Secret Hitler from Kickstarter has arrived
I backed Secret Hitler on Kickstarter a little while back, and it finally arrived! I'm really looking forward to playing it, but it might be a while as it is a five to ten player game. Secret Hitler - what's in the box? Here are a handful of pictures of what is in the box. The box, two of the three double sided tracking boards, the places for the President and Chancellor, voting cards and policy tokens. The back of the Chancellor's placard, with a summary of the relevant game rules on the back. It's sitting on the liberal party's board, these are all identical on all three game boards. On the other side are the fascist policy tracker boards that depend on the number of players. The back of the President's placard. As you can see the President has…
Visiting Berlin – first impressions from a family holiday
I've had a fascination with visiting Berlin since my early teens, if not earlier. I did German at secondary school, and the class had a map of Berlin with the wall in 3d. The exchange student, Frauche, was a west Berliner. The city was firmly divided back then, I was at uni when the wall finally came down. Somehow it took me about thirty years to get round to visiting Berlin for the first time. Visiting Berlin Visiting Berlin was a family holiday, so I had both children and my wife with me. The kids are 4 and 10. Berlin isn't that child friendly, it was hard to find things for the little one. My elder was OK most of the time. I think we broke them both with walking about, even though we made an effort to use the…
Writing Good Living History Characters for Re-enactors
This second post in the living history series is on creating good living history characters. The previous blog post was on the five steps for scripting living history events, of which creating your living history characters is the fifth step. Cooking snacks for soldiers at a living history event Living history events are a sort of promenade theatre with a lot of improvisation. Re-enactors are often mingled with the public, and many will be answering questions one to one. So living history characters need to be more robust than if you were writing for another medium. Here's what you need to do: Outline the scenario Work out what characters you need for the scenario Provide background for each character Define limits for improvisation Cast people as your main characters & brief them 1. Outline Your Scenario Mass-produced colour photolithography on paper…
Scripting Living History Events for Re-enactors – in Five Steps
It has been quite a while since I was last involved in scripting living history for an event. It has also been a while since I attended one, but I spent this weekend at the ECWS living history site at Newport Pagnell. The ECWS living history has come on a long way over the last few years. There is an excellent small town feel to it with a load of talented people showing a wide range of skills and aspects of 17th century life. This is how it should be. The next stage in the evolution is scripting living history cameos so that there is a hook for the public to learn more. About a decade ago the Fairfax Battalia, now sadly gone, saw this and ran a series of living history events. I was lucky enough to be able to script some…
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Failure is the Foundation for Success
Our culture fears failure more than anything else. We talk about failure less than we talk about death, even though failures are way more common than fatalities. If we are honest with ourselves we know that there are many things we do wrong in our lives. Most of them are inconsequential, although a handful have lasting consequences. Failure is good At work I've learnt the true value of embracing failure. I tell my team that I expect them to fail. I do this not to undermine their confidence, but to build it. Sounds counterintuitive, doesn't it? I don't mind if you fail, as long as it is a novel and interesting failure. That's the core quote I give my team, they'd all recognise those exact words. My gloss is that the only way to avoid failure is not to do…