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FFG Rants Archive — Even Older RantsWhen 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. 12/31 - Kevin Well, it's been a good year here for us at Fantasy Flight. We've gotten to do a lot of really fun projects and interact with a lot of really nice people. For me, 2003 was the year I moved to board games (Yes, Tim, I'm _still_ talking about that.) and worked on Magdar, Mutiny!, Arena Maximus, Warcraft, A Game of Thrones, and Inkognito: the card game, and that's not even counting the stuff I can't tell you about yet. Next year, we have even bigger plans, with tentacled horrors, better rulebooks, shinier pieces, and of course, plenty of good old fashioned solid game design. Annnnnd...whoops...Photoshop just crashed on me, so there went my New Year's Eve picture puzzle for you. Sigh. Maybe next year. :) Happy New Year anyways, everyone!
12/30 - Chris
I am punting this rant two weeks ahead. *punt*
12/29 - John
12/22 - Brian W
There now. So there's lots of cool new stuff coming out next year -- always is, of course. But rather than go into that, I thought I'd touch on the product coming out for existing games. You see, as much as we're always going crazy coming up with brilliant new projects -- like the Cthulhu CCG or Reiner Knizia's Blue Moon -- we're also dedicated to our existing games. Looking at my door, I see from the Master Release Schedule of Doom that we've got some cool stuff coming up. Now, the last half of the schedule is still the July-December 2003 items, but I've got the first half of next year filled in. So, for the first six months of next year we have: Midnight: two supplements for our Ennie award-winning d20 setting in the first half of next year. City of Shadow, the first, should be available in February. Furthermore in summer we have our very first Midnight novel! For Dragonstar we have one supplement in the beginning of '04, a book on fighters, combat, and sweet death dealin' in the Dragon Empire. And joining Midnight, we have the first Dragonstar novel. A Game of Thrones CCG is in for all sorts of gooey goodness, including a bunch of things I'm not allowed to talk about yet. We've got the Ice & Fire premium starters, A Crown of Suns, the national championships, Gold Dragon items of delight, and an extra special GoT product (not redemption). There are more promos, some of the most anticipated characters in the game will finally get cards, and we'll get to see GenCon World Championship winner Casey's original card design in the next set. We've also got some Horizon and Legends & Lairs action, as well as some undisclosed bits of possible tasty events involving the GoT board game. Well, the day is almost over, and we're going to be out of the office for the rest of the week, so I hope that everyone has a happy holiday!
12/18 - Brian Schomburg
12/16 - John
Friday was Rob's day to rant. Again, he was at Gen con and everybody else was too busy (even me). Monday was my day to rant. Ooops! If it is any consolation I was taking over Tod's online order duties and going to the post office to ship all our foreign orders. Today was Chris' day to rant but he just got back from Gen Con and is sick. So here I am. We cleaned our office and our warehouse today in order to host the FFG Christmas party . . . YEY! There is Buca for food. Yum Yum. Gaming for entertainment. How novel. And for the coup de grace, (Did I spell that right?) the midnight showing of THE RETURN OF THE KING. OH YAH! It is going to be great. Some of us in the office have actually already seen the film. (It is true). I can tell you right now it is not going to disappoint. Tomorrow we are all going to be dragging. Happy Holidays!
12/10 - Kevin for Darrell
12/9 - Scott
I am still working feverishly on the RUNEBOUND board game. So I will give you a sneak peek of what I am doing with it.
12/8 - Brian W
As many of you already know, Frenzy is a non-collectible card game of real-time battles, designed by Eric Lang, lead designer of the Game of Thrones CCG. The key to Frenzy is the real-time aspect. There are no turns or order to play. You just lay down the cards as fast as your attention can keep up. The great thing about this is the game has just enought things going on to strain your mind, but not so much that you can't keep track. Schomburg was taking some product shots of Wreckage while we were back there, and took photos of the game as well. For a blow by blow tale of our epic game of lunchtime Frenzy, Click HERE
12/05 - Greg
12/03 - Kevin
12/02 - Chris
Gen Con SoCal is held in Anaheim, Thursday-Sunday next week. Come and say “Hi” to us FFG guys if you’re coming! You can also check this link out for more info: www.gencon.com/socalhome There are a few very exciting news items on our front-page today. One is the preview of the DAWNFORGE RPG for the d20 system. Our RPG department has been working hard to make this a great product, continuing its line of successes like DRAGONSTAR, LEGEND & LAIRS, and MIDNIGHT (three great FFG RPG lines that FFG will continue to support in the future). The original DAWNFORGE setting idea was chosen among the 11 finalists in Wizards Of The Coast great setting search in 2002, so it comes with high credentials. DAWNFORGE did not win the final nomination, obviously, so we have ourselves undertaken the exciting task of developing and publishing this RPG set in the pinnacle of an age of magic and might. The other announcement is that of the FFG next CCG project: the CALL OF CTHULHU CCG. As noted in the press-release (see the front page), FFG will start production of its second CCG in the spring of 2004 (FFG already produces the much-popular A GAME OF THRONES CCG). The “Cthulhu” genre is among the most recognized and well-regarded in the gaming hobby, and we hope to provide a fast, clever, and horrific collectible card game in this juicy setting, complete with 1920’s paranormal investigations, jaded detectives, mad cultists, and horrors from beyond the stars. Ahhhh. I get very excited when I think about our 2004 release schedule, so much goodness is in store for you all (and for us). I think I will rant about the 2004 upcoming coolness another day, so stay awake, stay sharp, and never forget to read the rants.
12/01 - John
Right now we are simultaniously assembling the Kingdoms reprint (YEY IT IS BACK IN STOCK AFTER BEING GONE A YEAR), and Mutiny!. They are starting to ship tomorrow so look for them in stores next week. While you're checking out those games we will be shifting gears to assemble Wreckage and Inkognito. There is more in the works too but I will leave it to others to tell you those tales. Gotta go and be crazy!
11/27 -Tod
Five things that I’m currently thankful for:
11/26 - John
hee hee
11/25 - Scott
I have been hard at work bring the Runebound Board Game together and I must say that it is coming along quite NICELY! . . . um yeah . . . I think everyone will be pleased with the look and the graphics. Also, I think I have mentioned that I am teaching a miniatures painting class, this has been going really well. I will be teaching the kids some terrain building techniques next week. Plus my painting has gotten quicker and better. So much that I might actually get all my minis painted some day. Yeah that will happen. Well I am back to the grind. A graphic artist's work is never done.
11/21 - Greg
For example, minotaurs obviously make formidable fighters—but what about a minotaur sorcerer? Gore is a decent ability for fighter-types (especially when combined with powerful charge), but it’s a great choice for spellcasters—a proficient weapon that deals 1d8 points of damage and doesn’t occupy my character’s hands? Sign me up! My minotaur sorcerer can gain bonus item creation feats, extra hit points, and improved healing with his other racial talents—weaknesses of my class that my choice of race will go a long way toward shoring up. As for transformations, natural armor looks really good—I’ll take that at 2nd, 6th, and 10th level. Goes great with mage armor and shield! Mix in Great Fortitude at 4th level; with my Con bonus and rat familiar, I might actually have a solid Fort save. At 8th level, I’d probably have to go with darkvision: It’s important for spellcasters to be able to see their targets, of course, and that’s a precious spell slot I won’t have to spend on the darkvision spell. Now I just have to worry about all the powered-up monsters my DM is going to throw at me to challenge my powered-up minotaur sorcerer….
11/20 - Brian Schomburg
Candace Okeson:
11th Level
STR 12 I have used the Permanency spell on Spooky so far to make “Comprehend Languages” and “Detect Magic” permanent. I have just enough XP points from our last encounter to do one more permanent spell on her. I am debating between “Darkvision” and “Tongues”. What do you folks think? (Not that I’ll actually listen to any of you but I am curious). Below is a picture of the current characters in our little campaign. I’m sure you will recognize the original artists who drew these characters, before I stole them off a website and colored them in.
From left to right we have “Q” otherwise known as Quenolt, a Wood Elf Ranger. Next is a Half Elf Bard (in this illustration she has a striking resemblance to Xena). The stout companion is Gar, a Dwarf Fighter and last, but certainly not least, is my sexy Spooky. Please note Spooky’s staff is made of Dragon bones and skull. We are currently playing the official D&D adventure “Nightfang Spire something-or-another” and the vampires are tearing us a new one. Any vampire hunting advice is welcome. There is one more thing I would like to say and it is more on a political note. I see signs everywhere that say “Support Our Troops” and whether you believe they should come home or stay and fight, I think we should all do something nice for them for the holiday season. If you would like information on how to help, drop me an e-mail (and not to worry; I won’t send icky spam or sell you out or anything). My e-mail is CandaceOkeson@hotmail.com I originally started doing this because my mother’s church sends the Troops packages. But I was a little horrified when I was told their church won’t mail anything Sci-Fi or Fantasy related. (They wouldn’t even send Shakespeare, because some of his stories contain witches and ghosts). After hearing that I decided I would take up the cause and send specifically Sci-Fi and Fantasy items, such as books and comics. Whether you are for or against the war, I am sure we can all agree that sending a little gift to a soldier who is enduring the harsh conditions, is a great thing to do.
