UK Games Expo A Huge Success!

I've just got back from the UK Games Expo, and here's a very brief run down of what happened.

When we got there (The Wife and Dave came with me) we were shown up to our room to find someone else in our spot. It turned out that things had been re-arrange the day before, we'd moved just round the corner - nearer the bar. It seemed like a quiet out of the way spot, but turned out just fine.

I took the last six copies of Border Reivers, and twenty-one copies of It's Alive!: mine, ten pre-orders, one to give to a publisher who's going to try to raise some interest in the States and nine copies for sale. I hoped to sell out of It's Alive! at some point on Sunday, and sell a copy or two of Border Reivers - I wasn't even taking a demo copy of that, so I didn't expect to sell much.

We set up, and within minutes (before the convention officially opened) we had a bunch of players for It's Alive! The table was never empty after that - there were usually people queuing to play. It seemed to be going really well, I started to sell a few copies. Plus a Border Reivers or two. Then it went insane. There was an hour or two when I was struggling to sort out sales, I had a queue of receipts to write. Border Reivers sold out (the last copy was nearly fought for!), It's Alive! sold out. It just kept coming. We got rid of the last of our stock at 1:30pm on Saturday! Three and a half hours in. All we could do for the rest of the convention was demo the game and take orders (over twenty). An online game store pre-ordered twelve copies for stock. There was interest from the UK's largest games distriutor. A publisher was interested in Border Reivers. It was a fantastic weekend.

Saturday night we celebrated with Cheeky Vimtos :-)

Near the end of Sunday we heard a rumour that It's Alive! and Fagin's Gang were very close for the UK Game of the Year award, and we just missed out! We're awaiting official confirmation of that...

Progress

I got eight copies made yesterday, way less than the twelve I was hoping for. Still, it means I should have at least sixteen to take with me. I reckon I can get another thirteen done today (I've got longer, and The Wife did a bunch of prep for me, bless her), which will give me a total of twenty-one copies to take. Since one of those will be mine (for demo purposes) and seven are ordered, that would leave me with an unclaimed stock of thirteen copies plus six of Border Reivers. Any I don't sell I'll use to start fulfilling the pre-orders.

To the grindstone!

In other news we'll have a new member soon, Bobby Doran a Californian game designer who recently took five prototypes to a convention and had some interest from Jay Tummelson, of Rio Grande Games! Make him feel welcome!

Thunderbirds Are Go!

This morning the print jobs arrived at 8am, with the baggies (the last of the German order) following at 10:40. I've got all the rulebooks and box labels, and around fifty of each sheet of the game components - so I will definitely have some stock at the Expo - yeay! That was a close one for a while there.

This morning I've started on the first batch of six copies - I've labelled the boxes, and I'm now cutting out the components. The Wife has mucked in and been bagging wooden pieces (the game's coinage) and numbering the rulebooks - thanks!

The good news is that the boxes take less time to label than I expected, the bad that the components take more time to cut out. Still, with a couple of late nights I should still be able to take twenty or more copies to the Expo. I've got eight copies put aside for people already though, so if you want a copy to collect at the Expo, it's best to pre-order.

As soon as I've got a finished copy I'll post some photos here and on BoardGameGeek for your delectation :-)

Australian Games Expo

I've been asked to mention the Australian Games Expo, which will be attended by our very own Phil, demoing Archaeology. Here's an excerpt from their press release:

Australia will host its second annual Euro games expo and national championships in Albury, NSW, sponsored by the world’s largest games manufacturer, Hasbro. Event organiser and Albury games store owner, Phil Davies, says this is the second year the city has hosted the championships and can’t believe the event’s growth. “We have double the number of exhibitors for the Games Expo on June 9 and 10 and we expect more than 120 competitors to register for the national titles in Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Diplomacy,” he says.

The Expo, open to the public at the Albury Performing Arts and Convention Centre, will be a feast of games – both European and Australian – for people to try. Experts, and even game designers, will be on hand to teach first timers and provide advice. Games will also be available to buy.

“Another exciting development this year is a new Blokus competition. The winner of each draw takes home a giant-sized set, and the overall tournament winner receives a $500 gift voucher from Mind Games Albury and becomes the Australian Blokus Champion” he says.

Mr Davies says the Australian champions in Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan will head to the world titles in Essen, Germany, in October, while the national Diplomacy champion will represent Australia in Vancouver, Canada, in July.

For more information on the Australian Games Expo contact Phil Davies on (02) 6041 2448, or visit www.austgamesexpo.com

Sounds like it's going to be a great weekend, you'll get to meet Phil, a Hasbro games scout and compete for a chance to represent Australia.

I'm Cursed

It's Alive! is proving remarkably awkward to release. First there was the Germans emailing me to say they didn't have the pieces I wanted, two weeks before the planned release at the UK Games Expo. Then my printers emailed me to tell me the lamination wasn't working as there was too much ink on the page. Then I cocked up a bunch of box trays over the weekend.

The correct wooden pieces arrived on Friday, directly from the factory, so the only thing I'm waiting on from the Germans now is the baggies in which to place them. But I had been expecting the first print job last Friday. It didn't arrive yesterday, so fairly late in the afternoon I rang the printers to get an idea when it was due to arrive. They were going to ring me back. They didn't but I did get an email from the Managing Director fairly late. Apparently they had been experiencing problems with both their presses which had caused a backlog of work. They are going to send me part of all three of my print runs via overnight courier tonight, so I should get enough to make a few games on Thursday and Friday. There goes my idea of taking forty copies to the Expo. There's a chance I might have twenty copies now, but that's looking very tight. The Wife has offered to take Friday off work to give me a hand with the construction which will definitely help.

That leaves me with all day off work today, and no It's Alive! construction to do - I've made forty boxes (but I can't cover them until the artwork arrives), and I've filled all the baggies I've got with wooden pieces. Instead I'm going to cut out the tiles for the Border Reivers copies I'm going to take and make some merchandising material for the Expo. I'm thinking an A3 stand for the company, plus an A4 stand for each of the two games.

What A Fool!

Over the weekend I've mostly finished the last batch of Border Reivers (I just need to cut out the tiles), and I've started making It's Alive! The delivery that I though was the first print run turned out to be the wooden pieces when I went to collect them from the depot (having not been in when the delivery was attempted). This is great as the wooden pieces were the things I was most worried about, I thought there was a real chance they wouldn't arrive on time, but they have. The down side was that when I collected the parcel I found out that the large sealed box containing 24,000 small wooden discs had been opened by customs when it entered the UK and then no-one had thought to re-seal it. The wooden pieces were loose inside the box, and the box was open. The first thing I did on arriving home was to weight it to check they were all there, and the weight was about right, so hopefully I've not lost to many.

Over the weekend I've started making boxes. I drew out thirty-six boxes (to make forty as I've four boxes that the blind-playtesting prototypes went in), and then cut out the trays. At which point I realised that I'd messed them up and I had drawn them too small. D'oh! What an eejit. I've written off nine sheets of card (which fortunately doesn't cost too much and can be recycled), but more important is the time wasted. I think I'm going to aim to take thirty copies to the Expo now.

Resurfacing

Well the first print run of Archaeology is finally all produced and shipped, plus I have had some rest time (it got crazy for a little while there). I was taken a bit of guard by the number of orders I got, so I had to work quickly to construct the remaining copies. I have learnt a lot about how to speed up production for the next print run I do. Custom-made money tokens? See ya later!

At any rate, I am now starting to think about the next game I'd like to do. I have plenty of prototypes to choose from. While the one I'd most like to do is called Cannonball Colony (a reasonably deep tile placement game), there are a few others that may be easier options to do next, having less components. When I get a holiday from college in a few weeks I will hopefully get the chance to start work on game number 2.

I'll also be visiting the Australian Games Expo in a couple of weeks to sell Archaeology. This will be my first real convention experience, so I am not sure what to expect, but it should be great fun.

Border Reivers: The End?

I'm finally making the last batch of Border Reivers. I've made the boxes and will get most of the components plus the last batch of tile-gluing done this evening. It's been hard work and taken up a huge amount of my time over the last year, but I did it! I designed a game, playtested it, published it, manufactured it by hand and sold it. It's been a fantastic experience, that I've thoroughly enjoyed, for all my bitching about being too busy and too tired.

It's Also been fun keeping track of the ratings and comments on BoardGameGeek and seeing how they've evolved. It hit a low a few months ago when one of the BBG admins rated it four (out of ten!), but since then a few more people have rated it highly, and its now got twenty-four of the necessary thirty ratings to get it ranked on BGG.

It's Alive! meanwhile is coming on, the first print job was delivered today, with the box artwork to follow on Tuesday (Monday is a public holiday here in the UK). I heard from the Germans that the wooden pieces have been shipped, and I've started making boxes for that too. I've now got seven days off work and I'm hoping to get between twenty and forty copies assembled for the Expo. The last few weeks have been a blur, but hopefully things will settle down after the Expo a bit so I can go back to having a social life (of sorts).

Nothing Worthwhile Is Easy

Or so I keep telling myself.

