.
He mentioned some of his recent favorites: “Ticket to Ride,” an internationally award-winning game that has players building competing railway (and other transportation) systems around the world; “Pandemic,” where you are working with teammates to stop the spread of viruses; “Carcassonne,” which involves growing and populating territory in medieval France; and “Touch of Evil,” in which you and fellow heroes must use various talents and powers to capture a wicked creature that’s terrorizing the remote village of Shadowbrook.
Many of these games owe their style of sophisticated character play and complex real-world landscapes to trailblazer Dungeons & Dragons, the infinitely flexible fantasy role-playing game from the 1970s that never went out of style, Bostick said. There will be a whole Dungeons & Dragons room at GameStorm — as well as other role-playing opportunities, from boards on tabletops to large-as-life costumed adventures. There will be plenty of computer, console and video gaming too, he said.
Many of today’s gamers prefer electronics to boards, Bostick said, so many new and popular games now come in multiple versions for multiple platforms.
GameStorm doesn’t emphasize the classic dice-driven board games that most of us enjoyed (or detested) when we were kids. It’s not that there’s zero strategy in a “roll-and-go” game such as Monopoly, Bostick said — but the dice rolls and card draws do add up to a preponderance of random chance. You’re mostly just “playing against the board,” Bostick said.
But wait, open-minded Monopoly masochists: Among GameStorm’s dozens upon dozens of board game sessions will be an international American-German adaptation called “Figure 8 Monopoly,” which involves overlapping the boards at Free Parking and managing two distinct currencies, dollars and Deutschmarks, as you go back and forth. You can’t exchange your currencies — there’s no Bank of Credit and Commerce International in this world — so you can get rich on one board while going bankrupt on the other.
Most exciting of all for passionate gamers such as Bostick is the GameLab, a workshop for designers, artists, manufacturers — and people who enjoy testing brand-new, still-unpublished games. Aspiring game makers at all levels show up at GameLab, Bostick said, bringing everything from meticulous homemade creations to vague notions sketched out on the backs of napkins.
This year, industry professionals Brian Poel and Mike Mulvihill will be testing new games, offering advice and feedback, sharing their own work and leading workshops.
Way of life
Bostick said gaming has been a way of life for him since he was kid.
If You Go
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What: GameStorm 18, an annual gamer convention.
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When: 8 a.m. to midnight (individual sessions vary) March 18 through March 20.
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Where: Hilton Vancouver Washington, 301 W. Sixth St.
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Cost: For ages 15 and up, $60 for all days, $35 for Friday only, $40 for Saturday only, $20 for Sunday only. For ages 6 to 14, who must have parental supervision, $20 for all days.
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On the Web:www.gamestorm.org
“My family was always playing games at home. Old school games, card games, war games,” he said. “As I moved through college in the ’90s, I got into gaming in a big way to engage with my friends.”
About a decade ago he connected with a Portland friend who was a founder of GameStorm. Bostick said he’s now hooked for life and attends about a half-dozen gaming conventions a year.
And while GameStorm is great, Bostick said, he dreams about going to Essen, Germany, to attend Internationale Spieltage SPIEL — the world’s biggest gaming convention. Last year it attracted 910 exhibitors and 163,000 visitors.
“It’s on my bucket list,” Bostick said.
