After a brief flurry of activity last month, it’s been hard to concentrate on all my little gamey side projects, since I’ve picked up a gig working on Flash games, but I’m still trucking along as the hours or fractions thereof present themselves.

I’ve recruited my friend and fellow improviser Halyn to work on the art for Fluffy Bunny Tea Party! We met today, and I’m totally amazed by the sketches that she put together. I’m really looking forward to working with her on all of the bunnies and desserts and associated artwork for the cards and rule booklet and boxes and whatnot. I’m sending her more technical graphic specs tonight, and we’ve got a production schedule down for a solid BGG.Con launch this year, and I’m totally confident that this is going to be a fantastic little game.

Speaking of cards, I just received a box of a hundred 4″x6″ Six Gun postcards from overnightprints.com, and they look amazing. I already liked the design, and seeing them all glossy and up close makes it all that much better. I’ll try to keep a few on hand as I toodle around – if anybody wants one, let me know, and I’ll make sure that you get it.

Work on Game Poems has been pretty slow lately. I’m just not feeling super inspired – I feel like I’ve explored the form a good bit, published a book of games (which still gets me a small check from distributors every few months, which is pretty nice), and although I’m certainly not out of ideas for them, I’m just not really moved to keep up with the weekly-or-so output these days. I’m writing a few special ones for a collection of vampire games that someone on Story Games is putting together, but beyond that, I’m not promising anything.

There are a couple of other projects still on the medium-back burners (Skin Men, and the Cochise RPG), but my energy is going towards getting Fluffy Bunnies out this year, so we’ll see how much writing and playtesting those get. Still keeping my hand in things, but taking it a bit easy right now, yeah?

This is cross-posted from my blog:

I was in Dallas this past Thursday through Sunday for BoardGameGeek.con, a fantastic board gaming convention. It was a smaller, more laid back type of con than your GenCon or ComicCon, with perhaps only 700 attendees.

I cajoled Cory into going at the very last minute, so he, Nukes, Majcher and I headed up there Thursday morning. The con was at the Westin near the airport. The only thing nearby was a Denny’s and a Shell station. That Denny’s must make bank as it was the only source of reasonably priced “food” within several miles, as we found out.

The con itself was spread out between a large ballroom, a smaller ballroom and an overflow room. Plus there was a foyer area and a games library. The games library was this heavenly wonderland where you could find every game you had ever heard of, no matter how rare or out of print. Games that would cost you $300 on eBay could be checked out and played, even taken up to your room overnight. That right there should tell you about the top shelf quality of people at this convention.

I got to see Mischa again! Mischa is a gaming dynamo. I came down one morning, at what I thought was an early time (maybe 7:30 or 8AM) to find Mischa embroiled in a game of Galaxy Trucker. He had gamed through the night with no signs of stopping. Later that afternoon, I began to suspect the use of illegal stimulants, or, at the very least, a clone. How could someone do this? The secret to his staying power was revealed a few days later, but I shall take it to my grave.

I had the most fun playing obscure games, out of print games or games designed by my friends. Kapitan Wackelpudding left a deep impression. Shipping a stack of coffins and video games to Dracula land is no easy task. Tales of the Arabian Nights stole my heart. It is a game I should have been playing during my childhood at the same time as Talisman or Cosmic Encounter. It is essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure board game with role-playing elements. Thankfully, Z-Man is coming out with a new version next June. I learned the ferocity of soccer moms vying for the best looking garden in Garden Competition.

I played Dan’s Monkey Lab again, outwitting my opponents. I also had a chance to play Majcher’s Honeypot, which is a brilliant abstract strategy game. I was also delighted by his prototype of Fluffy Bunny Tea Party. It involves bunnies sitting around eating cakes, drinking tea and being horrifically polite to each other. Dan sold out of Chains of Fenrir, Majcher sold out of Honeypot and Ian sold out of Taktika. We were all really happy for Ian. He walked around in this kind of daze, unprepared for how well his game would be received.

I brought 12 units of House of Whack and managed to sell 6 of them! At first I was really overwhelmed. I felt kind of stunned by what it was I was trying to do and a deep terror grabbed hold of me. I didn’t think anyone was going to like my game. I wanted to give up and run far away. But on the morning of the flea market, I went down to the show room, claimed half a table, and set up a display for House of Whack. When the browsers flooded in like a Zerg rush, I kept my head and hyped the game to everyone who came by. My very first sale was to Aldie, one of the guys in charge of the convention. That was cool.

Friedemann Friese, a famous game designer was there as the guest of honor. He hung out and played games with everyone like a regular guy. You could always spot him in the room due to his shock of bright green hair. He always looked like he was searching for something, entering a room, head craning about, trying to spot something just out of view. I talked with him about what it was like when he had finished his first game and he said that he felt like he had no idea what he was doing, but, after the first game, nothing else quite gives you the same feeling. I get that.

Sunday morning found us packing up our massive hauls of treasure gleaned from the math trade and the flea market. If I had an extra $100 (and more trunk space), I would have matched Jake and Jen’s impressive finds. I think they got Arkham Horror and Descent for $40 total. Nice.

And then we came back to Austin.

The End.

Jun 092006

Hi everyone,

My name is Ian, and I live in Austin Texas. I have been designing role-playing games and then playing them with my friends for about 20 years now, and it has been a very fun hobby for me. However, I now have a new hobby; designing and playing board games (I still play RPG’s too).   
I have just recently discovered how important having a regular play-test group is. I have been meeting with a group for several months now, play-testing games and talking about game ideas. Not only has this really helped me to stay motivated to keep producing prototypes, but I find my self thinking up new ideas much more often.
 

May 292006

I’m Dan and am also an Austinite. I’m working on several board and card games right now. I’ve been playtesting a few of them off and on since last year. Some of my other designs are currently waiting on my magical back burner, while the unfortunate other ones are right in their design files still born. I plan on publishing some of them, but that’s in the hands of the publishers right now.

Nah, mine’s Clarence.

Okay, it’s Emerson. I’m a designer living in the Bay Area, making a living on the webbernets. I’ve got some ideas for some juegos de computadora, but haven’t really gotten anything past the sketch-word-doc-fall-asleep-playing-sudoku-on-the-ds stage. Which is a long stage, let me tell you what.

eo

May 252006

Hello, everyone.

I’m Mischa. I’m a transplanted New Orleans native now living in Austin, Texas. Game-wise, I’ve got two roleplaying games on my burners, and four board/card games and ideas on the back burners in various stages of development. I have a few ideas for computer games, but as I’m not a programmer, it’s likely not to happen. That’s fine with me. Right now, I pay the bills by keeping computers running. I’m really in IT for the glory.

I’m very interested to see where this little open-air experiment goes.

MDK

May 212006

Hello, and welcome to our little experiment in open-air game design. We’ve got a few games on the burner, and we figure that by thinking out loud and posting our progress to a public forum, we’ll both be encouraged to keep plugging away at things, and be albe to elicit feedback from each other, and the design community at large.

We’ll have a few people joining us here, so let me introduce myself first. I’m Marc, and I pay the bills by making computers go. I’m primarily a programmer, with a good dose of game designer. I have a handful of mostly-done board and card games in the queue, a couple of smallish role-playing games in dire need of playtesting, and a large stack of interactive waiting to be built – that is, video games, both single-player and web-based multiplayer. I’ll be dribbling those out here as they come up.

But first, I’ll wait for the others to pipe up, and then we’ll get rolling.