Taste All The Shapes!

SamplerAd.jpg

Taste all the shapes! This ad was more than a year “in the making,” which basically means I ignored it for twelve months, because I usually had better things to do. But not today!

Following cold on the heels of last year’s Sabor del Cangrejo ad (see blog post 5/23/20), this sampler pack ad was actually the original concept. I wrote most of the ad more than a year ago, designed and printed the cigar labels, and even shot and ‘shopped this lovely photo last March, the same day I posted the first ad. But distractions happen, and here we are a year later, finally enjoying another fake ad from a fake company on an imaginary island.

Here are some more tidbits from the month of April:

Design Textbook: This month I spent a few solid weeks reviewing my in-progress game design textbook. I’ve been working on this project for far longer than this ad. The book will be called “Games on Paper,” and it will be based on my tabletop design class from 2013.

I now have a shiny new outline for the book, which includes a series of articles like those at the Lecture Hall, as well as a complete lesson plan for learning the basics of several kinds of game, starting with pure luck games, jumping to pure strategy games, and then exploring various ways to integrate the two and season to taste. You’ll certainly hear more about that book over the next few months.

After The Fog: One brave soul was willing to try the print-and-play of After the Fog this month, but he quickly discovered some pieces were missing. I had accidentally left out two blocks of cards from the main deck (the Events and Adventures, lol) and I’d also forgotten to include the filler squares for the 2- and 3-player boards. The updated card and board PDFs are now at the After the Fog page, so if you were waiting for a good moment to try the PnP, it has arrived!

New Design Articles: I posted two new articles to the Lecture Hall. The first is an explanation of Driving Games, with several examples followed by a little design advice as well as a brand new game, The Forest. The second is an update of Writing Effective Rules, an article that will most likely also be part of the aforementioned design book.

In general, I expect to post a good deal of the book at the Lecture Hall, if only to get some feedback before I send the whole thing to a publisher. Or publish it myself. Not really sure at this point. I’ll keep you posted.

Here All Week, Episode 50! My weekly podcast with Kelly Wright celebrated its one-year anniversary last week, with episode 50! That means we’ve spent an entire year in our respective basements, refining those qualities that make an amateur podcast what it is. Give a listen to Here All Week with Kelly and James!

Personal News: My family and I are half-vaxxed and waiting a month for needling number two and the subsequent two-week nausea period. It’s almost comical that we now think “Six more weeks? That’s easy” when we were originally hard-pressed to imagine staying put for half that long. It’s been a strange and isolated year, and although I’ve been lucky enough to have a second home to take care of, I realize that many of us have been stuck in the same place for the whole time. Hopefully we’ll all be back at the gaming table soon, though I’m not sure I’ll ever take off this mask.

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Be well, be safe, make plans, play games!

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March 2021 Recap