Promo video for D&D: Rock Paper Wizard

Wizkids put together a fun promo video that highlights how Dungeons & Dragons: Rock Paper Wizard is played! This is our new game – designed by Sen and I – AND Josh Cappel! That’s right – the artist guy who has done some of the best art for board games, also co-designed this one (AND he did the art! So double Josh awesomeness). We’re really proud of this game and feel like it really offers something new in the gaming world – and we’re super stoked that we got the D&D license for this game. How cool is that?

It’s 1 minute long – so you can’t NOT watch it, right?

-Jay Cormier

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Rock Paper Wizard Announcement from WizKids!

A brand new game from not only Sen-Foong Lim and myself, but also co-designed (and graphically designed) by Josh Cappel has just been announced! Check out this brief synopsis of our upcoming social game, Rock Paper Wizard, set in the Dungeons and Dragons world! We’re super excited to be able to contribute to this world – and we’re excited to design a game with our Bamboozle Cousin, Josh! Expect to see the game in January 2017.

-Jay Cormier

The Gathering of Friends 2016 – Bamboozle Brother Summary

The Gathering of Friends is always my favourite week of the year (ok, with the exception of the week I got married this year!), and this year was as fun and productive as usual. Here’s a summary of the shenanigans that the Bamboozle Brothers got up to over the last 10 days.

Pitching new games

We pitched fewer games than usual this year, mostly because we’ve been busy working on licensed games. We still managed to meet with a bunch of publishers.

Filosofia: We showed them 9 Thieves and a set of three games set in the Arabian Nights stories, each designed by different designers. They liked 9 Thieves and gave us an idea to improve it, which we did for our next pitch.

Wizkids: Right before the Gathering a contract expired for Rock, Paper, Wizards, a game that another publisher had of ours, which meant that it was back on the market. Zev from Wizkids remembered liking it last year, so after a round of playing the game again Zev wanted the game! He had an idea that seemed like it would break the game, but the underlining issue he was trying to solve was a valid issue. This was a game we co-designed with Josh Cappel (yes, THAT Josh Cappel – the artist for Belfort!) and Josh had a brainstorm that solved the issue even better and made everyone happy! Huzzah!

I also pitched to Zev a game I designed with non-Sen designer, Shad Miller, called Skirmishes. He really liked that one and asked to have a copy to evaluate.

Zev from Wizkids examines Skirmishes!

Stronghold: I showed Stephen Skirmishes because I thought it was something he’d be interested in – and he liked it and said it was very clever, but he already had a battle game coming out this year.

USA-opoly: I wouldn’t have thought to pitch anything to him based on the games that they’ve made. I had the fortune of sitting beside Tony from USA-opoly on a 2 hour bus ride to Toronto to visit Snakes and Lattes and see the Blue Jays game. Seems like they are trying to publish their own games and the timing is perfect! I showed him some games and he seemed intrigued, but none of our current games seemed to match what he was looking for. 

Huch & Friends: I always enjoy pitching to Britta and Benjamin as they are very nice, fun and professional. They are also the fastest publishers to respond to an email in my experience so far! We showed them our games and she ended up liking two of the Arabian Nights games, one of them being our Aladdin game. Yay! They have also had our Herdables game for a coulee years and think they might want to publish that one too…so fingers crossed!

North Star: it was more of a lengthy conversation than a pitch as we chatted about where they’re at and where they want to go with their business. It was great to learn where they’re going and what they’re looking for in the near future. Could turn Into something exciting!

Pretzel Games: Well this is a first – we pitched a game to a publisher that we never play tested. Not only that, but we didn’t even have a prototype! Whaaa? We were told by Martin that he was looking for some outdoor games, so Sen and I came up with an idea for an outdoor game, but we didn’t want to put time and resources into making the game if the concept wasn’t even interesting to Martin. After our pitch we brainstormed some more on some production challenges and he ended up liking it and wanted us to proceed to the prototype stage! Sweet.

Matagot: Stefan is pretty new with Matagot so he is still trying to understand what they’re looking for, but he liked Skirmishes and wants me to take a picture of the game fully set up so he can show it to his team.

Indie Card and Board: This was an impromptu pitch when I saw Travis walking around, not looking busy. He had seen me playing/pitching our word game, Chainables in a restaurant with Tony from USA-opoly and had commented that it looked cool. I figured that it wasn’t the kind of game that Indie would publish but thought he’d like to play a game. He did, and enjoyed the game (not to publish it tho!), and then I transitioned that into a pitch for 9 Thieves. He seemed to like it and gave us a couple of great ideas to tweak it. So yay for improvements at least.

Promoting Games

Sen and I had 2 games that we were asked to help promote while at the Gathering this year, Junk Art and Godfather: A New Don. 

Junk Art is the second game from Pretzel Games, with the first being the hit from last year, Flick ‘Em Up. Junk Art involves 15 wooden pieces in 4 different colours for a total of 60 wooden pieces. There’s a deck of cards with each piece having its own card. There are many ways to play the game, but mostly you’re challenging players with cards to place those pieces onto their own base, trying to get points for placement or for having the tallest structure. 

Matt Leacock (designer of Pandemic and Forbidden Island) is amazed by his own creation!

Willaim Attia (designer of Callus and Spyrium) trying Junk Art!

Josh Cappel (designer of Wasabi and artist for Belfort) trying some outlandish moves.

Some great reactions after a piece is added to a structure! They’re playing the Montreal variant which has players inheriting the structure that they were just passing cards to in the previous round. This mode causes the most insane structures!

Travis from Indie Card & Board calling to order his own copy of Junk Art (I can only assume that’s what he was doing). This mode was called Gujarat where each player takes all the pieces of one colour.

Eric Lang staring contemplatively at his winning structure while playing the Monaco variant.

Phil Walker-Harding is trying to compete for tallest structure in the Home Town variant. This is considered to be the main game and has a lot of strategy!

Mike Gray – the man who brought Bausack to America and called it Bandu, plays Junk Art!

The game seemed like a big hit at the Gathering this year with the game being played multiple times per day by different game groups. I heard Tom Vasel and Zee Garcia played it for about an hour one day too! Junk art is being released at GenCon. You can check out a trailer for the game here:

Godfather: A New Don is published by IDW Games and was air shipped to the Gathering. It was a final art prototype, meaning that the quality of the components were not final (and some pieces were hijacked from other games!). I got to get this game played at least 4 times during the con and everyone seemed to really like how streamlined the game is. If you like dice rolling and area majority, then we have a game for you! Add to the mix that players have to offer dice to the Godfather every round, the ability to muscle other players out of your neighbourhood and the fact that you can invest in Vegas and you’ll find it pretty difficult to not talk like mafia and quote the movie while you play it!