I've now got all the print jobs off to the printers, they reckon they'll be able to deliver them in time, and the Germans think the wooden pieces will be here too. Aaaah. Huge sigh of relief. While I'm waiting for the stuff to arrive I've started the last batch of six Border Reivers games. It's strange. I've given up a huge amount of time to Border Reivers over the last five years and now I've nearly sold out of the limited edition. Feels great, but slightly weird. There's only eight copies left (so if you want one, hurry before they disappear ;-) ), and a few ordered copies that need finishing off. I estimate around twenty hours work.

So there I was happily constructing the last few boxes while listening to music, about to go round to a friend's house to do the penultimate set of gluing in her backyard when I checked my email. I should know better, I know. It's the equivalent of turning round in a horror film, you know something bad is going to happen. And there it was. An email from my printers. Their laminating machine has been failing to laminate the game components - they think the ink is so thick the laminate can't adhere to the paper. D'oh. Looking at the proofs (which aren't laminated) I think it'll be alright (and in fact I've been recommended not to laminate components by Markus of JKLM Games as it eventually peels off), so I've told them to go ahead without it. Still, this game has not run smoothly, what with the Germans and all. Still, orders are still trickling in, and it's not even out yet, so there's no work of mouth or real content on The Geek yet.

Fingers Crossed...

I might have everything ready in time fo the UK Games Expo! After a couple of slightly panicked phone calls to Germany where their English completely showed up my German yet again, I got an email from my German suppliers telling me that I should have the wooden pieces for It's Alive! by next Thursday. Which is cutting it a bit fine, but would be alright. Dave has also made a pill counter for me, which will allow me to quickly sort out the correct number of wooden pieces for a game - speeding up the sorting and bagging process. The Germans are going to ship to me from the production facility (rather than the office) which will speed up delivery.

In other news, two of the print jobs are now with the printers: the components which will hopefully arrive on Friday and the box labels, which are due next Tuesday. The third and final print job - the rules - will be sent tonight and should arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm getting the rules pre-cut and folded, so I'll have very little to do for them - just numbering and slipping in the box.

It's all very exciting, but it's completely un-sustainable. I'm finishing between 12:30 and 1am (last night I got to bed at 12:15! Early night!), and then it's taking me about half an hour to relax enough to go to sleep. This week The Wife is away, and I miss her, but the silver lining is that I get to use the car, and hence I can get up later and still get to work at a sensible time. By later I mean 7am though - so I'm getting nowhere near enough sleep. I feel shattered pretty much all of the time. My parents were up at the weekend, so that meant slightly earlier nights and a proper lie-in which was nice. It's fun. But very hard work, especially when you have to fit it around a real job.

Russin' Frussin' Germans

I've ordered the wooden pieces for It's Alive! from a supplier in Germany who provided the pieces for Border Reivers. When I ordered them two weeks ago I was told they would arrive in the third week of May - i.e. next week.

Last night, after close of business in Germany I received an email which told me that the pieces I wanted are not available - please can I order something else. I have two weeks until I hope to release at the UK Games Expo. Aaaaarrggh!

As I can see it I have four options:

• Wait for the pieces to become available (if they will), and probably miss the Expo,
• Get them to send me what they have in stock (if any) and then wait for the rest,
• Try to arrange shipment from another supplier (and probably miss the Expo),
• Try to sort out plastic pieces instead.

I'm not liking any of these options much, but I think the hour before I start work on Monday is going to be a busy one. God knows whether I'll have a product in time for the Expo.

Almost There...

Yesterday I received the proofs of the first print run from the printer. The first print job is the cards, player shields, player guides and slabs - basically all of the game components. The artwork looked really good, a little darker than I expected but not really a problem.

There was a problem however. I've been exhausted the last couple of weeks, I'm up until around 12 - 1am working on the It's Alive! graphic design, and then have to get up at 6:30am to get the bus to work. I'm wrecked, and it told in the artwork. I'd accidently left crop marks on both sides of the artwork, and I'd done the wrong sort of crop marks on the cards. D'oh! My printers will accept amendments to the artwork, but it costs £24 + VAT to re-submit new artwork. Sadly, I had to do it. Still, the good news was that it gave me a chance to tweak the player guides to make them more legible. £28.20 over a run of three hundred games is less than 10p added to the cost of a game so that's not a major problem - plus I'd left a little slack in the budget in case of emergencies.

Gtting the components proof back from the printer also means I can mock up a game for the back of the box photo. All the artwork is one-sided so that added a challenge to the framing of the photo, but The Wife came up with something nice. I'm sending the second print job (box labels) off tonight.

Just to whet your appetites, here's the artwork for the box front:

And the back. As usual, you can click on the images to see a larger version.

Beer and Pretzels 2007: Day One Report

Sorry it's been so quite here recently, I've been exceptionally busy. I've been trying to get the last few copies of Border Reivers constructed for the Beer and Pretzels convention, while preparing prototypes of It's Alive! for the playtesting and trying to get the artwork ready for the printers.

I spent the last weekend in Burton-on-Trent at the Beer and Pretzels convention organised by Spirit Games. Due to the presence of an all day bar the beer was both plentiful and high quality (Burton has five breweries), and I noticed several people had brought Pretzels, so the convention was aptly named. I had managed to get seven finished copies to take with me (mostly by stealing sets of tiles from ordered copies that weren't needed any time soon). I was hoping for three sales, more than three would be great.

It was the largest convention I had been to, and it wasn't just limited to board games - there were wargamers, CCGs and roleplayers there too. Phil set me up with a table just outside the bar (and between the entrance and the bar), which was a great location. Plenty of traffic wandering past. I was set up opposite a table where someone (presumably the designer) was showing a professionally produced game called Fondue about cheese chasing. It looked like a mainstream (toy shops not game stores) game, but the guy left before I had a chance to speak to him.

One of the things I was worried about was that I might have saturated the market - that everyone who was interested in buying a copy of Border Reivers would already have one. I knew that a few of my customers would be there - was there going to be anyone else interested?

Fortunately, yes! Saturday got off to a great start as I set up a 4-player game with Acer, Charles and Dave. The guys quickly got stuck in and we had a great game which was won by Dave. At the end of the game both Charles and Dave were interested in buying a copy, but it was out of Dave's budget, so Charles bought one instead. Good start ot the weekend. My next game was with Tim who had played in Stoke a few times with the various members of Shire Gamers who own a copy. As is often the case in a 2-player, my experience told and I won the game, but Tim enjoyed it and is up for playing it again in Stoke. At some point a guy called Peter wandered past, and after a brief chat bought a copy on spec. This day was going better and better. I had two more 2-player games on Saturday, one with Matthew and one with Neil. I won both. Matthew had some dreadful luck on the reinforcement rolls and clearly didn't enjoy the game, but Neil and I had a great game, and he ordered a copy too - that will be my three sales when his cheque arrives. A great day from a sales point of view.

As is my want at conventions I work during the day selling games, and then in the evenings I have fun. I play other games and finally get to drink :-)

While looking for a game to play I bumped into Ben, who had bought a copy at The Cast Are Dice last year, and his good lady. They suggested a game of Evo, and Matthew and Ian joined us for a 5-player. Something about this game didn't agree with me. I don't know whether it was the numerous dice rolls or what, because the theme and cartoony graphics are right up my street, but I didn't get on with it. I also got royally creamed. After an hour or so I drew a card that gave me an opportunity to potentially do a lot of damage to the other players, at the risk of being eliminated myself. That didn't strike me as a problem, so I went for it. I died. Poor old Ben was the only other player to suffer really. I wandered off at that point. I've no idea who won.

Then I sought out Steve, another of my TCAD customers from last year. He had a copy of 'my mate Phil's' game: Archaeology which I was keen to try out. I had thought to buy a copy, but before I had a chance, Phil had sold out! Anyway, Steve had played it a bunch of times and was quite keen on it, so I definitely wanted a game. That evening Steve and I played a couple of games of It's Alive! and one of Archaeology. Steve enjoyed It's Alive! and ordered a copy, and I enjoyed Archaeology. It's nice, simple, quick and clean. And the production quality is fantastic. Well done, Phil!

I'll post again with Day Two in a few days.

Slow News Day

The interview I did for the Yorkshire Post has finally been printed today. It's a nice interview (software expert :-) ) and has a massive photo on page three of the paper.

The Yorkshire Post is a cross between a local and a national paper and already it's having an effect. I've had two orders today from Yorkshire (which I guess are as a result of the story) and both local radio and TV stations are interested in running the story.

That's a great result as far as I'm concerned, and it may go further yet!

