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TRUE story of life of a game company, BGG and me.
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This list details the events that swept me into Adiken and the oddities that surround that. Update: 4/27/06 Item 17 added
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Posted On: 2006-04-27 13:31:19
Edited On: 2006-04-27 13:31:19
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It all starts right here. On BGG. I regularly came on to jump the pages and check reviews, but never registered. I used to look for games that suited my tastes by the advanced search.
I register on Aug 04 on a bored day at work and start asking a few questions here and there.
One day, the search spits out this new mass market thing called HeroScape. After a few minutes research, I find out it is to be released later that week.
Modular board. Minis. Fantasy. Fighting. Where do I sign up?
Well, that answer was easy. Toys R Us. Then I played this behemoth with streamlined rules and decided more people needed to know about it.
10/10/04, I write the third review for HeroScape on BGG, my first. And I rate it a 10. I then proceed to rate a few hundred other games.
BGG leads to some HeroScape fan sites. |
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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My comments on the HeroScape fansites are soon noticed by Craig Van Ness and his buddy Rob Daviau - the designers of HeroScape. I am invited to become a playtester for expansions, and start providing edited wording for unreleased characters.
Being I was a copy editor in the past and alpha tested some thing called EverQuest, they were happy to take my comments in hand, along with those of other playtest groups.
I had to sign an NDA, and I respect that still to not reveal more about secret moonlit meeting places and arcane formulas to compute character values. |
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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HeroScape: Modular board. Minis. Fantasy. Fighting.
Some guy on the boards found another similar product coming soon. Nin-Gonost.
Components were jaw dropping. Freakin MAGNETIC board? Rulebook unreadable. Game absurdly complex. Price ... $150? No thanks. You will NOT get my money.
But it wasn't my money. $100 from my mother-in-law for my birthday (2/15/05) moved me into the game shop.
See, Adiken is a Canadian company. And they invoiced in Canadian dollars. So a local store acidentally put the wrong price on their copy.
$85. Hmmm. That saves me $65. And I easily spend $85 on minis and collectables anyway, so what the heck. After all, its got a cooool wooden case, pewter minis, a whole lot of chrome.
Sold. |
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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Now, Nin-Gonost is an odd beast.
NOT a dungeon crawl - but it takes place with orcs and knights in a dungeon. No levelling, no treasure, no equipment, no exploring. This is fatal and that's it. Go in and beat the snot out of each other.
Badly translated from French, the rulebook is a horror. "Figth Values" instead of "Fight Value". The rules include such mental convolutions as characters having a momentum so that if they turn when running, they probably fall, although you can attempt to nock a bow and fire while doing so.
It DOES, however, have the really cool terrain and a massively cool and misunderstood dice system. A TON of dice, but you only ever roll two. Modifiers modify the dice, not the die roll. This eliminates tons of calculations and makes for hyper fast fighting. If you can figure out the movement rules.
I wrestle with the rules and write a session report. |
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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The session report makes history.
No, really.
I got on that "Best Session Reports" geeklist for the first time with it. I wrote it as a pure adventure combat story. Having written tons of fiction in the past, this was no big deal to me.
But it got read by Arnaud Borne. Nin-Gonost's lead designer.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/61404
He flipped for it. Thought it was the perfect realization of this brutal but generic fantasy world.
I am contacted through BGG and offered the job of fleshing out the world of Nin-Gonost.
This is done by regularly writing Character Intros for all of the minis in their line. At least one a week for the new releases, but I'm given a free hand to do more.
We negotiate. They offer MORE than I ask. Well, OK.
Sorry, HeroScape, I have to leave your playtesting because I am now a paid employee of Adiken. |
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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Alain Henner, President of Adiken calls me. His accent is thick and extremely French.
"Alo, Pau? Is Alain. We woo lie you to come upear to Canada. We ave a beeg projet."
He offers to get my family to Canada for a four day weekend, all expenses (and I mean food, hotel, car) paid to discuss the future of Nin-Gonost.
Well, obviously, this sounds like a setup to a bad horror movie: Buy game, write report, get hired, now go to a foreign country for some secret project ... never to be seen again.
I literally call the hotel to verify everything has been paid before we leave.
Well, it was. I had been writing for them a few weeks, and they were happy.
So was I. |
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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That's me on the right at the Adiken offices. My son Spencer is the little dude. Alain Henner at the head of the table. Just left of him, Arnaud Borne. Far left, Pete somethingIdon'trecallrightnow, the art director.
Adiken was founded by Alain using a grant from his father, who was a very prominent manufacturer of helicopters in Europe.
With over a million dollars in capital, rather than find a place to cast miniatures, he bought the machines to do it all. The plastic injection stuff, the pewter cast equipment, the CAD systems to run it. In the long run, this would save fortunes.
The first trip up, Spencer cast the very first Malgaroth figure. This meant a lot to him. He knew the story I had written (it was the first) and he thought the guy was coolly evil. I detail his casting process at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/67442
Oh, if you're interested in the stories, there's a few dozen at www.adiken.com, just click around the miniatures and many have plotlines.
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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The project they want me on?
The Campaign Book.
This will be something like 200 pages, with new rules, new characters, and The Campaign.
Cool, what do we have so far?
Alain puts three handwritten looseleaf sheets on the table.
That's it.
There's no book.
I'M supposed to write it. In 2 months.
Oh, and I get to basically make the world whatever I want.
Well, if that's the case, I better get cracking...
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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The idea was massive. A series of scenarios, all interconnected in a tremendous which way book. Some choices would be based on the player decisions, some would be on the results of a given scenario. A massive scenario tree was designed, stories crafted, characters fleshed out.
And we're not talking a little work. This is a novella. 120 pages of fiction, all tightly tied into these wild scenario ideas I develop. I give them all of the stories and pertinent guidelines, they playtest the scenarios.
Nin-Gonost was purely combat based. I am adding a whole new strategic plotline level to it.
In the end, very few characters will survive. This will lead to another series of characters and new campaign book each year.
Job security.
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1 Comment []
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Posted On: 2006-03-29 14:08:58
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Posted On: 2006-03-30 04:48:29
I'm happy to see that my geeklist of best SR's of the week is in some small way connected to the good part of your journey. I wish you could have a happy ending to your story, I really do.