Meetings with publishers

We spent some time not pitching – but business stuff!

We spent a couple hours at least with Martin from Pretzel Games discussing and brainstorming the first expansion to Junk Art. The game isn’t out yet but they believe in it so much that they want to have an expansion ready ASAP. It was maybe my favourite part of the whole week as 2 designers and a publisher brainstormed through game play and publishing challenges to figure out how to make our cool ideas come to life. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about it!

We had a lunch meeting with Mercury Games and talked about the two games of ours that they have in the pipeline, Zombie Slam and What’s That. Both require an app to play the game, and they have recently hired an app developer (another Game Artisan of Canada!). So we talked through the timing as well as the future of Mercury.

Playtesting 

We wanted to get a lot of play testing of our games with other people done at the Gathering – and we did!

Powers (a game based on the comic, coming out later this year form IDW Games) was played twice. The first game had Matt Leacock as a player but the game broke down and made us realize the importance of the set up. We got some great feedback though and we tweaked it for another playtest later in the week. The second test was better but still messy. We have ideas on how to clean it up and continue simplifying while still ensuring there’s a challenge for players who’ve played it a bunch.

Godzilla (a game coming out from Toy Vault) was played numerous times, and three times by me. All the games were great, but it’s obvious that the Godzilla deck is not well constructed, so we have to change which cards are in the deck. Easy fix!

Skirmishes (by Shad and me) got played by Sen and me before we left for the Gathering and it made me change one big thing in the game that makes the game easier to comprehend the first time playing. 

But Wait There’s Even More (a game from Toy Vault). The first print run has sold out, but instead of just reprinting, we’re thinking of printing a new box, full of 100% new content. This way, existing fans can buy it – but newcomers can buy it as well! We tested all the new phrases and got to tweak a few of them as well as a new rule for this edition!

Phil Walker-Harding (designer of Sushi Go and Cacao) pitches some crazy product to the rest of us!

I got to playtest other designers’ games as well, like Matt Leacock’s new family co-op game, Mike Kolross’s G-Men, Phil Walker-Harding’s Spy Craft, Mike Gray’s Water God, Josh Cappel’s Dead Run, Al Leduc’s Dogs on the Bed, and probably a few more that I can’t recall.

Played games

I did find some time to play some games as well while I was there! 

Codenames Pictures: This was a no-brainer. Take the hit party game Codenames, but replace the words with images. The images are all kind of weird too – which makes it interesting. This will play better when you have friends that have different native languages.

Karuba: a fun and light game that’s like Take it Easy with a theme. Played this one a couple times.

Team Play: a nice light partner based card game where each player has a goal of the cards they need to collect in order to score points. Players can draw cards as well as pass cards to their partner. Pretty fun and easy.

Colony: Kind of like Machi Koro but has a bit too much downtime between turns. I heard it’s great with 2 players – and it would probably get better with repeat plays.

Ulm: I played this last year as well, and it should be coming out this year from Huch & Friends. I really like it and look forward to playing it again.

Tichu: I partnered up with Stefan Brunelle and we beat Zev and Ignacy’s wife, Merry. Love this game. 

Strike: Weird that this is a published game…it’s just a bunch of dice and a plastic mold inside the box that you roll them in. Super random obviously but fun for 4 minutes I guess.

Rollers: this one was a fun game but it just lasted way too long for us. We thought it was over but then we realized that it’s the player to get 5 points first…so the game continued. 

Adrenaline: A cool PvP game that emulates a first person shooter in tight quarters – but it does so with no dice rolling. It has a bit AP, but I thought it was very neat!

Wonky: a neat idea for a small balancing game. Not sure how much replayability it would have though.

Broom Service: a neat idea about being cowardly or brave…though it can be punishing.

Broom Service in action!

Designed

Sen and I didn’t have as much time as we thought we would, mostly because he had to leave for 4 days in the middle to go back to work. Boo! But we ironed out quite a few things in the car ride there and back at least!

Josh Cappel had an idea for a game while at the Gathering and asked me for help trying to turn it into a game. We made some good progress on it and we’ll continue working on it together.

Other shenanigans

As mentioned before, 40 of us got on a bus and rode into Toronto to hang out at Snakes and Lattes and then to the baseball game. I’m a huge Blue Jays fan so this was exciting! I was surrounded by Germans and Australians who had never seen a baseball game…ever! So I was able to help them throughout the game with some rules explanations.

The Skydome …uh I mean, Rogers Centre!

Getting ready for the game to start!

The CN Tower…obligatory photo.

All the rooms had fridges and microwaves this year so we did a grocery run when we first got there which was my breakfast and lunch every day. For dinner I had a lot of yummy Indian food as there are many options close to the hotel. We did our annual walk over to the Canadian side to have dinner at a nice wood oven pizza place. We had around 18 of us this year, with numerous designers and publishers. On another night, eight of us drove into Buffalo to eat some great meat at Dinosaur. We were well fed.

We had our largest turnout for our annual soccer game, organized every year by Richard Bethany. This year we each had a sub plus a full team of 6 on each side (half field- hey we’re old!). One of my favourite activities every year.

The final ceremony started with a humourous magic act and then quickly proceeded to the prizes! Everyone that donates something, like a game to the prize table, goes into a draw and gets to take something from the prize table. It’s not just games though…there were numerous hand made options like meeple pillows, hand painted miniatures for popular games, handmade gaming quilt – plus some super hard to find games like Indonesia and Antiquity. I managed to snag Super Motherlode because it’s from Roxley Games…and they’re just awesome (they’re doing a Kickstarter for Santorini that end soon). 

That’s it in a rather large nutshell. Even though the atmosphere is casual and relaxed it never feels like there’s enough time to do everything. Maybe it should happen twice a year? 🙂

Jay Cormier

Sent from my iPad

The Bamboozle Brothers’ GenCon Experience

Wow what a whirlwind adventure! This was my first visit to GenCon and I loved it! I hardly got to experience most of what GenCon had to offer as I was busy pitching games almost every hour of every day – but no complaints from me because that was so fun!

Sen and I followed our own steps on how to prepare for a convention (it’s actually been awhile since we’ve attended a convention that wasn’t The Gathering – which doesn’t follow normal convention rules for pitching!). We set up meetings with 10 different publishers via email so that the afternoons of Fri and Sat were packed – back to back meetings all afternoon.

