Fantasy Flight Games

When the FFG Rants page gets too full the excess is dumped here to rot. After fermenting for a while the updates will be rendered down to their component letters and recycled. Files will be transferred to the Archives at random intervals, whenever we remember to do it.

12/12/07 – Michael
Hello, I'm one of the new editors. Technically, I'm the senior editor, but until very recently, I was the only person doing editing work full time around here. I started in August (the same day as Laura), and since then, I've known little rest. I can't really complain though, because I'm one of the lucky few who get tamper with nearly all the cool projects this company has in progress.

We use iChat quite a bit at FFG, and one of the things we're asked to do is keep our status message set to our current project. So, to give you an idea of what I've been doing for the past four months, I give you a screenshot of my entire iChat status menu:

12/10/07 – Thaadd
Once upon a time there were 6 kids in a haunted house…

Or wait! There was actually 13, but they could not all play on the same night, so they forced the softhearted Editor to devote one night a week to running children (FFG Employees!) through the lands of Grimm. Here is a story of six of these children.

The Children had a fair amount of bickering on who would get to do what. One, the self-assured and droll designer declared right away that he would play the nerd. He immediately started detailing in minute detail the contents of his school backpack. The graphic designer wanted to be the Cool kid, which being his somewhat younger age than the rest of the children involved some discussion. For our world of Grimm was set in the early 80s. No, Nike was not cool – Velcro Reebok were cool. Steel lunchboxes were very nice. Oh, and those Velcro notebooks, what were they called again? Much discussion ensued over lunch tables.

The Art coordinator being a very dreamy person ended up as the Dreamer, however it took her so long to make up her mind (being distracted by beautiful art for covers and cards) that she was making her character at the very last minute. The one who makes the webpages was new to this type of gaming. There was much discussion on what she might be at heart — in the end, a Bully! She is very good at telling people who go bother her in the middle of the day to walk back to their computers and email them the requests they have for her. This is a sign of a good Bully.

Another person found of this band of children was the Jock. Normally the Jock can be found in the warehouse, heaving boxes around to get games out to stores and distributors. Now armed with a hockey stick, he is there to hang out with the Cool Kid and take on monsters in the Grimm Lands. He is somewhat quiet, but very confident of himself when he makes up his mind. The last person to make up the band of third graders is the Outcast, played by the very talkative and quirky Customer Service person. This outcast did NOT do as everyone expected her, and make a little goth Swedish Exchange Student, but instead of little French girl who is obsessed by Spies and being Grown Up. The little girl Nikita (named by the Operations Director, although she has not seen this movie) likes to rush shrieking at monsters, but is afraid of adults.

Together these children gathered together every other Fourth Weekday, and fought the monsters of the Great and Awful Forest. This is a nice difference from the normal Dungeon Crawling done by the Jock and the Outcast with a number of other people who did not reply to an interoffice email fast enough to get the first slots. The Editor who runs the various bands of Children through the Forest had no idea what he was getting into when he replied to the Outcast's email after having forwarded a rules question back through her. The Outcast simply wanted to know what was the correct answer to something involving 'Moose sized' monsters — and ended up buying the book as a nice, single book alternative.

Now the Outcast has to convince the Bully to put this Rant up without removing the Irritatingly cute Capital Letters. (I'm usually really nice… usually. -ed.)

The office A Game of Thrones CCG league is once again in full swing. In the past number of weeks we have been working our way through the newest edition, Five Kings Edition, its precursor Iron Throne Edition and its two expansions, A House of Thorns and A House of Talons as well as Winter Edition and its two expansions A Song of Twilight and A Song of Night. We would buy a pack and offer another up to the prize pool for which ever expansion/edition we happened to be moving through that week. After playing in a swiss style tournament for three to four days we would tally up each players record for the week and divide up into two groups to draft the packs that were offered up by each player. If anyone felt particularly confident that week they could also put in an extra pack to go into the top pool.