Playtesting Feedback

This evening I held the blind playtesting session for It's Alive! in a local pub. I'd invited a few friends and some people from the local games club. It was a great night. It's Alive! was played probably around twelve times in total with 2 to 5 players. It was a fun evening.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive - much better than that for Border Reivers when I did the same thing. Here's the breakdown, I've done the scores for everyone, and excluding my friends:

Aspect	Gamers Average	Full Averages
Rules: Clarity	7.00	6.57
Rules: Completeness	8.80	8.43
Gameplay: Choosing a card	8.25	8.00
Gameplay: Buying a card	8.00	8.33
Gameplay: Selling a card	8.50	8.83
Gameplay: Auctioning a card	9.25	9.50
Gameplay: Winning conditions	8.40	8.57
Gameplay: Game Length	9.60	9.71
Artwork	9.80	9.71
Overall Rating	8.70	8.50

In addition, five out of seven ordered a copy, and the remaining two were maybes :-)

As with Border Reivers, before the playtesting I got last minute nerves and was worried the money I'd already invested was a false economy, but I'm now full of confidence again. I've not had a chance to fully digest the feedback, but it's clear that the clarity of the rules is the weakness again, I need to make sure they are more clearly explained.

Clearly I've still got stuff to learn about games publishing, but I feel I've learnt a lot in the last year, and I hope it shows in the selection and production of It's Alive!

It's Alive! Playtesting Night

I've booked a blind-playtesting event for It's Alive! next week. It will be in the upstairs room of the Yorkshire Terrier pub on Stonegate in York next Wednesday (9th May) from 7pm until 11pm. Click here for a map.

The event is limited to twenty people, and to people who haven't yet played It's Alive! You'll get to play the game from the rulebook, without any help from me, and drink great beer. At the end I'd like you to fill in a short questionnaire, and provide feedback on how to improve the quality/clarity of the rules. In return for your time you'll be able to order a copy at the playtesters discount (20%), so £12 instead of the usual price of £15.

If you would like to attend please email me to book a place.

Boy! Have I Been Busy

After my GeekList last week things have been pretty hectic round here. I've finally (nearly midnight last night) completed the copies I needed to fulfill all the sales I've made during the last couple of weeks. I now have a grand total of zero complete copies in stock.

In nine days I'll be attending Beers and Pretzels in Burton-on-Trent. Obviously I need some stock for that, so I've got lots of Border Reivers construction ahead of me. Still, I've got ten copies ready apart from the tiles so I should be able to get a bunch done in time.

In addition, I've received the last of the artwork for It's Alive! from the artist and sent him payment, and ordered the wooden pieces from Germany too. On top of that I have to get the graphic design work done on top of the artwork. I've got to come up with a way to display the numbers of the cards on top of the artwork without looking crap, do the player guides, and make the rules pretty. I'm trying to organise a blind-playtesting event, and I think I've got about three weeks before the artwork has to be complete. Aaaah!

Off Topic:A further complication has been due to some health problems. Last year I experienced some wierdness where one of my legs went partially numb. Odd. I went to the doctor and was sent to a neurologist who sent me for an MRI scan. Still, it wasn't bothering me that much, it didn't stop me doing anything, and the neurologist thought it was most likely a virus causing an inflamation of my spinal column. About six weeks ago, I experienced some new symptoms. First my balance (which had been a little dubious) got significantly worse, and then I developed double vision. Over the last month or so I've been busy. I've been to A&E, the Eye Clinic twice, my doctor and now the neurologist. Three weeks ago I had an appointment with the neurologist to give me the results of my MRI, and my new symptoms confirmed the MRI results: I have MS. In the short term, this isn't too much of a problem - and shouldn't interfere too much with either my life, Reiver Games, or my job, and the double vision has now repaired - which is good as I couldn't drive for a few weeks. But things will get worse over the next few decades, and it's incurable. D'oh.

If you're feeling charitable, please give generously to either The MS Society (UK), the The National MS Society (US) or a similar organisation in your country to help scientists find a cure or ameliorating drugs. Ta!

Archaeology released!

Well I am happy to say that I have finally finished Archaeology!

It feels great to have a couple of finshed copies sitting next to me. I am for the most part happy with how everything has turned out. I had one printing job partially botched, but thankfully the company acted quickly to correct it and I wasn't held up too long. Other than that the process was pretty smooth, just long!

I have learnt a lot and am very keen to write up some observations from the whole process, but for now I think I just need a rest. I was really working hard to get the game done before the business end of the semester kicked in.

Oh yes, I also put together a website to handle ordering at www.adventurelandgames.com. My first print run is 50 copies. Hopefully I'll have to do a second, but we'll see how things go!

Well, That Was Unexpected

What a weekend! Friday night I decided to write a Geeklist on BoardGameGeek about my experiences self-publishing Border Reivers. I hoped that it would get a few thumbs and draw a few people to look into Border Reivers. I might even get a sale from it, if I was lucky.

Saturday morning I added a couple of items, posted it, and packed myself off to Beyond Monopoly! for only the second time this year. BM was great - I'd not been since early January, it was nice to catch up with everyone, and get to play a few games that were new to me. Thurn and Taxis in particular shone. Another worthy winner of Spiel des Jahres, the German Game of the Year.

I staggered back late in the afternoon, all gamed out, and checked out BGG to see what had become of my Geeklist. I was expecting the usual: a couple of thumbs up and dropped into obscurity. Instead it had all kicked off. I'd got over fifty thumbs, a bunch of GeekGold (BGG's currency), and a couple of orders from the States despite the truly awful exchange rate at the moment. It had been a slow news day, so my Geeklist had remained at the top of the list on the front page all day, gaining thumbs up (which keep it at the top) and getting read a lot.

It kept going, it was top all weekend and Monday. It's now got over 165 thumbs. Border Reivers entered the 'Hot Games' sidebar on the front page (today it was the eigth hottest game!). I got six orders over four days, and a bunch more interest. It totally blew me away. I've burnt through my finished stock, which is great, but I'm getting interviewed by the Yorkshire Post this week and I hoped to have some stock ready for that too. D'oh!

I also got a few more It's Alive! pre-orders, and I've nearly got enough capital now to publish It's Alive!, I should certainly be able to get the rest in time now, even assuming that none of the outstanding enquires turn into sales, and the Yorkshire Post interview doesn't generate any more. Yeay! Now I just need to get the rest of the artwork, finish the graphic design, blind-playtest it, send it to the printers and construct a few copies in the next five and a half weeks. Gulp!

Bizarrely, two of the recent Border Reivers orders were from the BBC MindGames magazine review in January. I'd given up on that as a slightly wasted effort as it had only generated a single sale. Turns out it might be three!

An Invititation

Hugo of Bode Gueims has made us an offer:

I'm currently inviting boardgames bloggers to contribute to Bode Gueims with old (but still relevant) content from their own blogs, which I then translate to the "other" language (in your case from English to Portuguese) in order to open up a bit more both communities of gamers to each other. Having been enjoying Creation and Play for quite a while now, I think my fellow Portuguese speakers would enjoy it also, mainly because there is very little content on boardgame design in Portuguese. So, I would like to extend an invitation for you or any of the current contributors of C&P to participate in Bode Gueims as well. As I said, there is virtually no extra work for you guys: You just pick some old (but still relevant) entry from your blog and send it to me, so I can translate it and publish it. I will obviously state the author of the post and where (and when) it was published first.

Anyone interested?

Who's Been A Busy Boy?

Me!

The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur. The Wife came back from Denmark, and we had a lovely long weekend together, playing Pirates of the Spanish Main and Carcassonne: The Castle which she bought me as a present :-). We also had a visit from her sister and her fiance (not The Wife's! The Wife's sister's) when we played among others Twilight Imperium Third Edition.

Since then I've been trying to step up Border Reivers production to get it finished off at the same time as doing some graphic design work on It's Alive! processing the artwork I've been receiving from the artist over the last couple of weeks. I've got all the artwork for the cards now and the slab (on which you place your cards), so I'm just waiting for the player shield and the box illustration. I've been getting all the individual files together into a print-ready A3 sheet, while at the same time working on graphical overlays which sit on top of the artwork to convey extra information. I'm having some issues getting the numbers on the cards to look good, I'll probably post some options here for feedback in a day or two.

I've now got five finished copies of Border Reivers in stock, plus nine that are finished except for the tiles. I've started another batch too. This is good as I had a photographer from the Yorkshire Post round today to take some photos to go with a phone interview I'm doing tonight. I wanted to get some stock in, just in case the story generates some sales. I'm also considering some options for a publicity/special offer that might help shift a few copies fairly swiftly, as I need over two hundred pounds of Border Reivers sales in the next three or four weeks if I'm to fund It's Alive! in time for a release at the UK Games Expo at the beginning of June.

Anyway, sorry I've not posted in ages. I've been busy :-) Still - I wouldn't have it any other way.

Theme vs mechanics at the start of the design process

A question that seems to often get asked of designers is "what comes first for you, the theme of the mechanics?". It seems to be the boardgaming equivalent of the cliched music jorunalism question, "so what are your band's influences?".

This is an important question because most gamers are very interested in how theme and mechanics work together. Knizia is accused of pasting on themes, some American games are accused of having fiddly chrome-laden rulesets. These observations beg the question in the player's mind, how are games born? Do themes or mechanics usually set the design process in motion?

While I am no authority at all on game design, I thought I would share my thoughts on this issue about how the design process works out for me.