Thursday night

Sen arrived the day before but I flew in and got to the convention just before 5pm…which was good because we had a meeting set up with Dice Hate Me at 5:50pm!

Our first stop was at the Oni Press booth to set up a meeting with Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt and Charlie Chu as luck fell in our laps when Sen found himself in the right place at the right time and learned that they are looking to make a game out of the comic Sixth Gun. Meeting was set for the next morning – perfect!

Now it was time to meet Chris from Dice Hate Me. We had created a separate folder for each publisher we were meeting with and then put our sales sheets in the order that we thought each publisher would like each of our games. The pitch went great with Chris from Dice Hate Me liking Law of the Jungle, 9 Thieves and a game from Sen and another designer called Burning Rubber.

Then we went to the Nerd Nighters charity event hosted by JR Honeycutt (whom I met randomly on a trip to Texas 1.5 years ago!). We got to chat with other designers like Kevin Nunn and Luke Laurie about game design, which was really interesting. Then we had to head back to help demo our game, But Wait There’s More in hall D. We had a good turn out and since they were all adults, that allowed us to test our new Naughty Version expansion and was ecstatic that it went over better than expected! Yay!

Friday

We started the day with me trying to get one of the 100 per day copies of Mysterium that Asmodee had but the lineup was too big even though I bee-lined it to their booth. Boo. Ok, next we had an interview set up with The Spiel. If you’ve ever been to a game convention then you’ve probably seen them as they wear white jackets with large coloured meeples on it! The interview was fun and humorous and should be posted soon.

Next up was our meeting with Cullen and Charlie from Oni Press. It was Sen, me and Jon Gilmour (designer of Dead of Winter) in the meeting with them. I won’t go into all the details but it was exciting to chat about the possibilities of a Sixth Gun board game with them! Then Cullen said we really need to chat with Matt Kindt….Matt Kindt!!! For those unaware, he’s one of my favourite comic creators! Cullen took a photo of Sen’s business card and texted it to Matt – who reached out right away and set up a meeting with us.  Cool!

This happened! Jon Gilmour, Charlie Chu, Brian Hurtt, Sen, Ja

So now it was time to jog on over to our first actual pitch of the day. The exhibitor hall is ginormous that no single photo can do justice and so it can take quite awhile to get from one side to the other – not just because of the size of the hall, but also because of the amount of people you have to navigate through. This place was packed!!

Frank from R&R Games was ready for us when we arrived and we chatted quickly about our game that we already have signed with him and learned that they’re really just trying to figure out the art for it as they want to get it right. Then onto the pitches. I love pitching to Frank because he’s very straightforward and that keeps things quick and still professional. We’ve perfected our pitch process now and so we really know how to use our time wisely with publishers. You never know if a meeting is going to get cut short or not!

Our process now is to bring out the previously mentioned folder (with sales sheets in order of importance for that publisher), and go through all of our sales sheets quickly. We preface the pitch by letting the publisher know that we plan on going through a bunch of different games quickly, using the sales sheets, and then the publisher can pick and choose which ones they’d like to see or learn more about. This is a great approach because now the publisher doesn’t have to feel like a schmuck by saying no over and over again. Instead they can simply say that they want to hear more about this one and that one – without having to say that they don’t like these other ones!

Frank liked our game 9 Thieves and Chrono Chickens! As per usual though we needed to keep the prototypes for the rest of the event to show other publishers. We could always come back near the end to hand over any prototypes.

Next we met up with Randy from Foxtrot who liked 9 Thieves and The Mystery of Mister E! A fan of the deduction game!

We met up with Zev from Z-Man and showed him our mini Akrotiri expansion as well as the rest of our games. He liked 9 Thieves as well! Martin from Filosofia came over and we chatted about our game Junkyard that they’re going to re title to Junk Art and will be released as the second game in the Pretzel lineup after Flick Em Up. We also chatted through a scenario for Flick Em Up that we were asked to design! He showed us the first expansion for Flick Em Up and it was awesome! Horses and ramps!! What a cool game!

Travis from Action Phase was next and he really liked Law of the Jungle, 9 Thieves and Pig Goes Moo. He was cool with us sending him Print and Play files for the games though, so that’s cool!

Then we got to meet with Hasbro! We met Dougall at The Gathering this year, and so we were already very comfortable and friendly with him. We pitched our games in the usual way and he was blown away (I might be exaggerating to inflate my sense of self importance) by the quantity of games that looked good! We played 9 Thieves and a couple games from other designers – Snap Shot and Burning Rubber. Then our time ran out but he wanted to see more so he set up a time on Saturday morning to the rest. Fantastic!!

We had to boogie to our next pitch which was with Scott from Renegade Games. He expressed interest in SimpliCITY and Pig Goes Moo!

And thus concluded our pitches for the day though we did a couple hours of demoing But Wait There’s More which is always fun and funny. It’s so great watching people experience the game for the first time and realizing how funny this game is!

We thought we were meeting up with Matt Kindt after this but we rescheduled for the next morning. So I played my first non-prototype game at the con and it was Flip City from Tasty Minstrel Games! Neat game! Then we met up with Level 99 Games and played their new battle game, Exceed. We were joined by Josh Cappel and had some interesting conversations about graphic design.

Saturday

We started the day by meeting up with Dougall from Hasbro again. We only had 30 minutes but it was enough to try a couple more games and for him to express interest in Chrono Chicken – but only if we can come up with a better theme (and we think we have one!), as well as The Mystery of Mister E! That could fit in their Clue line up of games.

Then we shimmied over to meet up with Matt Kindt at the Oni Press booth. This was the highlight of the con for me. Matt, Sen and I talked for about an hour, with Brian Hurtt coming in halfway through to join in on the conversation. We chatted about the possibilities of turning Matt’s comic, Mind MGMT into a board game – and wow, that was cool to just brainstorm with him! We’re going to think about it and see if we can make something happen! How cool would that be??!!?? Matt was a super cool guy who has recently fallen in love with board games. His passion about games was great and we have some good ideas that will do his property justice!! So excited about this – I. CAN’T. EVEN.

Potentially the beginning of something amazing! Sen, Brian Hurtt, Matt Kindt and Jay!!

