A Gathering of Strangers

That was a whole lot of fun!! I was able to make the trip down to Salt Lake City on both Friday and Saturday. I had never attended A Gathering of Strangers, or any game convention for that matter, before, but I really enjoyed it and can't wait for next year!

Friday I presented my game, the Armor of God, in the guild competition. It went pretty smoothly. There were 2 groups of 5 judges (from places like FRED Distribution, Out of the Box Games, and Games Unplugged), so the game was played twice. Then the judges rated the game following Mike Compton's Evaluation Form (find it on baordgamegeek here). A total of 8 games were entered into the competition. I'm not sure what place I ended up taking, but it wasn't in the top 4. Not really a big deal though. I mean, I didn't really expect to win. There are a whole lot of great games that the members of the guild design. It was just great to be a part of it and I can't wait to get the feedback from the judges. I'm sure it will help me improve the game a lot.

There were a few highlights of the weekend that I wanted to touch on. After the judging on Friday, Carey from FRED Distribution approached me and asked about taking a copy of the prototype to Armor of God home. In other words, he's interested and thinks it's a pretty good game! No guarantees that they will publish it, but success!!! Part of the purpose of the competition was to get publishers to see the games from the guild and hopefully get them interested in the games we had to offer. Carey was also interested in Mike Compton's game Bandits of Persia! It's exciting to see that publishers have an interest in games designed by guild members!

Also on Friday, Seth picked up the finished painting that Scott has been working on for Hagoth!!! Here it is!!!

He brought it to the Gathering. We both had prototypes of the game as well and we got about 10 people to demo it during the weekend. Ryan from The Board Game Guy was very excited! We're getting closer and closer to being ready for production!!

Lastly, I wanted to add that there was a lot of free stuff given away by all the publishers and game stores on hand. On Friday I won a brand new copy of Dominion Intrigue!!! I ended up playing it 3 times that evening (I even won the first of the 3 games, which was pretty big because I don't thing I won anything else during the 2 days). It's a great game!

All in all, I just loved the convention. I got to meet new people (another guy from here in Logan, now we'll have 4 of us here that design games). I got to play a lot of games. And I found someone interested in another one of my designs. Really, what more could I ask for from 2 days?

Armor of God Resurrected!!!

Well, I've recently been working on the Armor of God. Originally it was a game for two players only. Phil at Covenant Communications said that two players games aren't likely to be accepted by them for publication. Plus the Guild is having a competition that will take place during A Gathering of Strangers this year (July 10 & 11)! So I started redesigning the Armor of God so that it would play with 2 to 4 players.

I was able to have it playtested on Tuesday the 9th at the Guild meeting. That was great! I didn't play. I just explained the game to the four who volunteered to play it. They enjoyed playing, said it was fun and that it kept them involved. They also had a lot of good feedback that I've gone through and incorporated into the design. I love having a group of people this close that are willing to play others games and help them improve them.

Also, I was searching around online for images that I might possibly use to at least have a decent looking prototype to take to the competition (so far it's just been 3" x 5" cards cut in half). I came across some awesome artwork! Tony, in Kaysville, designed some Armor of God cards for his young men and young women. I contacted him and he gave me permission to use his artwork in my prototype!!

Here are 2 of the cards that I put together using his stuff. I'm no artist, but having Tony's artwork definitely made these (hopefully I haven't detracted too much from his stuff)! Thank you Tony!!



I just finished sending my files to Steve at BluePanther yesterday. He's going to print the cards for me. That way I'll have a hopefully really nice looking prototype.

At A Gathering of Strangers a set of judges will play all of the entries in the competition and they'll choose a winner! The judges come from the world of publishing, and elsewhere. There are no guarantees that anyone, not even the winner, will get their game published, but it's never bad to have those in the industry look at your game.

Hagoth!!!

This is very exciting news (at least for me anyway)! Hagoth: Builder of Ships will be published by Mayday Games (updated 5/27/09: Pre-order Hagoth!!)sometime this summer!!! Sweet!

On May 9th the Guild had put together a meeting with Seth from Mayday Games, where we could come and show Seth our games. Four of us showed up to show him what we had. All together we spent 4 hours or so playing each game. Seth said that he liked the games and that he might look into doing a couple of them.

Later he told me that he wanted to do Hagoth. I was very excited (and still am)! I really had no idea that anyone out there would be interested in publishing a Mormon themed game. I always hoped that there would be someone or that somehow we could convince someone that they wanted to. But now it is actually going to happen!!

Anyway, Seth emailed me a contract on the 11th. I looked it over; asked about a couple of changes (like getting my name placed on the cover of the box); signed it and email it back on the 13th. Then yesterday Seth came up here to Logan with his signature now attached to the contract as well. So, it's official!!!

While he was up here we met with Scott Wakefield (an artist I know; here's his website). Scott is going to do the artwork for Hagoth!! I'll post some updates as Scott moves along with the artwork. Very exciting!!!

Well, that's how it's all happened. I can't wait to see the final, finish, published version of Hagoth. Seth is hoping that we can get the whole thing put together and take a couple of copies to A Gathering of Strangers in July. I don't know if that is feasible, but it would definitely be extremely cool!

We've Got a Plan

So we've had quite a bit of activity on the Google Group lately. It was pretty much started when Chester (boardgamegeek profile) found us and joined in. He is very fired up and excited about getting something like this (i.e., Mormon themed games) out for publishers and distributors to see and pick up. We talked on the phone last night for a little over an hour about the idea. It goes something like this:

A Co-op will be created (we'll call it something like Zion Game Designers International (ZGDI)). We will hook up with the LDS Booksellers Association (become a member) and start attending their annual convention (happens in August; we'll be shooting for the convention in 2010). At the conventions we will have a booth where members of ZGDI will display their games. Members will bring games that are 'Ready for the Box.' If it isn't ready to be sold, then that is just what it is - not ready to be sold. Those at the LDSBA are there to make plans for the entire next year - decisions will be made on what goes into what store and what publisher will buy what game. Prototypes don't need to be professional in appearance, but they need to be functional and the game needs to have all the bugs worked out and read to be sold. That's another part of where we come in as a group, we'll be vetting games and helping get them ready for the LDSBA. This will give us access to the publishers and distributors in the LDS world of books, and we hope to get them to adopt new game designs as well.

He explained it to be sort of like an Essen-type setup: a convention where designers come with hopes of hooking up with a publisher. We'll be there for publishers and distributors to see us and our games. The Co-op will give us a chance to save on costs (all costs split by those of us who are members of the Co-op) and also provide us a way of letting the publishers and distributors know that we will always have quality products for them to consider. In essence, as a Co-op we would put our "stamp of approval" on the games that the members bring to the LDSBA conventions.

We also hope to be able to showcase our games at the Gathering of Strangers (that will hopefully happen this summer here in Utah). We hope to be able to go there with some games ready for others to play. Then we can get LDS people's feedback on the games and have that for 'market research' to back up our pitches to the LDSBA.

Anyway, it's a lot to take in. It makes me very excited though. I hope we can get this all set up and ready to go. I'm especially excited that someone other than me is excited to give quality Mormon themed games to the world!

Thanks to Chester for this brilliant idea!!