Wednesday 03-05-2017 - 15:12

Vague MMU, also known as the Roleplaying and Wargaming Society, recently attended the National Student Roleplaying and Wargaming Championships at Nottingham University.

Having hosted the event the previous year, we caught up with their current chair, Corey Davies (MA Clinical Psychology) to find out how they enjoyed the event, and what else they’ve been up to this year.

 

Tell us a little bit about the society…

“The society was founded in the late 90’s or early 2000’s by a man called Jon Scholes.  Back then, every society needed a certain amount of members, so the Rock Society, Sci-Fi, Wargamers, Roleplayers and others all joined together and created a very vague society (hence the name).  Over time, everyone split off to do their own thing again and the roleplaying society kept the name, as that was the one Jon was closest to.

We meet up twice every week, and we do roleplay on a weekday evening.  At the moment it’s Tuesdays in the Business School, and that’s Dungeons and Dragons and that kind of thing. On Sundays we do the wargaming and board gaming, like Ticket to Ride, The Settlers of Catan, Warhammer and others. Then there’s all sorts of socials that we do, like Nerf Wars and cross society events with the Rock Soc, the Gamers, the Nerds Society and Anime.“

 

What have you been up to in the last year?

“So last year we hosted the Nationals instead of Leicester University.  It wasn’t that they couldn’t host it, but they had hosted it the year before. Hosting it was incredibly stressful, I was in my final year, and then sadly around November last year, Jon Scholes died, and he was very heavily involved in organising it.  We all soldiered through and got it all organised.  We held all the games in the Business School and all the evening events in The Union. 20-odd teams attended, but not all of them were universities.  Some of them were people like Jon who stayed on to keep the events going.

We held a Nerf War in The Union in February this year, which was organised by Aiden, the Vice-Chair. This is the second year we’ve done them now. We split people into two teams, and if we’re on the top floor, we send people to either end of that corridor after explaining the rules of whatever game we are playing; so it might be capture the flag, or just elimination. We start the countdown and the teams just run at each other firing! There are a few seconds of complete madness where everyone is firing at each other, then it dies off for about ten seconds as they find cover, and wait for the Nerf to stop flying. They are typically really fun, but they are a bit of a pain as you are carting around 40 single shot Nerf guns and trying to get everyone to pick up all the bullets at the end.”

 

How were Nationals this year? Did you enjoy the experience?

“It was really good this year. It was better than ours, which was bittersweet, but we helped build the Nationals up from scratch; re-doing the opening ceremony, the evening events, and changing everything but the games last year. They had done what we had done, but ironed out the issues we had last year. It was really nice though and the uni is absolutely lovely.  It was a closed off campus where 500 nerds descended and it was really fun. We sent two teams, the Vague MMU team which is the student members, and Vague Vets, which are the people who refuse to leave! The Vets are a much bigger team and they placed third. Vague MMU were a bit further down but we still got more places than I expected for such a small team. We had a great time, and I played in two roleplay games in the western category.  One was a version of the A-Team but set in the old west, and the other one we were detectives in Kentucky, so I spent the entire weekend doing a Foghorn Leghorn impression.”

 

What other activities and socials do you do?

“As mentioned, we work a lot with other societies, so we go along to different events with them. At the moment, we book three rooms in the Business School, meet up, and play games around the table every week.  A few of us go to the pub after, and meet up with Rock Soc who have their socials in there, and then go across to Footage with the Gamers. On Sundays we are in the Conference Suite, and get out all the board games and the wargame terrain and see what people turn up with really.”

 

What would you say to anyone interested in getting involved in the society?

“Try it once and you’ll be hooked. I ran a D&D game for my friends back in sixth form, and I wasn’t going to join the roleplay society when I came to uni, but my friend Jack pushed me at it during Freshers’ Fair and I went along once and sort of ended up in charge! It’s definitely something that if you are on the fence about, give it a try.  We are nerds, so occasionally some of us are a bit touch and go with social interaction, but generally we are lovely."

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To find out more about VAGUE or to get involved, visit their society page.

To find out more about societies, check the Opportunities page.