It seems to me that initial ideas for games must fall into one of three categories: When the theme is the first thing to arrive in the designer's mind, when a raw mechanic comes first, and when the process begins with some combination of the two.

I thought I would share my thoughts on how each of these three processes has worked for me, and something of what I have read from other (more famous) designers.

Theme comes first
Occasionally something will spark the desire to make a game with a very specific theme. For me this usually comes from watching a movie or something on television. A particular scene or situation might just spark my imagination, and I immediately get an idea for a game. Seriously, every viewing of Star Wars could yield ten game ideas: Escape from the Trash Compactor! Light Speed Hide & Seek! The Death Star Maze Game!
Usually this initial idea will suggest some basic things about gameplay, such as the aim of the game, or some foundational mechanics. Then it's time to start scribbling in the notepad, and try and flesh out the flow of play. Sometimes spare mechanics that are lying around will be plugged in to the design. Sometimes new and fresh mechanics will naturally arise out of the theme. This for me (if it happens) is one of the most exciting things in game design.
I often find that ideas which come to me theme-first also often fall flat pretty quickly. Sometimes there just doesn't seem to be any simple solution to a problem in the design, and it is very hard to properly squeeze mechanics into a theme if they don't naturally fit! If you start with a strong theme, you are in some sense 'bound' to reflecting it in the gameplay well, and if you can't, the design usually falls by the wayside. For me I feel I am selling the idea short if I just settle for a mechanic that will do the job without integrating with the theme.
A real world example of this would be Knizia's Lord of the Rings. Reiner was commissioned to create the game and he has said that after studying the book he realised he simply had to make the game co-operative. The theme came first and dictated the base mechanic. Now of course developing the smaller details to make the game flow how he wanted must have been very tough, and people debate how successful he was.

Combination of theme and mechanic together
Sometimes a game mechanic will arrive in my mind with some aspect of theme inseperably attached to it. These ideas usually come when I am actually thinking about games and game design. One recent example was a tile laying mechanism that popped into my head, but what I was imagining on the tiles seemed to only work if the game was set in a cave. Odd huh?
Now the cool thing about getting ideas this way is that there is some leeway with what you do with the development of the theme. Is it a pirate's cave? A tunnel through the earth? Ancient catacombs? Each possibility allows you to move the design forward in various ways. There is the opportunity to take the design down a number of different paths and see which one works best.
I often find these designs develop well and end up yielding nicely playable prototypes. The fact that the mechanic is automatically linked to a theme helps the gameplay feel somewhat natural. Of course, more arbitrary elements often slip in as a final theme is chosen and the game system develops.

Mechanic comes first
This is pretty rare for me, and these ideas come either when I am thinking about game design in pretty concrete terms, or when I am thinking about some mechanical process in real life. For example, watching the switches on train tracks as I take a train trip may suggest to me some sort of abstract strategy path-swapping mechanism.
I find that these ideas rarely develop straight into a game of their own. I usually just remember the mechanic or take note of it. Sometimes I later find a good situation in a different design were it makes sense to insert this mechanic. On some occasions these mechanics are interesting enough that they can become the comeplete basis and centre of a game. In hearing Ted Alspach speak about Seismic, it seems that for him the mechanic of laying tiles to build a path way was such an exciting one that the whole game design flowed out from it.
Amd again I can't help but think of Knizia. From my first play of Lost Cities I was sure he must have come up with the game idea while playing around with a standard deck of cards. But while the theme does feel pasted on, the real fun of the game comes from its exciting set-collection mechanism. I am sure Reiner realised that this mechanic was good enough on its own to simply 'be' the game.

What seems to work best
The games which for me have come the furthest in development are the ones where something like 'chain reactions' have occured from one stage of design to the next. What I mean is, that the design begins in one of the three ways listed above, but then at some point hits a wall, and one aspect of the design takes me down a totally different path. This may happen two or three times before the game really takes shape into something that I feel can be great fun to play.
The development of my game Archaeology is a good example of this. The game began with a mechanic, which was a modular board which created an island out of sqaure terrain peices. I am sure this was probably suggested by Settlers of Catan, but it also came from an old computer game I programmed in BASIC as a child. Anyway, after playing around with the mechanic I eventually decided this would be an island where explorers came to hunt for treasure. So I added treasure tokens which were placed face down on each terrain sqaure, and turned over until collected by being landed on by players. During playtesting the game developed into a fully fledged pirate epic, with sailing, weather conditions and all sorts of goodies. I eventually lost interest in the design, as I felt I could never come up with the correct mechanism for player movement, and the interaction between players seemed doomed to be very low due to some core design decision I made early on in the process.
What stuck in my mind though was the fun that there was in collecting a mystery treasure each turn, and the way the different types of treasures combined to be valuable. From there I started a new design that was largely based around this mechanic. The board was vastly simplified, and I soon realised the theme of an archaeological dig made much more sense. However I again had problems with player movement and late one night decided to toss the whole board in and basically make the game a card game!
Things took many more turns (and a board was later re-introduced!) but the finished product is so far removed from my island mechanic that I can scarcely call them the same game. I feel that Archaeology is a better game for going through this process, as I feel that it evolved organically. Because I threw away so many big chunks of gameplay I was always dealing with my favourite mechanics and theme ideas, and this I think made for a more creative headspace in which to design.
Something similar to these 'chain reactions' seems to have happened for Teuber with his Catan/Entdecker/Lowenherz design, and with Knizia and Ra. One design led to another, which led to another, the gameplay being distilled and refined with each iteration.

Prototype day

I have been doing the artwork for Archaeology for three months now, and the fine tuning is taking quite a while! I am finding it hard to stay super motivated as there isn't much creativity required in the project at this late stage. Although it will be done in the next two or three weeks!

So I find my mind wandering to the games I have lined up next to try producing. Today I spent time working on three prototypes for games that are in various stages of the playtesting phase. It was certainly a fun diversion.

Two of these games use quite similar mechanics and are exploration games. Although one is quite light (a pirate theme), and the other quite brain-burning (an egyptian theme). Playtesting today surprisingly yielded that the lighter game seems to be playing the best, although it is far less developed. I think I may have over-thought the complexities of the egyptian one, and need to work more on the simple fun factor of each phase of play.

The third game is an extremely light-hearted combat card game, which is slowly turning into something kind of good! Time will tell if it has the gameplay to back up its quirky theme, but if I figure out the right balance for all the combo moves it could be cool.

But I've decided that's enough prototyping for awhile and I just need to put the head down and finish Archaeology. Onward!

March Report

Well, March is over and I did some stuff. Time to admit what exactly. I'll start with play, as is my want.

Play

A decidedly mediocre month in terms of number of games played. I didn't get to Beyond Monopoly, and due to various trips abroad I missed a load of my stalwart games nights with Paul and chums and Dave. Still I managed to get a few good nights of gaming in and this is what I played:

• Lost Cities: 8 plays
• Border Reivers: 3 plays
• Fluxx: 3 plays
• Carcassonne: 2 plays
• Caylus: 2 plays
• Space Hulk: 2 plays
• Memoir '44: 2 plays

Plus the shrapnel: Carcassonne: The Castle, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Power Grid and Puerto Rico.

The only new game I played this month was Fluxx, which, to be honest, I really didn't enjoy that much - just a bit too random for my tastes. It was good to play more Space Hulk after a short break, and Lord of the Rings which I hadn't played in ages. Dave and I have agreed to play Lord of the Rings (and the Friends and Foes expansion) next time we get together - we've both not played it enough recently.

With 27 games in total it was a fairly average month, and that only because Paul G and I played nine games on the last night of the month. I really wish I was at home more to enable me to get more games in.

Creation

I had a week off work this month to allow me to make the most of The Wife's visit to Denmark. I wanted to get as much construction done as possible so that I can spend more time with her when she returns. This was counteracted by ten days when I was away from home for work (and visiting The Wife in Denmark :-) ).

Border Reivers

I only got six copies finished during my week off, but I did manage to get twelve copies almost finished in addition. This is pretty good progress, as that's nearly forty hours work right there. Sales wise it was an average month, which is ok, as I don't want to sell too many before the end of the tax year, to minimise my tax liability. After the end of the tax year (in just over a week), I'm going to step up efforts to sell out of Border Reivers, as I need the money from Border Reivers sales to pay for It's Alive! production.

It's Alive!

It's been an exciting month for It's Alive! I announced it to the world on March 4th, and since then it's been all go. I've had a boatload of pre-orders, it's been mentioned in a bunch of places including Board Game News, and I've received a few thumbnails of artwork from the artist, chose the ones I like and opened some of them up to my readers here for input. Once the financial year ends I'm going to step up Border Reivers promotion, in order to get enough cash to make It's Alive!

Codename: Jorvik

I finally got around to making the prototype of Dave's suggested rules change. Yesterday afternoon, Dave and I spent a few hours in a local pub testing it out. It's definitely much better than the last version, and fixes the problem I was worried about - lack of player interaction. The card balance is all wrong at the moment - but I can fix that by tweaking and playing repeatedly.

