Gaming – Page 31 – The Designer Monologues

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

My New-Old Gig

We just made the official announcement today: I’m taking a gig with Cubicle 7 Entertainment as the Line Developer for the tabletop games line of my creation Far West. So I’ll be continuing to helm FAR WEST, but will be doing it with an amazing amount of support!

Cubicle 7 will be the exclusive publisher of tabletop games for the setting, and will distribute them world-wide. I’ll shepherd the line, make sure it continues to mesh with all other FAR WEST releases (fiction, comics, web series, what-have-you) — which will still be released by my own company, Adamant Entertainment.

I’m thrilled about this. The delays in production of the FAR WEST Adventure Game core rulebook were due largely to the project becoming much larger than could readily be handled without assistance, and partnering with one of the top games publishers in the world will mean that I’ve got a great bunch of creative people at my back, as well as the infrastructure in place to handle things like distribution, warehousing, etc. — freeing me up to concentrate on line development, direction and creation.

Cubicle 7 has committed to a robust release schedule of support as well — so expect announcements soon about what we’ll have coming for the line in the first year.

April 7, 2013

BoardGameGeek Interview

I didn’t spot this when it went up at the end of March: Steve Donohue (The Other Other Steve) at BoardGameGeek did an interview with me for the site:

Click here to read.

An excerpt:

What was the first project you worked on? What was that like?

My first game design was a “war game” — or rather what I thought was a wargame based on looking at advertisements for Avalon Hill and other publishers in various SF magazines and comics. Using a bunch of Avery labels, I created a “game board” out of the only real-world map I could find at my Grandmother’s house — a map of Canada from an issue of National Geographic. I came up with a scenario where we’d discovered the Canadians had been tapping into the Alaska pipeline, and so we invaded (naturally). I called the game “Conquer Canada.” I was around 11 or 12. Obviously, it never saw print.

My first commercial release was in 1993 — a small-press science fiction RPG called PERIPHERY: SCIENCE FICTION ROLEPLAYING ON THE EDGE, which was a percentile-based generic space-opera game that I designed and published with several college friends. We only had a print run of about 500 or so copies, but I still occasionally come across one at the GenCon auction.

Check out the rest over at BoardGameGeek.com

March 27, 2013March 27, 2013

PAXEast

I got back yesterday from PAXEast in Boston, my first time at that show. Aside from staying a day later than planned thanks to Delta Airlines (DELTA: Doesn’t Ever Leave The Airport), the trip was great.

So, for this post, I’m returning to a long-held tradition of mine: To recap some of the things said or heard at the show, via context-free quotes.

“I’ve got some kind of magical animal.”

“You could park a zeppelin in here.”

“What could be better than dough?”

“The Walking Poor.”

“Sexy Foreign Guy Is Here For Your Womens.”

“This is my sister. She sang that Madonna song.”

“Occasions!”

“I tend to talk faster and get much more Welsh.”

“Enjoy your artisanal sandwich… it’s rustic. Says so on the plastic.”

“We’ve made the stretch goal! Everyone eats!”

“I think we need a Nemesis.”

As an aside — it is definitely a show worth attending for tabletop games companies. The population concentration in the northeast alone means that you’ll be seeing more traffic than you get at GenCon, even if the tabletop area is secondary to the main expo hall area.

Oh, and another thing you should be aware of: The tabletop exhibitor area runs around the open-gaming and tournament tables — which stay open until 2am — and there’s no separation. So even though expo hall ‘closes’ at 6, that’s not the case in tabletop, as people still come through. We’d wrap up around 9ish (3 hours after ‘close’), but could’ve stayed there the whole time… if we wanted to work a 16-hour day. Worth keeping in mind when considering staffing.