11/19 - Kevin
Also in the works is my Warcraft Scenario Guide, which will give a lot of advice and ideas to prospective scenario designers. I expect to have it up in the next week or so, and I'll put a link to it in my next rant, assuming it's up by then. In other news, our latest small games (Mutiny!, Wreckage, Arena Maximus, and Inkognito: the card game) are finally taking shape. We had some delays on them, but the last few pieces and rules are starting to trickle in at last. They all look fantastic, if I say so myself, and I can't wait until they make their way to stores. Darrell and I have already started on the next batch of games, and there are some really exciting bits of news there, but that will have to wait until another rant...
11/18 - Chris
Installment 24: “Fantasy Flight Games"As we were preparing our comic-book business and researching the business in the Northfield basement of Pegasus Research Group (it was early 1995) I was slowly tinkering with the idea for an epic-space conquest and economics board game in the spirit of Milton Bradley’s GAMEMASTER series (Axis & Allies, Shogun, Fortress America, etc). As you may have known from previous rants, I was a long-term gamer – and a lot of creativity had slowly been stored up in my batteries when it came to games. I did not realize, at that time, that this creativity would be far more significant for the business in the long run than any comic book. The idea behind TWILIGHT IMPERIUM was one that mixed the thematic flavors of DUNE, STAR WARS, STAR TREK, and Asimov’s FOUNDATION. The game play would be simple, yet involved, and would provide the players the feeling of controlling an interstaller race, complete with galactic politics, warfare, and empire-building. My idea was to take loose hexagon pieces (as I had previously seen in Avalon Hill’s “Magic Realm”), so that the board (or the ‘galaxy’) would be new and change every time the game was played. In later years, people think that the TI map board was taken from the excellent SETTLERS OF CATAN board game. This is, of course, false – we actually were presenting TI to gaming industry professionals in 1996 when Settlers was first published in English. I did not really pursue the game idea with actual detailed prototype work and game-design until the winter of 1995/96, when it slowly dawned on me that our comic books were catastrophically underperforming. A little voice inside of me was whispering “what about a game! What about a game?” Honestly, one of the reasons that we entered the gaming industry at all, or that I felt that we had the option, was in some part due to the existence of the magazine “Comics & Games Retailer” (which was actually called “Comics Retailer” at the time). As a comic book publisher, we received this industry magazine every month – which covered the comic book and hobby gaming industry simultaneously. You see, in the U.S at least (and in Denmark as well) there is a huge overlap among retailers that sell comics and games. In my experience about 75%-90% of all “comic” retailers carry at least some games (mainly CCG’s) and visa-versa. Also, the magazine was ripe with game distributor information, industry sales figures, tips, feed back, etc. So, after many months of reading C&GR – mainly to learn about the comics indutsry, I finally found the courage to make a final decision to plunge into the gaming biz as well. It was in that bitterly cold month of February 1996, that the name TWILIGHT IMPERIUM was born. We had a good friend and artist, Bill Heagy, create the first TI cover which was digitally colored. We hired a comic-book design agency to design the logo and presto – here was the final result.
Getting TI published, however, proved to be quite an ordeal and much more difficult that previously imagined. I presented the game publishing idea to the Fantasy Flight board of directors in April 1996, and I got an enthusiastic – but cautious -- “Thumbs Up”. Yet we were still struggling to make the comic-business work, and we were also starting the infant Downtown Distribution. In addition (unknown at that meeting) Anton would leave the company and go back to Indonesia only 6 weeks after the meeting had taken place (see prior rants for the riveting simultaneous history of the other activities). Yet despite the mountains ahead, TI would not be held back. Its final publication was to be more than a full year later, but would change me and my company dramatically. Stay tuned for “Pax Magnifica, Bellum Gloriosum” the next installment in my serial rant, only a few short weeks away!
11/17 - John
As I'm sure you have heard from everybody else, we are pretty busy here. While the rest of the office has been consigned to hard toil in the slave pits I have been by their side filling A Game of Thrones tourney support. Tim has the month off and I'm trying to fill the gap. Sorry out there if your support is running a little late. Hundreds of tournaments are being scheduled out there! That's great; keep it up Night's Watch. So, as you have heard I was in Essen Germany for the big show. Wow! It was amazing. If you have ever been in the dealers room at GenCon just think of that and then multiply by 6. Time for a picture show. Here is Chris, Chris' brother Anders, and Ander's friend Michael eating breakfast at our quaint hotel just before going to set up our booth.
Games! Games! Games! Our initial mound of 120 Warcraft and 160 A Game of Thrones. Everything was gone by Sunday.
Busy, busy, busy.
Late night A Game of Thrones board game demos at our hotel.
Here is Chris (getting a little out of hand) at our party that we co-sponsered.
Here I am, standing victorious.
11/14 - Robert
The Hydra Kharlin strung his bow and tested the pull, then checked the fletching on his arrows for the thousandth time. About him, the rest of the party made their own peace. Thogrin knelt in prayer, muttering words of praise and requests for assistance to his god, Modrin of the Earth and Flame. Llorrlyrm sharpened his axe and, Kharlin noticed with a chuckle, was still chewing that cud. He doubted he’d ever get used to that. The night elf was nowhere to be seen. Preferred solitude, that one. But he’d be here when the time was right. The beast would emerge at dawn. Of them all, the night elf was the only one he did not trust. The rest of them had good reason for coming to the vale. Thogrin was here at the behest of his god, so he said; “Only in testing the strength of his flesh could he prepare himself for the coming conflagration beneath the earth.” Or something like that. Kharlin didn’t know what it meant, but the dwarf had proven himself strong and loyal, and capable of much divine power. Llorrlyn was here to avenge a great ancestor, one of the first mortals to be killed by the beast. And Kharlin himself owed a life-debt to Llorrlyn for releasing him from capture by a pair of wild ogres. It was a debt that, while he did not begrudge, would be good to get off his shoulders . . . if any of them survived. A man is nothing without his honor, so Kharlin knew he would not break. But the night elf . . . he searched only for power. Kharlin had studied some archery with the dawn elves of the Sildanyr, and so he knew what night elves were capable of. This one claimed that the beast’s blood and teeth were powerful, and that he wished to harvest them. His motivation was greed. That made him suspect. Kharlin’s thoughts were interrupted by a shaft of light cutting through the canyon. The dawn had arrived. The three stood as one; the night elf emerged from the shadows, his staff gripped securely in his hands. Together, they ascended the slope to the cave’s entrance, and to the nine-headed monstrosity that awaited them there. The Diabolist “I will have your undying allegiance. Bow to me.” The command echoed through the diabolist’s mind as he replied, gritting his teeth, “I will not serve you!” For several minutes, the two minds battled in a force of wills. The nalfeshnee was obese, clawed, and obviously the more physically powerful of the two. It stood unshaking, bearing down with its alien mind at the diabolist’s weak frame. The tiefling shuddered, sweat running down the unique markings on his face and chest . . . but he held. And with all the hatred and rigid fear of a royal tiefling’s upbringing, he struck back. The demon’s eyes widened in surprise, and perhaps a hint of fear. Then it smiled. A feisty fisherman it was that caught him with hook of ritual and line of spell. “What would you have me?” it gurgled, feigning complacency. The diabolist, still wary, regathered his strength. “I have summoned thee, nalfeshnee that is called Corridun, to root out my enemies on this peninsula of Emerlyn. There are spirits, here, or perhaps bandits, we know not. They are elusive. You will hunt them for me, summoning your fellows as you see fit. But you will do no harm to those of tiefling-born!” he added, seeing a glint of evil in the demon’s eyes. As its shoulders slumped and it began to nod, the diabolist smirked. It was said this was a dangerous type of servant to summon, but this thing’s will had bent easily. The diabolist laughed silently to himself that he had been afraid the nalfeshnee would steal his soul or some such . . . and relaxed, ever so slightly. No, but I believe I will have your body, the demon’s voice thundered in his mind. It was the last thing the diabolist ever heard. His body shuddered for just a moment, then he raised his face, now wearing a feral grin. A hellish glow emanated from his eyes. As the nalfeshnee waved the body’s hand with a careless gesture, dismissing his old body back to the nether planes, and turned to survey his new home. The New Continent “Dad, dad! Look!” The boy pulled at his father’s jerkin, pointing to the rock jutting up at the tip of the coastline. His father dutifully stopped mending his net and glanced up, searching with an older man’s eyes to find what the boy’s sharper sight had picked out. After a few seconds, he found the reptilian shape perched on the top of the rock. “Just one o’ the lizardfolk, Jorin. Nothin’ to be scared of. They don’t mind us here,” he said, returning to his mending. His crewman was at the rudder, easing the ship out of the bay through the other fishing boats. Mending nets was woman’s work, but Jorin’s mother had been dead these five years, lost on the long voyage to Tamerland, and so Middick had learned to do it himself. He had had to learn many things. “I’m not scared, dad,” Jorin said crossly, “I know all about the lizardfolk. They can track better than any man, and their eyes are dark, so dark they can see at night, and they can smell you coming, and—“ “Enough, boy!” Middick said, chuckling, “you’d think you wanted to be one o’ them, the way you carry on. We’ve not got time for such talk,” he continued, growing serious. “We’ve got to catch our keep, lest we lose this boat. Following lizardfolk into the wilds, explorin’ the mountains and jungles, that’s for ne’er-do-wells and criminals. You,” he said, with earnest pride, “will learn to fish. Like your father.” Jorin nodded obediently and did his morning chore, baiting the large hooks in hopes they would catch a shark or maybe a longfin, rather than just the small catch in the nets. But as each bait fish flopped in his hand, he gave a quick moment of thanks to the creature giving its life so that he might live, and felt as if he could feel the creatures’ lives fading. Surreptitiously, he glanced once more at the still shape of the lizardman on the rock, made out the shape of a staff hung with fetishes and spirit amulets. He knew that one day he would learn from such a one as he, and that the lizardfolk could help him understand this power in him that his father could not see.
