Big changes

I don't blog much anymore (never did blog much, really), but I guess it doesn't hurt to post an update.

TMG

It's official - I now work for Tasty Minstrel Games! This is an exciting change, and I think it's going to be a positive one.

I'm still going to do some engineering on the side. We'll see how that goes. It may turn out to be just a transition sort of thing, but if I can manage to keep that up, then it'll be a nice source of additional income.

Kublacon

In other news, I just got back from KublaCon last weekend. For the first time in many years, I felt like I didn't really have a good time at the con. Don't get me wrong, I managed to enjoy myself for some of the time. But I felt like I spent far too much time just not doing anything - standing around looking for something to do, or sleeping in far too late. I did do some socializing, but even in that respect I feel like I barely talked to any given person, so most of the socializing seemed superficial. I don't know what I used to do differently, but I used to play 30-40 games over a 4 day con weekend, get lots of prototypes played, and I felt like I really got to visit with the people I rarely see.

I don't know what's different, but if that type of con experience becomes the standard, then that doesn't bode too well!

Other stuff going on...

SAGA

In 3 weeks I'm hosting another SAGA fundraiser for Rincon at the Holiday Inn. Last time (March 30) it went VERY well. I'm hoping the next one (June 22) will be equally fun and successful. I also hope I get to spend more time playing games this time.

Summer Vacation

Soon after that I leave for my annual trip to Seattle! I already got a plane ticket TO Seattle... but I have not yet figured out how I'm going to get from Seattle to Ann Arbor for Protospiel and back home. Those tickets seemed extraordinarily expensive, though I have a Delta flight voucher that might cover it. Sadly, Delta flies through Atlanta, so I'd be taking a roundabout path to get home!

I suppose I should make some plans for my trip!

In frisbee news, I have been able to play at league lately. I've even been able to run pretty well (though clearly not as hard or as fast as I used to), and most times it doesn't even leave me limping the next day! It's reassuring that I should be able to play at Potlatch again this year, and I should be in much better shape than last year.

Gaming

In the gaming world, I've played Tzolk'in several times lately, as well as Bora Bora, and I finally tried Terra Mystica. Terra Mystica is getting a lot of good press from my friends. I don't know if I like it as much as they do, but it seems like I ought to give it another try at least. I do like Bora Bora pretty well. And I'm happy to finally be playing my copy of Tzolk'in!

And in entirely other news...

Television

I have continue to watch Doctor Who, but frankly I'm not terribly impressed with the recent episodes, nor with Matt Smith as the Doctor. I don't know if it's Smith, or Moffit, or what - I really liked the early Matt Smith stuff. I also liked the recent companion (Clara), even if I thought they overplayed that "impossible girl" bit. I was not sorry to read today that after the 50th anniversary special and this year's Christmas special, the eleventh Doctor's time will be up. I'm hopeful that I'll like whoever takes up the mantle a bit better - like the early Matt Smith episodes (like the Silence and the Pandorica stuff).

On the other hand, I just watched the season finale of another BBC America show which was fantastic. I mean the whole show was fantastic, not the finale. This show is called Orphan Black - and I'm happy to hear it'll be back for a second season. At first I wasn't sure what they could do for he second season, but they left plenty of viable story open. I look forward to that show coming back, and I highly recommend Orphan Black to anyone who likes things that are awesome.

That's probably enough rambling for now.

The long wait is finally over... for some people anyway

Last week I got news that the boat had landed, and all of Tasty Minstrel's games had arrived in the warehouse (ahead of schedule for once)! I was sworn to secrecy, but today it was announced that the Kickstarter copies started shipping out last Friday! That means people in the eastern US will probably be getting their copies any second now, while people like me on the west coast will be receiving their copies in the next couple of days.

I know the international orders will still take a while to arrive - I wish there were a better system for that. Hopefully there will come a time when TMG has a distribution partner, or a warehouse, in Europe and some of each print run can be sent directly there rather than sending it back and forth across the globe.

I have heard that our exclusive surprise for Kickstarters DID make it into the shipments, so Kickstarter supporters should be receiving those along with their copy of the game.

I look forward to seeing reviews, session reports, and strategy posts at BGG and Boardgaming.com starting to pop up this week!


In other news... My friend David (designer of Ground Floor, coming soon from TMG) helped me put together this official rules sheet for the Bonus planets:

This will be available in the files section of BGG as well as on PlayTMG.com in the near future. I think it looks great, and I love that it matches the rulebook.