Ok, back to earth and onto our next pitch which was more of a show and tell than a pitch. IDW/Pandasaurus had asked us to make a dice game for The Godfather as well as a Scotland Yard-esque game based on the comic Powers. We wanted to show them our progress on both of these games. First up was The Godfather game and they LOVED it! We’ve spent a lot of time play testing and tweaking this game to a point where we’re really happy about it! So glad they love it! Next up was Powers – which was presented as a Beta game. We walked through the direction we’re going with it and they were in full agreement on our decisions so far! Whew!

We had to dart over to Tasty Minstrel Games after this to show Seth and Andy our Belfort Dice Game that we’ve been working on. We let them know that this was still beta as well. Normally we wouldn’t show a publisher a game that was beta but in both these last cases they seemed to make sense. It was a good opportunity to show what we’re doing and if they had any feedback that would change the direction of the development then it’s better to know now. And they did have direction! They thought there were probably too many dice in the game. They’re going to price it out, but we’re already thinking of ways to reduce the number of dice needed.

Then I got to meet Ryan from Mayday Games. While it’s great to catch up and meet with publishers we already knew, the big benefit of coming to GenCon for us was meeting new publishers and starting a relationship with them. Ryan was fun and after pitching one of our games and getting ready for our second he gave us a really nice compliment. He said that we’re the most organized and professional designers he’s met! That’s pretty nice to hear! We do take pride in our professionalism and strive to stand out from other designers (damn, why am I sharing this with everyone else then??!). Ryan liked a bunch of our games – Chrono Chicken, 9 Thieves, Law of the Jungle!

Next up? Shari from Ad Magic. Shari had agreed to publish our game Clunatics but wanted gameplay to be smoothed out a bit more. We fooled around with so many different ways to play this game and finally had a great suggestion from one of our play testers and it worked really well.  We showed her how the new version played and she really liked it! Yay! She assigned a project manager to the project and now we’re off to the races with this one! We had enough time so I pitched a game I’ve worked on with another designer named Shad Miller called Rack Your Brains. She had seen the sales sheet before and thought it looked interesting. I walked her through the first few rounds and she got it immediately and really liked it! We were in a rush but we left it with her and the project manager so I’m not sure if it’s happening yet or not!!

So we literally had to jog to a different hotel as we had signed up to give a seminar called, “How to pitch to publishers, the Bamboozle Brothers way.” We had borrowed a projector and we had a PowerPoint presentation to go along with our skits that went through all the steps on how we pitch our games to publishers. We had about 20 people attend the seminar and they seemed really engaged throughout, asking questions and taking notes. I really liked doing it and I think it’s just another thing that Sen and I do to try and give back to this community.

At 5pm we had our last But Wait There’s More demo to run alongside the publisher. Another set of fun people came and enjoyed themselves! Tons ‘o laughs.

For the first time, we got to actually go to a sit down restaurant for a meal! Crazy! Up until then we had been eating from food trucks and from inside the convention centre (dangerous – but the pot roast sandwich was delicious actually). We met up with JR Honeycutt, Tim Brown, The Spiel guys, Josh Cappel, Daryl Chow, Daryl Andrews and more at The Yard for a meal and lots of great conversation. Great stories from everyone about how their pitches went.

On our way out of the restaurant we bumped into Michael Coe and Nathan Hadfield from Gamelyn Games. That was serendipitous since we were on our way to a different restaurant to meet them! We chatted about our upcoming game that they’re publishing of ours called, Rock Paper Wizards and agreed to meet up again later in the evening.

First time meeting in real life! Michael Coe, Jay, Sen, Josh Cappel, Nathan Hadfield

Back at the hotel we had arranged to meet up with Patrick from Crash Games. We really thought that he would like our game SimpliCITY. We were a bit bummed that SimpliCITY wasn’t getting a lot of love at the con so far. It’s our favourite game of the ones we were pitching. I think it has to do with the sales sheet I made. I think the art makes it look too busy and basic. Anyway, we played it with Patrick and everything was humming along and we scored after the first round. Then you could almost hear the click as Patrick ‘got’ the game. He really liked it!

Then it was back to the hall to meet up with Gamelyn Games again. We chatted about the direction they wanted to go with Rock Paper Wizards and Josh sketched up some ideas for the cover. That’s a fun meeting! We’re thinking of aiming it more towards a family friendly type of audience since we know that gamers will like it no matter how it’s packaged. Michael really wants to get this game into mass market so the packaging really needs to appeal to that market. Then we played Tiny Epic West – the next game in the Tiny Epic universe, and had fun playing it and providing some feedback afterwards.

Sunday

Sunday was all about re-visiting publishers to hand over our prototypes. We had some decisions to make about which prototype should go to which publisher. It’s a great position to be in when multiple publishers want your games! So we had to factor many things into which publisher we should give our games to, but their need for exclusivity – that was a big one. Some publishers requested this and that makes it hard for us! We did give some of our games to publishers that wanted exclusivity but usually it was based on their enthusiasm for our game and their promise of how much time they needed. We also found out that Dice Hate Me was also interested in our word game, Lost for Words! Huzzah! I’d love for that game to find a home!

Patrick from Crash won the Bamboozle Lottery! He gets to take one of our prototypes back with him!

Some of our games went home with two publishers if they didn’t care about exclusivity, so it was smart of us to bring two copies of each game! We are so SMRT! One publisher was doing print and play and Hasbro wanted us to mail him copies afterwards as he didn’t want to carry all of them back with him. So we got rid of all of our prototypes with the exception of Herdables. Boo. And we had just found a way to make the game even better too. The good news is that Huch and Friends likes that game and was interested in publishing it (and gave us the OK to pitch to other publishers at GenCon). So now we will let them know about the recent changes and that might motivate them to publish it!

So as of right now, we have no prototypes without a home! That’s a great feeling!! GenCon was even more exciting than I thought it was going to be. I wish I was there longer as we had more publishers we could have pitched to if we had the time. Next step for us is to email all these publishers to touch base with them after the con, and to ship out prototypes to Hasbro. Stay tuned if there are any takers!!

-Jay Cormier

More Pics from the Gathering of Friends 2014

Here are some more pictures, this time from my POV!

This is series on game design in 3 parts:  Feedback / Revise and Playtest / Pitch

Josh, Jay and show Zev and JF from Filosofia/Z-man the reworked “Rock, Paper, Wizards” game.  After getting some great feedback from them, it was back to the lab to tweak things here and there.

Below, we’re playtesting the revamped game with fellow Game Artisans of Canada colleagues, Martin Ethier and Al Leduc.

