In Memoriam

It was with great sadness that I learned yesterday of the death of one of our ODGW partners, a founding member of the company. J.D. Perry passed away a few days ago, and he will be sorely missed. He loved life and lit up our meetings with his infectious good humor.

Drum Beats on the Battleline pt.17

Today the latest version of American Battlelines was playtested and the rules gone over thoroughly by the OGDW partners.  Bob Benge got me on the phone, and said that it was "not a slaughter," though he did indicate that there was some head-shaking going on.  Pointed up a number of areas that I did not update from the original to the new edition.  So there were some dropouts.  Also there was some question of my reasons behind some of the changes, and why I had dropped one possible action from the list.  All in all, it was productive, and I hope that the changes are adopted by the folks whose ultimate vote I would need.  I can attest that the new game is less fiddly than the old, and seems to have an intuitive feel.  There are fewer die rolls overall.  I also cleaned up a lot of the areas that were not clear from the original.  Just not all of them.

Now the real work begins

I have literally a ton of unmade paper terrain buildings and fixtures that need to be constructed.  It is time to dig into these and put them together.  The 10mm are for a friend's playtest and development group for his miniatures game.  The 6mm are for my chosen scale, microarmor in WWII, and 10mm everywhere else, though I may be tempted by 15mm's for the War of the Roses project.  So much to work toward now, what with a group that is willing to try out new systems and help me out with playtesting.  The Battlelines system has to jell relatively quickly, so that I can open up space for the GQIII project final work, and the Meine Truppen rules, which are going off in directions that no one planned for.  It is all keeping me busy.

No price increase

I spoke too soon.  It looks like there will be no price increase on ODGW products coming with the new year.  So stand down from frantic shopping mode, if you were in that mode to begin with.  ODGW continues to have great value for its games, which are very comprehensive treatments of the eras they cover.

Price increase

Printing costs have increased, and so will our prices, effective very soon.  Anyone wishing to purchase a game at the old price should do so within the next few weeks, as I expect we will put the new prices into effect on the first of the year.

business meeting

We had our "monthly" business meeting last weekend, and it is divulging no great secret to announce ODGW is doing well.  We have projects in the works, solid cash flow, work on the web site, and very good hopes of finding a printer to replace our recently departed (bankrupt) one.  So all is looking up.  Almost all the ODGW partners except yours truly will be at Fall In in Gettysburg this coming 6-8 November, so if you are there, stop by and say hello.

Research on the horse and musket era continues, as does design work and playtesting on Meine Truppen and American Battlelines.  Keeping me busy.  Still have that niggling little bit of work to do on our latest naval release before its beta test package goes out to the groups.  I spend as much mental effort on wondering why I am blocked on the final few details as I do on writing those last pieces.  It is proving tough to overcome.  I am hoping for some final burst of creative energy this weekend to push this item over the line and out the figurative door.

And we can only hope that USC beats Washington later today.

That D*** Web Site Part IV

One way to work around the problems with the ODGW web site is to look for flashing "NEW" buttons next to Forum topics, even if it shows that there are zero topics within the category.  Definitely not perfect, but our web guy is working on a new site for us.  I am just frustrated by the problems after dealing with them all these years.  So know that the difficulties are being worked on, and a better web site is in the offing.  Or so I am told.

Meine Truppen

The third project your humble narrator is working on is the infantry-centric version of Mein Panzer, to be called Meine Truppen. MP itself is actually an excellent infantry game, so much so that my group has had many very enjoyable infantry only battles. Take a look here for some of the AAR's that the Miracle Mile Gamers (MMG) have posted. But the detail we use really makes for a different game at a different scale. Soon I will do a general call for playtesters of this new game, since the folks who currently have the game seem to be sitting on it. Got to make some progress somehow.

Anyone who is interested, leave a note here and let me know a little bit about yourself.

beta test of a different sort

Time to get up and finish the beta test kit for our next General Quarters offering. We hope for a Christmas release on this one, but I am pretty much convinced that will not happen. It is a big game, and will require quite an outlay of playtesting time to finish properly. Then there is the publishing side of it. With the demise of Quality Print-on-Demand, many game publishers are scrambling to find new printers.  So we are faced with several challenges.  First and foremost is getting the game in the hands of the playtesters.  And that is my job.

Drum beats on the Battleline pt. 2

I am anxious to see all the posts arriving about the Battlelines playtest rules, for good or ill. Have not come up with a good plan yet for the Command section, though some limitation on the ability of all units to do whatever they want is likely in the works. The original designer of Battlelines absolutely hated morale and command rules, so much so that he never used them when playing his Mein Panzer games. He left it up to me to design those sections. Now I have been doing quite a bit of reading to see how command was administered in the late "Lace Wars" period, just prior to the Napoleonic years. I want the rules to work within the game context, but also to be unique in giving the flavor of late 18th century warfare in the New World.

Drum beats on the Battleline pt. 1

The first several chapters have made it to the playtesters via the ODGW web site, which, wonder of wonders, seems to be working now, even for yours truly. There have been changes to Battlelines, which will annoy, even outrage, those who are used to the old version, but the proof is in the playing. I want to see how it works first before cutting off the new version at the knees. There were some anomalous things that occurred in the rules, that I struck out, making the rules simpler and cleaner. We will see how they are received in this new, controversial version.

The Latest Stuff

So, the latest stuff happening from the Old Dominion is updating of the Mein Panzer 2 Databook. Bob continues his encyclopaedic work on the massive tome that is the Databook. I cannot imagine the patience in putting the thing together — really beyond me. And we all await the final work on the WWI Supplement for Fleet Action Imminent. This will give us the French, American, Japanese, and the other smaller navies that could have seen action in WWI.

And there is more in the works...