Two months

Two months since the last post... I haven't had much to say I guess. I haven't done any thinking about New Year Resolutions at all, which kind of disappoints me. I've also not been concentrating on losing weight or exercise, which also kind of disappoints me.

On the bright side of things, Eminent Domain is about to go to the printers - all the illustrations are done and the rulebook is getting some finishing touches. I will be very happy when that goes to the printer - I guess it'll be time to start working on the 1st expansion soon!

I just got back from Los Angeles for OrcCon, where I had a lot of fun. Sadly then I got sick - flu or maybe food poisoning. Feeling much better now though.

Upcoming travel: I plan to go to GAMA trade show with Mike again in March, and I'm also planning on going to New York for a Spielbany meetup (game design group) in April. Berkleyish for KublaCon in May, and of course Seattle for Potlatch in July. I havven't made any SPECIFIC plans for any of those trips yet, but I am planning on going and therefore I guess I'd better get on the arrangements!

I've got 2 Tasty Minstrel submissions which I like, got to figure out if they'd make good 2012 releases. One is like a cross between Railroad Tycoon and Roborally - I'm enjoying that a lot. The other is an economic game.

Well, that's the update.

It's not all bad

I FINALLY talked to a Stucco guy and will FINALLY get stucco repairs done at my house... FINALLY! I'm a little sick of everything in my life feeling like it's delay after delay :/

But it's not ALL bad - I'm really enjoying the excitement of the publishing company that Mike started. It's been frustrating lately because of the three games in the works currently, only 1 is on schedule. Another has been held up about a month because apparently it's impossible to send a playing card in the mail to China, and the other is more like 2 months behind and I don't understand why. The artist is still working on it, but he's approaching the end finally, and except for the fact that we won't have the games in time for the holidays (let alone the convention I wanted to release them at), at least they LOOK amazing!

Despite that frustration, some things are going right. We should have Train of Thought in time for the convention in a couple weeks. I know a handful of people personally, and there are dozens other I'm sure, who have been eagerly awaiting the release of Train of Thought since this time last year. Also, we've started a fund raising campaign on Kickstarter.com for my next game, Eminent Domain which I'm really happy with. We're only 3 days into that fund raising drive, and already we've raised almost $6,000 - almost 30% of the way there! I'm really excited by how well that's been going so far, and there are 27 more days to go!

So you see, as much as I like to complain, it's not all bad.

The Squeaky Wheel

There's a cliche I'm sure you're familiar with... It is the squeaky wheel that gets the oil. It refers to the dynamic by which the most noticeable problem is the one which gets attention. There's truth to that, of course... things don't become cliche because they're bullshit. In professional society I've seen this dynamic take effect time and time again. I've had clients call asking me to expedite a particular project because of their timeline, expecting it to happen despite what other clients' work might be in front of them in line. And you know what? If they call often enough, and make their situation sound urgent enough, often times it works. This says nothing of the respectful clients who understand the dynamics of a schedule, and don't call early asking (or demanding) to be bumped to the front of the line. My manager at my last job was especially susceptible to this kind of behavior, so much so that he would frequently give me a project priority list one day, then completely change the priorities the very next day based mostly on a phone call merely stating "when do you think this will be done?" He read that as the client getting antsy, and he constantly feared that if he didn't keep the clients happy they would jump ship and find another engineer.

As you can probably tell, I'm not fond of this behavior at all. At my first job we had a much more structured scheduling system, with things written right into the contract such as "we will begin work on this project within 3 weeks of receiving complete information, and the project will be completed within 2 weeks of that date." Then when someone called to ask when they were likely to get their project, the schedule could be referenced and an answer given. In the event a project was done early, of course it was given to the client early, and in the event of an actual urgency the schedule could be adjusted for a client, but not at the expense of other clients. This did not eliminate the Squeaky Wheel from, well, squeaking, but it gave some recourse and allowed the firm to operate without constantly jumping though hoops for the inevitably ungrateful clients.

Oh, didn't I mention that often times the Squeaky Wheel clients are also the clients who argue fees and are slow to pay?

Now don't get me wrong - not all clients are ungrateful, or difficult when it comes to payment... even some Squeaky Wheels. I know that some companies hire a specific individual to hold the Squeaky Wheel position - their whole job is to make sure things stay on track, and I've seen it done in a reasonable and respectful way. But I've also witnessed the annoying, unfortunate type of Squeaky Wheel, who wants everything done right away, and for free, and those people have spoiled the entire dynamic for everyone else.