In other news, I wanted to go to the UK Games Expo and hopefully launch It's Alive! there. I ummed and ahhed, hoping to delay the decision until I knew I'd be able to get it ready in time. I checked that they still had space - and they didn't. D'oh. Fortunately I put myself on the waiting list, and a space came up, so I am going now. I'll just have to bust a gut to get it ready in time.

Session Report: Headingley Games Club

On Thursday Dave and I went to Hugo's games club in Leeds. I was going with the intention of trying to play Border Reivers with a bunch of people and hopefully sell some, like I had done in London the week before.

It took us about an hour to get there (it's on the 'wrong' side of Leeds), and then it took us another fifteen minutes to find the place (my trusty sense of direction failed me after we parked the car) - fortunately, Dave used his army skills and managed to navigate by the stars or something and we eventually found the place.

We walked into the venue and found a large room full of people all playing Games Workshop games such as Warhammer 40K, Blood Bowl and Warhammer Ancient Battles. I never knew they'd done an ancients game - shows how out of the loop I am. Anyway, apart from a blast from the past this wasn't what I was looking for - we were directed upstairs. Upstairs was more like it, there were eight people playing board games, including Canal Mania which I've been meaning to play for ages. There was also a back room where a small bunch of people were playing Magic: The Gathering, which was a break from their normal game of roleplay wrestling. Urrrgghh. The less said about that disturbing idea the better.

Sadly for my playing Border Reivers idea, I recognised a lot of the people from Beyond Monopoly and Psychocon. So we volunteered to join in with a game of Puerto Rico that would be starting in around half an hour. With half an hour to kill, Dave and I set up a quick 2-player game of Border Reivers. This would be Dave's fourth game, so I was expecting some stiff competition now that he had got the hang of it.

It was a good game, I can't remember an awful lot about it, I got to the mine and held it for most of the game (though Dave did Ambush me there, killing my mine workers), and there wasn't much action on the fortified border. I managed to sneak around the fortified border, exposed Dave's soft underbelly, but he blocked me off to stop me taking too much advantage. Dave built all three of his cities, while I only got two built. In the end I won with an economic victory, 44 to 14.

Then we joined in with five others for a game of Puerto Rico. This was Dave's first game of the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek so we didn't play with the expansion (which I had never seen before). I chose a shipping to the old world strategy, while Nigel and Andrew (I think that was his name) went for cash, and through that buildings. I spent most of the game skint, which hurt later on as I was unable to build anything useful. In the end the three guys from the club whooped us - final scores: Nigel 49, Andrew 46, Corran 45, me 42 and Dave 36. Not a bad score for Dave in his first game against four seasoned players.

I'm not sure I'd go there again, it's a long way for a couple of hours of gaming, we spent almost as much time in the car as we did at the club.

In other news, check out this year's April Fools Day effort on BoardGameGeek. After last year's effort (the 'admin' screen) I didn't want to miss it this year, and Aldie didn't disappoint. Sadly the Crochet tab doesn't work, so I guess I'm going to have to shelve my plans for a nice gaming shawl.

Session Report: Games With Dave

Dave came round on Tuesday night for another night of games. This time we went back to Space Hulk, which we started playing when we started doing these mid-week games nights, but we hadn't played for a few weeks.

I'd had the lion's share of the Space Hulk wins so far, but Dave was keen to visit me with pain and retribution. So we started the fourth campaign mission, with Dave playing the Space Marines first. The map for this one is symmetrical, with the marines try to get from the bottom of the map to two rooms near the top (one on each side) and hit them with a flamer. I decided to harry Dave from all sides - so I used all the Genestealer entry points, those in front, to the sides and behind. My reinforcements came in dribs and drabs from all sides and kept Dave's Terminators under attack, but I'd chosen the wrong strategy, and as I killed of the last non-flamer marines, Dave's two remaining flamer marines simultaneously hit the two targets winning him the first round.

I chose a conservative strategy for the second round, with me playing the Space Marines, and set off slowly making for one of the target rooms. Dave however had a brainwave, he only needed to keep me from one of the targets - so he concentrated his waves upon waves of Genestealers on the other side. He managed to kill one of my flamer marines just before I hit the first target, but by then he had such a wall of Genestealers I couldn't fight my way through, and eventually my second flamer marine bought the farm. Damn. 2-0 to Dave. Nice work.

It wasn't too late so we decided to slip in a quick game of Carcassonne before we called it a night. This time we used the river expansion, which Dave had never used before. I got off to a decent start, claiming a decent chunk of real estate for one of my farmers, and as the game went on not even Dave's Monastery Alley was able to get him enough points to beat me. Final scores: me 119, Dave 85.

At least I won something :-) Another great night of games. At the end Dave offered to pop along to Leeds with me tonight, and we agreed to go to the pub for a couple of pints on Sunday. I promised to make the new Jorvik prototype to take along with me - trying out the that idea Dave had ages ago.

In other news it's been a bit of a rollercoaster week for me on the games side. I've been (and am continuing to be) very busy making games, Border Reivers is rolling off the presses at a phenominal rate as I try to get as much done as possible while The Wife is away. I've now got six finished copies (two of which have been claimed), and I've another six which I will have finished apart from the tiles today or tomorrow. I've sold two copies this week, and I'm off to Hugo's games club in Leeds tonight to try to play it and sell some more tonight. Unfortunately I've also had a sale in America fall through when he realised just how bad the exchange rate is. I've also heard from the UK Games Expo - where I had hoped to release It's Alive! I was told a couple of weeks ago that they had no space - but now they have roomd for me - yeay! Unfortunately, (nothing comes without a down-side this week) it's more than twice the price I thought it was - so it's not an easy decision to make. Hmm.

Construction Rush: Progress So Far

I've got this week off work, with the intention of getting as much construction done as possible while The Wife is away. I got back from Denmark on Monday evening, and once I'd done a few chores I was ready to start construction. I made a set of tiles that night finishing off another game, and then started making the boxes for the next batch. I had to make an extra box as, for the first time, a box got damaged in the post last week. I'm sending the guy a replacement box free of charge and hoping to get some compensation from the Post Office. Not sure how much luck I'll have there though.

Yesterday was dissappointing in construction terms. I spent most of the day at work (I'm supposed to be on holiday!) and then in town later. In the evening Dave came round for games, which was good fun. All I got done in terms of construction was to make another set of tiles, finishing another game. I think part of the problem is that with all the travel I've been doing recently for work I just needed some time to relax - I spent a decent chunk of time yesterday reading some new comics I had bought.

I've got a few non-construction related tasks to do today, and in fact every day this week, but I hope to complete a couple of batches of games before The Wife gets back. I've also agreed to meet Dave on Sunday and play the new Jorvik prototype over a couple of pints, which forces me to actually make it :-)

Session Report: Swiggers

Last night was the last of three nights in London for work. I'd not been home since Saturday morning, and I was beginning to feel a bit fed up with the whole travel thing. Fortunately, before I left home I'd decided I'd try to get to a games club in London and promote Border Reivers. I'd contacted a couple, the email address for one of them bounced, the other replied swiftly and was friendly and welcoming. I was hoping to be able to play a couple of games of Border Reivers, and hopefully make a sale too.

So I went along to Swiggers near London Bridge. I got there around 7:30pm, and there were around twenty-five people already playing games - apparently it starts at six. While waiting for a game to finish I wandered round and I was surprised to recognise so few of the games being playing. Shortly after I arrived a bunch of gents finished their games of Safari Cafe (I think that's what it was called although I can't find that in the BoardGameGeek database). I introduced myself, and Border Reivers and offered them the chance to play a game. They were up for it, so I set up a 4-player game and set about explaining the rules. The game started off fairly slowing, with Jay saving his cash in the first turn and going for the mine, Robert and John playing fairly defensively and me moving towards the mine at a fairly slow pace. Jay got to the mine first and with his first turn savings had built up a fairly healthy lead cash-wise, but he then settled down, creating a few towns at which point my slower settling (I'd only built one town) meant that I was now right next to him with far more troops than he had. He spent the money he'd saved trying to bulk up his armies for defensive purposes. I played fairly cagily, making sure I had armies left defending my cities and getting a Militia for defence as soon as I could. Robert built up extensively, and just as he built his second city (and was very low on armies), Jay hit him with a successful Insurrection. Robert didn't play much of a part in the remainder of the game, he took a while to recover, hindered further by his terrible luck on the reinforcement rolls. I managed to wrestle the mine from Jay, and then keep him on the back foot by heading toward his soft underbelly whenever he tried to threaten me at the mine. John came for me in the last couple of turns, and he did manage to push me back, but my defence in depth strategy paid off as he was unable to destroy one of my settlements and hence stop me winning economically.

After the game Jay bought a copy, but the others said they wouldn't have anyone to play it with. Still, Jay said he knew a few people who might like it, and selling a copy to one third of the people I played it with is a result in my book. I was complemented on the production value too, which is always nice.

Border Reivers continues to sell over the internet, but it sells very well when I play it with people and explain the rules to them, so I should really make more of an effort to get to games clubs or whatever and introduce the game to as many people as possible.

