Archive for July, 2004

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Board breaking at GAMA, karate not involved

Friday, July 30th, 2004

The new GAMA Board of Directors has hit rough waters already, after being appointed a month ago, and has lost two members. According to the press release sent yesterday (see below), Ryan Dancey has resigned as Treasurer of GAMA after revealing that he had been reading private emails from the GAMA Board of Directors email list for months before running for office. Confidence in the rest of the new board is severely lacking right now, as most of the new appointees were perceived to have run alongside Dancey, who could have provided inside information.

As if to add fuel to rumors already being flung, another press release arrived this afternoon, stating that Chris Watson, GAMA Managing Director since late last year, has been “laid off due to a reorganization of GAMA.” And yet, the position is still deemed necessary, as “Anthony Gallela, GAMA’s Operations Director has been appointed Interim Managing Director until the board of directors can hire a new Executive Director.” Curiouser and curiouser.
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Posted in Industry | 2 Comments »

Pokémon gets up on soapbox

Friday, July 30th, 2004

Seems like companies are all searching for that elusive advertising venue these days, that crowd of potential customers that haven’t yet realized how badly they need to purchase games and toys. Or maybe I’m just hearing about the various promotional experiments more often, and they were happening all along. Most anything seems fair game, from WizKids’ yogurt give-away figures, to Hasbro slinging action figures at a kids’ event in Phoenix that featured, of all things, a big mud puddle. Now Nintendo of America is getting inventive with the latest Pokémon promotion, and joining the list of sponsors for the All-American Soap Box Derby tomorrow in Akron, OH (press release below). Makes sense, really. All those kids, at an all-day event with their parents, many of whom will have wallets.
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Posted in Card Games, Industry | Comments Closed

The corpse of Twonky rises to feast on the flesh of its enemies

Thursday, July 29th, 2004

I just keep findin’ em! (Confession: here’s where – found via GGA.) RoboTournament is a cross-platform, networkable near-clone of RoboRally. The changes are improvements, in my view; at least they’re improvements for the online domain. For one, I very much like that the default mode is Deathmatch – Rally was never the best game to be mapped onto RoboRally‘s system, in my view – but Capture the Flag is a lot more fun. I killed a good hour yesterday playing against the computer. The instructions are not as clear on how to get going as they could be, but be sure to download the server, client and maps appropriate for your OS and you’ll do okay. Who wants to fire up some of this action?

Posted in Board Games, Computer and Console Games | Comments Closed

WizKids’ Pirates hit the streets, search for rum

Wednesday, July 28th, 2004

Today’s the street date for WizKids‘ latest innovation, Pirates of the Spanish Main, designed primarily by Mike Selinker and James Ernest. I’ve managed to get my hands on some packs of the game, and yes, every $3.99 pack has at least two ships, some crew members, treasure, an island, and a tiny six-sided die. The ships are a little more difficult to snap together than I’d like, but it gets easier with practice. Besides, how can you not be enthused by all those sweet ships in the figure gallery?
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Posted in Board Games, Miniatures Games | Comments Closed

A board game design convention only two blue cards away

Wednesday, July 28th, 2004

This past weekend the first annual Pow Wow conference was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. Like its predecessor Protospiel, the idea was to get together a group of German-style board game designers and have them play each other’s prototype games. Each game is then work-shopped, offering suggestions on what works, what doesn’t, what could be improved rules-wise and production wise, and even given suggestions on possible publication. The event was hosted by Stephen Glenn (Balloon Cup) and included special guest recent Spiel des Jahres winner Alan Moon (Ticket to Ride). Attendees mostly came from the east coast, though there were a couple people from the Midwest.
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Posted in Board Games, Card Games, Conventions, Industry | Comments Closed

Extended Return of the King scenes online

Monday, July 26th, 2004

For you Peter Jackson/Tolkien fans out there, this site has footage of the extra Return of the King scenes from this December’s upcoming extended edition previewed at San Diego Comic Con this past weekend. Apparently, the Voice of Sauron appears briefly, and a good time is had by all. Follow the tab that says “Video” to find the download page.

Posted in Industry | 3 Comments »

Steal a gene, go to jail: it’s the law

Monday, July 26th, 2004

If there is only one of you, according to the most careful accounting you have available, you can play Space Hulk second edition rules on Windows.

Posted in Miniatures Games | Comments Closed

Rumors of John Wick’s death are greatly exaggerated

Thursday, July 22nd, 2004

Hey, so look who shows up all of a sudden! Enemy Gods is the new style being rocked by the famed L5R and Orkworld author, who has a new publishing house and domain name, apparently co-owned by the author of the praised indie game InSpectres. Enemy Gods looks like it’s in the same territory as Sorceror and maybe My Life With Master, but with more of a classicist/ass-kicking bent. Good times to be had by all, no doubt. It’s good to see new companies admit that they are selling to the already initiated; I’d feel a little better if they didn’t say they had print versions for Gen Con, but maybe they essentially just mean printouts. We’ll see.