11/13 - Tod
Things are pretty crazy around here. Everyone has been pitching in to help get Warcraft out the door and around the world. Lots of stuff going on. Lots more games on their way as well. Too much going on to tell you about it all… My current fave CDs:
11/12 - Darrell
DICE OF SHAME!!!Here are some reject Warcraft dice. Now I must return to the slave pits.
11/10 - Brian W
Even though Warcraft has shipped and is available all over the country, we still haven't finished putting it together -- not by a long shot. We have all of the international editions to make, and then the rest of the US editions. We're talking well over ten thousand more games. Though we have several trusty and hard-working warehouse guys, we just don't have enough people to get it all done on time. Thus on Monday the entire office was dragged into the warehouse to assemble board games, and it looks like we'll be there all week. There are upsides to it -- for example we have about 101,000 6-sided dice, which every gamer should appreciate. And at first it's kinda nice to be out of the office and doing something else for a change. But mostly it's just downsides: developing permanent spinal disfigurations from hunching over too-low tables, inhaling dangerous levels of cardboard dust, and the ever cruel seperation of the vaccuum trays, which inevitably peels the skin off of the back of your fingers with excutiating slowness. Oh yeah, and the constant barrage of cuts large and small from paper cuts to cardboard cuts to gouging the very eyes out of your own skull so you don't have to see another Warcraft flat staring up at you again cuts. Yup. Another day at FFG.
11/4 - Brian W
I gotta give kudos to Darrell and Tod, who supplied me with their rants (though days late, but still). I also gotta admit that I didn't bother a single person about ranting whie John was away. I cannot tell you how pleasant it was with the rant clown nowhere to be seen for a change. At any rate, John's going to be back and your regularly scheduled rants will begin again tomorrow. Also for those of you who have not seen the current poll on the front page of the site, we're determining exactly what the punishment should be for those who miss their rants. So what have you missed here in the office? Nothing much -- mostly a lot of parties while the boss was away at Essen with John. We played some paintball in the warehouse, had a contest to see who could make the highest stack of board games, and played Legends & Lairs frisbee. As Tod mentioned, Warcraft is in and has shipped to distributors. You should be able to find it in your local game store starting tomorrow. We are also going to be shipping Grimm, the new Horizon book of roleplaying in twisted fairly tales, within a few days -- so look for it on your game store shelves in a couple of weeks. We have tons more games coming out yet this year, including the A Game of Thrones CCG expansion: A Throne of Blades (which will be released on December 11th at 2pm, for those curious), the much anticipated Arena Maximus, Mutiny, Inkognito, Wreckage, Dragonstar: Smuggler's Run, Dawnforge (the WotC setting search semi-finalist), Horizon: Virtual, Frenzy - the card game of real-time fantasy battles, Wildscape, and a handful of older products getting reprinted due to continuous demand: Kingdoms, Path of Shadow, Citadels, and the GoT CCG Premium Starters. Yup, the year's almost over, but all the best is yet to come!
10/29 - Tod
What are you going to be for Halloween? Is anyone going as your favorite gaming character? I saw some great costumes from A Game of Thrones this year at several conventions. There are many game shops that are having costume contests. If anyone dresses up as a character from one of our games or related properties, please send us pictures. (AGOT, Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, Dragonstar, etc…) This year, I’m going to be a Thundercat. Not any particular one, but own made up character. If it works out, I’ll post a picture. It’s Halloween and that means that it’s time once again for DJ Fenris’ Halloween mix tape list. This year, since I’m actually not going to be a werewolf on Halloween night, I’ll make up for it with a werewolf theme.
Halloween Mix tape 2003:
10/22 - Darrell
Today's random game mechanic (compliments of boardgamegeek.com and my 1d42 roll) is "Secret Unit Deployment." Hmm.. Sounds like the punchline to a David Letterman joke. Let's see what I can do with it. I'm seeing a token game, kind of like Stratego, with your units on one side, and a blank face on the other. Or better yet, the back face (which your opponent sees) identifies the unit's type: melee, ranged, or cavalry. We've got a rock/paper/scissor thing going on, so melee kills ranged kills cavalry kills melee. Each unit has a STRength score, which tells how tough it is. The pieces are played face-down and move around a grid board. Cav units move 2, and Ranged units have 2 range, while Melee grunts move and fight one space at a time. When you attack, you must reveal the units you are attacking with, as well as the target unit. First remove any RPS kills, then compare STRs of anyone remaining. Attackers win ties, losers are killed. Then everybody turns over again and play continues. What else do we need? A turn order, I suppose. How about three actions per player per turn? A move is an action. An attack is an action. And. maybe not all your units begin in play, but you can bring new units into play with an action. There. It's brilliant. You're welcome.
10/17- Greg
This illustration by Mitch Cotie is also very cool.
10/16 - Brian Schomburg
10/15 - Kevin
More info on the top secret projects as I'm able, I swear.
10/14 - Guest rant by Pat and Joe
In other news, Pat is putting the finishing touches on a book of essays about new media he’s co-editing for MIT Press. The book (First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game) has been in process since Spring 2001, so you can imagine he’s mighty pleased to be finishing. (When the book comes out, be sure to look for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Reiner Knizia’s Maginor.) Anyone interested in learning more can follow this long, ugly link: Joe is busy planning the Halloween edition of his monthly comedy show, Look Ma, No Pants! The show will be on Halloween night itself, which falls on a Friday this year—hooray—and will feature a costume contest that I think will be of particular interest to geeky type folk. I personally hope someone will attempt to dress as the mighty Cthulhu. Anybody who wants more info can check out our web site at: www.scrimshawbrothers.com. And now, some tips.
Recommended reading:
Recommended viewing: ‘Til next time,
10/13 - John
While that has been going on Tod and I have been running around packing up stuff for Essen, the really big trade show in Germany. Next week at this time I will be in air on my way. Chris leaves Thursday. It is very exciting and I'm looking forward to meeting many of FFG's European Distributors, Retailers, Fans, and Friends. Again, if you are going to be in Germany October 23rd to October 26th, stop by our booth. After Essen, I'm jumping on a train to Vienna for a little vacation. Ahhhhh Vienna. I also plan on visiting Prague and at least daytriping to Budapest. It is going to be great. While I'm gone Brian Wood will be taking over the rant page again. You know what that means . . . right? Hopefully it won't be in too bad of shape when I get back. I'll have plenty of stories to tell then. Until then, auf wiedersehn.
10/10 - Rob
Grimm goes out to the printers today, in celebration of which I've included a lil' web supplement goodie for you: Rumplestiltskin. He's a vicious little bugger. Casual rememberers of fairy tales and serious students of folklore alike should find something cool here, and in the game of Grimm as well (did the version you remember include the poor guy ripping himself in two? It's in the story, I swear! Check out http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/ if you need proof.). But more importantly, tonight is my first and probably only brush with fame. I, yours truly, will be a guest on a radio show. What's that? Okay, well, maybe not a "on the airwaves" radio show, but a show nonetheless. Oh, and yeah, I suppose it's kinda a niche thing, being for gamers specifically. Oh, and no, I'm not going to be talking about me . . . I'm representing FFG. Sigh. Okay, well, at least it's my voice! Anyway, it's at Mortality.net, 8 PM eastern time (7 PM here in Minnesota) . . . about a half hour of stuff before they have me call in, and then there be interviews and there be call-ins and there be prizes and giveaways, ARRRRrrrr!!! Did you know International Talk Like a Pirate Day was last month? I love that holiday. Become a true believer, tell your friends: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/
10/9 - Tod
Halloween is coming! I love Halloween. I went to my first Halloween party last weekend. I have at least one every weekend now until the second weekend in November! I love Halloween. I just wish that October wasn’t so busy here at FFG. We’ve got Warcraft coming in soon followed by Mutiny!, Inkognito, Arena Maximus, and many more! It is going to be a wild and crazy Fantasy Flight Fall filled with many cool games and surprises. What I’ve been listening to this week:
10/8 - Darrell
Today’s random mechanic (thanks to Kevin’s calling of “27!”) is… “Card Drafting.” Hmmm… a whole game based on a single card-drafting mechanic? Sure. Why not. The game is… about making magic spells. There are three decks of components (maybe one is the subject, one the verb, the other the object, but we’ll leave that for now, as it’s too specific). The decks are shuffled and the top three cards of each deck are discarded without being revealed. Place the three decks next two each other. Draw the top two cards from each deck and place them, face-up, next to the deck (probably one on top of the deck and one beneath). Now deal the top card from each deck to each player. Therefore, at the beginning of the game, each player has three cards and there are six face-up cards on the table. During your turn, you can discard any card from your hand face-up onto one of the face-up piles (though it must be in the appropriate row – a deck 2 card must be discarded to one of the piles next to deck 2, for example). You can also draw one face-up card, and reveal one face-down card from the deck, placing it onto one of the face-up piles. Can you do all three things in the same turn? Probably. In what order? I don’t care. The game ends when one of the three decks runs out. At that point, everyone reveals their hands. The player with the best hand winds. Eh, that works, but it would be cooler if you could reveal your hand at the end of your turn. Everyone one else gets a turn, and if no one can beat your hand, you win. Even cooler yet would be if your hand doesn’t determine the winner automatically, but it tells you what spell you’re casting to attack your opponent. He can deflect it with his spell (if he’s got the hand to make such a spell) or can try to attack you back. Or something. After all, adding rules to let you attack your opponents in a game will increase that game’s coolness by at least 30%. Everyone knows that.