And finally, once we’ve ironed out most of the kinks in the game, we repitch the game to Zev (Z-Man) – this time, with the help of our pro-players, Aldie and Licoln (Boardgame Geek), Nikki (Queen Games), and Stephen Buonocore (Stronghold Games)

~ Sen

Gathering 2014 in Review: Part 1

Sen and I just got back from 10 days of gaming goodness and we have a lot of amazing news and stories to tell! What’s the Gathering you ask? Well it’s an invite-only event organized by Alan Moon (designer of numerous games including the very popular Ticket to Ride) and it’s attended by tons of other game designers and many publishers as well. The atmosphere was super relaxed and very friendly. Everyone has a name badge and based on the colour of the badge you know if the person is from a publisher or not. Fortunately this was my third time at the Gathering (read about my previous Gathering experiences for 2012 and 2013) so I already knew most of the publishers already.

Sen and I got to meet with pretty much every publisher and show them our new games. I’ll review how each pitch session went in this post and a few more posts to follow!

Z-Man / Filosofia

Our first meeting was with JF and Zev from Filosofia and Z-Man Games. They had our game Rock, Paper, Wizards (co-designed by Josh Cappel too!) and had given us some feedback via email about some changes they wanted. This is an interesting story actually. Sen, Josh and myself had gotten Rock, Paper, Wizards to a place where we thought it was the best that it could be. So when we received the feedback via email about the changes they wanted, we all got pretty defensive. Not to the publisher – just between ourselves. We couldn’t understand why they wanted the changes they requested. But we decided to go into the meeting open minded – and even play the game with their new ideas – so they could see how it wouldn’t work!

Well, we were pretty wrong! Once they were able to communicate the reasons behind their ideas in person, we realized what they were trying to do. So we tried it with almost all of their suggestions…and guess what? It really worked! The game – which we thought was as good as it could get – was improved with these new ideas. The game played so well! We brainstormed how a few of the cards would be changed because of the new ideas and we said we would work on it while at the Gathering and show it to them again later on.

After this, Zev left for another meeting and we pitched our new game, Zombie Slam to JF. He enjoyed it but didn’t think it was a Z-Man kind of game. Makes sense.

We spent more time with JF and Zev eating dinner and even continuing our tradition of seeing a horror movie at a local theatre together (this year’s movie: Oculus!).

Sen signing a contract!

We also got to sit down with Sophie from Filosofia because she had a contract for us! We had pitched our wood block balancing game, Junkyard to her awhile ago and she’s been trying to figure out how to produce the game. We had emailed her prior to the Gathering asking for the prototype back so we could pitch it to other publishers – even though we would be happy if Filosofia would publish it. She countered by offering us a contract! Well ok then!

Nearer to the end of the Gathering, we made an appointment with Zev to try Rock, Paper, Wizards again. When we met up, he was finishing up a game with some other people and he asked us to come over and play Rock Paper Wizards with everyone at his table. Who was at his table? Well – Nikki from Queen Games, Aldie and Lincoln from Boardgamegeek and Steven from Stronghold Games. Wowza! No pressure! Well, we played the game and everything worked perfectly. Everyone was laughing and having a great time with it. So much so that Steven from Stronghold said out loud after finishing the game that if Zev didn’t want to publish the game that he would publish it! How cool is that? We have high hopes for this one!

Next up we’ll review our pitches to Days of Wonder, Ystari, Abacusspiele and R&R Games!

-Jay Cormier

I’ll just add some more pictures to this post.  You know.  Because pictures.  These ones are Z-man related and, as such, are relevant to this post!

Jay signs his royalties over to me (he just doesn’t know it!)

Jay’s first look at the back of the Akrotiri box, forthcoming from Z-man.

Jay teaches Akrotiri to our friends Ed Bryan (ToyVault) and Daryl Andrews (Londonderry)

And then he teaches it to fellow Game Artisans, Michael Xeureb and Gavan Brown (Jab).

In other Z-man news, the Battle of Kemble’s Cascade is also coming out from them soon.  Our good friends, Sean Jacquemain, Adam Marostica, and I played the pre-release copy of this homage to 80s arcade games at the Gathering.

~ Sen-Foong Lim

 

Step 32: Working with an Artist

If you don’t self-publish then you often don’t get much of a say in the art for your game. Remember, it’s the publisher taking the risk in publishing it so it’s fully within their rights to make all decisions on the art. That said, if you have a good relationship with the publisher then you still have a voice during this stage. Once we submitted the game to be published, then it’s the publisher’s job to seek out an artist. It is possible to recommend an artist of course. I know that Matt Tolman really wanted Gavan Brown to do the art for his game, Undermining, for example, and that is actually what happened!

For Train of Thought, Tasty Minstrel Games also chose Mr. Gavan Brown! Our first exposure to his art was when we were shown the box art. Immediately we both loved it. At the time, the train had the dragon from the Tasty Minstrel logo as a conductor riding the train. It was the only thing that wasn’t perfect and even though we had no ‘right’ to asking for art changes, we expressed our opinion. Fortunately Tasty Minstrel felt similarly and we all agreed to tweak it a bit. We were fortunate to work with a publisher that allowed us to express our thoughts on the art. Well, we say fortunate, but we’re not really sure what it’s like working with other publishers…yet!

The rulebook was another story altogether. Sen and I wrote the rules a long time ago and when Gavan took our words and put them into his art style – there was a clash. Our words were too stuffy and lawyer-y compared to the fun style that Gavan brought to the game. We did a quick re-write and that got incorporated into the rules as well.

Belfort was even more of a collaboration between us and the artist. When we first heard that Josh Cappel was doing the art, we were ecstatic! I remember buying the game Endeavor because of the awesome art that game has. Tasty Minstrel set up a page on Basecamp so we could see Josh’s art as he made it, and so we could all comment on it.

90% of time we were over the moon with what Josh Cappel provided for the art. There were a few examples where we requested some changes. Sometimes the publisher agreed with us and sometimes they didn’t. For example, there was one issue with the guilds on the board. Initially they didn’t have a spot for worker placement, which was fine as it was going to be on the Guild card, but when the art for the Guild cards came out, they too didn’t have a spot for a worker to be placed. Once this was brought up, Josh found a solution that made everyone happy. He re-jigged the board art so that there was room for a worker placement spot. This is the main reason why it’s great when the designer has input on the art process. I can see why a publisher wouldn’t want to give veto rights to a designer – but at least allow them input as they are (hopefully) the people who’ve played the game the most and would catch things that don’t fit with the game.