Posted in Roleplaying Games | Comments Closed

The kimono finally lifts on Doom board game

Thursday, July 22nd, 2004

This interview with FFG’s Kevin Wilson over at one o’ them video-game sites reveals that, no, Doom: the Boardgame will not in fact be much like Frag. He describes it as “a cross between Heroquest and Space Hulk.” Not only will play be scenario-based like the WarCraft board game, but one player will play the baddies, which will actually involve reading out “short bits of descriptive text … at key moments.” That’s the closest I’ve seen a board game of the one-player-against-the-rest type hew to the D&D model in a while. Also, the cyberdemon figures are 3 inches tall. Think spawning one of those will get their attention? Yeah, maybe! This is still scheduled to hit in late fall.

Posted in Board Games, Computer and Console Games | 1 Comment »

Paranoia XP cover posted

Thursday, July 22nd, 2004

According to the development blog as well as the visual evidence, the cover artist of the original Paranoia is back and apparently in fine form. Whether the book is going to be at Gen Con Indy is a matter of crossing one’s fingers at this point (and we don’t mean crossing them behind your back while assuring your commanding officer of the integrity of the Bouncy Bubble Beverage shipment you were responsible for).

Posted in Roleplaying Games | Comments Closed

When the time limit expires, a giant sneaker fills the screen

Wednesday, July 21st, 2004

So, while I’m thinking about virtual CCGs that cross card gaming with established computer-gaming genres: Magnant is a real-time strategy game driven by card play. The CCG haters among you will be happy to know that any and all actual trading is not implemented yet. The geeks among you might be interested to hear that the engine driving the RTS portion of the game is open source – the Mac users will note that the above means the game is cross-platform. Plus, it’s got ants. You like ants, don’t you? [Update: there is not, in point of fact, a Mac version yet. The engine is portable, so it should happen, in theory.]

Posted in Card Games, Computer and Console Games | Comments Closed

Werewolf relaunch delayed to February

Tuesday, July 20th, 2004

Originally planned for a November release, White Wolf‘s Werewolf relaunch, Werewolf: The Forsaken, is now scheduled to arrive in February ’05. Why the delay? According to Ken Cliffe, White Wolf’s Vice President of Editing and Development, “All of us have been working flat-out on Vampire, and it became clear to us that with Werewolf set to come out only two and a half months after Vampire, it was at risk of getting second-hand treatment. That wasn’t acceptable.” Bravo. Watch for teasers in the next White Wolf Quarterly, and keep your snarls of frustration to a minimum, Werewolf: The Forsaken will be along soon.

Posted in Roleplaying Games | Comments Closed

Cue the Odd Couple theme: Palladium Books and Nokia share presence at Gen Con

Tuesday, July 20th, 2004

Now this is just weird: Palladium will be sharing their Gen Con booth with Nokia – yes, the Finnish cell phone empire and makers of the thus-far lackluster game deck N-Gage. The form-factor problems with the N-Gage have been at least partially solved, but the bigger problem was a games selection so utterly mundane as to interest no one. Nokia appears to have swung to the other extreme – they’ll be previewing a Rifts RPG for N-Gage. I think it’s fair to call Rifts fans a niche market within a niche market – but I suppose if Nokia hits enough niches, and finally fires up the online play that the N-Gage cries out for, they might have something. (As an aside, I bet their new hire had something to do with this booth-share.) I think it’s unlikely we’ll see online play out of this game, or indeed anything other than a demo video, but one thing’s for sure: Rifts for N-Gage will have characters that’d snap your neck like a toothpick if you so much as say “side-talkin’.”

Posted in Computer and Console Games, Conventions, Roleplaying Games | 2 Comments »

Essen 04: if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere

Sunday, July 18th, 2004

GameFest has an Essen ’04 preview that is mostly kind of perplexing. It’s meant to collect all the details for all the pre-announcements of board and card games coming out this year at Germany’s preeminent game fair, but sometimes the details are pretty sketchy. Some highlights: a European-map version of Spiel des Jahres winner Ticket to Ride, Eagle Games’ less-combat-oriented Bootleggers, a new standalone Carcassonne game, and plenty of upcoming action from Rio Grande and Uberplay.

Posted in Board Games | Comments Closed

But running them down in a burnt-out Hummer is no challenge!

Sunday, July 18th, 2004

Phil Reed, who among his other fine qualities has the distinction of being the very first financial contributor to OgreCave (he gave us a dollar!), has released a new PDF RPG called MotoCaust. I was disappointed to learn that it has little to do with motocross, the retro sport of the decade. Instead, it’s all about Mad Max crossed with Night of the Living Dead. Run and gun those zombies down, with a three-stat system (not to be confused with Tri-Stat) that appears to be d10-based. Peep the demo PDF, which mainly comprises fiction with dirty words in it, and some hot Christopher Shy artwork.

Posted in Roleplaying Games | Comments Closed

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