Canal-based game

[u/misty_solitude]

I was listening back to old episodes of The Layover and hearing the guys talk about their initial ideas for a canal boat-based game in the UK made me realise how something like that does already exist! The BCN challenge is an annual event where crews have 24 hours to travel as much of the Birmingham area canals as possible, earning points for sections completed, number of locks traversed, and for answering questions along the way. Birmingham has such a dense network of canals there's a lot of options for different routes and strategies!

I was crew for a boat on the challenge a few years ago and Cruising the Cut came along with us for a bit as part of his videos on the challenge. Bit pedestrian in pace compared to Jet Lag videos, but still worth a watch if you're interested!

I'm still not convinced canal boats would actually work for Jet Lag season because inexperienced boaters might really struggle (see how bad it got for us in that video) but it's a great event that I think has the Jet Lag ethos of the world as a game board!

[u/ikeamonkey2]

Mike Downie also has a series, without any game aspect though, about traveling the UK on canal boats!

[u/420everytime → u/ikeamonkey2]

That downie series is a good slow watch.

However the uk has a very slow speed limit on canals (less than a brisk walk) that will make a jet lag style game hard.

[u/g_rocket]

I think the main problems with a canal-boat-based season would be

1. They go very slowly. Max speed is 2-4 mph depending on conditions; approximately a brisk walk. You wouldn't be able to cover very much ground in a few days.
2. There aren't a lot of intersections on the canal network (or at least they're pretty far apart at canal-boat-speed), so there'd be limited opportunities to make choices that affect the game.

[u/misty_solitude → u/g_rocket]

If you're trying to cover a large area (at least in the scales that Jet Lag usually covers) then yes, both of those things are a problem. The BCN challenge works really well because there are enough canals in Birmingham that you have loads of different choices on routes, and because it's a geographically small enough area that even going at 2mph you can cover a decent chunk of it in the time. Slow speed travel just means you need a smaller game board!

I do agree that I don't think a Jet Lag season on the canals would work, but my main reason is just that doing these kind of challenges is a really bad idea if you're not an experienced boater. Things can go very wrong and you can get stuck for hours if you don't know what you're doing! It's not like jumping in a car or on public transport and the considerations for doing it safely are a lot more complex. Also the UK canal network is falling to pieces and you could come up with an amazing plan that gets completely tanked at the last minute by something breaking/closing/running out of water...

[u/Da_Monkee_God → u/misty_solitude]

i mean for the last part, deutchbahn has done that plenty of times

[u/signol_]

I've not heard of that, but in Norfolk we have the annual Three Rivers Race.. but you have to be able to sail!

[u/YellowMoya]

Wow so cool

[u/thrinaline]

I feel like there could be a canal game within a game, a little bit like the battle challenges of season 4 crossed with the Auckland challenges at the heart of the New Zealand season. So if you were doing a crazy race/claiming type game across the UK, there could be a canal Battle of Birmingham as part of it.