10/7 - Scott
Well enough of tooting my own horn. I am feverishly working to get caught up after putting in some extra time on Warcraft. Also I started teaching a miniatures painting class at a local art academy, I have four kids ages 12 to 14. It is a lot of fun, so today's Haiku is in that spirit.
Pigment like warpaint,
10/6 - Tim S.
Brian Wood
Yeah, I thought about doing a RANT for Brian Wood like that, but that would have been mean. So I'll just RANT about 'Thrones'. The WILDLINGS are beating me up. I got all of the foreign events done this morning. All of the domestic support will be out by Wednesday. I have been so busy with AGOT CCG that I took a break and played a different game last week. The Source 'Thrones' CCGers played A GAME OF THRONES the board game. We all loved the game. Not just because it was in GRRM's world but because the GAME and her mechanics are so elegant on their own. Play the game! My car's engine blew up on the freeway on the way to work today. That was fun. I didn't care to live it so you probably wouldn't care to read it. . . so I'll just say go get a copy of A GAME OF THRONES board game! You won't be disappointed.
10/3 - Greg
The second illustration shows a lizardfolk shaman watching ships dock at Landsgate, the largest port city of the newly discovered continent of Tamerland. The lizardfolk have a relatively primitive culture when compared to the great empires of Ambria, but they have powerful magic in their own right—and they worship the godlike, ancient dragons that make the wilds of Tamerland their home.
10/2 - Brian Schomberg
Remember Mayor McCheese? How about his friends: Officer Big Mac, Captain Crook and Uncle O'Grimacey (the Irish version of Grimace)? What happened to these guys? You’d think McDonalds would put their picture on the side of Milkshake containers!
Go to the link below and sign the petition. Hurry before it is too late and more beloved McDonalds characters are replaced by the likes of the McNugget Buddies! (Yes, I know. The McNugget Buddies scare me too). www.petitiononline.com/McCheese/petition. Now I must get back to work. PS – Thanks to everyone who responded to my Scarecrow queries! (Special thanks to those who are hooking me up with a copy of the film! You know who you are).
10/1 - Kevin
Arena Maximus is a game of fantasy chariot racing that uses card management and a tile-built track as the core of the game. The track (as you can see by the mockup below) sets up to look like a nice Romanesque chariot track, and is littered with jumps, slaloms, and other obstacles to the racers' progress.
In order to deal with these various hazards, you must effectively manage your hand, consisting of whip, rein, and magic cards. Whips are used to speed up, reins are used to navigate through slaloms, and magic cards are wild cards. In addition, each rein or whip card has a type of magical 'power' on it used to dodge other types of obstacles. The key to the game is that although you have a 7 card hand, as you speed up, you tie up more and more of your hand in whips that sit in front of you to move your chariot, and have fewer and fewer cards to avoid obstacles and whip, ram, or block your opponents. Finally, if you're a fantasy fan, there are optional rules for adding spells to the game, allowing the players to hurl fireballs back and forth while racing along. Overall, I'm quite excited by how the game has turned out, and I'm looking forward to playing it once we have the actual pieces in.
9/30 - Chris
I am too busy today (making deals, making games, making copies) to give you a ‘serial rant – FFG history’ update, so instead I must choose to deliver something shorter. I am very excited about a role-playing book being put together in the RPG department right now. It is part of our d20 HORIZON line of new RPG mini-setting books, and this one is called GRIMM.
The idea is that the players will play children stuck in a world in a land of fairy-tales gone wrong. Stuck in a nightmarish land with a haunting take on characters and stories of classic fairy tales. Remember the classic “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.” Traditionally a political rhyme from pre-war Germany, the popular childhood rhyme could also be construed as a melancholy lesson of death, fate, and the passing of time. Yet what if this was all wrong? What if, behind the fairy tale curtain, a horrible truth lay? What if the foreboding tale of Humpty was akin to that of the angelic Lucifer. What if Humpty, like Lucifer, actually fell from, not from a wall, but from grace? What if he fell into darkness, rallied the vile creatures, the fallen and the expelled from the fairy-stories, and defeated the king and his men the great war that followed? What if his broken rule and ramblings still permeate the dreams of children like a jet-black sea of spilled ink on white paper. GRIMM opens the world for just such possibilities. Like the children in Steven King’s “IT”, the players face ancient and overwhelming darkness. In GRIMM tittering and grinning danger lurks, seeps, crawls, from the world of faeires into our own. Check out the first preview adventure of GRIMM here: Game Trade Until a future Tuesday, keep your closet doors locked. “The sky is falling” the chick said. “So it is” said the fox.
9/29 - John
I just put up the A Game of Thrones Board Game FAQ on the web site. If you have the game go check it out. Busy making plans for the big trade show in Essen Germany, October 23-26. If you live in Europe, or are going to be there in late October, stop by our booth. Gotta go!
9/26 - Rob
Okay, so Grimm. It’s frickin’ hilarious in its darkness, I gotta admit. I’m trying to get Darrell to run us through an adventure or two, just because I want to PLAY one of those stereotypical, doomed kids. Playing is all the joy in this game, I think, unless you’re one of those people that LOVES to tell tales and is quite an English nerd. Then again, the game lends itself really well to alternating GMs, seeing as how the PCs go up a level every adventure, and each adventure is meant to have a different antagonist. I wish I had more room in the book, because the author stuffed in quite a few crazy NPCs that didn’t quite fit in the word count . . . but hey, there’s always web supplements. As Horizon books go, I’m thinkin’ it’s cream of the crop (granted, it’ll only be the second one, so there’s not much crop to be the cream of . . .). All for now!
9/25 - Tod
I went and saw my friends’ band, Signal & Report again last night. I love those guys. If you like early-80s inspired post-punk such as Joy Division, the Chamelons, the Cure or Interpol, you should definitely check them out. www.signalandreport.com I’m going to see the band, Goldfrapp Friday night. My friend, Giles says that they put on a great live show. Sexy, electro/ambient/trip-hop electronica. Should be fun. Check them out at www.goldfrapp.co.uk Oh, and if you have HBO on your cable TV lineup, you should definitely be watching ‘Carnival.’ It’s a new series set around a traveling carnival during the depression era of the US. If you liked ‘Twin Peaks’, you should definitely check it out. What I’ve been listening to this week:
9/24 - Darrell
Today’s random mechanic from boardgamegeek.com is… “Paper and Pencil.” Well. That’s a little vague. Actually, it reminds me of a game I used to play during class in elementary school. It was a simple pastime that kept me occupied when the teacher failed to do so, and required nothing more than a pencil and sheet of notebook paper. At the top of the paper, I would draw a row of, say, five spaceships. At the bottom of the paper was another row of ships in a different design. (One row usually looked like X-wings, the other like TIE Fighters.) It was important to leave some space between the ships in each row. To play the game, I would place the tip of my pencil at the edge of one of the ships at one edge of the page (at its weapons mount, naturally), and close my eyes. Then, with my eyes closed, I would try to draw a line from the ship to a target at other edge of the paper. After “firing,” I would open my eyes and see if the line had “hit” any of the enemy ships. If it did, I’d scribbled out the ship (it was blown up). After taking the shot, I’d fire again from the other side, and try to take out an opposing ship. I’d shoot back and forth across the paper until only one side survived. There was a little skill to it. If the pencil went off the paper while firing, the shot was a miss. Also, I added “mines” in between the rows. If one of my lines hit a mine, the ship that fired the shot was destroyed, regardless of whether the shot went on to hit an enemy ship. Was it a great game? No. But it was fun. And it kept me occupied on those long school days when the teacher was droning and I had nothing better to do. Try it sometime when you should be taking notes (at a sales meeting, a news conference, or sitting with your marriage counselor) and I think you’ll find it more fun than the alternative. 9/23 - Scott
Metal armies march
9/19 - Greg
The character races in Dawnforge include: dwarves, elves (dawn elves and night elves), giant-men, gnomes, halflings, humans (trueborn, saltbloods, lowlanders, and highlanders), lizardfolk, minotaurs, ogres, orcs, thinblood yuan-ti, and tieflings. I hope I’m not forgetting anyone. We’ve also tried to give each race an interesting culture and unique traits that will be fun to play. For example, the gnomes in Dawnforge are very close to true fey folk. Their coloration changes with the seasons, they don’t need to eat or drink, they’re innately magical, and some seem to exist both on the material plane and in the fey realm, called Itheria. Some gnomes with a strong connection to the fey realm have an ability called ghosting whose effects are similar to the ethereal jaunt spell (except that the gnome transports himself to Itheria, rather than the ethereal plane). Your gnome character can master this ability, and many others, as he gains levels. One thing racial levels do is ramp up the power curve: every time your character gains a level in Dawnforge, he’ll be getting new racial abilities in addition to his class abilities. The design intent is to allow players to develop powerful heroes over the first 10 levels of the campaign, at which point the campaign shifts to truly legendary adventures and quests. Here are a couple illustrations of various character races in Dawnforge. The first shows a night elf, a gnome, and a dawn elf. The second shows a tiefling, trueborn human, and thinblood yuan-ti.