The only time I had an issue with the art was the back of the box. Josh put a lot of humour in Belfort and so he had a very funny letter covering most of the back of the box. It was really fun, but my opinion about the back of board game boxes is that it should show as many pieces of the board game as possible. Fortunately everyone was in agreement and new art was made and it was perfect! Now it’s the most perfect-est box back ever!

We were lucky to be paired up with not only excellent artists so far, but with artists that are very collaborative. May you be so lucky in your game designs! The take away for us on this is that you should try to ensure you are allowed some sort of input on the art process. While this probably won’t be put in the contract (but maybe it should be somehow), hopefully you’ll be working with a publisher that wants to collaborate with you as much as possible. Also, you shouldn’t be afraid to express your concerns, though you need to know which battles are worth fighting. We might have had other issues here or there (though I don’t think we did!), but only really expressed our concern if we thought it would impact the game play or the game’s sell-ability.

-Jay Cormier

To me, this was probably the most exciting stage of the whole process of bringing a game to market. While its fun to work on the initial design and it’s awesome to finally get the finished product in hand, there’s something about watching a skilled artist take something that’s just a dream in your head or some chicken scratching on paper and make it 200 times better than you could even imagine!

Gavan had the difficult task of working with a party game that was really just words. Oh, our original prototype had train car on the backs of the cards that you could connect to see who made the longest train, but that was about it for real graphics. What Gavan did with the game, however, was give it a “face”. He created the conductor from scratch, giving the game a human mascot – a talking head – that we could use for expository purposes. Gavan also implemented a ton of design elements on the box that make it that much more effective packaging using elements that Jay and I would never have thought of – things like the ISBN number and the vertical spine – to make it shelf-friendly in a potential mass-market situation.

Josh had the potentially staggering task of creating what amounts to a whole game world from scratch. And not one that he had dreamed up, but one that two other dudes had knocking around in their noggins! Belfort gets many compliments on the great artwork Josh provided and if there was an award for best game artwork, Belfort would be a strong contender – the in-game humour, references to other games, and hidden gems are just a few of the reasons why the Belfort artwork is tops in my (biased) book. Speaking of books, if there was an award for best game rulebook, I would also humbly submit that Belfort might be *the* best game rulebook this year. And a huge part of the credit for the layout, flow, and humour inherent in the Belfort rules comes from Josh. He took our ruleset and reformatted and rephrased things in a way that better suited the witty, anachronistic fantasy world that he had drawn for Belfort and it all took shape from there.

The synergy generated between us (the designers), the developer and publisher, and the artists we’ve worked with on our games has been nothing short of eye-opening and pudding-eaten proof that a well thought out product and a game that is literally *designed* for maximum impact in all aspects can deliver much more than the sum of it’s parts. I look forward to working with Josh and/or Gavan again and would recommend them without question to any publisher looking for more than just an illustrator, but a game-specific graphic designer who can not only draw and design, but oversee other artists when more content is needed (see Gavan’s work on Eminent Domain for an example of this).

-Sen-Foong Lim

Belfort: The Second Edition!

As mentioned previously, Belfort has sold out from the publisher level (possibly a few left – read here for a discount opportunity). It’s amazing that we have sold out so fast! The good news is that we’re going back for a second printing! We’ve been informed that the art has been submitted to Panda and the printing should start right away. Still – it means there will be a couple of months of printing and shipping before it hits our shores. The good news is that not all stores are sold out of it yet – so you can still find the game in some stores!

A second printing also allows us to tweak and clarify anything that gamers have pointed out to us to be unclear so far. It’s pretty amazing to me that while Sen, Josh and I (but mostly Josh) spent hours pouring through the rules to ensure there were no mistakes, and that everything was crystal clear – there are always things that people will misinterpret.

It’s a great exercise in communication really. Every change we made was because things could be interpreted a bit different – and when you’re playing a strategy game, it’s important that everyone playing has the same interpretation of how to play. There’s nothing worse than someone being told they can’t do something in a game, when they thought they could based on their understanding of what the rules meant. Can you swap Turn Order markers with yourself? How does the Architects’ Guild really work?

So I present to you now, most of the changes in the rules and player aid for the second edition. Second Edition art is on the right or on the bottom.

The new cover will now feature the Game of the Year stamp from Dice Hate Me!

The Architects' Guild was the most misunderstood guild and so we clarified the intention we always meant in the rules and even tweaked the wording on the tile itself.

Can you swap Turn Order Crests with yourself? Yes you can, though we didn't specifically call that out in the original edition. Now we have.

In a 2 player game, players have asked how many Property Markers are placed when the Non-Players are playing on a Keep or Gatehouse.

Added a few words to the player aids to clarify the original rules.

-Jay Cormier

Official Canadian Belfort Launch at Snakes & Lattes in Toronto with the Designers and Artist

Snakes & Lattes is the first boardgame cafe in Toronto with over 1500 games and specialty treats!  It also happens to be where Jay and I will be demonstrating Belfort for the first time officially in Canada.

Please join us as we teach and play the game with fellow gamers!  As an added bonus, the game’s artist, Josh Cappel (Wasabi), will be there to showcase Belfort as well!  It is a rare and momentous occasion when Josh, Jay and I are in the same province, let alone the same building so be sure to catch us if you’d like your copies of any of our games signed for your personal collection!  If you’re in the Toronto-area, come on out and play Belfort with the designers and artist!

The festivities start at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, October 28, 2011

Snakes & Lattes

600 Bloor St. W.

Toronto, Ontario

There is ample parking nearby as well as close proximity to the TTC (Bathurst Station).

(Please note that there is a small cover charge for gaming at Snakes & Lattes)

Here’s a link to the Facebook E-vite for more info.

Belfort: Designer Diaries, part 3: The Artist

In our latest installment of “Belfort: From Inspiration to Publication”, we take you into the creative world of one Josh Cappel. Hailing from Toronto, Josh is a fellow member of the “Game Artisans of Canadian” and his artistic skills grace many a game, including Pandemic, Endeavor, Terra Prime, and the upcoming Pirates vs. Dinosaurs, to name but a few. He is also the co-designer behind Wasabi (currently enjoying it’s 3rd printing, thank you very much) along side Adam Gertzbein. So the fact that he had time to talk to us was pretty fortunate!

Jay: Hey Josh, thanks for your time! First off, although it’s been said many times, Thank you so much for the beautiful art for Belfort! We love it!

Sen: Absolutely! So tell us – how did you come to be the artist for this project?

Josh: A mysterious scroll was appeared on my windowsill one morning. I cracked the seal and before I knew it I was magically bound to the task of illustrating Belfort. Okay, not really…

Jay: Did Tasty Minstrel Games come to you out of the blue? Were there other artists in the running?

