March Convention Report

As it stands we did not. We came early and got to gain some great insight into the industry from the many valuable seminars that were held before the show. Did I mention this is a trade show? Yes a trade show so needless to say we made no direct sales from the show, it's a promotional effort aimed at retailers and distributors.

We gave away about two cases of books to various retailers and distributors, gave out a couple hundred company packets and talked to allot of great people. We managed to find a nice pool of retailers which were local to us which we didn't even know existed, so that was promising.

On one of the nights, Jake and myself along with Lance of Avalon innovations, and Jason and his wife Kate of Key 20 went to diner at Spagos and had a great experience brainstorming some ideas to better the exposure of the small press companies involved in the Key 20 collective. The dinner was incredibly expensive (a fact I poke fun at Jason about even now) but the food and the company and the progress was well worth the expense.

The show finished in typical fashion with the last day being virtually dead, but the few additional people we spoke to had good things to say and were very up beat about our products and the prospect of the support we are trying to offer.

All in all GTS was well worth the investment, though I doubt I'll ever be able to gauge the actual sales repercussions of the show, but I know it made some great contact and got us some good name stake with a lot of great retailers.

March 2006 Gamestorm 8 report

Game-what? Storm? If you mean called on account of rain, then sure. Perhaps the show was better in the past when it was at other venues (I wouldn't know this was my first and possibly last attempt at attending), but somehow I doubt it. This year's show took place at the Red Lion at the Quay in Vancouver Washington and was apparently reserved as the venue, sight unseen. How in the world you can ever hope to arrange a show without first visually plotting the layout is beyond me.

So anyways I had high hopes of a small show where I could get some good face to face time with a few interesting individuals and run a few games which I had scheduled to show our game in action and try and get some people excited, but upon arrival I was crushed to find out that the "convention hall" where I was going to be setting up was a small meeting room which consisted of 4 tables of game masters running scheduled RPG's and 2 tables for dealers (ourselves and crucifix games which apparently didn't show either, at least not in the first day) I was so insulted by the concept that they wanted to place different genres of games in different areas rather than running game sessions in separate rooms and having all the exhibitors in one area. They had a large meeting/reception hall, which was allocated for card/board/miniature games and several small meeting rooms for RPGA and a small room for the RPG dealers/gamers. Instead, they could have taken the 30ft x 20ft area they taped off as a life size square board for some stupid demo in the main hall and placed it in a separate room and brought ALL of the dealers into the main hall. As it stood I came late, it took me nearly a half hour to find where I was supposed to set up, because nobody had a clue, and then I find that I'm buried down a hall off the main lobby rather than in the actual convention hall. What was worse about it is my pre-scheduled game sessions weren't even listed on the sheet outside the meeting room, which was to be my exhibit hall like all the other games were.

So needless to say I didn't waste my time by staying. I scoped out the area for awhile and the wheeled by crap back to the car and left. I doubt that anyone would have shown for the games anyways, and if I had stayed, I would have been all alone, staring at the gamers playing call of cathulu, starwars, D&D and something else I couldn't identify. To boot, Jake had Pneumonia that week and was out of action for quite awhile, so perhaps the show was ill fated to begin with.

This is the tentative title we're currently leaning towards for this new incarnation of the CrossRoads world. This is a table top non-collectable, yet expandable tile based strategy game which we are currently developing, so far what we can tell you is this: The game is played using one deck of cards (currently slated at around 40) The "tiles" as we refer to them are 1.5" square and are placed on a foldable game mat with 100 square spaces (10x10). The tiles themselves depict various trades and creatures, and land marks from the world of Rivium, and serve every function as playable action cards and as unit cards on the game play area. Players take turns placing their tiles into play one at a time each turn as they see fit, move tiles around, initiate an attack each round, and play any cards from their hand which applies to the situation at hand. Your Soldier or fortune card for instance is a good combat unit which can be used well in play, or could be played from your hand to return a target tile to the draw deck; or your fire wizard can be good for dealing ranged attacks in combat, or played from your hand once to deal an attack anywhere on the table. The cleric can be used to help support combat by adding to the attack of a combatant, or boosting its defense, just like any tile could do, or it could be spent from your hand or from play to prevent and amount of damage from an enemy's attack.

The game is for 2-4 players, requires only 1 deck of cards to play, but expansions will be released which can allow you to customize the way you play the game. Play continues until either a player is wiped out of units, or after a pre-determined number of casualties (3 or 5 for instance). The game currently runs around 15-20 minutes using the 3-5 casualties model.

We're still in the alpha stages of design and testing, but once we finalize on a Beta version, we'll be releasing beta copies of the game to certain play testers. If you are interested and have done or are planning on doing play testing for our RPG, please contact us and we'll put you on the list for a Beta copy of Skirmish. Include your name and a mailing address that we can send the beta copy to once it is ready. ETA on Beta copies is late August.

• You must be at least 14 years of age
• You must first participate in a play test cycle of new material in works from Arcadiam Games, and give constructive feedback on that material. A play test and assessment cycle lasts around 2 to 3 months while the product is in development. Any questions, concerns, or feedback should be addressed on the website forums where you can get response form other play testers as well as us.
• You must write a short review (a paragraph or two) giving your honest feedback about the CrossRoads system and Arcadiam Games in general and post it on one of the many RPG resource sites on the internet such as RPG.net, the Forge, The Village, Flames rising, etc. We aren't looking for a shameless plug. We want your honest appraisal of the system, both good things, and things that could use some work, so people know what great things to expect, and we know what to improve upon; as long as it's constructive. Send us a link to the review once it is posted.