This week we all wanted to do something a little different and since we had done tournaments based on all of the standard format legal editions/expansions, we decided that a chaos draft was in order. Each person who wished to be a part of the tournament would buy five packs of cards of their choice from the previously named sets and sit down in a group. Each person would choose one of their packs, open it, choose one card from that pack and pass it on to the next person at the table. That person would choose one card from the pack and pass it to the next person etc. etc… until all of the cards were gone. After the draft each person would build a deck using only the cards they had drafted (along with a few utility cards available to all players from a supplemental draft pack). Because of the limited amount of cards available to players each person is allowed to play as two house cards but needing more power (a commodity needed) to win the game. Now the tournament may begin!

I ended up drafting houses Martell and Targaryen. I think I drafted really well (all things considered). I didn't end up with as many tricksy-tricks as I would have liked, but it is a solid deck with a good set of characters such as the Ghost of High Heart (a card designed by former world champ Matt (Rings) Ley, Grey Worm, Daenerys Targaryen, Septon Chayle, Daario Naharis, the wildling Craster, Dany's dragon Rhaegal and the Khal himself Khal Drogo. I also ended up drafting my favorite plot card ever, The Red Wedding!

Corey has showed his prowess among the ranks of AGoT players here in the office often finishing in the top half of the players in the weekly tourneys. Knowing that, I figured I would probably have my work cut out for me and that this would not be an easy win. As a matter of fact I was handed a devastating loss. I started with a two card drop in the setup phase with no income to speak of. I pulled out all the stops trying to delay his deck until I could get something going, but to no avail. I was able to stall his win for about five rounds. His Robert Baratheon who raises his claim by one during power challenges was just too powerful and I did not draw into the cards necessary to kill him off. Bob was definitely his MVC (most valuable card) during the match. My MVC was an attachment that stopped him from winning a challenge by 4 or more total strength otherwise it would have given Bob –4 strength and killed him (until Corey discarded it with an event… grrrrr).

My next opponent (notice how I didn't say victim ^__^) Rob Kouba playing House Greyjoy/Baratheon

We decided to play our game after work instead of at lunch. During lunch we played a friendly game of Mutant Chronicles for our play-test league which I conceded when it was apparent that my dice rolls were doing nothing but causing me a brain aneurysm. Another poor start to the day.

Post work Rob and I sat down for our game. I felt it was still a poor start for my deck, but it was good enough. We went back and forth for a few rounds until I was able to marshal my eight strength dragon Rhaegal with the help of Dany. Two rounds later I was able to trigger my Red Wedding on Rob's poor Lord character Randal Tarley and it seemed to be the beginning of the end for him. He made it an interesting game but I was able to squeak out the win 16 power to 11. My MVC was Iron Throne Edition Rhaegal. An eight strength dragon sitting on my side of the field seemed to make all the difference.

Jason is still a new-comer to A Game of Thrones (in the big scheme of things), but has flexed his muscle in the early tournament/league by building a wicked Baratheon deck that had made everyone a little nervous to play against it. To my knowledge this would be his first draft experience in a collectable game. He and I before the match began were both at a respectable one and one record, so I assumed he picked up drafting rather quickly. As it turned out, it didn't really matter much.

I got off of a nice start with a three card drop in the setup phase with a nice army character and some income. After the first round I had solidified some nice characters and taken out a big threat on his side of the field The Knight of Flowers, Loras Tyrell. Second round I went and searched for Daenerys Targaryen to give me some extra gold to use and to give me a Lady character to power my Red Wedding. I was able to trigger the Red Wedding round four and push for the win in round five.

Corey Konieczka was the winner being the only person to go 3-0. Nate French, the lead designer for A Game of Thrones, and I were tied at 2-1. We decided to pass on playing and we would let the dice decide how we were seeded. On a twenty-sided die I roll a 6... and of course Nate wins the roll with a twenty.

Not a bad showing all things considered. I felt obligated to post this rant after we had drafted because I had ended up with a card titled Moment of Glory. As we opened our fortune cookies after lunch, Luke's read… Well, I'll let you take a look.

A few of us dressed up — see the picture below. I thought for sure more of us would dress for the occasion, but there's one more then last year.

from left: Jason in a Midnight outfit he dug out of the Midnight wardrobe in the back;
Jeremy as Dr. Who; Zoe as a Renaissance Princess; Michelle in fun Halloween colors;
Laura as Jet Girl; Eric as a Radioactive Pirate.

