Festival of Daring and Excitement 2015

Playing Masquerade

We had our "Festival of Daring and Excitement" today in the department. We do this on the Saturday at the end of the first week so that folks have something to do on the first day of their weekend away from home. In fact we do this so early in the session that not all the electronic locks on the campus have been updated with new student cards so that getting into there building to take part was more than a chore that it should have been. But thanks to everyone who came along. Lots of fun was had.

We had some silly multi-player games, a Super Smash Brothers Tournament with proper prizes (thanks for organising that folks), an Xbox One network from the lovely people at Platform Expo and some crazy Japanese arcade games (which quite took me back to my days in Tokyo).

I took a few pictures, as you do..

Getting Started

Prizes worth winning

Worthy Winners

A few drinks and nibbles...

Grabbing the food

The last piece...... We got through 27 pizzas in all.

We all had a great time. I  set up a second "board game group" and we played Masquerade, Coup and Cash and Guns.

Then at 5:00pm it was all over and it was time to tidy up.

If you enjoyed the event, we'll be doing something similar around Christmas.

Festival of Daring and Excitement

The Calm before the Storm

Some time back we were discussing the first week of the new semester. One of the things that we talked about was the very first weekend that new students spend away from home. We thought it might a good time to do something social. So I suggested a Frag Fest. Everyone thought it might be fun to try one, and so Adam set to work preparing a whole bunch of things to do. 

I gave the event a name "Festival of Daring and Excitement" and got entry forms and tickets printed. The basic structure was a bit like an all day Christmas Bash, with PC games, console games and board games spread around the department. 

I wasn't sure if anyone would be interested, but then we sold around 110 tickets and so I thought we might be on to something. We ran the event for 12 hours, from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm. At 10:00 a few folks turned up and by mid-day the top floor of the Robert Blackburn building was buzzing nicely. Some folks turned up, signed into their favourite game and settled down for the long haul. Others formed a posse and went from room to room, trying PC gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox One and a totally crackers game called "Gang Beasts" in one of our Lecture Theatre. And some played board games. 

A tense moment in "Cash and Guns"

By 2:45, when the pizza arrived, the place was pleasingly full and we got rid of 38 pizzas in a good time (but not beating the record set by Three Thing Game last year). I left around 4:00 in the afternoon (had to go and do some "Real Life" things ) and I could see a lot of fun was being had. 

We called this place "The Steam Room" for reasons which should be obvious.

Thanks to go Adam and the Platform Expos crew for bringing all their lovely hardware. 

Thanks also to MechaCrash for bringing along the most stupendously awesome arcade machines.

I'm going to send out a little survey to find out if folks enjoyed it and whether they want another one sometime. I think the answers will be "yes" and "yes".

I took a few more pictures of the event. You can find them here.