Happy New Year! Term 2 means new timetables, intro to RPGs, and the AGM slowly scuttling towards us (having undergone carcinization since last year).
❗ Announcements ❗
🦠 😷 COVID Policy reminder for our in-person events😷 🦠
Ahead of our in-person events this term, we would like to remind everyone of the rules we are putting in place to try and mitigate the risk of covid to the people attending.
⚠️ You must abide by these rules, or we will ask you to leave our events. ⚠️
0️⃣ Please take a lateral flow test before coming to our events. If you get a positive result, please do not come.
1️⃣ We will be mandating that masks are worn by all participants along with social distancing in accordance with government advice. If you do not wear a mask, if you do not abide by social distancing rules, and/or if you do not practise proper sanitation, you will be told to leave our event.
2️⃣ If you feel ill or are displaying any COVID-19 symptoms, please stay at home. We won't be chasing you up if you miss a session or anything like that - we'd much rather you got better and didn't infect anyone else!
3️⃣ We ask that you wash and sanitise your hands before, during and after your play session. We will endeavour to provide hand sanitiser as well as disposable gloves if you would like to wear those while playing. Furthermore, we ask you not to eat during your play session.
4️⃣ Tables will be sanitised after people have finished playing on them, ready for new players to sit down and play.
5️⃣ If you sign up to / attend our events, you are agreeing to abide by all the rules we set out above, and our Code of Conduct (https://www.warwicktabletop.co.uk/page/codeofconduct/).
❗ Do not sign up or attend if you do not agree with them. ❗
📝 We will be operating a sign in/out system at our events. You will be expected to use the QR code on the laminated forms provided to note down your contact details upon entry, and when you leave.
🦠 In the case that you test positive for COVID, please contact the society via su303@warwicksu.com or PM one of our exec with details of what sessions you attended, and we will contact everyone who may have been infected so that they can go and get tests/isolate.
📱 Please make sure you have the NHS covid tracking app installed and active on your phone if possible!
😷 Note: a free mask and thermometer can be picked up from student services in Senate House if you have forgotten yours!
Thank you for reading and abiding by these rules. We want to keep you all safe and healthy, but still provide a place for you to have fun. We look forward to seeing you in the coming weeks! 💛
📅 New Timetable
We have a new timetable for term 2! Apologies, but due to the cruelty of the arcane sages that rule all timetabling, the rooms for board games are... a bit messy, so if you're a board gamer please take note!
⚔️ Intro to RPGs
Intro to RPGs is this Saturday! Whether you're completely new to RPGs as a concept, or are a veteran player looking to try a new system, these beginner-friendly oneshots are a great way to do that! You can find a list of what's being run this time around and sign up at the main website event. Once you've done that, sign up to an individual GM's event so you can actually play something. I've also asked a few GMs to give a summary of their oneshots:
Ben, running A Night at the Opera:
In my game, a group of spies are tasked with infiltrating an opera performance, locating and neutralising a target. Of course, things don’t always go to plan…
My inspirations here are the Hitman video games, Bond and Bourne. So if you like that sort of thing, this might be for you!
It’s run in GUMSHOE, a rules-light, narrative focused rule system.
Tim, running Defiance in Phlan:
Strange goings on are afoot in the city of Phlan, and it’s up to you and your fellow adventurers to uncover them in this series of mini adventures. Explore different areas of the city, learn what you can from it’s people, and fight to foil villains and save your lives.
Scarlett, running Nice Marines:
You're a 7' tall super soldier, clad in inch thick power armor and zeal, and wielding the full arsenal of the God Emperor of Mankind himself, trying to resolve a tense and fragile diplomatic situation while
avoidingmitigating any collateral that might be caused. Good luck!
Lewis, running A Heist By Candlelight:
Your motley gang of wannabe thieves are dragged into the biggest heist of their lives in the haunted city of Doskvol. Can you grab your prize, and escape rich enough to be set for life, or will you be caught by the deadly Spirit Wardens?
Oli, running Chariot of the Gods:
This Cinematic adventure involves the crew of a cargo space-ship (you!) en-route to the Weyland-Yutani outpost on Sutter's World, a colony in outer space. But of course, it wouldn't be an ALIEN scenario without something, or, everything going wrong now, would it...
🗳️ Impending Democracy
Term 2 means we're getting close to when most societies (including us!) have exec elections. In our case, that also means our Annual General Meeting, which is on the 2nd of March 2022, 7-9pm, in B2.02 (Don't worry too much about remembering this - it'll show up in many more newsletters and announcements closer to to the time)
This means that
- Every exec role will be up for election. Given how many of our current exec are boomers (sorry not sorry Finnbar!), and so are either leaving or stepping back, that means there's a lot of chance for new faces. Being an exec member has been a really good part of my uni experience, and a way to give back to the society that has given me so much. Plus apparently it looks good on a CV or something idk I'm not a careers advisor.
