[BigPapaBear]

Någonting som länge har fascinerat mig är spelföretaget GMTs omslag, kartor och counters. Designarbetet verkar i det närmaste vara begränsat till två personer: Rodger B. MacGowan och Mark Simmonitch.
All heder och cred till dessa killar som har färglagt många käcka krigsspel i sina dagar. Dock undrar jag om det inte skulle vara lite kul att prova lite olika designers, för att få lite variation på bitarna.

Tankar och åsikter kring detta?

[A F]

Tankar och åsikter kring detta?

Krigsspelsens visuella utforming präglas av tre storheter

• Det stora bristen på begåvade grafiker

• Den stora bristen på grafiker med någon som helst artistisk vision

• Den konservativa publiken

Alltså så ser spel ut som de gör.

[BigPapaBear]

Krigsspelsens visuella utforming präglas av tre storheter

• Det stora bristen på begåvade grafiker

• Den stora bristen på grafiker med någon som helst artistisk vision

• Den konservativa publiken

Alltså så ser spel ut som de gör.

Men borde man inte kunna rotera lite grand? Låna in lite killar från Phalanx Games, Eagle Games eller Fantasy Flight Games; våga sig på nya eskapader.
Ur ett långsiktigt perspektiv kanske det skulle vara sunt att satsa på lite fräschare design, så att man lockar till sig en ny, yngre publik. För att "säkra hobbyns överlevnad".    [överdriven dramatisering]

Med snyggare paketering skulle folk upptäcka hur pass mycket bättre "riktiga spel" är, jämfört med t.ex. Axis & Allies.

[A F]

Ur ett långsiktigt perspektiv kanske det skulle vara sunt att satsa på lite fräschare design, så att man lockar till sig en ny, yngre publik. För att "säkra hobbyns överlevnad".    [överdriven dramatisering]

Jobbar bland annat åt "Baltimoreglaciaren", sen de köpte "Children of the Corn" det närst största krigspelsföretaget, och har en viss inblick i hur dessa människor tänker. Och saken är den att man inte är intresserad av det du pratar om. Man ser snygga produktioner från utanför den egna dammen och tänker att det inte angår oss.

Skrev detta för nått år sen till en krigsspelstidning och blev refuserad för att det inte skulle intressera krigsspelare. "Gå figur" som de säger i USA.

   in love with leatherface

Your game might be great, but will anyone bother to even look at it?

A new Swedish Role Playing Game landed at my desk the other day. Two big books full of "Götterdämmerung – a mystery role-playing game" set in the 18th century. I thought "what a strange idea" -350 pages of Valmont & Vampires? Not that sexy if you ask me. At least that was my very professional opinion.

Still, I could not drop the subject. The guys at Riotminds are professional folks that make excellent products, so they must have seen something I had not. What could be so interesting about Benjamin Franklin meeting (or being eaten by) Great Cthulhu?

It took one look at the images inside the books to get my overactive imagination going. There was a lot of spooky stuff going on in the 18th century, right? By that time Widow Queen Hedvig Eleonora's ghost had started to haunt the castle across the channel from where I live. Meanwhile, men like Carl von Linné and Anders Celsius where laying the foundations of science as we know it today and just a few blocks down the road from here Emanuel Swedenborg where busy rewriting the Bible and talking to spirits. Witchcraft was still a crime to punished by death and it was common knowledge that since womankind was created from a bent rib women often did "bent" things. The New World in America was not that new anymore and the Ostindian Company was flooding the land with porcelain and silk from China, along with weird stuff, like opium and (you bet) images of gods with octopus-like faces. And the more I think of it, I am also pretty sure that the loot from the sack of Prague in 1656 must have included at least one vampire, with coffin and all. So somewhere in town there is this Bohemian Vampire Count sitting in a cellar and being irritated about the long summer nights.

Now,I have not played Götterdämmerung, and this little article's purpose is not to review it. What I am aiming at is of course the first impression feel some games project. How some of them grab our attention and interest in an almost brutal manner. I still remember how the first edition of Call of Cthulhu made me ask "Howard Philips Who?" and how an hour later I was off to the bookstore to buy everything I could find by the guy. Or how Kevin Zucker's "Struggle of the Nations" where fascinating not only because the very small hexagons and the rectangular counters, but because its rulebook started out with a Lewis Carrol quote. It conveyed an eerie sense of fate and tension more than any "Bloodthis" or "Death-that" title would ever had managed.

