I was at Origins in Columbus last week. Germania is with an interested publisher (we played a game at the convention). The next step, by his reckoning, is written negotiations. It is still the case that any comments about the clarity of the rules are welcome. The publisher also may want to change some of the names (Granada to Lusitania, for example), and in a game like this that is always a matter of taste, whether you use Roman, Dark Age, or later Middle Ages names. I have revised the rules for clarity (not in substance) since I sent them to several of you.

I talked at length with another publisher about Seas of Gold, which is not quite ready for "blind" playtesting. Nothing going with Gangsters: the small company I'd talked to last year wasn't at the con (not unusual), and I haven't got a peep out of Steve Jackson games. This business is always very slow. Publishers plan issues well ahead--FFG is already booked up through 2006, for example.

The main Fantasy Flight guys were not at Origins. I understand they're about to deal in earnest with Brit 2, which makes the publication date sometime in the late fall. They also have Dragon Rage, a game originally published in 1982, but have not had time to look at it (and I don't know when they will--they're very busy, and hiring new people).

Here are some figures that may interest you about the business side of boardgaming. Print runs are, usually, much less than in days of old. The print run of Britannia in UK was 10,000 in 1986, and I suspect (don't know) twice that in the US, maybe more. Dragon Rage's original print run in 1982 was 10,000. If Brit 2 sees 5,000 this year, that will be exceptionally high for a wargame. Wacht Am Rein, a successful "big" hex wargame, had a print run of 1,500 (and will be reprinted). I've read (don't know) that Columbia does 2,000 of each of their popular "block games". Strategy & Tactics magazine's circulation (with the game) is about 3,200; Against the Odds magazine is 2,500. S&T also does some 7,000 without the game through Barnes and Noble.

In other words, there's not much market for any individual wargame. I suspect that's because there are so many games that the market is diluted, but also because younger people have found other things to do than play board wargames.

Euro-style games can have quite small print runs to start with (but larger than wargames), and are perhaps more likely to be reprinted. One that wins the German Game of the Year award can go to half a MILLION in reprint, however.

Even among collectible card games, there's great dilution. One game collector has more than five hundred CCG in his collection. One of the main halls was devoted to CCG, with the national Yu-Gi-Oh tournament handing out significant prizes (expenses-paid trip to world championship in Tokyo and a DVD-equipped laptop for first and second place; the trip for third and fourth place).

The "cult of the new" was very obvious at Origins. Manufacturers of collectible card and related games (there's one that uses a poker chip format!, as well as all the miniatures versions) employ people to teach convention attendees how to play the latest games in hopes of hooking them "on the spot". The boardgame tournaments are much smaller than at WBC (where the focus is on playing great games), even though the overall attendance is 15 times higher.

BTW, Origins attendance was 11,000 unique individuals after two days, so they expected to go over their record of 15,000. WBC attendance is about a thousand. GenCon claims 50,000, but that's person-days, not unique individuals, so it would appear to be the same size as Origins.

It's been said that Euro games are very pacific because Germans don't like wargames. I'm told, however, that computer wargames sell very well in Germany. So the consumers don't mind wargames. It's the owners of the shops (family game shops) who feel they shouldn't have conflict games on the shelves.

This should have been posted a couple weeks ago...

I used to correspond with Roberto di Meglio (owner of Nexus, co-designer of War of the Rings). But in January he went silent on me, even though we were working on a business proposition. I got so concerned that I finally asked someone who worked with Nexus how Roberto was doing, and was told he's fine. But I still cannot get a word out of him. Very puzzling.

Brit 2 (again), Seas of Gold (tm), and Enchanted Labyrinth: The Card Game (tm) have most occupied my gaming time lately. Along with Stars of Gold (tm), which leaped into being recently. It is somewhat like Seas of Gold(tm), not surprisingly, and similar in that after I played it three times I have a full set of playable rules, most unusual for me, but about the same thing that happened with Seas.

