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New this week:
For
God And Queen
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"Probably a board that's the same width as
this, just as an extension," I say, pointing to the left
side of our front doorway, "and then over here we'll put
one of those thin boards." Gina uses her hands as vicarious
boards, putting them up against the door frame. She says, "What,
is it going to have a..." She stops, as if listening to
something.
swaly (sway'-lee) adj. shady
- Dancer In The Dark %}
Painful musical --
a great tragedy that I
wish I hadn't seen.
Forbidden Planet
This
influential fifties sci-fi classic summarizes like a "Star
Trek" episode: a starship arrives at a strange, distant
planet and a team (consisting of the captain, first officer,
and doctor) leave the ship to investigate the planet's dangerous
mysteries. It also has the feel of a "Lost in Space"
episode... this crew's spaceship is a flying saucer, and this
film's Robby the Robot looks and acts much like the one that
was always warning Will Robinson about impending danger. [more]
Roller Coaster DataBase
Ashfield Online
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- "Gameplay: (* * * * *) Wow! This game is absolutely
amazing!"
"Overall: (* * * * *) This is without a doubt my new favorite
traditional card game. I only wish that I had played it sooner!
It is a stimulating strategy game that is unparalleled in design,
and fun. Chrononauts' time has arrived, and now is the moment
that you should buy this game!"
-- review
of Chrononauts by Brian Spicer, in Dungeon Crawler magazine
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Back From Gen-Con |
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We're
back from Gen-Con, and it was fabulous. Since this event takes
place just a few weeks after our Big
Experiment at Origins, we decided long ago not to plan anything
too ambitious for this convention, and just got a booth in the
Exhibit Hall. We also kept our staff to a minimum this time,
bringing as official booth staff only myself, Kristin, and Alison.
But even with a small booth, a limited team, and an impromptu
demo schedule, we still managed to attract huge crowds and sell
lots of our games. Yay!
We're very pleased with the new
fixtures we added to the booth this time, which included
a new backdrop, a giant rotating Chrononauts box, and our first
real cash register (this last item having been a real joy during
those times when the booth was really really crowded). With each
new show like this we do, we further refine our equipment, our
procedures, and our shtick, making it that much easier to do
yet more shows like this each year... and aren't there sci-fi
conventions and gaming events of some scale just about every
weekend, somewhere? The more events we do, the more we want to
add more events to our schedule. But of course, there's never
enough time. Always we are needing to return home, to tend to
the daily workings of the business.
Suddenly, however, everything
is changing. We are in the midst of turning over our warehousing
and fulfillment operations to a partner company, ACMS.
Once this handoff is complete, we will no longer be involved
in the day to day issues of taking orders and mailing our products
out to our customers. Oh sure, there'll still be an endless amount
of work for us to do as we seek to market our games... but in
these days of tele-commuting and with our fulfillment work outsourced,
we will suddenly be theoretically freed to run our business from
anywhere. And with that realization comes the idea of getting
an RV, setting up a mobile office/residence inside it, and HITTING
THE ROAD! We could go on tour for weeks, even months at a time,
just driving around the country from event to event, making game
store appearances in between conventions, meeting fans and recruiting
rabbits along
the way, and updating this website and running the business from
wherever we happened to be at the time. Wouldn't that be cool???
Well, it's an idea.
Other things I remember from Gen-Con:
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- Fluxx promo card collectors will want to know about the Gen-Con
2001 promo card: it's a Goal promoting Chrononauts called Time
Travel: Time + The Rocket. We have plenty of leftovers and we'll
be making them available (along with the Chrononauts promo from
Origins) through our website in a few weeks, after the fulfillment
handoff is complete. (Can't wait? Send us a SASE.)
- Fluxx Blanxx
made its debut at Gen-Con as well, but again, if you weren't
at Gen-Con, you'll have to keep being patient while we rebuild
our shopping cart. (Anyway, we'd rather you bought your copy
in a game store, many of which should be receiving Fluxx Blanxx
during the next few weeks...)
- The best concessions at the con were the
bags of delicious cooked-before-your-eyes tiny donuts, sold by
the Milwaukee Miniature Donut Company. They had a scaled down
version of Homer Price's donut machine right there on the third
floor of the convention center, right between the exhibit hall
and the open gaming area, and the whole area smelled of donuts
all weekend.
- The most intriguing new release I saw was "Morton's
List", a thick book filled with hundreds of real-life
activities, accompanied by dice and lookup tables, with the idea
being that you get your gaming group (aka "the Inner Circle")
together, roll the dice, and then go out and do whatever the
book tells you to do. The game's subtitle is "The End to
Boredom" and some of the suggested game activities are sufficiently
risky (the book is filled with warnings and disclaimers) that
Gen-Con management decided not to let them have a booth in the
exhibit hall after all. (To find them, you had to follow the
trail of "Banned from Gen-Con" flyers to the table
they were camped out at in the Open Gaming area.) Anyway, they're
clearly Dreamers
so we picked up a copy... we'll see if anyone in our group
wants to review it.
- Speaking of new games, James
Ernest just released a time travel board game called "US
Patent Number 1", but frankly, it looks like no match for
my time travel game. It's probably fun, but it's just
a racing game, the time travel factor is pure window dressing.
What fun is time travel if you don't get to change history?
- We
haven't been to Gen-Con in several years, and the last
time we were here they were actively tearing down sections
of the convention center to make way for a whole new version
of same. Now, most of that work is done and the new facilities
look great... for example, check out this funky bus shelter!
It's just too bad the convention is moving to Indianapolis the
year after next. I shall miss getting to eat at Giordano's
and the Safe House.
- As always it was good seeing friends and fans both new and
old... I especially enjoyed playtesting the Lost
Identities with Brad (who was thrilled to see his character
Mojo
in my nearly-final prototype deck) and Nanofictionary
with Zach, Jessica, and William (I've never seen anymore more
excited about this newest game than Zach). Oh, and thanks Carol
for making sure we stopped to eat now and again!
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Stay
cool! |
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Fluxx and Chrononauts are doing so well in the
WotC/GameKeeper mall stores that they've decided to pick up Aquarius
as well! They just placed an order for 1000 decks! |
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"Yeah, OK, sure! Even though you didn't
invent the game, you can be in the picture too."
-- a fan named Tony who didn't realize he was talking to James
Ernest as he sought to take a photo of the team from Looney Labs |
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"Another one of them new worlds... no beer,
no women, no pool parlors, nothing. Nothing to do but throw rocks
at tin cans and we gotta bring our own tin cans."
-- Cookie in "Forbidden
Planet" |
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