On the other hand, there are great games on interesting subjects that almost seem to tell the not initiated hard-core gamer to stay away. As does the gamers who play them. "Please do not come here and disturb us. We are exclusive." When some seventeen-year old leans over the wargaming-table at a convention and asks: "What is this?" He gets the reply "a very difficult game. Please go away."

I've heard this said in real life. From ASL-players, of all people. The guys with the best sales pitch in the hobby. "You drive Big Tiger Tank." A few hours later I saw another guy from the same club spend three hours talking two novices through an ASL-scenario with all the guts of a snake-oil salesman. (I do not think he even bothered with showing them the rules before they began.) Everybody had a good time and he won two new gamers to his cause.

Meanwhile the seventeen-year old kid had probably found something else of interest. Perhaps he instead brought some White Wolf book that oozed violence, sexual angst and endless teen-sulking from its back pages. And Man, are White Wolf good at violence, sexual angst and endless teen-sulking. Even their booth at Spiel in Essen reeks of violence, sexual angst and endless teen-sulking. White Wolf are so good at package that the artwork on the cards for "Vampire-The Eternal Struggle" will keep you struggling all the way through one of history's most boring set of rules, just because characters like "Yvette the Hopeless" and "Leatherface of Detroit" has convinced you that there must be a spectacular game at the end of that godawfull little book. (And indeed it is.)

Or our seventeen-year old spends hundreds of Euros on leaden lumps, just because a Gamers' Workshop store literally screamed "WE HAVE COOL THINGS IN HERE!!! PLEEEEEEEASE COME IN!!!!" at him. And Man, are Gamers' Workshop good at that. GW recently released "The Battle for Macragge," (ww.macragge.com) a new starter-kit for their 40K-system. Any aspiring game designer should buy the kit and just take in the skill GW has achieved in packaging. Forget about the plastic miniatures or the muscular artwork and all the other things that your little project will never be able to afford. Look behind that and learn. Look how they work on feel and storyline, how they make good the promise that within minutes you will be in too, and how they cap that off with "if you like this: check all this stuff out!" and point you at their websites and catalogues. Any wargame-publisher dismissing them as a Megacorp that sells games for kids is simply ignorant. Twenty-five years ago GW was a garage outfit as well.

Back to the guys that plays "a very difficult game." There is no universal rule that says that a hobby -be it historical gaming or anything else – must be inviting to newcomers or care about recruiting, but why should it not? And if a club or company goes to a convention why should it not bother to put up a bit of a show to attract attention? Unless the purpose is to just be alone in public, each new gamer even remotely interested means a new potential buddy as well as a new customer. Why not build a big game with hexes a decimeter across and with counters the size of CD-cases and play out some small scenario? Or for once make convention booth look like anything BUT a garage sale of colorful cardboard. We in our little corner of the hobby might just profit form a bit more attractiveness.

After all, being smart and slick is free. Nothing stops a small firm from being clever.

[BigPapaBear]

Bra ord, Anders. Vi får hoppas att de som är intresserade av att sprida hobbyn är framgångsrika och att det smittar av sig. Var och en får dra sitt strå till stacken!

Upp till kamp!  

[A F]

Var och en får dra sitt strå till stacken!

Upp till kamp!  

Indeed.  

Eventuellt så ska min tyska kollega Udo Grebe ha en STOR monter i Essen i höst. Jag har redan nu börjat propagera förr att NÅGON ska bli ansvarig för monterns utformning och utseende. Och varför inte be Vanessa, en tjej vi känner som jobbar med konferanser och dessutom pysslar med design och annat på fritiden, sköta detta?

"Hon vet inget om krigsspel" blir svaret.

           

[Jon Karlsson]

Twenty-five years ago GW was a garage outfit as well.

Dessutom är väl inte Warhammerreglerna störtenkla, direkt?

[A F]

Twenty-five years ago GW was a garage outfit as well.

Dessutom är väl inte Warhammerreglerna störtenkla, direkt?

Beror på vad du jämför med. De är 1000 ggr lättare att komma igång med 40K än med ASL eller VtES. (Bland annat för att man använder sånna gamla knep som det som Avalon Hill kallade "programmed instructions" och som alla moderna tycks veta inte fungerar.)