Jeremy and I, to celebrate, had candy and cupcakes for anyone who came into our office and said, "trick or treat!" We also encouraged costumes, but I still gave cupcakes to those who didn't — they still had to say the magic words.

"The Doctor" (AKA Jeremy) dishing out some candy, and Cupcakes!

10/25/07 – Kevin Childress
Being a graphic designer at FFG demands a large amount of effort into making things look cool. So I will divulge a small amount of information into how much work goes into something fairly small and usually under-appreciated in one of our board-games. The little button, shown below, seems innocent enough, just something simple that will probably end up on some cards to hold some form of information or a stat in the future.

The casual player may not realize what goes into making such a small button that, when shrunk down and actually used, will lose most of it's striking artistic glory. Most of the graphics here and in other companies will probably start 300% larger than it's actual printed size… however the smaller something gets the better looking resolution wise it will get (that is why most art prints and such are actually significantly reduced in size when it heads to the printers).

It certainly looks like a circus in there now! It took no less than around 30 individual layers to create the above button, each with varying degrees of shadows, highlights, bevels, glows, shadows and textures all applied... most also have transparency effects such as color burns, linear burns, overlays and masks going on. It's not as simple as apply styles to various layers, that's only a small fraction of the equation. Making it all look professional when everything is set up is the trick... to use styles but to make it look like you didn't use styles. Painting your highlights and shadows by hand also adds a good dose of realism to projects.

So if you see this image in the future on some FFG board-game, you'll know what it's insides look like, and how much effort we put into even the smallest things.

10/15/07 – Bryan
Last weekend Jaffer, Luke, Nick and I attended the Alliance Games Distributor open house in Ft. Wayne Indiana. I always enjoy these retailer shows because I get to spend a lot of time talking with retailers one on one, and showing them our new games. I started out in the industry working at retailers, so it is fun to see things from the other side.

If you're a retailer, you should really be attending one of the many retailer shows that happen over the course of the year. These shows are a great way to get a chance to talk with the manufacturers, and they are a good time to boot.

For those of you who couldn't make it, I have included pictures, so you can get the complete FFG booth experience. Apologies for not being as good a photographer as Peter:

Close up of the sweet pre-painted minis included in the Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok starter.

10/12/07 – Andrew
In celebration of the forthcoming StarCraft: the Board Game and the slew of amazing video games that have been and will be coming out this fall, I've decided to put together a list of my top 5 favorite video games of all time. Here it is in no particular order:

Baldur's Gate 2 (PC): An amazing, very long, AD&D role-playing game set in the Forgotten Realms. I loved BG1 as well, but I think the sequel took everything that was great about the original to the next level - better graphics, more replay value, cool character sub-classes like the Monk and Berserker, and of course, a fantastic story with a great villain, fun plot twists, and the potential for romance with a dark elf. Oh, Viconia!

StarCraft (PC): Not here to promote the board game, StarCraft consumed my life for about six months (which I know isn't much time to many people in this office — namely the ones who have been playing World of WarCraft every day since launch) but, to me, given that it's an RTS (a genre that I'm not much into) and the fact that I played multiplayer only a handful of times, that's saying something. At the time, I thought this game was the coolest thing ever. I found the campaign totally engrossing. The story was entertaining, the cut scenes were beyond anything else at the time, and the overall atmosphere of the game was hypnotic.

Resident Evil 4 (GameCube): The best thing to come out of my short love affair with my Nintendo Wii was that it provided me with the opportunity to play all the cool GameCube games I'd missed out on by not owning that particular console. The coolest of said games was easily Resident Evil 4. I'm not a big RE guy, but I loved this game. It's perfectly paced. The visual style creates a totally immersive experience. The fact that you can't strafe is awesome and helps to reinforce the nearly constant tension you feel while playing. The final boss was a bit weak, but since getting to him was a significant challenge, I didn't mind so much, then you ride off into the sunset on a waverunner. Brilliant!