- Motions! Your chance to change things about the society! These can be both constitution-changing (new exec roles, renaming the society, etc) or not (introducing a timetable for drafts, a new event, giving the exec silly names.) More serious examples of recent ones have been amendments to the society's no politics rule to clarify that it permits the discussion of marginalised experiences, or introducing discord moderators as a position separate from the Web Admin.
- The most important "role" of all, the society's Mascot, is up for election. As they are too powerful to be a formal exec member, the position is open to abstract concepts, genius culinary ideas made on a whim, and other non-members of the society.
If you're at all interested in running for a position, or are vaguely curious about things more generally but don't know where to start, feel free to ask our current exec. Alternatively, keep an eye on the newsletter, where over the next few weeks I'll be advertising and summarising roles, with a testimony from existing exec - you might find certain positions are more approachable or more your thing than you first thought!
💻 Website Update
Finnbar did some webcrimes! I held them at knifepoint and they elaborated.
Hi! If you're viewing this newsletter on the website, or happen to have gone to the website in the last day or so, you might have seen some changes! Most of them are behind-the-scenes bits that won't affect most users (there's a better newsletter tool! and a tool for helping find and replace deadnames!) but there are two things you might like to know about.
First, we have our new homepage, which replaces the "here is an essay on why Tabletop is good" school of design with the "oh hey I talked to a graphic designer" school of design - I hope you enjoy it! (Also please try resizing the site I worked hard on making it look good in loads of different sizes.)
Second, we have our new tutorial popup! This will pop up exactly once to inform you about the cool stuff you can do on the website. It's also accessible from the top right of the screen (under Account) if you'd like to look at it again.
Finally as a bonus, I'd like to put a quick spotlight on an older feature you might have seen in use for the Intro to RPGs event this term - subevents! Now all of the one-shots are grouped together under the main Intro to RPGs event for your ease of access. Thank you to Anna who wrote this feature, and checked through all of the other features that were introduced with this website update!
❔ What's happening this week? ❔
The Board Games room situation is a little awkward this term - worst case go to the science concourse and just look for our banner!
- Monday 5-10pm: In Person Wargames, B2.01
- Tuesday 6-10pm: In Person Draft - B2.02 - STX - £10 - you must sign up here to take part
- Wednesday 2-10pm: In Person Board Games - B2.02/B2.04/5 (it's a little complicated, B2.02 from 2 to 5, B2.04/5 from 5 to 10pm, and B2.01 from 4pm to help with the changeover)
- Thursday 5-10pm: In Person CCGs - B2.04/5
- Sunday 12-5pm: LARP - B2.02
Remember, you can always find an up-to-date timetable of what's going on on our website's Schedule page, and you can see special events (including RPGs) and sign up to them via our Events page.
💭 What happened over the holiday? 💭
Finnbar and I made waves in the RPG design space by running a one-pager over New Year and switching GMs every 5 minutes. It's an extremely chaotic but very fun way to play oneshots, plus every so often you'll make a roll, fail just as the timer goes off, and have to work out what the consequences are.
Reylynn's written a summary of some of the things that were played over the holidays, because it's been a while since I've played 40k and I've never played Battlestar Galactica.
As most of us at the soc know, rolling dice is fun; as such rolling more dice must therefore be more fun. In 40K when melee combat begins each model will roll a number of d6 equal to its "Attacks" characteristic. Assault Intercessors, the archetypical melee unit from across the marketing, will achieve 41 attacks on the charge, which is impressive. Here we see my unit of Khorne Berzerkers, point for point the best melee unit in the game. As you can see above they are rolling 82 attacks. Not only that, but I was able to then roll these dice again as Berzerkers double their attacks. And not even that each of them have an extra sword which gives them another attack (this has different characteristics to the main weapon so is rolled separately). This means that total I rolled a wonderful 194 attack dice. That, to me, is what 40K is all about.
You're the last fleet of humankind in existence. Almost all of civilisation was wiped out by the Cylons; artificial intelligence that can masquerade among us indistinguishable from humans. In Battlestar Galactica - the boardgame specifically - you take the roles of leaders in this fleet and try to reach Kobol, the only place we think is safe from the Cylon threat. The game is a social deduction game and one of the best ones out there, two players will become Cylons and try to sabotage the human players from succeeding. BSG is incredibly difficult and punishing, only growing harder as players may become Cylons at the game's halfway point. Despite the keys to power being almost exclusively in the hands of the secret Cylons (and never in mine :'( ) and the game coming down to the wire, the human players managed to reach the destination!
Extra Bonus End Bit
No quest this term because these newsletters are going to be long enough with all the exec role advertisments and AGM prep.
However I have found a random indie RPG generator so that's the next few weeks sorted.
This week: Dramatis Personae. The PCs are a (roll) group of space aliens pitted in constant struggle against (roll) a bunch of knights. Why? Well since I'm determined to get as much content out of this as possible tune in next week to find out!
Wash your hands, stay safe, and come play some games with us 💛
Fern (she/they/fae, Communications and Operations, survivor of The Incident!)
@aceempress#9631 on Discord
hannah.a.collins@warwick.ac.uk
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