I'm off to Denmark tomorrow to spend a weekend with The Wife who I've not seen for a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to it...

Game Design Notebook

I always have a few designs in the works, as well as plenty of other ideas floating around in my head. For the last few months I have found keeping a notebook of ideas invaluable. I am not sure if others use a similar method for tracking ideas, but I find it extremely helpful for planning, so I thought I'd share how I use it.

I use a grid notebook. It is great for drawing quick designs of boards and cards, and allows you to write lists and columns of things very easily. I have quite a thick yet small one, so I can take it around with me.

When I first have a game idea, I like to draw out some of the components that are in my head, just to get a feel for how the game might seem. Often board or card ideas come first. As I go I jot down all the little rule ideas that pop into my head. Over time I develop these and crystalise ideas in the book until I am ready to make a pototype. Here is an early page of notes for a game called 'Nerd Fighting League'. I doubt this will every get made, but a few elements from this have made it into a newer design of mine. I have plenty of pages like this one which didn't quite capture me enough to go on with the design process.

When a game design is some way along, I also use the notebook to work out many of the details for the game. For example, on this page I was working out the balance of card numbers for Archaeology. I also started playing around with specific design ideas for the board and cards.

When a game design is pretty close to finished I also use the notbeook for plotting our the nitty-gritty of production, costs etc. Here I am writing out the different options for the components I might produce for a game. I have found lists like this very useful in comparing prices and different costing options. This sort of process has helped me make decisions about board size, numbers of components and plenty of other things.

Hope that was interesting! I'd be keen to hear how others keep track of all their ideas..

The Woes Of Indecision

I've been trying to get It's Alive! ready for a launch in early June at the Uk Games Expo 2007, a new convention in Birmingham.

However, I know this deadline is quite tight. Before I can go to a convention I need to: get the finished artwork from the artist; do the graphic design; sell some more copies of Border Reivers so that I've got the cash to pay for the artist, printing and components; and then assemble a bunch of copies to take with me. I estimate that It's Alive! will take around an hour and a half to construct a copy - so that's no small feat.

The UK Games Expo would be the first convention I've attended where I've had to pay a trader's fee for a stand, and while I think I'd sell enough copies of It's Alive! and Border Reivers combined to make it worthwhile, I doubt that if It's Alive! wasn't ready it would be worth it to pay the price if I only had Border Reivers to sell.

So I've put off booking and paying for a stand until I'm more sure that I'll definitely have It's Alive! ready. I contacted the organisers again to tell them I was still interested and to check they still have space - and they don't! Damn. By sitting on the fence I may have missed the boat. They've got a waiting list of traders and they are going to try and re-arrange things to make more room, but I may very well not get a booth.

The moral of this tale is to just go for it - then I'll force myself to get it ready in time because I've already paid.

It's Alive! Thumbnails

Today I got some thumbnails from the It's Alive! artist R H Aidley. They're hand-drawn sketches to get an idea of the layout and composition. I've got to look them over and either choose one of each of the options or suggest a different layout.

He's sent me examples of most of the artwork, I'm not going to post them all here, but I will post a few examples. Please bear in mind that this artwork is obviously a long way from being finished. I'd appreciate some feedback :-) As usual you can click on the images to see a bigger version.

First up, the artwork for the 'Arms' card:

Personally I'm leaning towards number three - not sure why.

Secondly, the 'Coffin' card artwork:

Originally I was thinking something like numbers two or three, a simple object like the body parts. But the coffin is conceptually different - it's a wild card that can be used instead of any other part. Maybe the number one, with a scene will convey that better.

Next up the 'Villagers' Uprising' card artwork:

Number two here was my suggestion - the crossed torch and pitchfork to symbolise the angry villagers marching on your castle. However, now I thinking something like number one will again better convey the difference between this card (bad stuff) and the other cards (good stuff).

Finally, here's his take on the exterior of the player shield which hides your progress from the other players:

This is exactly what I asked for, and he's made it look much better than I imagined.

What do you make of it? Likes? Dislikes?

Session Report: Dave At Mine

On Wednesday Dave came round for a night of gaming. We had nothing in particular lined up, but Dave brought along his copy of Memoir '44 just in case. It seemed like a good choice for the evening so we set up the next scenario we had to play: Sword Beach - an amphibious assault. As usual we played both sides, I started as the Axis, defending the beach and then played the Allies in the second game. In the first game I took full advantage of the dug in positions I had with bunkers, infantry in cover and artillery to rain fire on Dave's waterlogged minions. I seemed to be doing pretty well (for me!), holding my own and wreaking some damage on Dave's special forces (who had the wrong insignia as Dave was keen to point out) and armour. However, Dave's special forces were mint and they caused a lot of damage in return once they got a bit closer. It came right down to the wire, with Dave and I both on four out of the five needed victory points. However, it was Dave's turn and I had some weak looking units within range of him, and he promptly finished them off, getting the victory point needed to win the first leg. Ding, ding! Round two. In the second leg tried to emulate Dave's successful strategy, but he brought his reserves out of cover to attack and this just overwhelmed me as I left a decent chunk of my troops in the water in reserve. Dave slaughtered me, quickly racking up the five kills need to win, while I could only manage two in return. Dave two, Jack nil.

Memoir '44 had taken about an hour and a half, and I didn't want to finish too late as I wanted to phone The Wife. So we chose Lost Cities as a nice quick filler to wrap up with. Dave had played fairly recently at one of my games nights so we were able to get stuck in pretty quickly. Dave's winning streak continued as he beat me 43 - 24 in the first game, but we played best of three, and I won the other two games, saving myself from a complete washout. Final scores: me 23, Dave -34 and me 60, Dave 25.

It was another fun evening, it's nice to hang out and play games with Dave, especially with The Wife away - I need the company. It's been a while now since we played Space Hulk, or any of our prototypes - hopefully that'll happen in the next few weeks - I was enjoying both of those.

Border Reivers: Big Push

With The Wife in Denmark for nearly a month I'm keen to get as much construction done as possible while she's away so that I can spend more time with her when she returns. So how's it going?

She left on Sunday afternoon so I've had four evenings available. Two of those I've spent playing games (with Paul and Dave) and I've been getting home late from work due to travel requirements so I've not actually had that much time. However, I have managed a few things:

• I've made the rulebooks for all the remaining copies
• I've bagged the wooden pieces for all the remaining copies
• I've labelled the boxes for the next batch of five games
• I've done the scoreboards and mountain ranges for the batch
• I've started the cards for that batch

Tonight I'm going round to a friend's house to do the gluing for the tiles for that batch, and tomorrow night I hope to finish two or three games from that batch. Why the rush? I'm away all next week in London and Bristol for work, so if I get any orders I'll have to post them from where I am. I need to get a few copies ready to sell and then take them with me. In addition, I'm hoping to attend a couple of games clubs in London on Monday and Wednesday to show off (and hopefully sell) Border Reivers, so I need to have some stock with me for that.

I'm going to get no construction done at all next week, (or the following weekend - I'll be in Denmark visiting The Wife), but I've got the following week off work so I hope to get a load done then. In addition, while I'm away I hope to be able to make some progress on It's Alive! doing some of the graphic design on the computer. How much luck I'll have I don't know.

Session Report: In Which I Don't Finish Caylus!

Last night I went round to Paul's for Monday night games again. I had to be up at 4:45am the next morning to go to Birmingham for a conference with work though - so I was hoping to finish early. First up was Spence's copy of Fluxx. I'd heard bad things about this on the Internet, so I was a bit wary of it, and to be honest I didn't take to it at all. During the three games we played the rules conspired to seriously reduce our choices each turn - for a lot of the time we had to play all the cards we had earn turn. It felt like we were just mechanically performing actions until the game was over - far too chaotic to be able to plan anything and it seemed pretty much random who won. Although I didn't enjoy it, Lisa did like, and the others seemed to think it was fun on occasion. I guess it's just one I don't enjoy. Winners: Lisa and Greg twice.

When Vin arrived we set up a game of Caylus with the five of us. I'd not played this in a while, and I enjoy it so I was keen to play. I got off to a fairly good start building a lot of castle components in the first couple of stages, but only building a single building. I'd used the favours I got to boost my score though and I was in second place. Then I glanced at my watch. It was 10:20pm, with probably an hour left to play and I had to get up in six and a half hours time. It was not good, I had to call it a night or I'd never manage to get up in the morning and catch my train. So I made my apologies and left feeling wretched. I hate walking out halfway through - it's really rude. About the only saving grace is that I don't think Caylus would suffer if someone pulls out. Who won? I've no idea. Let's say me.

A disappointing night all told - and mostly my own stupid fault, but there you go. It was still good fun as the conversation was very entertaining yet again.

Monthly Report: February

February's monthly report is significantly late I'm afraid - mostly due to the excitement around the It's Alive! announcement. It was a pretty good month in terms of games played and an exciting month in terms of creation.