9/18 - Brian Schomburg
By now most of the denizens of the gamer world have watched the movie, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. I should mention that I have never read the comic book and was pleasantly surprised that the movie wasn’t wretched. Anyway, I am watching the movie and I spot a painting on the wall behind the “M” character (when he is introduced). Pictured behind “M” is the painting is a group of colonial-type soldiers surrounding a scarecrow. Upon seeing the scarecrow, I immediately have a flashback to a comic book I loved as a child. My grandpa had a very cool pile of comics I loved to mutilate/read years and years ago. These weren’t the traditional superhero stuff, mostly horror and western books from the 60’s and 70’s. There were some great stories in those books and one of my favorites was about a priest in England during colonial times. This priest would dress up as a scarecrow and had many Zorro-esque adventures. His name was Doctor Syn, aka The Scarecrow.
This guy had to be the same character I spotted in the movie, but how? After digging around on the Internet, I discover that yes, it is Dr. Syn in the painting and he appeared in one panel in the comic “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. Even better, I also find out that Dr. Syn was a freaking 1963 Walt Disney movie: “THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH aka DR. SYN, ALIAS THE SCARECROW.” How cool is that? So the question is, how do I get my hands on a copy of this film? More importantly, is this worth tracking down? It might be like some many other fond childhood memories which are oh-so-uncool when I run across them now. Please email me with any Dr. Syn info at brians@fantasyflightgames.com. Thank you in advance for any assistance! Now I must get back to work.
9/17 - Kevin
9/16 - Chris
Installment 23: "The Brief History of a Gamer" - Part IIII was happily gaming along in early high-school when I decided to get a little more serious, a little more involved, a little more daring. My entrepreneurial gene was starting to itch, and I had a serious infatuation for the games published by Avalon Hill (the “old” Avalon Hill if anyone cares). So I wrote them a letter, inquiring to what extent I could start a whole-sale import of their titles. Soon I received a letter back (remember this was in 1989, a good 6-7 years before email hit the thermal layer), and yes they would indeed be happy to start up a new wholesaler in old Denmark. Needless to say, I was hell-bound to make that new wholesaler yours truly. So, with a few friends, we pooled money together and started PEGASUS SPIL IMPORT (PSI): A bona-fide DK corporation. The plan was to set up a whole-sale and direct mail-order/convention company. When the order had been placed, we started making letterhead, catalogs, and the whole “first business” jazz-a-long. We were young, and extremely pumped to start this business (we were probably pretty obnoxious/cute in the seriousness of our endeavor). One of the most exciting days of my professional life must have been the day that we received the first shipment of our Avalon Hill inventory. Waiting for us at the docks, was an entire pallet full of board-games ready to hit the arms of eager Danish consumers. We loaded the inventory into my parents old green Volvo, unloaded it in my basement, and set up all the games on large grey wooden shelves. We took a pause: There they were! Glowing shrink-wrapped copies of Civilization, Diplomacy, Empires At Arms, Hitler’s War, etc. So, in the next few years, I had the distinct pleasure of running a small import company selling Avalon Hill boardgames direct to gamers and through a larger chain of DK bookstores (a chain that was slowly getting into Games Workshop, Role Playing, and Board Games). I learned a lot of accounting, expectation-setting, cash-flow, and managing partners – albeit on a very small level. As you might expect, the partners (4 of us in the beginning) soon got frustrated with each other – resulting in me and my friend Jesper buying out the other partners and continued on our own. It was during the first year of running PSI, that I personally founded the north-Zealand games convention known as ‘Games Weekend’. Driven by the desire to be further involved in the gaming biz, I started to engage the Danish ‘Alpha’ gamers, and the snobbish Danish ‘profesional’ gamers (whom all published little gaming ‘zines) to drive enthusiasm towards another Danish convention (on the Zealand island) to challenge the mighty “Viking Con”. Oh, boy are conventions a lot of work. Together with my good friend Daniel (the president of the large north-Zealand gaming club) we started to organize the grand event in the photo-copying vaults of my Dad’s work. Anyone who has run a convention knows that the ‘convention book’ is the key promoter of your convention. In this booklet you put your blood, malice, and your will to dominate all living things. Contained in this convention book of power, is the agenda of events, adventure, and excitement that you are selling. So, we organized about 40-50 gaming events (pulling all the strings from gamers that we knew from far and wide). Including in that Games Weekend was probably the most ambitious “Call of Cthulhu” RPG event attempted to date (with 23 simultaneous groups playing the same adventure at the same time). The event, which was to held at my high-school, also needed organization for registration, a game-library, a silent auction, sleeping facilites (to this day, at Danish conventions, gamers just bring their sleeping bags and sleep in dedicated rooms or -- if the convention is at a school – sleep in the Gym), and at last – but greatest of all – food and drink service. Unlike the U.S at the time, Denmark was not a ‘Fast Food’ culture, and access to easy, affordable food within close proximity to our school was pretty much non-existant. We placed our convention booklets at all the major retail stores that cared about games, and sought to spread the word gamer-by-gamer, shop-by-shop. This was harder than you may think in a time where the internet was only a tale in cyber-punk fiction. Yet, I started to receive pre-registrations for our convention. Bundles of them. Each with a $15 pre-registration fee. Early on it was clear, Games Weekend was to be a success. We managed to pull in more than 150 pre-registrations, and the actual show had a turnout of almost 350 people (which at the time, and the maturity of the gaming hobby in DK, was not a small feat). During the show, our hot-dog, hamburger serving ‘Cantina’ was just slammed with people, and I spent most of my time managing the food-service (which in the end was extremely profitable). PSI had a sales booth in the great hall, and made a hopping business of selling board games to the convention goers. I remember selling a whole lot of ‘Titan’ games there (now a classic, highly collectible, game). This was a high-point in my gaming career, and likely a strong proponent of what has kept me going here at FFG. The nexus of convention, game sales, and the consumption of thousands of Coca Cola’s was a gaming-business orchestra, and I was the conductor. As any rock-star will tell you: It’s hard to go to bed after a great concert. We would do a re-run, equally successful, next year of Games Weekend, and PSI would continue to run over the next few years. In 1992, I left for College in the U.S, and slowly these giants of my teenage years faltered and died in my absence. Gaming had been my passion, my business, and perhaps one of the things that I understood best. Through the hard first years of Fantasy Flight’s comic-book publishing days, these experiences lingered in the back of my head, and would form the back-bone of what would be the vision and discipline of Fantasy Flight Games. From the early days, the smell of pine and D&D, to the halls of Twilight Imperium, Diskwars, Lord of The Rings, A Game Of Thrones, Midnight, Dawnforge, Runebound, and Legends & Lairs, it has been an exciting ride, and you are just about to step on board the train. You do not want to miss the next installment: Chapter 24 “Fantasy Flight Games”.
9/15 - John
Recently I have been out of the office, laid up with an injury, and so I'm a bit behind on some of my duties here at FFG. While hobbling around the office I have been buried under a pile of Gold Dragon redemption requests, especially since Ice & Fire booster packs went up on the redemption page. The popularity of this game is really sky rocketing. You GOT fans are great! Since I have been getting a lot of questions regarding gold dragon redemption I thought I would take some time, and space, addressing some GD issues.
Gold Dragon Domestic Postage
As stated on the website, for promo cards please include a SASE. For a booster pack please include a SASE. For 2 to 4 booster packs please include a SASE with one stamp for each pack. For booster pack orders of 5 to 15 please include postage equivilent to .37 per pack but do not put it on an envelope. FFG will provide the packaging. For booster pack orders of 16 to 2 full displays please send $5 in postage or a money order for $5. If you need to redeem for more than 2 booster displays email me and ask me what to do. Orders for Stone House Cards and Power Counters do not need to include postage. If you order one of these items and order promo cards or a few booster packs (up to 10) with it, you DO NOT need to send additional postage.
International Postage
You can also include a credit card number with your order and I will charge you the appropiate postage and then email you the amount. Make sure you give me your email address. I bet you didn't know how complex this seamingly simple task is huh?
A Flight of Dragons Signed Prints
Stark & Targaryen Power Counters
Rob is out on vacation today and next week (lucky dog) so here is a guest rant by our current part time/temporary warehouse flunkies.