Super Mario Brothers 3 (NES): I've enjoyed every installment in the Super Mario Bros. series, but the best is SMB3 - especially if you play it with two players. The levels are great fun, and they don't become ridiculously difficult until the very end, but by that time you've had so much fun that it doesn't seem to matter. The two player aspect, I think, is where this game really stands above the others in the series. The ability to work co-orperatively in the world view allows you and you're playing partner to play to each other's strengths and plow through the levels in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, my wife is a sorceress at SMB, so I can lean on her ability to easily complete levels when they've become too difficult for me.

Planescape: Torment (PC): I had some trouble deciding whether or not to put Planescape on my list since I've never completed it, but I've started it nearly ten times (for a total of about 60 hours of gameplay), and the story has probably one the the best beginnings in the history of all RPGs. Waking up in the morgue to a floating, talking skull. The setting is unforgettable. The main character, The Nameless, is so rich with story it's ridiculous. The NPCs are the best ever. Character death has never been better utilized. And, the writing is better than what you'll find in most fantasy/sci-fi novels. The is a lot of reading in the game, so if you don't like to read, then you shouldn't bother with it, but for those of you who appreciate the written word, there is no game better than this one.

10/11/07 – Laura
Now that I've been here at FFG for 11 weeks and 3 days (I started July 23rd) I thought I should finally introduce myself.

I am Laura, the newest Marketing Associate. I'm told I kinda took over what Dan was doing now that he does more production type stuff. I started here just as all the GenCon craziness started happening, which made me wonder what I got myself into. After getting to experience GenCon and recovering, I am now getting settled here at FFG—it's beginning to feel like home.

Before I found my way here, I was working as a contractor in web design/development for a few different corporations. I fit in a lot better here, but it took some getting used to not being the geekiest person in the room—it's true, I was always introduced as the token geek.

Some of my favorite things: juggling, unicycling, robots, tutu's, sci-fi, being artsy (like sewing, photography, and other crafty things), and baking. Oh, and there's games too!
Video games: Kirby will always be my favorite, and I've been playing Kingdom Hearts and I'm so excited for Kingdom Hearts TCG to come out!
Card games: I guess I'm a little more old school with cards, such as Tarot, Cribbage and Canasta. I've become a huge fan of Cold War, and I can't wait to get my own copy.
Board games: I love getting together with friends and playing new games. I just got the Treehouse system, which I enjoy for the simplicity. I'm still getting to know the FFG line better, but some of the ones I like, so far, are Condottiere, Drakon, and Wings of War.

BTW, I know I had promised on the forums that rants would be posted everyday, but this has turned out to be tougher to encourage people to write then I thought.

I am new (well… only sort of at this point) to Fantasy Flight Games as an employee. I work in the collectables department as a community support associate— so, for those of you who play A Game of Thrones CCG or Call of Cthulhu (or who will be playing Kingdom Hearts CCG and Mutant Chronicles), we will probably find each other sooner or later.

I will soon begin the painful entry of our tournament records for A Game of Thrones CCG and Call of Cthulhu tournaments from GenCon. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Wasn't GenCon in mid-August?" Yes… yes it was. After recovering from the madness of my first GenCon and various other endeavors at and away from Fantasy Flight (and with Luke Reed out on the road doing his Wandering Crow work) in the following weeks after GenCon, it seems an almost mountainous task to scale. I need to get the hundreds of people looked up under our player records with usernames (and if they don't have a username for our rankings system I need to make them one), going round by round and entering them into our online ranking system. As the community support associate for Fantasy Flight Games' collectables it is my duty to snuggle up to all of the sheets of paper containing ridiculous turnout numbers and do the round-by-round, blow-by-blow account of each of the sponsored events. As a side note, I'd just like to thank Kevin Tomczyk for being both the bane of my existence and my savior by compiling as completely as possible, the tournament records for me to enter and post for everyone. Thanks KTombut — next time could you lose it in the mail for me?

Now, just to put all of this in perspective for those of you were not at GenCon 2007, I'm going to show you just how much work will go into doing the data entry for these events. We had a total of 62 people for our Game of Thrones CCG Worlds Tournament. We also had a bunch of other various AGoT tournaments with a combined total of people that make 62 people seem like a bucket of water tossed into a Minnesota lake. Couple with that the fact that I need to go and enter the results round-by-round to get those people ranked accordingly (which involves finding all participants' login names too). Toss all of that together and sprinkle in some four to five Call of Cthulhu CCG tournaments with approximately seven to fifteen people each and we've got ourselves a major pain in my arse (or a brain aneurysm… which ever comes first).

