GeekOut Shrewsbury October ’19 – Bad Cosplay Party

Happy Hallowe’en! Ok, we’re now at the Sunday after Hallowe’en but still, it was rather nice to distribute sweets instead of the standard disappointing prizes. That’s not to say that people weren’t disappointed with the sweets they got, honestly I never asked, but assume that they shared. And my gods did a lot of you bring confection to share.

Pre-Meet

I parked about six foot from where the river had occupied Frankwell carpark, knowing full well that it would rain, and that I wouldn’t see my car again between 2 and midnight. Call it bravado, call it foolishness, only one of those is right, but I was curious, and I figured there’d be more spaces, I was right! Oh, and kudos to the Alb for the cool spider and dangling corpses on your scaffolding.

Anyway, Shresbury Coffeehouse ended up being a most relaxed affair, certainly from my perspective as I simply could not move from my seat, and Cal ended up getting me my second coffee and a waffle. Consider this an IOU, I haven’t forgotten I still owe you one. Gameplay was negligible, but the conversation was about as nerdy as it comes; Pokemon, video games, magic, D&D et al.

Monty’s

First quiet GeekOut in a little while, first time we haven’t surpassed 30+ attendees in a few months, looks like Summer is finally dead at last, or perhaps the flood waters just put a few folks off. Still, a quiet day of casual gaming was exactly what was required, as was a hasty dash for a roll of selotape to finish my terrible mask (pictured later on Cal’s face). Thanks to Harley for the cherry-blood cupcakes, and to those of you who joined in the terrible costume competition.

Oh, we had to move part way through the evening too, the problem with GeekOut coinciding with a holiday is that Monty’s opens up the dance floor for the less geeky members of the public, and we were forced to coexist with normal society for a while there. On the bright side, at least one member of the public appreciated our company and had nothing but nice things to say about all of you. Well done, geekery wins out over normalcy once again.

Next GeekOut Shrewsbury is November the 28th, and not the 21st that has previously been listed on our Facebook page… not sure why that would have been the case, there’s nothing preventing the 28th. Weird. Anyway, keep an eye out for further details on Facebook and Meetup, and of course our countdown timer.

GeekOut Shrewsbury January ’19 – It’s Not Going To Chairs

Previously: The Frigid North

Name changed for reasons that will become apparent later on. Now the original idea was to combine any fantasy setting that included cold north spaces, Tamriel, Westeros, Britain, or Azeroth, wonderful in principle, but coming to sit and think about it… I was scuppered. So thank you Alan for A: giving me the idea, and B: bringing his own Jenga tower with him, so that we could have a tournament. It’s wall building, we seem to like walls to stop encroaching peoples from marching south, and there’s a rather ominous metaphor to the whole thing I rather like.

Anyway, to the photo gallery.

Pre-Meet

Back to where it all began, if only for a little while. A few casual games of Love Letter over coffee and cake… which may or may not have been breakfast. The warmth that makes the Coffeehouse unsuitable for a summer meet (although for a quick brew it’s pretty good) makes it an absolute blessing in this chill.

Cal arrived with gifts! Sample stickers for the purposes of shameless branding and for selling on to you in the name of supporting the Meets, the prizes, and materials thereof. The first sticker adorned the Resolutions Box, more on that later.

Monty’s

Werewolf, chair stacking, Tsuro, cards against humanity, kingdomino, tides of madness… other games that I wasn’t really paying attention to because I was busy talking to people. We had a lot of new faces, and a lot of people who have become regular attendees that now feel like they’ve been with us forever. As we fast approach our second anniversary, it’s nice to see the mixture of old hands and fresh victims… people… people victims.

And we’ve brought back the Resolutions box! When I bust open last year’s efforts (most of failed to uphold our promises, myself included) a lot of people took a keen interest, and were pretty swift to enter into a cruel bargain with me this year… pinning their hopes onto a card, sealing it away, and placing their name upon the box, entrusting their very future to me, making me guardian, arbiter, and judge.

Jenga

Sixteen competitors, sixteen games, tension, dirty tactics, heart failure, and a tie breaker that I don’t think we’ll ever forget. Would we have it any other way? Could we? For once, maybe have a competition that people can just enjoy instead of the genuine concern for our respective health? It’s not a quiz, dammit, it’s just Jenga. Here I thought it would be a nice and relaxing evening of good natured fun, only tangentially related to the theme of keeping frost zombies from marching south, or romans from getting too far north.

During the quarter finals we saw something I had never thought possible, a tie in Jenga, that could only be resolved by adding a second game on top of the tower! Congratulations Matt on second place, Hannah for the tense fight for third, and finally to Zach for demonstrating dexterity and steady nerves enough to reach first place.

