So it’s been a few weeks … errrr, a month. 😉
Summer always gets me overly busy into fun things that aren’t necessarily game related. So, I’ve been off doing that sort of thing over the past month — camping, canoeing, hanging out with the family, mowing, weeding, grilling, visiting family and friends, etc.
I even picked up a new thing: woodworking! During June, I built my first piece of supposed-to-look-good-furniture, pictured to the right. It’s a TV & linen cabinet for the corner of our bedroom, made to match the new bedroom set we recently bought as a 20th wedding anniversary present to each other. My wife did the cool stain & poly work. I also have to give thanks to Chevee Dodd, who turns out to be an experienced woodworker and general fix-it guy … lots of good advice from him. Also, from the folks at the lumber yard in Mayer … good folks there, and good lumber too. 😉
But, I’m guessing that if you’re reading this site, you probably don’t care that much about my camping and woodworking exploits … you’d really rather have me talking about games. So, here goes …
One of the things that made me need to take a bit of a gaming break was missing the deadline for the Miniatures Game Design contest at TGC. I was so very, very close … even staying up late and getting up way-too-early the last couple of days before the deadline. But, it turned out that I missed an important part of the contest rules: exactly what it means to be “publish ready” — it’s there in detail, but I missed it an filled-in my own assumptions instead. So, when it came time to submit the game to the contest, it was not in the proper state and couldn’t be accepted.
This bummed me out a lot more than I had expected it to. I was initially pretty angry at myself for such a silly oversight … but then I tried to shift into “no big deal” mode. But it was a big deal to me, so I really couldn’t fake that very well. So, next best thing was to take a break and just enjoy summer time.
But now GenCon is approaching and it’s time to get busy again. I absolutely cannot wait to spend four great days of gaming with Chevee, Grant Rodiek, AJ Porfirio (my 3 roommates), plus a ton of folks that I have come to know via Protospiel, TGC, BGDF, Con of the North, Twitter and other gaming community connections. So, here is what I have on tap:
- Jump Gate, 3rd Edition on TGC … I am still working to get the new edition of Jump Gate ready for the TGC Shop. The final items involve finishing up the rule booklet, player reference cards and new shop graphics. I was originally targeting end-of-June … but that flew past. So now: end of July. Really. 😉
- Thunder Run to Gratis-3 … Although I missed the contest deadline, I still came up with a very fun game that I’m quite proud of. Not having it in the contest will allow me some time to slow down, play test it some more and really hone it. I will have it with me at GenCon and would love to play it as much as possible over the next couple of months.
Prototypes for GenCon … I plan to have 4 other game prototypes with me at GenCon, and they’re the same ones I had along at Protospiel-Milwaukee in March: family games SharkBait and Cosmic Critters, odd medium strategy, open-bidding, worker-placement game For Goods and Honor, and heavy strategy, area-control game Magistrate. All will have been tweaked and improved since March, and (with the exception of Magistrate) ready for pitching to publishers.
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