So, wish me luck that I don't fall off of the horse and get buried under a pile of tournament records and decklists and/or die from a loss of blood from all the paper cuts I'm about to receive.

So, we went and did some Paintballing last week. A grand time was had by all, even those of us who got creamed in the face by bright orange paint (when they say "Do not take your goggles off," they mean it!). For me, as out-of-shape and unskilled as I was, the greatest success of the day was the implementation of Paintball Codenames for all in attendance.

Here we go; let's see if I remember them all. (Please note that some of the codenames, and here I'm looking at the Landroval Studios crew, are not fit for public consumption.)

Back row, from left: Emo, CENSORED, Redbeard, Bastard, Elvis, Camo, Sarge, Army, Cardshark (back), Sparkles (pigtails), Hampster, Junior, Mayhem, Wolfboy (that's pronounced "Volfboy"), Roadrage, CENSORED, Plague, Sandman, Metal, A-Bomb. Front row, from left: Two Weeks, CENSORED, Tattoo, CENSORED, Crash, Birdbrain, Orcbait (in black), Yankee, Hamlet, Flyboy.

Every codename has a story and a reason behind it. My own codename, Yankee, was given to me by Roadrage (Peter), based on the fact that I'm from Vermont. Trying to explain to him that for a Red Sox fan, "Yankee" has some unfortunate connotations was pointless. People aren't interested in hearing why you don't want your codename—in fact, if you don't like a codename, all the better! Maybe if you make a lot of noise asking for it on our forums, we'll actually go into the various codenames and explain where they came from.

We played a few games of Capture the Flag, and then a few of what can best be described as "Deathmatch" for those of us who are FPS players. Since we're a company of giant game nerds, we decided that the "Deathmatch" game rules needed some work—they rewarded low interactivity and turtling as opposed to aggressive, fast-moving gameplay.

Next time we go out there, I expect we'll have a draft of rules ready to be playtested. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Yes, these are boxes and boxes of board games. But no, that's not a picture that was taken inside of Fantasy Flight's warehouse immediately after a semi truck sized shipment of games has arrived.

Hello, I'm Jason, the newly hired Game Developer at FFG. I am originally from Ohio, so getting the developer gig here in Minnesota meant packing all my worldly possessions into boxes, and then packing all those boxes into a truck for a trek halfway across the country. A lot of those boxes packed into that truck held games. To be honest, way more boxes of games then I thought there would be. The sheer amount of games I own, and the volume of moving van space they took up surprised even me.

The pic with me in it is just for scale purposes. I am 6' tall, so you are looking at a height of about 7 feet worth of games.

So how many games are there? Well, I figure that since each box contains between 5 to 15 games, that would make an average of 10 games per box. And there are 40 boxes. 10 x 40 = 400. Wow. 400 games. Not quite sure what that number says about me, except that I must really like games.

10/2/07 – Corey
Lately I have been sucked into our A Game of Thrones CCG. No, this is not a shameless plug, I am simply stating that I really have been enjoying our in office leagues. Last season, I managed to pull out a second place finish, losing the finals to John Grams and his Powerhouse Deck of Doom™.

This season is a little different as we are playing with the newest set: Five Kings Edition, and the gaming is a little more free form. Generally we can play against whomever we would like whenever we would like. We are constantly pruning and manipulating our decks, and do not keep track of our record. Every week or two Nate is organizes a small tournament to run throughout the week. I find this league form interesting and have been through my share of nail biters. When we do return to the sealed league format I will reclaim what was wrongfully ripped away from me!

In work related news, I have been working on the World of Warcraft: Adventure Game and eagerly awaiting the arrival of StarCraft. My life for Aiur!

9/20/07 – Eric
I've stayed pretty late at work and should clearly go home, so instead I got the urge to write a rant about something that came up in conversation today. Figures.

