On The Move

I'm writing this in the departure lounge of Manchester Airport en route to Oslo for work. It's been a crazy few days, and it will continue. November is looking a little more reasonable though.

Yesterday evening on the train home from London I used the train's wifi network to check my email. That you can browse the web while on a train is pretty cool. I was impressed by that. Anyway, I had an email from Yehuda saying that Greg Schloesser and Tom Vasel had both played and liked It's Alive! Episode 106 of the The Dice Tower includes Tom's review. I tried to download the Dice Tower episode but it turns out that the train's wifi is too flaky to download an hour of audio without a smart download client, so I'll pick it up in the hotel in Oslo this evening.

Hopefully the positive review will drum up some more business, I'm halfway through the print run now, just another 140 or so copies to go.

In other news, I've nearly finished another prototype of Jorvik. This one tries something new - taking the idea Dave had to another level. I played it with The Wife on the train down to London, and it seemed to work pretty well (there was a risk it would be unplayable). The Wife found the plain white cards with a few pencil lines on them hard to differentiate though, so I've brought the prototype and some colouring pencils with me and I'll colour them in while I'm in Norway. I've also started discussions with my Dad about the artwork. I saw a painting of his in a half-finished state last time I visited, and I really liked the textures he'd put in it. I think that style of artwork would make Jorvik very visually interesting, so he's going to do some mock-ups for me in time for my parents visit in four weeks time.

Finally, I'm going to try Vassal for the first time. My mate Dave, who I try to play games with once a fortnight or so, has been deployed to Afghanistan. He thinks he'll be able to access the internet every now and again though, so we're going to try and play an offline game of Memoir '44 using Vassal. I need to brush up on the rules!