Diary #13 – To the Land of the Geek

The Bristol Big Geek Meet is a regular event for fans of all things anime, sci-fi, comic book and (you guessed it) gaming. It involves pub trips, parades and costumes. This month, my friend Mateusz (designer of Krill) and I decided to go along. We saw it as a good opportunity to catch up, discuss our…

Diary #12 – A Games Hack

On Saturday night, five gaming enthusiasts met as Asgard Games in Walsall town center. The challenge: to create a working board game from scratch in two hours. The host, designer Andrew Clayton, had provided the necessary bits and bobs and we dived straight in. My teammate, Martyn, and I discussed creating a game in which the objective…

Diary #11 – Overkill

In the picture above I’ve shown an extract from a graphic I’ve been making recently. I’ve used Inkscape to create a file which generates versions of the game board which are labelled differently, depending on application. To generate the picture, I’ve overlapped all possible versions, demonstrating how nonsensical and complex the exercise was. I’ve found…

Diary #10 – Derby

At the Games Expo a few weeks ago I met some members of the University of Derby gaming society who were very interested in Master of Olympus. We didn’t get a chance to play but we did swap email addresses and on Saturday I went to meet them. This trip was, I hope one of…

Diary #9 – Two Steps Back

  “You do remember that the aim of the game was to collect victory points, right, not smash the living daylights out of each other?” Such was my closing remark on last night’s playtest at the Gunmaker’s Arms, Birmingham. The winner of the game had collected two victory points, and the other three had collected…

Diary #8 – Expo day 3

Exactly a year ago I turned up at the UK Games Expo with a heap of Lego blocks and a dream. I still have those things, and I’m proud of them, but the man in the picture has helped me take massive strides in the past twelve months. Rob Harris set up Playtest UK, a group…

Diary #7 – Find the Turtle

I I discovered today that having a challenge for kids to take part in, even if irrelevant to the game you’re trying to promote, is a good way to get them, and their parents, interested in your stand. Master of Olympus currently uses a turtle-meeple to represent the Sea Creature, and looking for it in a…