As mentioned in a rant last winter, John G. and I go way back to elementary school. Find the rant dated 01/04/07 to see a picture of us as kids.

Moving forward in our past to young adulthood about 21 years ago, John and I were friends with another guy named Ryan and the three of us had various differing and overlapping geeky interests. We all liked comics, Ryan was a huge sports fan who knew about collectibles, John and I were both gamers, I had made model rockets when I was younger, John was a big WWII buff and he and Ryan had both built models from kits, including Star Trek stuff and so on... so we decided to open a hobby shop. We picked out a little mall that we thought would be a good spot, we took some small business classes at the nearby community college and started planning what stuff a great hobby shop would need.

Of course, things don't always fall into place. I honestly didn't remember why it fizzled, but John reminded me that one of Ryan's relatives was going to help finance us and when that fell through we didn't really continue. Maybe we should have. Maybe we were just too young and not sufficiently motivated by the idea at the time. The three of us were friends for several more years and we all ended up doing various other things, John and I don't know where Ryan is now. But I find it strangely fitting and a bit ironic that over two decades later, John and I are here working at a game company like FFG, helping to supply cool stuff to your Friendly Local Game Stores.

9/17/07 - Thaadd
So the Rant page has been a bit dry lately – sorry about that! Here is a bit of a longer rant. I was thinking about this the other day – We have some new staff around (we'll make them do the 'New Guy' rants and there is the standard FFG 'Get to know you' schmoozing soon!). This made me think about how well I know my coworkers!

We're a fairly close workplace, with a weekly RPG group (Seven-strong with a rotating roster! - ed., who is also the current GM), nights people set up for board games (my house tonight!), and some people doing fairly regular ping pong, Frisbee golf, cheap-movie theater nights (bad movies are better in good company!) and such. Still, we all have our other interests too. I was curious what other sorts of things people find themselves up to, on their spare time. I wandered around with a notepad one lunch, and pestered people about their interests. Some people were harder to pin down than others.

Like the last 'Long' rant I did – I'm mixing this up, the bullets are individuals, but I told them I would not identify them by name, department or the like.

Playing Games. Reading. Writing stories. Consuming media. (You're going to see a lot of "Playing Games" listed as a hobby here. Many people who didn't list it were heard to say "I figured that didn't count." -ed.)

Sewing, Juggling, Unicycling, long distance cycling, helping to run a science fiction convention. Juggling festivals. (We assume that this means festivals devoted to juggling, although it could mean metaphorically juggling varied festivals! -ed.)

Electronic gaming, painting, medieval weddings, paintball/airsoft, watching movies

Making Electronica music, playing guitar, drawing, video games. (Is it called "electronica music"? I thought it was "electronic music," or "electronica." -ed.)

Race car driving (when probed further: stock cars, with 4 cylinders), song writing, playing bass.

Massive Multiplayer Online gaming, hanging out with girlfriend. (Okay, this is second person to cite "hanging out with my girlfriend" as a hobby. Guys. THAT IS NOT A HOBBY. Tell your girlfriend she's your hobby; see how she responds. -ed.)

Running a science fiction convention, watching movies, dancing, Renaissance Festival, Fringe Festival Theater.

Music – Opera Singing, theater, biking, "Reading Excessive Amounts of Novels" video games, drawing, painting, martial arts, and making up stories. (Is "making up stories" a euphemism for lying, or for writing? -ed.)

Reading, Photography, pranks. (This last one is a hobby. A somewhat irritating one.)

Reading comics, anime, Massively Multiplayer Online gaming. Golf, video games, drinking delicious adult beverages, cooking.

Learning how to be a pilot (our far future corporate jet pilot!), Massively Multiplayer Online gaming, Role-Playing, CCGs, comics, anime.

DJing, Lacrosse (playing and watching!) Role-Playing, Travel, reading, TV, addiction to CDs/Music

Being a Dad. (When queried, yes – that is his only hobby!) (But I'm going to add: making movies, 'cuz he does it for both fun AND profit. -ed.)

Cooking, brewing, reading, flying internet spaceships, working theater tech, Role-Playing, crazed foreign folk music.

Running the Movie room at a the local Sci Fi Convention, collecting vintage movie posters, Role-playing.

