The Opinionated Gamers

Reposting the Essen report from last year got me thinking about traveling… One of the projects that we’ve been working on in the background for the past few weeks are travel guides to the biggest gaming events.

The writing staff here at the OG is spread out all over the world, and we’ve been fortunate enough to travel to many different conventions from these varied home locations.  What we’d like to do is share our travel experiences with you – both during the event as well as traveling to and from.  We hope to cover highlights of things we like to do during the fair: events not to be missed, things not necessarily mentioned in the program, etc.  We also will try to pool our recommendations on where to eat/sleep/park you car, etc.

They’re definitely still a work in progress, but we’re working hard on getting things together for the following gaming events:

• Origins (Late June/Early July – Columbus, OH)
• GenCon (August – Indianapolis, IN)
• Essen Spiel (October – Essen, Germany)
• BGG.con (November – Dallas, TX)

Other events we’re considering starting up work on include:

• Nuremberg (February – Nuremberg, Germany)
• Kublacon (May- San Francisco, CA)
• World Boardgaming Championships (August – Lancaster, PA)
• Dragon*Con (September – Atlanta, GA)

Hopefully the Origins guide will be done in the next few weeks and posted here on the blog, and we’ll try to post up the others as they approach on the calendar.

Any suggestions on what other events to cover?  Any subjects you’d like to see covered within each travel guide?  If so, leave them in the comments below…

And, while we’re on the subject of travel, it starting to get close to the time for many of us to start thinking about the trip to Essen… For me, travel to domestic events can be done last minute, but I find that there is a LOT more planning involved in the international trip for Spiel each October.

I still plan on going this year, and I have been asked to assist with an organized tour that will include the Spiel fair in its itinerary.  Below the jump is a short interview with Teras Cassidy, the organizer of the tour, to answer some questions about the tour that you might have.  If you’re interested, read on… If not, skip the rest of this post and just keep your eyes peeled for the travel guides to come in the near future!

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[Editor’s Note: This is a reprint of my 2010 Essen Spiel Fair recap – which was originally hosted on BoardGameNews, but has since gone “poof” with the demise of the original BGN host.  I’ll repost it here on the Opinionated Gamers blog so it has a new home.  I have integrated a few more pictures into the body of this recap.  My apologies if you’ve already read this before! Dale]

Part 1: Introduction to the Spiel 2010

Right now, I’m on the plane home for Germany typing up my thoughts of the fair on my iPad. Don’t worry, I’m not typing this on the screen, I am grateful to have a Bluetooth keyboard which is making text entry into Pages a breeze! Despite the weather in Germany being pretty much cold, grey and miserable all week – I once again had a great time in Europe getting a little bit of culture in, catching a few game demos, and overloading on doner kebab, currywurst and Rhenish blood sausage (Himmel und äad). In fact, I might say that the blood sausage may have overtaken Doner as my favorite German food!  Despite the grey weather, we were a bit lucky to have rain for only one day while we were in Essen – mostly because otherwise it would have been a bear trying to get the games home from the convention halls without taking water damage.  With only rain on late Saturday afternoon (at which point my bags were too full to really be buying anything), this was luckily not an issue.

The experiment of bringing the iPad as my only computing device was a true success. It is certainly smaller and lighter than even my smallest UNIX netbook and the battery lasts for over 8 hours at a time of constant use.  Because it is an instant on device, it was also perfect for keeping my games spreadsheet on for easy reference, and I was also also to download about 70 sets of English rules prior to the fair and it came in handy on a number of occasions to have a .pdf translation available at a moment’s notice. I was definitely not the only one to think that the iPad would be good for Essen as I regularly saw other gamers referring to their own iPads during the show.

I honestly have no idea if anything is different in Essen itself as I spent probably no more than 2 hours away from the convention hall, my hotel or Ruttensheid-strasse which is one of the streets between the hotel and the Messe. This isn’t because I was so consumed with gaming, but more a reflection on the fact that everything I need including hotels, restaurants, grocery shops, banks, etc. can all be found within walking distance of the Messe area. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration – the Hauptbahnhof has finally been redone, and it is quite nice to finally be able to move about the station without having to go outside (in the rain) or dodge all the construction barricades.

This year the report will be a little bit different as I have already tried to send back bits and pieces from the fair each day.  If I repeat something, I apologize – I’m trying to write this on the flight home while details are still fresh in my mind, though surely I’m still a bit fatigued from the trip.  I will start with some general notes on the fair in this first section and then try to give you a hall-by-hall review of the sights, sounds, smells, and games to be found along the way.

The Gaming Doctor and the other Gaming Doctor

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