The lesson, should we ever find ourselves in a tie break scenario, chairs are the answer, but we shall always do our utmost to prevent it. Thank you to everyone who came. Next month’s meet: February 28th, Meme Your Own Adventure, details on Facebook and Meetup soon. Expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed.

GeekOut Shrewsbury November ’18 – NaNoGeKo

Cuz it… it’s NaNoWriMo… it’s November, we did… it’s… aheh, ahhh… good stuff.

Puns aside, this was a month full of stuff, which sounds trite, but there’s an increasing degree of me being entertained by you nerds as I am there to entertain you, enough of you have your own plans for what you want to do month by month, that I’m mostly there to introduce the new folks and organise the venue. I was still up until midnight prepping the quiz, but the rest all fell into place nicely…

GeekOut Shrewsbury August ’18 – Tengen Toppa GeekOut Lagann

August, that long awaited Shrewsbury meet, a whole six weeks have elapsed since last we gathered and the enthusiasm has not faded, nay it has grown. Although it’s notable that with the encroaching term-time, and so many of you retreating back to university our numbers have taken a small blow, so too will our growth from month-to-month subside for a while. Still, there is ever more to look forward to.

This month’s theme was Tengen Toppa GeekOut Lagann, which will make very little sense to those not at least vaguely into their anime. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a ridiculously over the top anime about robots fighting moons and smashing together to make walking boat-swords. You can see the appeal. Our mechs will not be fighting anyone with boat-swords…

GeekOut Shrewsbury April ’18 – Marvel vs. DC

Over a year of GeekOut and it just keeps getting better. This month I decided to poke one of the geekiest bears out there, as divisive a topic as Kirk or Pickard, X-Box or Playstation*, D&D or Pathfinder, and to pitch the giants in the comic book playground against one another seems very du-jour considering Infinity War was released the day of GeekOut, and that I’ll be going to watch it tonight.

Some of you may have seen a few photos and live-streamed footage already, courtesy of our guest from Thors-Kin Podcast, Alex, who helped out with this month’s competition. Here is this month’s slightly belated gallery.

GeekOut Shrewsbury March ’18 – March At The Movies

Remember this?

Here’s the same thing about a year later.

GeekOut Shrewsbury November ’17

It seemed like such a long wait for it to be all over so soon…

One last gasp for air before we dive into the cold waters of Christmas Cheer, November 30th was GeekOut Shrewsbury, and we have had the biggest turnout since the beginning, way back in… um…

March! Wow, my memory is terrible. Let’s get into what little I recall of the gloriously blurry hurricane of geekiness that was GeekOut Shrewsbury the ninth, complete with photographic evidence.

GeekOut Shrewsbury Meet – October ’17

It was a happy Hallowe’en. And it wasn’t even Hallowe’en.

Let it be known that I do not cosplay often… read “ever”, so even my low-energy effort as the “Quest Giving NPC” still took some work but it’s not easy to carve a question mark out of styrofoam, get it painted yellow and affixed to a headband securely enough in between all the writing and full-time-job-having. It didn’t quite work out as planned, and five minutes after settling into Sweet and the quest marker was in three useless pieces. I took my frustrations out on Murray’s Magic deck and an oversized milkshake.

Kudos to Murray for his cosplay, he endured his wig, makeup and heels for most of the day, boosted along by the compliments of strangers. Sat next to him I felt woefully under-dressed.

GeekOut Shrewsbury Meet – May ’17

May comes and May goes, but every month something new for GeekOut Shrewsbury. More new faces, more new games, more new plans for our glorious and shining future! And as we continue to grow you continue to grow with us, making the Shrewsbury Meets yours. Remember we’re always looking for ways to improve and make these events better for everyone, so we want your input on what you want, on what you geek out about, because we’re not just out to play board games all evening.

Not that that’s a bad plan, but it damn near killed some of us this month.

Top 10 – Social Board Games

Here at GeekOut, we really love getting together with friends and fellow geeks in a social environment; be it in a pub, or over at each others houses. But when we’re there, we don’t just sit down and immediately start talking about life and current affairs, because that isn’t what we’re always interested in. Not to say those don’t have their place in conversation, but we need something to sink our teeth into, something to have as a compliment to our conversation.

In this week’s’ Top 10, we talk about some of our favourite examples of a board game that helps to drive conversation, giving you a vocal point – A common, shared theme, to which you can all discuss further, or just use as a way to say “Oi, remember that time you were really crap at that game? I remember it.” This is our Top 10 Social Board Games.