... so in summery, it does look like we are a geeky bunch, but with some definite 'outlier' interests, like Opera or Race car driving. Some people do things regularly, but don't consider it a hobby. A fair number of us are parents, which becomes a hobby in and of itself… I don't think there is an 'average' FFG type of employee. It was fun making this list, and then quizzing other people in the lunch room the next day who did what. No one could name the racecar driver, or the unicyclist. Only a couple of people knew the opera singer! Everyone knows who the Rollerderby announcer is, though (he does not really have an 'inside' voice). My addiction to internet spaceships is not hard to figure out, either! Perhaps we should have a FFG Band? Two guitars, bass, we could get the keyboardist to do percussion, and have an opera lead! Or maybe not... touring would cut into game releases... (I can hear it now: "Why is the new Fantasy Fliers album delayed AGAIN?" -ed.)

I've done flavor text before – most famously on Fury of Dracula – and I know more or less how the gig works. Flavor text gets to go on the component if and only if (that's "iff" to some of you) there's room to spare and it would enhance the experience. Those two requirements are equally important, by the way – just because there's some empty space somewhere doesn't mean you have to cram some italicized words onto it. If it won't enhance the gameplay experience by way of immersion in the world, it don't go.

So why, one might ask, did I go ahead and put flavor text in EVERY SINGLE ONE of the board encounters I first-drafted for World of Warcraft: the Adventure Game? I don't know. I really don't. I knew that most of it would get cut. If 25% of that stuff makes it through to the final version of the game, I'll be astounded. So why do I set myself up for the heartbreak of watching all my best stuff land on the cutting room floor? What I should do, if I were a rational human being, is hammer out the mechanics, let graphic design do their thing, and then go back and add flavor text where appropriate. Of course, if I were a rational human being, I probably wouldn't be doing this at all.

I leave you with this gem from the cutting room floor, uttered by an undead NPC:

(Yeah, yeah — we get it, Dan. Go back to translating things from French to English, please. — ed.)

8/10/07 - Zoe
So GenCon's next weekend. It's a happy, intense whirl of color and activity around here these days; if you imagine us all in pointy-toed shoes, it does rather feel like Santa's Gaming Workshop (Not to be confused with a certain British competitor - ed.), except for that it's August.

Jeremy's mustering swag, Ryann's printing out banners, Bryan never walks anywhere so much as jogs…

My corner, back by the graphics guys, has mostly been focused on Mutant Chronicles. Bexley, who I share an office with, is in and out with his little bits of modeled-terrain joy for Mutant Chronicles (sometimes I have to take a little break and trot back to the warehouse to look at the demo tables he's built) .

Me? I've been grooming the Mutant Chronicles figures…telling them glorious stories of battle, drilling them in their equipment maintenance and handling, prepping them psychologically for their unveiling at GenCon. They're pretty excited about it. Alakhai came forward on behalf of the others, and I've agreed that, yes, next Thursday is too long.

(okay, so that last paragraph never happened…but indulge a girl in her daydreams ;-))

Below is most of the cast of the first set of Mutant Chronicles, CMG; come by the booth to see their details and color!

8/01/07 - Corey
As we finish packing up for BlizzCon 2007, I swear that we are forgetting something...

We look forward to showing off our Blizzard products at BlizzCon and hope to see you there! For those who are unable to attend, here is a quick photo of the starting units from StarCraft: the Board Game!

7/31/07 - Dan
A note on Penguin, the new game from Reiner Knizia and the first in what we hope will be a very successful new line of FFG Toys. Penguin is described as "a family board game for 2-6 players." The clear suggestion is that Penguin is suitable for children and adults alike (and let me tell you right now: this is as vicious and cutthroat a game as I've ever seen, once you get a handle on it), and I would say that it qualifies as such.

Most pertinent to me, it is a hit with the "adores cute and fluffy animals" demographic as personified by my fiancée. When I pulled my copy (yes, I get one earlier than you folks do, company perk, deal with it) out of the bag to show aforementioned fiancée, she emitted a shriek of joy and delight that would have been perfectly at home coming from the mouth of a six-year-old, snatched it from my hands and insisted that we play RIGHT NOW.