So why do I bring this up? Well, recently Tasty Minstrel games sent out review copies of Terra prime and Homesteaders. It's been almost 2 months, and thus far I've seen only 1 written review of Homesteaders, none of Terra Prime, and no video reviews of either. Now I understand that reviewers have a stack of games waiting for reviews to be done, and I also understand that video reviews especially are not something you can just crap out on a moments notice. They are work, and they take time. I had simply hoped more of them would surface to coincide with the first shipment of TMG's games that hit the stores. Now I'm in the awkward position (awkward for me anyway) - do I simply wait for these reviews to surface in their own time? Or do I employ the Squeaky Wheel, emailing the reviewers to ask if they've had a chance to play the games, what they thought of them, and whether their review is forthcoming. I hate the thought of it, but in the end there's truth to the saying, it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

So I decided to squeak, at least a little bit. I sent some emails to some reviewers, trying to sound as little as possible like a dick who wants preferential treatment simply because I have the gall to ask for it, just making sure that they got the games we sent, if they had all the right bits (we've had some manufacturing issues), and if they got a chance to play them. I didn't specifically ask if their reviews were coming, but I'm pretty sure they can figure out that was implied.

Maybe I've got it wrong, and this kind of behavior isn't as abhorrent as I think. I rather hope that's the case, because I feel really bad about "sinking to this level" as it were. It wouldn't surprise me terribly if some of the reviewers I emailed actually read this blog, in which case I say to them "sorry, I wasn't trying to be a dick!"

But I do kinda feel like a jerk.

Atlanta bound!

I've never been to Atlanta, and frankly I never thought I'd have occasion to go. As it turns out though, to fix errors in the shipment of Terra Prime and Homesteaders Mike and I will be flying out to Atlanta in about a week to manage a team of temps to do quality control.

At the convention we found that about 10% of the Homesteaders boxes we opened had the wrong assortment of stuff. That's bad, because it means you cannot play the game! Terra Prime was better, but emails are trickling in about missing or damaged pieces here and there, so we might as well check all of those as well. We also found that it was kind of moist inside the boxes, which makes it hard to punch out the cardboard pieces without tearing them. To try and soak up the moisture and prevent mold and this tearing problem we plan to add silica packets as well.

There are almost 4000 total boxes which we'll need to open, check, then re-shrinkwrap. Hopefully this process won't be too bad or take too long. A lot of people are clamoring for their pre-order copies, and we hope to be able to get them out to those people before Christmas. I think this is feasible if we get a good number of the games checked in the first day or 2 we can send them straightaway to pre-order customers, which gives the post office a week to get them there before X-mas.

While the actual manual labor of checking the boxes will be tedious, I think the experience as a whole will be interesting and informative as we get a chance to see the warehouse and how the games are handled by the Fulfillment company.

Vacation! And... some people.are lame.

First off, I was at the store today, and some lady was there who was a great example of what's wrong with people sometimes.

There was a bag of dog food which cost $11. It was clearly marked $11.00 on the rack, and 1/2 of the bags had a sticker on them clearly labeling them as $11. The other half the sticker seemed to have been misprinted, too close to the cut-line, such that the left part of the sticker was cut off. Thus, on some of the bags it looked like the price might be $1.00.

This lady was insisting that although she knew it was supposed to be $11, since the bag said "$1.00" she should be able to bu it for $1. I don't understand how people can have that kind of audacity! I can sort of understand it if an item is truly mis-marked (has the actual wrong price affixed), but even then I am not the type of person to demand they sell me the item for the incorrect price. But in this case it's extra ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. What a horrible woman. I felt like picking up some other item, ripping off the price tag, and asking her if I deserved to get it for free.

Now that that's out of the way...

Tomorrow morning I get on a plane to my favorite game convention of the year! I'm going to Dallas for BGG.con, where my board game will be launching. I'm really excited about it!

I had a scare yesterday. Mike called to say that the shipment of games - that he paid a fortune to air ship from China to Dallas to make sure it was there on time - had been delayed, missed a plane out of Tokyo, was rescheduled for a Monday flight, and then got bumped to a Wednesday flight. This was terrible news, because a Wednesday flight would arrive in Dallas Wednesday afternoon, would probably sit in Customs for a day, and in the very best case (assuming no more delays) would arrive sometime Friday. The convention starts Thursday, and we have a booth and launch events scheduled... I've been looking forward to this for months (almost 2 years, actually), and to think that it was about to be ruined by stupid shipping delays had me very flustered and annoyed yesterday.