9/10 - Joe Scrimshaw and Pat Harrigan
As it happens, the Game of Thrones web site is temporarily down today because the same people who host it also host the Johnny Cash site. We’d also like to wish a more temporary goodbye to Garrett, one of our fellow warehouse zombies, who will be leaving us for a few weeks/months to focus on his schoolwork. We will miss him forcing us to play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” especially when he says, “Mimi Rogers to Kato Kaelin. Go!” (We did it in six moves, using Lance Henrickson and two actors who have played or will soon be playing Doctor Who. Can you? (And if so, what’s wrong with you?)) So a gloomy week for us all, and we’re looking forward to a relaxing weekend, when Pat will be bartending his uncle’s 30th high school reunion, and Joe will be rehearsing the musical children’s opus Johnny Appleseed. Cheers to you all.
9/11 - Tod
I am really looking forward to the movie Underworld which is opening next weekend. The trailers look great, now let’s see if the movie can live up to them. Of course, I’ll watch anything with werewolves in it. Yes, I have even sat through all of the crappy Howling sequels. So, really for Underworld, I’m just hoping that the werewolves are cool. I’ve heard that White Wolf is suing the filmmakers. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds. Another film that I am very anxious to see is Once Upon A Time In Mexico, opening tomorrow. I’m ready for some serious south of the border action! Viva Mexico! What I’ve been listening to this week:
9/10 - Darrell
Dice clatter. Twenty-two. That’s… Pattern Building. What the heck is “pattern building?” No time to look it up. This is a game on the fly. Okay. The object of the game is to form shapes. What shapes? Um… draw a card. The shape is on the card. Each player has a bunch of cardboard shapes that can be configured in different ways to form different shapes. For instance, I might have a triangle, a weird octagon, and a bunch of squares. No… wait. That’s just like that other game. Trapeze or something. I got it for Christmas a couple years ago. New idea, but similar. The cardboard shapes are the same (they’re all square tiles) but the pictures on them can be configured in different ways. Maybe there are heads, tails, torsos, and limbs that can be combined to form different creatures. Everybody has a “deck” of these tiles. At the beginning of the turn, you flip over a card from the central deck. The card shows a creature. Everyone races to make the creature out of their tiles. First one to do so “scores” the central card, which is worth points. Maybe some are worth more points than others. There! It’s brilliant! Throw in some zombies, ninjas, dragons, and winged cats, and you’re good to go.
9/9 - Scott
Brian Wood is at the Alliance open house with Chris sooooo guest ranting for Brian today isssssssssssssss.
9/8 - Garrett
The rules are:
An example of a game we have played: The Answer: (1) Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise. (2) Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky with Cameron Diaz. (3) Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels with Matt LeBlanc. (4) Matt Leblanc in Lost in Space with Mimi Rogers. In the general sense I'm not a gamer, which makes my employment here an interesting one. Working with the A Game of Thrones Collectable Card Game has turn me onto, in a small way, this card game and later the Board game. I'm currently in college at Hamline University here in Minnesota and studying under the dual major heading of English and History. For those of you looking for a good book to read I recommend Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. To close my first rant, the people here are turning me into a Gamer, Please Help!!!!!!!!!!
9/5 - Greg
The world of Dawnforge is a very young one, only recently formed from the energy and drifting proto-matter of the multiverse, and there are many places where there are unfilled gaps or creases in creation that flow with raw magical energy tainted by origins in other planes. The First Tree in the vast elven forest of Sildanyr is one such nexus, and it has become central to the conflict between the two elven courts. Its roots flow with the magic of Itheria, the fairy realm from which the elves and other fey races first journeyed to the world of Dawnforge.
9/4 - Brian Schomburg
9/3 - Kevin
This free expansion adds 3 major rules variants to Magdar including one that slows down the game a bit, one that lets you burn mithril for extra dwarf actions, and...Dwarven Dodgeball. Those dwarves play hard, lemme tell ya. The expansion also adds two new special tiles - the well of souls and the stone of kings. So anyways, download it and enjoy...and watch out for those dodgeballs! 8/29 - Rob
Minions = in = good
8/28 - Tod
The Labor Day weekend is almost upon us. Make sure you get outside and grill something!
What I’ve been listening to this week:
8/25 - Brian W
And yet... Maybe I'm a masochist, but as we talked about it more and more, I started to like the idea. But there are more problems with doing a sequel than just the lightsabers. A sequel has to be the same as the original, but more so. More action, more fighting (more lightsabers...grrr), more death, more funny. Now as hard as we worked on LotG on the whole day that we had for filming, it had a lot of stuff that could be cut. Specifically, we had too many shots of people talking in offices. The prologue was fun, the warehouse of Moria was pretty interesting, and the lightsaber fight and ending were great, but all those offices. Blech. Then Schomburg hit on what we needed to make the sequel, the thing that would give us all of the same, but more. Space battles, oh yeah. We got all those computer models of Armada ships laying around, and animating ships has got to be fairly easy -- after all, they don't have any jerky walking motions, they just fly in smooth arcs across a starlit background. We recently arranged to double our warehouse space here at FFG, so we have a logical location in which the company would place a spaceship. Of course I'm not sure why our intrepid band of heroes would go flying into space... and of course half of the main characters are dead now, myself included. But hey, this isn't quality we're talking about, it the Lord of the Games sequel! We'll find a way to ressurect them.
8/22 - Greg
There are lots of races to choose from in Dawnforge, and all of them provide progressive trait trees (sort of like leveled monster classes) that allow you to add cool racial abilities as you advance in level. Minotaurs are one of the races you can choose from. They are cunning and brutal creatures but have a surprisingly sophisticated tribal culture, and the value they place on personal honor restrains them from slaughtering their weaker neighbors…usually. Dawnforge is set in a mythic time before the fall of the great civilizations. Even the mighty giants have a loosely unified nation of their own. Ruled by the legendary Storm King, most of the giant clans live under the banner of an uneasy truce with the dwarven kingdoms. The fire giants, however, have never submitted to the Storm King’s rule. They live in the fiery bowels of the earth and constantly plague the dwarven undercities with raids and incursions. The frost giants—like the fellow pictured here—were long ago exiled by the Storm King to the frozen north.
There are humans aplenty in Dawnforge as well, of course. As with Midnight, though, all of the major human cultures and civilizations are different, and these differences are reflected in the game rules. The so-called saltbloods of the Dreaming Isles are born sailors and ship captains, as at home on the water as a dwarf is underground. A new frontier—the savage continent of Tamerland—has been opened across the Sunset Reach, and great ships sail from the port city of Seagarden to voyage to this untamed land.
That’s it for this time. Stay tuned, as we’ll have many more updates and previews of Dawnforge as the book nears completion.
8/21 - Candace for Brian Schomburg
I know the last two movies have been a let down, but look on the bright side, The SW Galaxy Online Game is now up and running! You can kill Gunguns in the game. I have not yet been able to play this game myself, but I have watched my wonderful roommate, Moyer play plenty. I was so pleased and proud of him when he came across one of those obnoxious Gunguns and slaughtered him. I had the best sleep of my life that night. I am afraid that if I did play this game that I would devote my life to killing of every one of those speech-impaired idiots. It is a lot more satisfying than watching Episode I and II again!
8/20 - Kevin
Anyhow, if that wasn't a transparent lead-in to talking about Mutiny!, I don't know what is. First of all, here's another snapshot from the cover. If you look hard, I'm sure you can count a couple of not-so-obscure bits of pirate lore.
Last, a bit of information about the game itself. Each player is trying to gather enough cutlasses to arm his men and launch a mutiny to take over the ship. To do this, players must bribe 5 key crewmen with doubloons and rum and use their special abilities to win the game. The players with the 2 highest bids on each crew get to use that crew's abilities. The Cook, for instance, gives 2 rum to the highest bidder, and 1 rum to the 2nd highest bidder. The real trick to this all, is that your doubloons stay on the crew from turn to turn, and you are only allowed to rebid a few of them. Anyhow, that's enough of a sneak peek for today, more later.
8/19 - Chris
Before I continue my long-awaited, and often interrupted, serial rant of FFG’s history, I should explain in a few words why you have waited so long for another installment – and why you haven’t heard from me at all over such an extended period. You know already that the normal problems of being the C.E.O (golfing, driving fancy cars, eating caviar, etc) are very tasking on me, and these duties take their normal toll – resulting in frequent ‘rant’ delays from my office. Yet in the past 6 weeks, things have been far from “normal” (phwa, what is “normal” in the gaming business anyway) here in the corner-suite. As you may remember, GEN CON was a few weeks ago – the most important show of the year for our company. If you have followed my serial rants in the past, you will also know that GEN CON is the time and place for one of the much-dreaded bi-annual meetings of the FFG Board of Directors. This means that I must create financial reports, seek to hide my luxury-vacation expenses and private-jet fees, as well formulate our current position – and speak intelligently about the future (near and far) for FFG. But a more significant event occurred in July that would create more havoc in my life than any BOD meeting, or any 52 project detailed resource MS Project outline plan, combined. On July 21st, I had the honor and privilege of assisting and coaching my wife Gretchen, in delivering our son Lars Christian Petersen into this world. He weighed 7.4 Lbs, and was 21 inches long. He is, needless to say, perfect! Having witnessed the birth and creation of countless games, I must say that these have nothing on the great miracle of nature. Thus on July 21st, my life (and sleeping habits) changed forever. It was, hands down, the most incredible moment/day in my life. Lars is growing rapidly, both he and his mom are doing great. Thanks to all the people at Gen Con (which I briefly attended) who wished me, Gretchen, and Lars the best. So, the serial continues.
