Inaugural Nerdvemberfest A Critical Hit with Players

Imagine you’re hunkered down at a table with six companions. On the table before you: boxes filled with colorful dice; a sheet with your character’s vital information; and stacks of books and graph paper. The Dungeon Master leans forward and whispers, “A fire beetle just bit you for four points of damage.”

Sound like a typical night roleplaying? Then consider that at Nerdvemberfest, held Nov. 17 in Fort Washington, Pa., there were 190 board games available for play and dozens of roleplaying games underway at the same time.

I spent my session in a well-run, well-contested pick-up game of basic D&D. To my one side, a group played “Call of  Cthulhu.” A little further away, the chief organizer Matt “in the hat” Aaron ran the new Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Another table played the forthcoming board game “Eldritch Horror.” Many of the tables welcomed new players to on a continual basis. Reserving a spot at the game cost only five dollars — the only fee associated with the event. They even provided donuts for people to snack on between sessions.

Several attendees remarked that the most surprising thing about Nerdvemberfest was how smoothly the event proceeded and how friendly and welcoming the atmosphere was. For example, if a player were deathly afraid of spiders and a spider attacked them in the game, the player could point to a card on the table with a large “X” on it and — poof! — the spider would be transformed into another nasty creature. Well, unless you were playing Call of Cthulhu that is.

Matt told Nerd Caliber that the hope is to hold more events in the future with even more variety of games, including war games. With the hundreds of people who came out to support this event and the overwhelmingly positive response, it’s hard to imagine that the next Nerdvemberfest won’t be an even bigger success with gamers hungry for more.

Learn more at http://nerdvember.org/