I have been thinking about writing a book about game design. I realized that some of the articles I have written, or that I'm writing now, are excellent material for such a book, and when I checked word counts I found that a reasonably-sized book isn't all that time-consuming (80-90K words is a shortish novel). Now who would publish such a thing is another matter. I would aim for it to be the same size as Game Inventors Guidebook (I may have the title twisted) by Brian Tinsman. I'm working on an outline.

I'll be at Origins and WBC, but none of the other big conventions. More local game meetings are better places for playtesters.

Last June, while on Jersey Island off the coast of France, I set myself the task of designing a card game, just to say I could do it. (I don't play card games, generally.) Gangsters: Taking Care of Business (TM) was one result, and a bird-watching game that I haven't yet developed.

Since the I've come up with a couple more ideas, but nothing beyond that.

Recently I decided to try designing "Britannia: The Card Game" (tm), and found that it worked so well (and came together so quickly) that I went on to design several more based on my boardgames Germania, Enchanted Labyrinth, and Seas of Gold (all tm). It's amazing how quickly the game comes together when you already have much of it designed via the boardgame. Of course, there are more limitations with a card game (and I try to design games that only use cards, nothing else); but limitations can actually help make a design better, not worse, as you concentrate on what's important.

The end of a not-very-good semester has kept me very busy, but I have had time to play "MegaBrit" twice, and am about to play a new game, "Viking Gold" (tm), which is a Viking version of Seas of Gold, more or less. I seem to be a phase of fascination with the Vikings, and have started designing a Brit-like Viking game, as well, 793-1093 or thereabouts, covering Britain, Ireland, and northern France and Germany (as does Viking Gold).

I did get to have Germania, Gangsters, and Seas of Gold (all (tm)) at Game Day in late April at NCState. I think Seas of Gold is about 95% done, the others 99%.

I have not heard a word from FFG since sending them the Brit 2 rules more than a month ago. They're hiring four new people and are evidently very busy with expansion.

I intend to go to Origins and World Boardgaming Championships this summer.

My Web site and pulsipher.net email have been down since Saturday, when the server failed; I was told it would be restored in 4-6 hours. My host (Lunarpages) voice support says the server is back up but for some MySQL problems, but that they won't talk with people who used the server I'm on because all they can do is write trouble tickets. I finally got logged in sufficiently to see that my site seems to be lost (not restored). Quite frustrating.

Last weekend I played a game of Megabrit from beginning to end. It seems to work fairly well, when playing as independent nations. I'm not sure how well it will work with four (or five) sides, as there are so many nations on the board at once, and many are not very large or robust but can score a lot of points.

I've recevied the signed contract from FFG and will be sending the game Monday or Tuesday.

I have been playing with Mega-Brit lately, and may play teh game soon. Another game brought out of fallow-land is The Two World Wars (tm).

On EN World people have been talking about their favorite articles from Dragons long ago, and four of mine have been cited. I may have to post some on my site.

I posted Why has the Gaming Hobby Changed? on my Web site in January. This article has generated a strong response. I received several e-mails from people I don't know telling me how accurate it seemed to be. And some bloggers vituperatively trashed it, though they did not have the courtesy to let me know they were doing so--I have just stumbled onto some of this. Where I come from, if you want to arrive at the truth, you discuss something with the source of your disagreement; shooting your mouth off where the target won't even know about it is a form of cowardice.

They must not have read "Are Video Games Turning Us into a Nation of Losers". Then they'd really hit the ceiling!

I have the signed contract from FFG for Brit II, and will be sending the rules off any day now.

I've been spending more time on "Mega-Brit" than I should, and may even play a game fairly soon. Anotehr game to be pulled out of the "fallow" pile recently is The Two World Wars. I've also found a way to put a flagstone background on the Enchanted Labyrinth map, very neat. Thank you CorelDraw.