Josh: Belfort is my second game for Tasty Minstrel; I did the art and design for Terra Prime last year. They did ask me to put in a bid, so there may have been other contenders for the gig. Luckily for me, they didn’t accidentally hire several artists at once and have no choice but to turn it into a competition. Though I feel I could have won it, if they had.

Sen: Yep, I think you would have too! So, what did you think of Belfort when you read the rules and saw the prototypes? What was your first impression?

Josh: Honestly? My very first first impression was, “Pentagonal board? Cool!” I am a sucker for the visually interesting. After a quick pass at the rules, my impression was “Okay, it’s Caylus with a fantasy theme.” I suspect that a lot of people will leap to the Caylus comparison simply because the central story is that the players are building a castle of sorts, and because there is some worker placement. First impressions are misleading though! Belfort doesn’t share much at all with Caylus. The game structure is entirely different, there’s a spatial aspect that is very central to game play, resource-gathering is less cutthroat, and the choices available to the player are many and varied at any given time. It has its own feel, and the feel is “interesting”. I hope that sounds as complimentary as I mean it.

Jay: Yes it does – and we are thankful for your praise!

Some early concept sketches of an elf and dwarf from Josh Cappel.

Josh: Playing Belfort, I find I am often struck by the depth of a given decision, and interested in the reasons I might or might not make the decision. Take buying a building: Can I afford the cost? If not, can I exploit one of the many resource-gathering/juggling mechanisms to manage it? Does it grant me income? What special actions does it grant me? Will I need to staff it with a Gnome? What on-board location should I claim if I do buy it? And so on, all with cascading implications for the future. I am always interested in my options during the game, engaged in the possibilities that open up from any choice. Good meaty fun – never boring, never scripted.

Sen: Well, that concludes our interview – no need to hear more after such kind words like that!

Jay: Ha! Well, maybe a few more questions! Tell us what the best part of working on “Team Belfort” was.  I mean, besides being around the awesomeness that is Sen and Jay.

Josh: The best part of working on Team Belfort was that we cobbled together a game world that I think has the potential to be the setting for other future games. It just feels fun to me.

Jay: And what was the most challenging part? Besides the fact that you had to be around Sen and Jay, that is.

Josh: The most challenging part was reconciling the level of detail I decided to paint, with the schedule we were on. The gameboard was incredibly difficult. Keep in mind that the board is a pentagon, and I did the city in an overhead isometric view. That means I had to figure out how to illustrate the differently-shaped buildings of each district rotated 72º from the previous one, while keeping the perspective consistent and each building immediately recognizable despite the rotation. Seventy-two degree rotation. Easy, right? YOU try it. Turns out, not so easy.

Jay: Here’s an image of the first draft of the board for Belfort. Now it sure is purdy, but the final board is a million times better (he said, without hyperbole).

Here's the first draft of what the board was going to look like. It still looks great, but Josh wasn't pleased with it and started over, turning it into an isometric view instead. In my opinion - well worth the extra effort!

Sen: I know we were surprised that you were going for that look when we saw the first segment of the board. We were excited about what it would look like when it all came together, but realized that you just signed yourself up for a crazy amount of work!

Josh: Add to that the insane decision to populate the city with hundreds of teeny little denizens all going about their business, and you have yourself a task of lengthy proportions. Luckily for me, the good folks at Tasty Minstrel loved my early game board samples enough to extend my deadline so that I could achieve it.

Sen: Luckily for us, too! We love the game board and couldn’t be happier with how it turned out, so thanks for all your effort.

Here's an example of one of our early boards and Josh's early board. Obviously Josh's was a vast improvement. Still, the final board is even more beautiful!

Jay: There are so many treats throughout that game board! I can’t wait for other gamers to experience everything that’s going on just on the board. And just so that doesn’t make it sound like the board is confusing – what I mean is that with all these tiny people all over the place, you can get lost just looking around and finding little stories all over the place!

Here's the final art for the board of Belfort! Wow. So much detail. The isometric view is stunning.

Sen: I think I spent a good hour just looking at the board when I first got it! Any clues as to the meaning of some of the Easter Eggs?

Josh: Well, there are a few Tasty Minstrel shout-outs. Michael Mindes himself is actually present on one of the board segments, although I added him in between preview approval and print file delivery… so he hasn’t noticed it yet! Surprise! There are a few references to my previous Tasty Minstrel Game, Terra Prime. And at least a couple references that board game geeks might pick up on, if they have sharp eyes. A lot of the stuff going on in the streets of Belfort isn’t “easter eggy” per se, but it’s definitely a lively town that I hope players will enjoy exploring.

This early concept scribble is ridiculously close to how it looks in the final version! Well, layout-wise at least.

Jay: Can you describe the working relationship between you, us and Tasty Minstrel? How is it working with people without ever physically meeting?

Josh: Actually, I have only ever worked for publishers that I have never met in person, so it’s pretty normal for me. The working relationship with you and Jay was ideal. You guys are creative and enthusiastic designers who (since you have a long-distance working relationship with each other already) know how to communicate easily and effectively online in a way that moves things forward. I would love to be involved in any of your future designs, of which I am certain many will get published. Tasty Minstrel Games and me are old pals by now. Since Belfort wrapped I have already started and finished another game, Martian Dice, and have just signed on for a fourth. I expect that I will still be providing art for Tasty Minstrel Games when we are all old and grey.

Jay: Nice! I haven’t played Martian Dice yet, but want to give it a spin, or a roll as it were.

Sen: Great to know that there will be an unending supply of Josh Cappell illustrated board games in our future!

Jay: So does that mean that board game art is your full time job or do you have a 9 to 5 job in the real world? It’s difficult to imagine you working in a cubicle somewhere!

Josh: Pretty much full time. I do take on non-game-related projects occasionally, but the great majority of my work is in games.

Sen: That’s so great to know that you can make your living off of providing such happiness to people who play the games you illustrate! You helped shape the world of Belfort as an anachronistic fantasy realm with a solid dose of humour. How did that come about and what lead to things like “100% Ent Free” rulers?

Josh: Early in the development process I wrote to Michael (head of Tasty Minstrel Games) and asked him if he was certain he wanted to do Belfort in this fantasy standard universe. Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes… you see them a lot in games and I didn’t want Belfort to get lost in the mix because the theme was overplayed. His response was that to create unique fantasy races would be fun and cool, but it would keep us from exploiting the tropes already established about the existing fantasy races that would facilitate player comprehension. Get it? Basically by giving players a fantasy setting that they are already familiar with, it’s a little less overwhelming when they first approach the game. So, working within that framework but aiming to stand out a bit, I decided to ramp up the personality, a.k.a. the funny.