Play

As usual I'll deal with play first. I went to a couple of games nights at Paul's, I saw Dave for games once, we had a dinner party with the obligatory party game after dinner and I hosted a games night too - so plenty of gaming opportunities. As I was playing with my own games or those of friends I see regularly I didn't play any games that were new to me, but I did play several old favourites. To experience some new games I need to get down to Beyond Monopoly really, but I'm having difficulty finding a weekend free. We've had guests and taken on a time-heavy commitment that can only really be done on the weekends. I'm sure I'll get there in the next month or two though. Guillotine was popular again, it's our standard filler at Paul's and Dave has just managed to get his hands on a copy via a BoardGameGeek trade. Carcassonne remains popular, and I still consider it my favourite game. Despite owning several of the expansions the vanilla game hits the table with fair regularity too.

First up the popular games:

• Guillotine: 7 plays
• Carcassonne: 4 plays
• Border Reivers: 2 plays
• Carcassonne: The Castle: 2 plays
• Diamant: 2 plays
• Memoir '44: 2 plays
• PitchCar: 2 plays

In addition, there were a bunch of less popular games too: Alhambra, Cranium, Die Mauer, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Power Grid and Ticket To Ride.

In terms of games played it was a fairly average month, but still enjoyable, and I'm glad Dave liked Border Reivers. When I'm designing a game I'll often suggest it to friends to get a chance to do some more playtesting. Once a game is finished I stop suggesting it - I pimp it at conventions and online, but friends only get to play it if they ask - I don't like to ram it down their throats. However, despite having played it well over a hundred times I still enjoy it, and playing against an experienced opponent is a lot more fun.

Creation

Which brings me on nicely to games design and publishing. It felt like a very busy month for games design, although on the face of it I didn't get an awful lot done. I guess the excitement makes it feel busier.

Border Reivers

It was a fairly steady month for Border Reivers sales, which is nice after the post-Christmas lull. I need to keep up Border Reivers sales to afford the It's Alive! production so a solid month is encouraging. I investigated a few advertising options, but most of them are out of my range - BGG advertising runs to the tune of a few hundred dollars, not much for an established publisher, but way out of my meagre budget. I also constructed another batch and started yet another. After this one there are only a few more batchs yet to make - it definitely feels like I'm on the home straight now - mustn't slack off! I have managed to get some stock back in, making games faster than I've been selling them which is both good and bad!

It's Alive! / Codename: Monster

Obviously a very busy month for It's Alive! I had to make the final go/no go decision, choose an artist (with my friend R H Aidley winning), get a contract together, sign it, post it to Israel and wait for the reply. Plus I worked on a new version of the website, polished the rules a bit, and created my first press release.

Codename: Jorvik

Dave's brilliant idea re-invigorated me on Jorvik, I was feeling a bit despondent about it - it just wasn't quite right, not enough interaction. I didn't managed to get enough time to create a new prototype though - that's a job for this month.

Codenames: Artist & Dollyo

No progress this month - too busy on other things.

Codename: Sennon

I'd made a first prototype of this over Christmas, but when I came to play it solo to see how my ideas worked in the flesh, the components proved to be way too fiddly. Back to the drawing board on this one - it'll probably stay on the back burner for a while I think.

Codename: Surprise

This was a new idea I've had, loosely based on a series of books I've been reading. I love the theme and spent the seven hour train journey to Paris working through some ideas in my notebook. Hopefully I'll get something together fairly soon and start playtesting it. Dave's keen on the idea too (he's reading the same books) so I'll probably have a willing playtester in the early stages when the game is rubbish.

What do I want to achieve this month? Quite a lot! The Wife goes to Denmark for a month on Sunday for her work so I'm going to be home alone, with game design, prototyping and construction the only things to keep me from chronic boredom and loneliness. I hope to finish (or nearly finish) all the Border Reivers construction, getting the last copies made ready for sale. I also hope to do some of the graphic design for It's Alive! (the schematic information that will sit on top of the artwork. I really need to get the new Jorvik prototype made and it would be nice to come up with a first prototype of Surprise. It seems like a huge amount, but I'll have a lot of evenings at home alone, and I've got a week off work to concentrate on construction too.

Components - Cost and feasibility

I am getting very close to finishing up the artwork for Archaeology. This means I'll be heading into actual production soon which is exciting but a tad scary. My brand new stack cutter arrived today, so I am all set for some heavy duty chopping!

Lately I have been thinking about the different types of components that go into games, and how easy it is for me to produce them. It is an interesting topic for me because half the reason I chose to make Archaeology first was because I thought that out of all my developing games, it had the easiest components to construct. However, development has shown me that some things I thought would be easy are hard, and vice versa!

So for my own use (and anyone else who is interested!) here is a list of component types and how easy/cost-effective they are for me to make. After each heading I have a list of exactly what processes are required, and then a rating of A, B or C for ease and cost. A is of course the most feasible. (Keep in mind I am working alone, and am basing this assessment on the cost of printing and materials in Australia.)

Board (no fold)
Printing, mounting, back mounting (if desired), cutting
Ease: A Cost: A

Board (one fold)
Printing, mounting, taping, back-mounting, cutting
Ease: B Cost: A

Board (more than one fold)
Printing, mounting, lots of taping, back-mounting, cutting
Ease: C Cost: A

Cards (printed on one sheet)
Printing, cutting
Ease: B (lots of cutting) Cost: B

Cards (pre-printed, cut and packaged)
Nothing, just order them!
Ease: A Cost: C

Tiles (straight edges, one sided)
Printing, mounting, cutting
Ease: B Cost: A

Tiles (straight edges, two sided)
Printing, mounting, back-mounting, cutting
Ease: C Cost: B

Tiles (curved edges, complex shapes)
Now we're getting into the world of die-cutting, which has expensive entry-costs and is something I am yet to really explore. The costs seem quite high to me though.

Wooden Pieces
Ordered online from good ol' Germany
Ease: A Cost: B - C (depending on amount)

Boxes
Printing, mounting, cutting, assembly
Ease: C Cost: A
(These are a pain to make, but I am yet to find a cheap solution in custom box production)

So there are my thoughts at this stage. Archaeology is tough because it has a folding board and a lot of cards. However the price isn't too bad all up. Other games of mine I feel will be much simpler to construct, but may cost a bit more, especially those with wooden components.

I feel a lot more could be said about the ups and downs of producing each component type. If anyone is interested in discussing this further just let me know. I often wonder if every self-publisher has their own methods for each of these processes!

Games Night: Dave's

Monday night I went round to Dave's for some games again. I'd brought his copy of Border Reivers, plus my It's Alive! prototype and my Pirates of the Spanish Main fleet. Dave wanted to christen his copy of Border Reivers first - so we set up a two player game. Dave won the toss, and laid out a fairly constrained map with more scenery in the middle than I like. I chose the end further from the mine (not sure why) and then we were off. Dave got to the mine before me and put a lot of armies in there to defend it, while simultaneously start to clear land for a new settlement. It's worth noting that Dave got a free reinforcement of both types army and card (Market) in his first turn - so he was off to a flying start. Despite this is was actually a really close game. I managed to successfully attack the mine, Dave won it back and I got it again. We both used Insurrections to attack fairly undefended cities, and I used a Reiving Party to trying to steal from him, while he used Siege Engines a couple of times to aid his attacking of my defences. I managed to break away on the cash front, while Dave continued to spend and receive armies, forcing me to spend my large lead to defend myself. It was one of those back and forth games where it's not clear who's going to win at all. My favourite moment was when Dave used an Insurrection to attack my city, little did he know that I had a Militia to defend with! Dave attacks, I reveal my Militia: 'Ha! My grocers are armed with...' Dave: 'That's a Market not a Militia!' Me:'Arse! It looks they're armed with fruit. Houston, we're in trouble.' Even armed only with fruit they managed to defend themselves though - the city lived to see another day. In the end I managed to wrest an advantage and won - thought it was very close.

The second game of the night was Pirates of the Spanish Main which we'd played recently. We set up for a quick thirty point battle, and I made a decision to add a six point coin to the pot of available coins - my reasoning being that I'd use fast ships with small holds to try to track it down quickly. I ended up with three ships and three fairly cheap crew. Dave chose two ships (one four-masted beast) and a couple of expensive crew, including Admiral Morgan who had the potential to be brilliant. I set out to the nearby islands and quickly found my six-value coin, Dave raided one of the islands near him and started to close with one of his smaller ships armed with a firepot specialist. I brought my Captained ship to bear on that ship using it's longer guns and ability to move and shoot to quickly dispatch the small two-master. Dave's bigger ship came over to engage. Fortunately for me Admiral Morgan's ability to act twice on a particular die roll wasn't coming up for Dave, and though I had to run away to begin with, I brought a second ship over for back-up and managed to maneouvre my Captained ship into range of his ship while out of range of his shorter range front and back guns. I managed to sink that one too, so it was game over. In conclusion I think the Captain is priceless, Admiral Morgan not so much, especially with bad die rolls a factor - he's very expensive (five points) too.

We had time for a quick game of Carcassonne: The Castle after Pirates. Dave and I both drew for the largest house, so neither of us got the biggest open space bonus, and I foolishly wasted a 'score an unfinished road' counter I picked up near the end of the game. In the end the game was decided by the markets, and I had quite a lot, so I snuck my third win of the night. Final scores: me 91, Dave 76.