The ocean freight will arrive in a couple of days, almost ahead of the air freight!

I did a lot of freaking out and complaining on FaceBook and Twitter, and got a lot of supportive responses from people. There was literally absolutely nothing I could do. Michael however had been on the phone a lot with the customs broker and whoever else, trying to get someone to rectify the situation. In the end, the shipment went in the air this morning (Tuesday), and should have arrived this afternoon in Dallas. I am hopeful now that it will clear customs sometime tomorrow, and that Friday is more of a worst case than a best case scenario at this point!

So now I can go back to looking forward to the release of Terra Prime and Homesteaders! And I can enjoy my weekend of fun and games! Brian will be there again, and I always love to spend time with him. Also, my friend Steve from Hawaii will be accompanying me, as will Mike of course, to promote Tasty Minstrel Games. This will be the first time I have gone to BGG.con with other people. I've seen other Tucsonans there before, but I've never attended the con "with" anyone.

In addition, this year my friend Sean from Seattle will be attending. I'm looking forward to hanging out with him, and potentially conscripting him to help in the Tasty Minstrel booth, demoing Homesteaders for example. I'm also looking forward to seeing a bunch of other friends from all over the country, playing lots of games (including late night Werewolf!), and basically just having the best time ever!

I'm sure I'll post all about it when I get home. Actually, now that I got one of those newfangled smart phones (I got a MyTouch! It's pretty sweet! Thanks Grandma!), I might post (or at least tweet) from the con!

Recent and upcoming goings-on

It's been a long time since my last post... So what have I been doing for the last month?

Not a whole lot, actually. I have spent a lot of time playing and thinking about a game Tasty Minstrel is considering for publication, as well as another we're already committed to publishing next year.

Since Regionals I have not been playing much Frisbee - just league once a week and some pickup once a week (not even that much). It's a lot less exercise, and I fully expect the normal holiday season laziness and weight gain to begin. In fact, it's already begun - I was down to 164 at one point, and now I'm back to 175. I am going to try not to snack too much though, I do NOT want to weigh more than 180 ever again!

It's getting to be time to revisit my New Year's Resolutions - I have been seriously slacking on those! Time to assess how I did this year and make new resolutions for next year. The key is attainable, quantifiable goals!

In a week and a half I'm off to Dallas again for my favorite game convention of the year. Last month there was one in Tucson, and it was much bigger than last year when it first started... but Rincon was nothing compared to BGG.con! There's nothing but gathering with 800 of your closest friends for 4 days of fun and games! Ok, so maybe not ALL 800 of them are my closest friends, but I HAVE met a lot of great people at this convention, and this year several of my closest friends WILL be there. As usual, my oldest friend Brian, who lives in Dallas, will be there - I'm looking forward to spending some time with him. Also, this year Mikey is coming with me, and so is a college friend Steve who is living in my house for the time being. He's got a job waiting for him back in Hawaii, but it doesn't start until mid January, so he'll be around through the holidays.

This year the convention will be a little different for me, as Tasty Minstrel will have a booth and I'm going to have to spend a lot of time manning it. I'll be demoing Terra Prime and homesteaders as well as next year's releases... lucky for me those are great games and I really like them! I hope that doesn't mean I have to miss too much of the rest of the convention... I'm sure it'll be OK.

I do love the holiday season, and I'm looking forward to all the games I'll play and fun I'll have. I'll be bummed when the new year rolls around, Steve heads back to Hawaii, and the world gets over the holiday spirit.

Tasty Minstrel Games - Super Duper Pre-order Special!

Tasty Minstrel Games has posted demo videos of the launch titles, Terra Prime and Homesteaders, as well as details of a terrific, limited time pre-order special:

1000 packages for US residents: $44.95 for BOTH games, shipping included!
100 packages for non-US orders: $59.95 for BOTH games, shipping included!

In addition, the 1st 100 people to order and also post some special html to their blog referencing Free Game Friday, get a plush Tasty Minstrel dragon!

All the details and all the links needed to order can be found on the same page as the demo videos.

There's also a give-away contest running right now at boardgamegeek.com where you could win a copy of each game! The contest and the super Duper sale end at about the same time, so anyone who pre-orders and then wins the contest can have their pre-order refunded with no hassle.

Good luck to all who enter the contest, and for anyone interested in these two games - I have to advise you jump on this special pre-order before they're all gone... It's an insane deal!