Well, the short version is we played, I won (barely), and the groceries STILL haven't been put away.

We're producing Beowulf: the Movie Board Game, based on Reiner Knizia's classic Kingdoms mechanic. It's going to showcase a lot of the beautiful imagery from the new movie, written by Neil Gaiman (Sandman) and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) and directed by Robert Zemekis (Back to the Future).

7/19/07 - Jeremy
So we had a mild scare a few moments ago. I tried to upload Bryan's new Rant to the website and found that it (meaning the website) had disappeared.

Bryan and I had a quick, calm conversation about whether or not we should panic. I called my girlfriend, who works for an ISP, and had her check to see if the world, at least, thought we still had a website. She did, and we did, so Bryan and I decided not to panic, and calmly waited for our new IT guy Rogers to finish working on Zoe's computer. He then came down and figured out what the problem was, and in no time at all, everything was A-OK again.

So let this be an official welcome to new FFG IT guy Rogers. Wow, we're glad he's here.

7/19/07 - Bryan
I play quite a few board games in a given week. I really like trying out new games. Seeing how new mechanics interact, and the analyzing the various design decisions a designer made is often more entertaining than the game itself. After I get done playing a new game, there is the inevitable discussion of whether it is a good game or not. I think the term "good" is not the right one to use in a discussion like this.

Most games that come from a publisher of any reasonable size are probably good games. Most of the time, enough people have had enough input to weed out really bad games before they see print. Not to say that every game published is good; I'm a nice guy so I won't name names, but you know who you are.

The question, I feel, should not be is this a good game?, but rather is this game great, or merely adequate? Playing games is like eating a hamburger (or veggie burger if you're so inclined). You can go down to the local fast food joint and get a pretty descent burger. It'll taste like a hamburger, it'll fill your belly...but in the end, was it really worth it? There is no shortage of good hamburgers out there. I can think of a half dozen places near the office I could go and get a burger that will outshine anything the high-school kids could whip up for me, and at about the same price. You can only eat so many hamburgers in a given week; it makes sense to make them really good.

Most of you don't eat your games, so maybe this analogy isn't perfect, but I hope the idea came across. An adequate game is the fast food burger: it tastes fun, but it's nothing memorable. I rarely look forward to my next trip to the drive-through. A really great game (or burger) is one that you think about playing (or eating) all the time. Envisioning the next Game of Thrones deck I'd like to build, planning an evening to play Twilight Imperium with friends or kibitzing about Mü strategy after lunch. This is how I know a game really is good.

I will never stop trying out new games. You never know where the next great game is going to be hiding, but most of the time I will just end up feeling like I could have spent my time just playing Blue Moon City instead.

Last week, 1/6 of the office was at CONvergence, a large science fiction convention here in the Twin Cities. Five of us (myself, John, Eric, Thaadd, and Peter) all work on the convention in various capacities, and I would say about half the folks that work here attended the convention. We came back to a pile of emails and lots of work to get done before the craziness that is August begins.

August 3-4, a few of us will be at BlizzCon in Anaheim, California, demoing StarCraft: the Board Game and the new Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft; the Board Game.

Then on August 16-19, the entire office (except Andrew!), plus friends, will be in Indianapolis for GenCon! Here, you can try out all the newest games on the FFG roster, as well as some of our classics! Luke will be running AGOT tournaments, you can meet the FFG staff, and take home some of the newest games!

After we get back home to Minnesota, John, Tod and myself will have one day off before heading up to Seattle for Penny Arcade Expo (August 24-26), which seems to be shaping up to be, among other things, a new E3.

But before any of that, there's a ton of work to do! We have to get demo copies and extra parts ready for every game we're demoing. We have to make all the signs, banners, and tabletops (yep, we do all that in house!) that you see at our booth. We have to teach our newest games to those folks that are demoing them in our booth so they know them inside and out, and can answer questions about them. Tod has been working on the logistics of it all, and we're all the better for it!

Hopefully soon after we get back, you'll be able to get a bit of behind-the-scenes info on how we go about doing a big show like GenCon. I'll make Peter take a lot of pictures!

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