Installment 22: The Brief History of a Gamer – Part II** I must first bring a correction to your attention. In the previous serial rant I noted that my first encounter with gaming was in 1985 – when I encountered D&D. This was, in fact, in 1982 and not in 1985. thank you very much (clap, clap, clap, John, can we please edit the previous rant!). So, after the gift of D&D from the great U.S, a Danish gamer (about 12 years old) was now making his way into the world. Perhaps some of my talent (yea, laugh it up fuzzball) for creating and understanding games (and gamers) was born out of necessity. At that early time, nobody in DK (at least that I knew of) was playing any hobby games. So my only choice was to turn my friends into gamers. One by one, I introduced them to the wonders of the dungeon, chain mail, and magic arrow. Without any retail stores in which to purchase expansions, modules, etc, I created my own D&D materials, variants, and games. Thus slowly (and not all my doing) a community of gamers was born in the upper North-East of Zealand (the far East Isle of Denmark, about 40 miles north of Copenhagen). A few years went by and then -- Eureka! -- I *finally* found a hobby store in Copenhagen that carried Role-playing, Miniatures, board games etc. This was, hands down, one of the most glorious discoveries in my life. Imagine the young geeky Petersen seeing all the combined coolness of TSR, Avalon Hill, Citadel/GW, for the first time? My eyes must have been as large as dinner-plates. Here I had been hard at work on my own D&D inventions for a few years, and suddenly the mother-lode of *actual product* had been hit – spewing the gaming oil out of the proverbial Danish gaming desert. “Cool” was not a word that could accurately describe my state of awe. The store was called “Fantask” and to this day is still standing proud in the inner city of Copenhagen. Thanks for being there Fantask. Though I continued role-playing, I started playing board-games (mainly Avalon Hill stuff) – spurred by my Dad who loves the board game stuff. My dad actually bought our first hobby-board game which was AH’s ‘Hitler’s War’. After finally learning the rules for this game (tough at my age and ability) it was in some ways just as exciting to me as D&D had been a few years earlier. As I grew older (now creeping into 15), gaming was slowly starting to connect more in DK, and I started attending the only Danish gaming convention “Viking Con”. Viking Con is still around today, and I still remember my ‘con number’ 721. I attended the show a few years ago (in 2001 I think) as I was visiting Denmark on my way to “Spiel” in Essen. It was with some melancholy satisfaction I noted that the con had not changed much since I roamed it as an excited boy. Of course, gaming had taking its fragile roots in DK before I got my first D&D books in 1982. It had truly grown into its own by the time that I found “Fantask”, Viking Con, and the other avenues of gaming (Board and Miniatures). In the mid 80’s (around 1986 I think) I was caught by the Games Workshop bug, and I invested heavily into miniatures for Warhammer Battle (and later played “Space Marine – which became 40K “Epic” in later editions). Later, I also fervently dug into such great GW fare as “Blood Bowl”, “Chaos Marauders”, “Space Hulk” and “Dark Future”. As I headed into my High School years these were the gaming flavors of the day (along with my other hobby – playing Guitar). I should also mention that board-games continued to be a wonderful part of my gaming hobby, and board games remained a constant as I delved into my various phases of miniatures, and role-playing games (such as “Call of Cthulhu”). Do you want to know what the first Christian Petersen gaming publication was? Do you? It was about 1986 when I found (or thought at least) that I had a good talent (at least in DK standards) for painting metal fantasy miniatures (mainly Citadel/GW stuff). With my ego held high, I created a small 16 page ‘zine called “Learned to Paint (Fantasy Miniatures)”. It was a photo-copied, poorly edited, scissors and glue Xerox job – and I priced this prized baby at $3 on consignment at the Fantask retail store. Simultaneously I placed some of my best painted miniatures on display at the store’s glass display case, along with a little ad for my ‘zine. Lo and behold, when I returned the week later – they had *sold out* of my entire stock of 25 copies. I had to return to my Dad’s work, where I dutifully made another 25 copies on the large Xerox in the McKinsey basement. I was beaming, how cool was that, – I had made about $40, touched the gaming community in a professional way, and I was on the way to becoming the gaming monster that I am today (ever hear me roar?). I think that I bought some of those overpriced GW plastic dwarves for the $40 I made (the first plastic miniatures to be created by Citadel/GW). It was, of course, not until almost 10 years later, that I would seriously enter the gaming business. But “Learn to Paint (Fantasy Miniatures)” remains my first success. It is a nice story to tell to friends and relatives, and it helps me to sometimes remember my little ‘zine to put some perspective on the massive projects that I work on every day here at FFG. Anyway, as I was enjoying the hobby of Miniatures, I still played board games – here are a few of my favorites at the time: Diplomacy, Civilization, Third Reich, 2nd Fleet, Axis & Allies, Supremacy, Junta (and probably a few more that I cannot remember). During my early high-school days I became involved with a wonderful gaming club North of Copenhagen which was called “FRN” -- short for Forenede Rollespillere i Nordsjaelland (United Roleplayers of North Zealand). Here I met many friends, some of which I still consider close friends today. We would have small gaming get-togethers on many weekends – game all day, and go clubbing all night. My gaming hobby was thus moving out of childhood and into my teenage years. As you can tell, I was a gamer – heart and soul – for most of early life. I ate it all raw and alive, Miniatures, RPG’s, Board Games, Viking Con, the Hobby Game retail, all of it. It was a passion, it had a life of its own. As my entrepenurial genes started to pulsate in my High School years, I launched two gaming hobby business initiatives that would put the pale on “Learn to Paint”, these were: Pegasus Spil Import, and Games Weekend. The story of these teenage exploits will have to wait until my next rant: “The Brief History of a Gamer, Part III”.
8/19 - John (again)
So yesterday I was trying to update the front page of our website with news about our new books, Cityworks, Sorcery & Steam, and Redline, when lots of weird HTML stuff started happening. Perhaps you were checking out our website around noon to find the image of Sorcery & Steam dropped down on the right or the Redline cover spread out gigantic across the whole page. Anyways, Brian Wood was out sick, so I summoned our resident FFG computer expert Darrell to my office. While Darrell was crouching over me, trying in vain to figure out what the problem was with my coding, his face scrunched up in a strange fashion. At this point I realized he was reacting to my music selection. You see, I'm a big classic film fan. Being a big classic film buff I have grown to appreciate big band music and show tunes. I regularly supplement my goth industrial music leanings with doses of Frank Sinatra, Ute Lemper, Marlene Dietrich, and yes Judy Garland. So now the secret is out. I don't think Darrell knew what to think about what he was hearing. So now for your entertainment you can at least experience the content of what squished up Darrell's face so. For the first time in fantasy gamer history, the lyrics from the song, "Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley," will be transcribed. Please note the effective use of onomatopoeia. Clang clang clang went the trolley
With my high starch collar, and my high top shoes,
With his light brown derby and his bright green tie,
Clang clang clang went the trolley.
Chug chug chug went the motor.
He tipped his hat, and took a seat.
Buzz buzz buzz went the buzzer.
Chorus Singers
Buzz buzz buzz went the buzzer.
8/18 - John
8/15 - Rob
Of course, there are folks, even in the office, who think the Aruun demon on the cover of Minions look like "a dire carrot golem," or perhaps a "pirate wicker cone monster," or even, my favorite, a "cornucopia demon." Hee hee. Just gotta get some imagination flowin', I say to those folks, traditional looking demons are BORING. But hey, to each his own. Even people complaining about a wacky cover is good attention for the book, methinks. So yah, Minions should be shipping by the end of the month. Working hard-core (or rather, Robert Schwalb is working hard-core) on Grimm. The playtests were very exciting. Looks like we'll have an adventure coming out for the game in Gametrade magazine in September, which I get to find time to write next week : ). In other Horizon line news, I got some good and some bad. Spellslinger has been pushed back to spring of next year, is the bad news. The good news is, it's being pushed back to allow our very own Kevin Wilson, board game guy and founder of the "School" and "Lore" lines, to write it. He's got a pretty dry, gritty, good sense of style, so I'm excited. To take Spellslinger's place (see, no bad news at all, really) is something we're calling Virtual right now. The PCs are sentient programs in the net, just becoming aware, while outside in the human and hardware reality, World War III is looming. Before you think Matrix and groan, add in Terminator and Tron and stir it around a bit. There are no humans logging into this virtual world, nor evil death machines taking over. The entire game world takes place in servers and on the Internet. When the programs become sentient, they learn to "see" the world of the systems they reside in, a place of planes of light, towers of data, shadowy back doors, dangerous firewalls, and fast-paced data transfer lines. The programs themselves take on a humanoid form in this virtual world, mimicking their gods: the users. Not all programs are sentient, just the few that were in the right place at the right time. At first the programs need to choose between fighting for their freedom from their programmer and their home hardware (becoming rogue programs) or staying and fulfilling their duties, limiting their amount of free-will but allowing them to travel most of the time and call on the resources of their home hardware (remaining system programs). Eventually, they learn of the impending war, and must use their abilities to hack into military mainframes, change real-world politics by infiltrating and altering corporate data, and even alter their gods' perceptions by interacting with the outside world. After all, in the end, if the humans nuke each other, the software goes with 'em. Someone has to save us from us, and it looks like our creations are the ones to do it. So, hope that sounds cool to some folks. As promised, here is another prestige class for Redline. If you purchased the book and enjoyed it, spread the word . . . there's more Horizon where that came from.