I stumbled across some blog comments on Why has the Gaming Hobby Changed? , which is posted on my web site. This article has generated a strong response. I received several e-mails telling me how accurate it seemed to be. On the other hand, the bloggers vituperatively trashed it, though they did not have the courtesy to let me know they were doing so. Where I come from, if you want to arrive at the truth, you discuss something with the source of your disagreement; shooting your mouth off where the target won't even know about it is a form of cowardice. I have learned that the contents of blogs varies greatly in quality, so I'm not purusing the matter. The article will be revised, and then I'll submit it to a magazine.

I don't think the bloggers read Are Video Games Turning Us Into a Nation of Losers. They'd really hit the ceiling . . .

Lew

FFG has announced via press release (which I haven't seen) and at GAMA that they're publishing Britannia Second Edition. I'm *still* tweaking rules, but I should think any day now I'll get word to send it in.

I have just sent out Germania for blind playtesting. Enchanted Labyrinth will be next.

I was gearing up to do a "Sweep of History" e-zine, but the original volunteer editor-publisher has reappeared. Now that my graduate class has finished, I may have time to write some things for it.

My next submission task is to find a publisher for reprinting Dragon Rage.

Not going to PrezCon was a good decision, because we playtested a 3-player version of Brit II, and because I got a streaming cold.

I should get the signed contracts back for Brit II next week.

On the way home from the NC Computer Instructor's Association meeting in Lenoir (where I gave a talk about teaching game design and programming), I had more ideas for the European colonization version of Seas of Gold (tm).

I am almost "out from under" the burden of the graduate class I teach: I still need to grade the finals and research papers. Then I'll have a bit more time for games.

I am so busy, and need to work directly on Brit II, that I've decided not to go to PrezCon next weekend (which also saves quite a bit of money). I could not have made it until late Friday because of classes, and as the tournament will be old Brit, it would be of limited use to me.

I need to use people closer to home (Triangle, Chapel Hill) for playtesting on a more regular basis.

I've found that my Web traffic went up greatly in January, evidently owing to a link to my article about changes in gaming; it's gone back down some in February.

One of my old (but revised) articles has appeared in The Games Journal for Feb.

We are working on the contract for Brit Second edition now. And I am still working on the revisions to the game, though I am at the point that my main worry is play balance.

I have not actually played many games this yar, nor devised new ones. Between Brit, school, and less than 100% health, I sometimes feel that I'm not getting very far.

My Web stats show over 500 hits per day, average, on my Web site now, and I find that hard to believe unless many of the hits are "bots" of one sort or another.

Having been somewhat under the weather for the past week, I haven't been making great progress. I did get a new historical atlas that is helping with History of Central Asia. Also today, for some reason, I dug out "Currents of Space", an old chess-like game that was one of my "favorite four" 25 years ago (Britannia, Crashing Suns, and Enchanted Labyrinth were the others). I should say it is chess-like but bears absolutely no resemblance to chess in its mechanics. I sent a copy off to my nephew, who is an excellent playtester, and I'll getit to the playtest listserv in a while.

Britannia II is where I need to spend time, but haven't been getting there.

Lew

Although I was suffering from a stomach virus--I seem to be sick when I attend winter gamefests--I went to NC Game Day VI at NC State's Central Campus this Saturday. The turnout was low, I was told, undoubtedly in part because of threatening weather (mention ice on the roads and southerners freeze up), in part because there was no announcement in the Raleigh paper. I'd suppose there were about 50 people, mostly playing RPGs, some Euro boardgames, one Heroclix game, no wargames. I did get a lead to triangle_strat_gaming on Yahoo Groups, and gave a few people my card; if not for an early ending (when the organizers packed up, I decided I'd better head home) I might have gotten in a game of Gangsters or Germania.

Latest projects (aside from two player training versions of Brit): Brit-like History of Central Asia (tm), which could have a lot of different titles, and some notes about a Diplomacy variant version of Lord of the Rings.

