Tag Archives: Industry
Origins 2017 Coverage – Your Opinions, Please!
What do you want to see from this year’s Origins? ~
The GrogHeads Team, 22 May 2017
As we ramp up for our coverage of Origins this summer, we’re doubling the number of journalists we’re bringing to the show, so we’ll have a dedicated photographer, plus a dedicated writer, in addition to the staff pitching in their thoughts.
But we’d like to know your thoughts on where you’d like them to focus on coverage.
also, we’ll be posting live/real-time updates to our Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/grogheads/
Chat about it below, or in our forums, or hit our FaceBook page >>
The Tuesday Interview – Brian Train (The Game Theorist!)
Brian Train stops back at GrogHeads for an asymmetric interview ~
Brant Guillory, 9 May 2017
Let’s start this off with a whopper: all-time best game you’ve ever played? Why that one?
Hmm. I really don’t know what would be the all-time best one. One I never seem to get tired of is Minuteman, the Second American Revolution by James Dunnigan. I played it again and again back in the day, and one of the first variants I ever designed was for that game. The premise back then seemed farfetched but 40 years later, I am not so sure. But I liked the processes of building up an insurgent movement, or the counter to it, through covert and semi covert actions, and the eventual payoff of an actual revolution. The various scenarios were interesting too, including two occupation/resistance ones and a four-way second civil war that could develop any number of ways.
I think I got more out of that design than any other SPI game I played, but a close second would be South Africa; another game people say they love to hate but I spent a lot of hours tinkering with it.
The Tuesday Interview – Tom Russell of Hollandspiele
Hollandspiele has joined the ranks of wargame publishers. Tom stops by for a chat ~
Brant Guillory, 25 April 2017
So… another game company, eh? Why break off and start your own publishing house instead of just bringing your games to an existing publisher?
Well, as far as my own designs go, I’ve done that. Of the twenty-five games I’ve had published, only six have come out through Hollandspiele. So, that’s nineteen times someone else has put up their money and said, okay, let’s have a go at this. And that’s satisfying and gratifying, but it has three real disadvantages.
Of the twenty-five games I’ve had published, only six have come out through Hollandspiele.
First, as far as monetary compensation goes, the designer really gets the short-end of the stick a lot of the time. This isn’t true all the time– I’ve had publishers that gave very generous royalties, and publishers that were a lot stingier. Now, I’m talking about wargames specifically here, because in the euro market, the designer gets better pay. I have a couple of euro-style games coming out in the next year or so from a certain publisher that I’m contractually unable to mention by name at this time, and my advance for that was more than the royalties on all my previous (non-Hollandspiele) games combined. So, with wargames, it’s a much smaller piece of the pie, though again, it varies. I was talking with a designer who is working with us on a game, and also has worked with GMT, and was surprised to hear that, in terms of royalty-per-copy, Hollandspiele pays better than GMT. Now, GMT has the volume, so they’re getting more money from GMT than they are from us, because they’re selling an order of magnitude more copies than we are. But still, I thought that was interesting, because while the royalties we give are more than what I got for most of my wargame designs, I didn’t think that our royalty rate was necessarily all that generous. I just thought it was equitable.
Origins War College 2017 Schedule
What’s on tap for this summer’s lectures at Origins? ~
GrogHeads Staff, 29 April 2017
The Origins War College has been folded into the overall lecture/seminar program at the convention. But they’re still sort-of separated out into 2 distinct program tracks, each in their own rooms.
There’s plenty of interesting talks, and many of them staffed/hosted by the NSDM crew.
The Tuesday Interview – Didier Rouy, Part Deux
Part 2 of 2, as Cyrano starts asking more Napoleonic questions ~
Jim Owczarski, 18 April 2017
When we last visited with Dr. Didier Rouy, he was discussing his Flight of the Eagle operational-level Napoleonic Kriegsspiel. In this second half of the interview, he discusses crazy things wargamers can attempt in the RPG-like Kriegsspiel space; how bear hats and humming can scare grown men; how a tactical, Napoleonic wargame could have been influenced by Magic: The Gathering (shudder); and what might be next on his design table.
continuing the discussion from last week
c. You acknowledge the link between the Kriegsspiel-type games like Flight and role-playing games, something about which I tend to obsess. One of the immense strengths of RPGs is the freedom to create it allows to both the game runner and the player. What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen a Flight player try or argue he should be able to do in a game?
Oh Boy, that can be a long response ☺