8/14 - Tod
It’s hot today. The temperature is in the upper 80s (feels like the 90s to me!) and is supposed to be into the 90s (farenheit) tomorrow and Saturday. I am not looking forward to playing lacrosse in 90º + heat. The thing I like the most about August is that it means that Fall is just around the corner. I love Fall. Cool air, dry leaves crunching underfoot. Right now we just have dry grass crunching underfoot. We could use a nice rainfall. Everyone always complains when it rains, but you know, it’s been sunny and warm for a while now and it sucks. Need rain! Rain good! I could go for a nice thunderstorm right about now. Mmm…thunderstorm… Anyway, it’s Tony’s birthday today. We should all wish him a Happy Birthday! It’s also my roommate’s birthday this coming Saturday. We should all wish Kat a Happy Birthday as well. Next Wednesday is H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday, too! We should all wish the creator of Cthulhu a Happy Birthday from beyond space and time! Of course, he’s long dead but what the heck. (Dead but dreaming!) This week’s exciting musical lineup:
8/14 for 8/12 -Scott
Hot sun burning skin.
8/13 - Darrell
What’s the game? I don’t know… Let’s call it “Battle of the Winged Cats” I know I can find lots of artwork for it on Elfwood. Okay, now for the game mechanics. Hang on while I fire up my browser, aim it at boardgamegeek.com, and peek at their enormous list of game mechanics. No time to be picky; I’ll just take one at random. “Variable Player Powers,” eh? Like CITADELS or COSMIC ENCOUNTER. Okay, I can work with that. For components, let’s have a small board, some counters, and a deck of Cat Cards. The cards have cat “powers” (wings, claws, tails, and teeth) the players use to customize and pump up their cats. Oh yeah. I’m on a roll. So everyone’s got a cat counter on the board, right? And the board is like a chess board, with spaces, so you can move your cat on the board and attack you opponents’ cats. Oh, and some of the spaces are elevated, so you have to fly over them. (Otherwise, what’s the point of having winged cats?) At the beginning of the game, everyone draws…. Let’s say seven cards. These cards tell you your kitty’s stats: wings are movement, claws are attack, teeth are um… damage, tails are… defense or something. Sure, why not. On your turn, you can play wing cards to move your cat, one wing for each space. (Some cards have more than one wing on them.) If your cat is adjacent to an opponent’s cat, you can play claws to attack. Your opponent can play tails to counter, but if he can’t play more tails that you play claws, then your attack gets through. If your attack gets through, you can play teeth cards to inflict damage on your opponent’s kitty. For each tooth you play, the target takes one hit. If it takes 10 hits, that cat is out of the game. Last cat standing is the winner. There! One game, 10 minutes. Somebody get me a lawyer. I got to copyright this stuff, Fantasy Flight. It’s gold, man. Pure gold. Don’t even think about touching it—I’ve got my eye on you.
8/11 – Brian W
But, despite the hip swankiness of our speech patterns, we have come to the realization that our lingo needs a bit of spicing up. Well, to be honest, it was John and I that decided that it needed spicing up. Maybe that’s because we in the sales department have a duller vocabulary, filled with terms like margins, profits, revenue, quarterly reports, value proposition, market penetration, trend merchandise, and, of course, overtime. So, in our continuing efforts to be at the forefront of innovation, both in our products and in our office lingo, the following employees may now be referred to by their new gangsta names:
This way when John answers the phone, he can say stuff like, “Yo, Home Slice! You got some action on line 2!” and Schomburg can respond, “I’m pickin’ up what your puttin’ down, G.” Oh yeah. Word out, dawg!
8/8 - Greg
The novels won’t likely feature any heavy-handed metaplots or world-shaking events that will screw up your campaign—they’ll just be cool stories with compelling characters that will allow you to explore these worlds in a little more depth, even if you aren’t playing in a regular campaign. I’m currently in the process of looking for talented writers. If you consider yourself such, please feel free to send me a writing sample at greg@fantasyflightgames.com with the words “fiction sample” in the subject line. I prefer Word or RTF documents, one-inch margins, double spaced, with your name and contact info on the front page and your name on each individual page. And, if you’re not a writer but you like to read, stay tuned: I’m sure we’ll have lots more information and previews as we move closer to publication.
8/7 - Brian Schomburg's Girlfriend
Anyhoot, I’m going to rant about my D&D character, Spooky. Now I admit I didn’t do the best job in creating her. I’m sure I didn’t pick the best possible spells and so on, but usually when I play I end up making a fighter of some kind. I’ve stayed away from spell casting because I use to think that it was confusing. Anyhoot, here is Spooky. She is a Drow Sorcerer and only sixth level. As you know, Drow take longer to level up, so even though she has enough experience points to be seventh or eighth level she is stuck at sixth. Spooky is only 3,400 exerience points away from leveling up to seventh so I would appreciate any feedback on what spells you think Spooky should get next. Here are Spooky’s stats:
Int: 7 AC: 16 HP: 32 Equipment:
God: Boccob Spells:
Now that you have seen Spooky, what do you think her next third Level spell should be? I am open to all suggestions. Thank you and have a great day. Candace Please email any comments about Spooky to candaceokeson@hotmail.com.
8/6 - Kevin
In other news, the Warcraft board game marches on. We've gotten the initial comments back from Blizzard on the preliminary design, and overall, I'd say we're in good shape and still on target for our mid-October release. We're also gearing up for a number of other fall releases from the board and card game department, including Mutiny!, Arena Maximus, Inkognito the Card Game, Wreckage, and Frenzy. We've already got the art in for most of the games, and I've attached a sneak peek or two below for your viewing pleasure. A portion of the cover of Mutiny!, painted by Anders Fine.
Mutiny! will also feature art from Don Maitz, who is perhaps most widely known as the gentleman who painted Captain Morgan for the Captain Morgan's rum label. Trust me, both his work and the full version of Anders Finer's cover are amazing. Lord Fiddlebottom, from Inkognito the Card Game, painted by Camille Kuo.
Although he's got a silly name, you have to admit that Camille Kuo draws one heck of a nice secret agent. The game takes place in Venice during Carnival, so he's in disguise, you see. Of course, no reason not to be stylish while you're concealing your identity. Anyhow, that'll have to whet your appetite for now. I've got Warcraft to get back to. Sorry folks, no Chris today. I will let him tell you why next time he rants. So for now itssssssssssssss Tony time.
8/5 - Tony
The only thing I can think of that might be worse then the Clown and Kitty was that fact that I had to drive through the hideous state of Cheese again (yes Mike Z. it really is that bad hahaha). As I'm sure you have heard by now we where all at Gen Con. And I'm sure you are all growing tired of the Oh so wonderful Gen Con stories. Course never know you all might be looking forward to me telling you how this was also my first Gen Con or I could go into more truck exploits since I got to ride in the truck again. Then maybe you all want to hear how the set up of the booth went and how wonderful it was having half the FFG staff there to make it a really efficient set up. Of course I could go into all the resturaunts I ate at while down there and to and from (yes I did eat at Hooters one of the nights sheesh you pervs). Maybe what your really looking for is stories of the hangovers I could have had and how I got there. Sorry never really got that drunk. But I did frequently went out and had fun. I could tell you how we actually went to Club Fusion on two different nights or how John and I went on a Midnight Cookie Run. I guess I could go on and on and on about the things I could tell you about Gen Con. But I'm sure you really don't want to hear about how I challenged Rob to a couple of games of air hockey and actually won both games. (Sure was glad Will Upchurch wasn't around to put me in my place.) I also know you don't want to hear about all the wonderful and great people I met while down there. Wouldn't you hate it if I went into how I bought 6 T-shirts and a Decepticon football jersey. Or worse yet if I started telling you how on Friday night I joined the Nascrag Tournament and got to play a bard who upon reading his description was basically Elvis Presley. Oh and the nightmares you would have if I let it slip that while playing said bard I actually started singing outloud. Oh the horrors that would be. What could be worse then me repeating the one about how I beat John in Thrones with my eyes closed and open and closed again. (Let it be said that I don't think of myself as great a player, as Greg had just crushed me right before I played John.) So to sum things up and keep it all short for you wonderful people, let's just say there was a great deal of things to do at Gen Con. I only got to do about 1 tenth of the things I would have liked to do. I really did have a blast and I can't wait to go back next year. Thanks to Chris for letting me go and no need to say thanks for me not going into great detail about what I did at Gen Con. I promise your Welcome. Well Until the next time John is so desperate for a rant that he has exhausted all other options and he has to turn to me. You all take care. Remember it's only just a game (or is it) and happy gaming to all and to all a happy gaming.
8/4 - John
Some of the highlights of my convention experiences were as follows:
That about somes it all up. Gotta go now to try and catch up with all the work that has piled up since Gen Con.
8/1 - Rob
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