Lew Pulsipher

Reading: Atlas of the Celtic World, Short History of Byzantium, and the appendices of Lord of the Rings, simultaneously.
Games: Brit second edition, bits on lots of games, and (for a proposal) a Brit-like version of the Third Age of Middle-earth.
But because it is the end of the term, I haven't played games much, nor have we playtested much at schoo.

LP

I'm stricken once again....

by "the disease". That being the disease of designing games. I read about a new game called 7 Ages a couple days ago, then yesterday started to read the Vinci rules (first sentence and a half), and it hit me. It's a cross between Mesopotamia (that being a cross between Germania and Britannia) and, more or less, Risk, Vinci and History of the World. I want historical groups, following their historical characteristics (Nomads don't like forests, e.g.), but not forced to follow the historical course the way Brit encourages them to. And I want it to be fairly simple, and not take TOO long.

At this point I have a board (modified from the small version of Dark Ages, with eastern areas added), a combat system (also borrowed from DA), point systems... I still have some sequencing to figure out, then I'll be ready to try to play.

Of course, it could be a year before it can be playtested outside the local group. We'll see.

I am calling it Europa (TM), for the time being. It covers Europe, North Africa, and Asia to the borders of India and (modern) China.

It has been too long since I updated the blog.

In early October I created, in record time, a somewhat Euro-like game aimed at lasting an hour, about the Italiam maritime republics. Within three weeks I had a full set of rules written (not my normal process). I actually only played it once solitaire, also not my normal process. Since then I've been tweaking and sometimes making substantical changes to the rules, through several playtests. I've now posted information about it to the Web page. I finally settled on the title Seas of Gold (tm), though for a while I wanted to use an Italian word. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good one, and the translation of Seas of Gold isn't very exciting.

An offshoot of this game will be "Seas of Promise" (or whatever I decide to call it) about European discovery/exploitation worldwide.

LEP

I've been pursuing correspondence with old buddies like Alan Paull, and have "activated" my playtesting yahoo group for Britannia II.

I have been working on Brit II with the Eurobrit guys, but not very fast as my classes take most of my time.

Still having "the disease", I've come up with a new Brit-like game, same time period, 20 areas, 9 turns, no dice. I playtested it with other people for the first time last night, looks like it might work out.

And then I worked up another one, Italian city states 1000-1300. The original intent was a simple almost-boardgame that would last an hour, I think I may have it beyond that right now.

LEP

Origins was very interesting, both for the seminars and the exhibitions, as well as for the opportunity to talk with some people. It appears fairly likely that Britannia and perhaps Dragon Rage will be republished.

A card game I designed during vacation in Europe has come together very quickly, and I intend to ask people to play it at PowWow in Charlottesville later this week.

While I was in Europe visiting relatives, my nephew and niece aged 15 and 12 played the two games I took along (Princes (TM) and Germania (TM). Katie, not a game player ordinarily, understood the tactical but not so much the strategic aspects of Princes. Nonethless, when I was otherwise occupied she taught her 11 year old cousin to play, and they appeared to be playing correctly when Beatrice "got bored" (meaning she was losing and didn't like it, in this case). Simon's cousin also played Germania, and tried Princes once. It was interesting to see that younger folks can cope with the games.

I also "designed" a couple cards-only games there, one about gangsters, one about bird-watching (my wife is a birdwatcher). We'll see if they amount to anything.

Am now preparing for Origins.

We continue to play some of my old unpublished games in our weekly sessions; I haven't played anything solo for several weeks, largely owing to the end of term rush.

I've located my game magazine archives (the articles I've been posting to web and yahoo groups were from carbon copies of original submissions). Latest notion is to turn "Bar Room Brawl" into a boardgame, keeping in mind that I once (at Ian Livingstone's suggestion) designed a game called "Troll Tavern" for Games Workshop, but they lost interest (it wasn't one of my best games).

I have not touched Dark Ages (tm) in over half a year. Sigh.