Another great night of gaming :-)

Re-theming It's Alive!

I've been monitoring the comments on Yehuda's blog, the Board Game News story and obviously in the emails I've received.

Lots of people have been discussing the change in theme between Yehuda's prototype: The Menorah Game and It's Alive! So I thought I'd post here to give a little more background into my thought processes, rationale and whether or not I still think it was the right choice.

My Experience

Border Reivers is themed around the chaos and conflict on the Scottish Borders during medieval times. It's a pasted on theme, I invented the game way before I thought of the theme, but I thought the theme fit the gameplay pretty well. A lot of my Border Reivers customers have bought the game because they live in the Borders region, are from the Borders region or have a Scottish or Northern English heritage. In that sense the theme is good as it attracts people to the game. Still as a proportion of British people, those who live in the Scottish Borders are a small percentage, and as a fraction of a world-wide audience it becomes vanishingly small.

Why Re-theme?

First of all: I liked the Menorah theme. It's unusual, there aren't that many religous games in the mainstream and very few of those are Jewish - an unusual theme gets extra points in my book.

However, theme serves a purpose when you are publishing (as opposed to playing) a game. The theme of a game is the hook that attracts people to find out more, play the game or buy the game. What a publisher wants from a theme is something that will attract as many potential customers to a game as possible, while putting off as few customers as possible. Not every game has a theme - abstract games like Go and Chess make do without, but most modern games do. Once the customer has been attracted the game will live or die depending upon it's quality - so a good theme won't save a crap game, and a game that has an unpopular theme (or none at all) can become popular just by being a good game.

As I've mentioned before the majority of my customers are in the UK, which is a largely secular country with a small proportion of Jews. While the Menorah theme will appeal to non-religious people and non-Jews I felt a different theme might appeal to more British gamers. There's the crux of it - I wanted to appeal to as many British gamers as possible.

What Theme?

So the next question is obviously what theme do I choose? Here I was aided by my friend Dave who suggested during our first play of The Menorah Game that you needed something to cry out when you complete your set of candles - we used 'Menorah'.

That started the gears whirring in my head. The next step was to work out who I sell to. At the moment most of my sales are to fellow geeks over the internet - most sales of Border Reivers have come from BoardGameGeek. I also get a decent chunk from friends and family (who tend to buy because I made/published the game regardless of theme) and from playing the game at conventions. Most of my customer base is male, mid-twenties to mid-fifties at a guess and I'm guessing here: has a broadly similar set of interests to me: games, comics, sci-fi, computers and general geekiness.

I wanted a theme where you were collecting eight different items, the different coloured candles in Yehuda's prototype had the potential to ruin the game for colour-blind players - I wanted something that was clearly distinguishable even if you see in shades of grey. My brother and two of my gamer friends are colour-blind so it is always in the front of my mind when designing games. In addition, it needed the concept of a wild card (gold candle/coffin) and a thief (soldier/villagers' uprising).

I don't remember when I first thought of the creating a monster theme, but I instantly loved it, I thought it would fit well with the people I think my customers are, and the people I suggested it to thought it was great. The biggest problem by far was going to be getting Yehuda to agree to it. I'd taken his nice, stately religious game and turned it into a macabre game of grave-robbery and body-part trading. Gulp. They are poles apart as several people have noted in various forums since the game was announced. Fortunately, Yehuda was prepared for me to change the theme and was ok (not delighted!) with the theme I had suggested. I think he'd been hoping for something more urbane, but there you go.

Feedback

So far there's been a range of feedback. AndyB regretted the loss of the religious theme. Several people commented that the themes were wildly different (no argument there), and I'm assuming a mild disapproval in their cases but I may be wrong. Several people have definitely approved though, saying it will be easier to get others to play the new theme.

Overall, I still think I've made a good choice. Is it the best possible choice? I doubt it. But I'm new to games publishing, and if my theme is good enough for me to sell out I'll be happy.

Interestingly Mike Doyle has recently posted on theme, and while I've obviously pasted this theme on a game that has (according to Yehuda) had many different themes, I like to think that I've tried to fit the new theme to the game with some success.

What are your thoughts on the new theme? Why not rate me on Mike's scale?

I Think I'm Getting The Hang Of This Publicity Lark

So Sunday I announced the release of game number two from the Reiver Games stable: It's Alive! (formerly known as Codename: Monster, formerly known as The Menorah Game). I also informed W. Eric Martin of Board Game News, and a couple of other press contacts and posted on BoardGameGeek that the pre-order list was now open.

This is quite a big difference from how I released Border Reivers when I just created an entry on BoardGameGeek and mentioned it here. Of course in those days we had hardly any readers so that didn't attract much attention.

Nowadays we get more readers here and the BoardGameGeek, Board Game News and a post on Yehuda's blog have all generated their fair share of interest. Within the first 24 hours of announcing the game I already have more pre-orders than I got for Border Reivers - so I must be doing something right.

Hello from Phil

Hello, I am a new member here at Creation And Play. My name is Phil and I am typing this from Sydney, Australia.
I thought I'd just tell you a bit of my gaming and design background in my first post.

I grew up with boardgames, but as with most kids I was mainly playing the mainstream standards. I can remember playing Monopoly at 5, as well as Battleship, Connect Four, Guess Who? and plenty of others. I think the first game I played where I can remember really noticing something special was Scotland Yard, at around 7 years. I really sensed there was something different in this game, and the mechanics (espeically the Mr. X player being invisible!) really appealed to me. A little later on I really got into games like Fireball Island and Dungeon. I really loved the worlds of adventure these games created in my imagination.

At some point in my early teens I decided to make my own games. This was partly just a fun thing to do, but I think also came about because I hadn't come across any really fun games in some time. My games were mainly made out of paper and hand-drawn. On the occasion I would do something special, and print a board off the computer or glue it onto some thicker cardboard. Here are some recollections of some of these very early games:

Army Campaign
A wargame which was inspired by Stratego and those complex wargames which I had seen but never played. I still have this, and surprisingly it's ok! The game begins with each player randomly laying down pieces of terrain, and then setting up all their units. Each type of unit has its own movement and attack factors. I even made a cardboard sleeve for the game and a scorepad!

The Crazy Hat Game
This was largely inspired by the absurdist game design of The Mad Magazine Game, which was a hoot for my cousins and I. We took the silliness to an extreme. To win, you had to be wearing the magic hat (which was made out of an icecream container), with the magic antenna (a toilet roll) stuck in it. You also had to have a sign around your neck which had something demeaning written on it like "I'm an idiot!". These objects were collected by moving around a board, finding them and also stealing them off other players.

Black and Blue
Looking back on this, I almost invented a CCG before Magic existed! Well, sort of. Basically this was a fighting card game. Each card was a character who had various attacking and defensive moves. A player would play the fighter they wished to use, and their opponent would choose their card which had the best chance of winning. Dice were rolled and the winner would take both cards. Me and my cousin played this a lot and what made it fun for us was that each time we got together we would create a whole pile of new fighters. Lots of fun!

A few years ago I played Settlers of Catan and was instantly drawn back into gaming. I love the sleekness of Euro design, but I also love the adventurous themes of the American games I played when I was young. These two things are what I try to incorporate into my designs nowadays.

I am currently working on quite a few games, which are at various stages of development. At the start of this year I decided to qive self-publishing a shot. I picked a design of mine entitled Archaeology to produce first. This was because it was furthest along in playtesting, but also because it was quite a simple game to make in terms of components. I am pretty close to releasing the game now, just having to finalise the artwork over the coming weeks. If all goes well, and I manage to even sell a few copies, I would love to move onto a number of other games.

I am looking forward to documenting some of my design experiences here, and I hope you get something out of reading them!

Codename: Monster Is Go!

I've been blogging for a while now about Codename: Monster a submission I received from another designer. Yesterday I received from that designer a signed copy of the contract I had sent him a couple of weeks ago, so now it's game on.

The designer is Yehuda Berlinger one of the most prolific board games bloggers, and the submission was The Menorah Game a set collection and auction game themed around collecting candles to light a menorah. While I liked the theme and loved the game I didn't think that the theme would help me sell the game in the UK (where most of my customers are), which is a largely secular country and where Jews are in a minority.

I played around with the game for a while and came up with a different theme which I thought would be more appealing to the UK market: It's Alive! - collecting body parts to build a monster that you are trying to bring to life. It's pretty macabre. After play-testing it quite a lot and getting Yehuda's permission to re-theme it we're now go for launch.

I'm hoping to have it ready for early June, but that may change as I have to do the graphic design, get the artwork done by the artist and gather a bit more cash from Border Reivers sales first. Anyway, it's available to pre-order now, from my website.

Those of you who have played it please rate it on the Geek, but as ever, please do it fairly - I'd rather have a mediocre rating than an obviously biased one than people will ignore.

This is a big step for me, from board games designer, self-publishing his own game to board games publisher, publishing on behalf of someone else. Exciting times - here's hoping it works out...