That goofy looking elf was the extent of the humour we had in the game before Josh got his hands on it.

Jay: I was surprised by how much humour you added to the game…which is pretty much all of the humour! Belfort wasn’t inherently a funny game before you had it, with the possible exception that we were using goofy looking elves, dwarves and gnomes in our prototype.

Josh: Actually, it all started with the Gnomes, I think. You guys set up the Gnomes as workers that players can add to their buildings to make them run more efficiently. From there I just sort of expanded on the idea that the Gnomes are intense bureaucrats, and that of course meant that Belfort’s parent kingdom has a strong cluster of Guilds and Committees and Departments that keep things running under the surface of it all. Then for some reason I started dropping in anachronistic props for the Gnomes… in various places you’ll see clipboards, wristwatches, paperclips, coffee cups…

Sen: Wristwatches? Wow – I haven’t seen that yet! Now I have to go back and pour through the art again to find that!

Josh: Another big factor was the basic idea that this worker-placement resource-management castle-building game was set in a world with magic and monsters. Naturally, these sorts of elements would be part of the everyday life of Belfort’s citizens, so I decided to play up the matter-of-fact relationship with the fantastical.

Jay: Yeah I love how it feels like there’s a lot of red tape in this world and it’s very bureaucratic. There’s none of that in the game play really – but it adds to the anachronistic humour you created.

Sen: You were given a lot of latitude when doing the graphic design of the rulebook and you put your own spin on the text. We loved it so much that we all went with that humourous vibe and you received extra credit for your contributions. For others out there interested in the board game biz, was this an unusual case for you or is this normal expectation of an artist when doing the text and graphic layout of a rulebook? What initially compelled you to try to revise and improve the flow of the rules? Was there any resistance from the publisher at all?

Josh: It is definitely not normal for game artists, but it is par for the course for me specifically. Rulebook editing is one of my strengths and is an added service that I pitch to publishers; it’s part of what they are paying for when they hire me. I feel that my job is to provide the best possible clarity for the players via engaging illustration, effective component design, and smartly-presented rules. I never change the functional mechanisms of any game rules; that would be overstepping my boundaries. However I do what I can to improve how the rules are communicated to the player. Sometimes that means reorganizing the flow, defining game terms consistently, standardizing language/tense/voice throughout, and writing solid examples of play. Often I alter components during the design process and that means that the rules are outdated by the time I get to them so they have to be rewritten to fit.

Jay: The rules to Belfort are definitely the best I’ve ever seen in terms of layout, comprehension and artistic design. It makes me want to play the game! It’s very inviting. But it’s not just rules, you also wrote a lot of flavour text throughout the rules.

Josh: Yeah, I love writing flavour text, and when I started inserting little touches here and there in the components, the whole team reacted very positively. From there I continued the trend into the rulebook. You two and Seth (Tasty Minstrel’s developer) built a very strong and extensively-tested set of rules; that stable foundation allowed me to really pour on the personality.

Sen: There are a lot of guilds in the world of Belfort – What guild isn’t in the game that’d you’d like to see?

Josh: It’s hard to say without playing the game a lot more than I have. Usually those kinds of ideas come from repeated plays where you can start to say to yourself “wouldn’t it be cool if you could __________”. The Guilds are one area that definitely remains open for expansions. This is evident when you notice that we put the build cost of each Guild on its tile (even thought they all cost the same) instead of printing it onto the game board. This was done deliberately in case we decide to add a Guilds expansion where the new Guilds have different costs. That being said, there are at least two other Guilds mentioned in flavour text; the Rules Lawyers’ Guild and the Clipboard Makers’ Guild. Not sure if they’ll ever make a non-cameo appearance, but at least we know there are other Guilds in Belfort than the twelve game tiles!

Another early sketch, this time of the Calendar board.

Sen: And tell us about the blue-skinned creatures you added to the game world. What are they called and what is their role in Belfort? Where do they stand on the subject of Dwarf-Troll relations and will we be seeing more of them in the future?

Josh: Ah, the Goons. Big tough guys. The came about to fill an archetype gap. For some reason we decided during development that Trolls are not well-regarded in Belfort… you’ll see occasional anti-Troll comments here or there. That animosity doesn’t feature in game play at all, but you two had mentioned that there was a possibility of a future aspect to Belfort where the city would be under attack by “greenskins” (a generic term for typical fantasy monstrous humanoids like goblins, orcs, trolls, etc.). So, once it became clear that I would be illustrating a big bustling city, it was requested that I didn’t include any greenskins in the mix, setting up this future possible conflict.

In the end I did include a smattering of them scattered about. Aside from a few random pedestrians, a couple are playing dice with a Dwarf at one of the Pubs, and there’s one that actually has a stall at one of the Markets selling some decidedly evil-looking trinkets. I wanted a Trollish sort of creature to act as burly hired muscle in the city, so I painted up the Goons. They can be found mostly guarding Banks and Gatehouses. One is helping out in the background of the game’s box. I envision them as strong, quiet, loyal hirelings. Handy to have around in a fight… maybe one day we’ll find out.

Jay: Look into your crystal ball – If there was to be a future expansion to Belfort, what do you think it might be about?

Josh: Belfort under attack! I’m not sure whether that could be done as an expansion though. Maybe an outright sequel. Mark my words, we will return to the Belfort world for another game project. I have actually begun the process of converting one of my own existing game designs so that it is in the Belfort universe. We’ve talked a little bit about future plans, so I have an inking of where things might go with a possible sequel, mechanically.

Sen: If there was a “Super Grand Ultra Deluxe 10th Anniversary” edition of Belfort (think the 3-D version of Settlers of Catan), what would you want to see in it?

Josh: Ask me in nine years. That’s when I expect to begin working on it!
In our final installment of “Belfort: From Inspiration to Publication”, we will be talking to the Richard Lee of Panda Manufacturing, the company responsible for making all the bits and putting them in the boxes.

For past interviews in this series, please go here:

Belfort Designer Diaries: Part 1, The Playtesters

Belfort Designer Diaries: Part 2, The Developer

If you are interested in learning more about how we came up with the ideas and how the game grew from something small into what it is now you can read this interview by Jeff Temple and watch this video we recorded.