Twenty Days Out - I was off gaming

So I finally get back to my blog and I see that it has been twenty days since my last post. Oops.

Part of what took me away was GenCon. For those who don't know, it is an annual gathering of somewhere north of 25,000 people at the Indianapolis Convention Center for the purpose of games. There are card games, board games, role-playing games (both pen and paper & live-action), miniatures games (Napoleonics and American Civil War, World War I biplanes, WWII tanks and infantry, futuristic settings), electronic games, seminars and workshops on making and publishing games, as well as ones on writing and publishing fiction.

The dangerous part is when they turn the exhibition hall of the convention center into a massive game store, with booths selling every type of game imaginable. My wallet often whimpered.

This convention was started in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, forty-one years ago, in the garage of one of the innovators of Dungeons and Dragons, the late Gary Gygax. It was called the Geneva Convention. Since there was already one of those, they called it GenCon for short.

I have played games my whole life. As a child it was Candyland, Conentration and Jack Straws. Later, my family often gathered around Scrabble, Boggle, Big Boggle (we are a wordy bunch), Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in the fourth grade and have enjoyed it and other role-playing games for many years. More recently games like the Ticket to Ride series, Memoir '44, Apples to Apples, or TransAmerica have become favorites.

Why games, and what do games have to do with faith or ministry?

First, they are fun. They can be social events and recreational. Play Apples to Apples with a group and try not to laugh at some of the cards played, I dare you.

Second, they are challenging. Many really good games are strategic puzzles to work through, opportunities to do problem solving without the stress of being real-life problems.

Third, they are educational. Sometimes the game itself teaches something, and sometimes the mechanics of the game help the players learn resource management and the importance of good choices. One of the seminars I took this year was on game design, as I am trying to put together games to help teach the Bible and the faith to kids and adults.

Fourth, they engage and stretch the imagination. Role-playing games allow people to play a character as much like or dislike themselves as they wish. Pictionary and Scattergories work the part of the brain that makes connections, recognizes patterns, or comes up with new ways of seeing or describing something. Even a game of chess requires the mind to go through possibilities of "what if?"

So that took a few of the days while I was gone. And a vacation usually takes twice as long to recover from than the time off. But I hope to post more frequently soon. I'll also let you know how the game design is going.