ClaymoreEntertainment.com

Well, this is my first ever blog. A few years ago, I never thought I would be in a position where my random thoughts would be worthy or interesting enough for other people to read. In my attempt to blog, I will mostly focus on what is happening in the day to day running of Claymore Entertainment, talk some about game elements, design and life in Alaska.

Where to start? I want to talk some about getting our Hero’s Bane quick start into Free RPG Day. Hopefully, it will be money well spent. Despite it being free to the customer, it was an investment of money, time and resources for us. Just the other day I got the proof copy from the printer and it looks great! You can see the cover on the products page. Nick, our layout guy, did a wonderful job and the cover really snaps. The cover image is a small portion from another larger image done by Tiziano Baracchi. Tiziano does great work and did the cover artwork for the two Hero’s Bane books that are in production. Writing, editing and layout for the quick start rules took about a month to complete. Come Free RPG Day, we’re hoping to start getting feed back from people about what they think of the game.

In many ways it is very daunting to be releasing a game that no one has heard of, let alone from a small start up company. However, I would not trade the experience for anything. Well maybe a million dollars. There are a lot of elements that go into a business from setting up the corporation papers, contracts with artists and all the phone calls, emails and in my case writing and development. The process can range from the very fun and exciting like seeing the proof print of the quick start rules to the frustrating like waiting for elements that you need to finish some aspect of the project. About a month and a half ago it was sort of cool to be sending out 1099 forms for taxes since I have never had employees or contractors of my own that needed tax information. I know an odd area for me to be excited about and I am sure in the coming years it will become boring, yet being the first time it was one of the things that stands out from the constant detail work that shows you that you’re involved with something special.

Today was productive. I got the rough draft of the training system written for Hero’s Bane. It can be funny where you get your ideas of how things should work. In this case a few weeks ago I was running on the treadmill randomly thinking about Hero’s Bane elements I needed to work on and I came upon a good workable way to handle training and learning in the Hero’s Bane world. Next time my friends and I play I will introduce the concept and test it for a bit before sending the section to the editor for the first edit.

I am writing this blog a few days before the website goes live and hopefully it is up and functioning with out any problems. Dianne, our web designer, has made the website design process a fun and rewarding experience. I think the site looks great and I am very excited about it and the possible uses the site can perform in the future.

Anyway, I can see how this blogging can become addictive so for now that is all. Check back soon for my next blog entry!

This week has not been as productive with Hero’s Bane as I would have liked. Wednesday I was sick with a lot of abdominal pain and had to go to the hospital. I was diagnosed with kidney stones. I feel fine now, but the distractions lately have slowed down the process.

The last few weeks I have been writing the class sections. I am happy that the rough drafts are finally finished. Other than just telling the special rules for creating a character, I included some history and stories of the world dealing with each class. The sections also help determine a character’s starting gear depending on their social standing.

Next on the list is detailing the character creation section, starting with all the skill write ups. Hero’s Bane currently has around 88 different skills that your characters can learn and use in the game.

The printer is done with the Quick Start Rules for Free RPG Day. They have arrived at the warehouse and are awaiting distribution to the retailers. Our printer for the Quick Start Rules was Chenault & Gray Publishing. They did a good job and were very professional.

Keep an eye on the ‘What’s New’ section on the front page. We should have an exciting announcement there in a day or so. Hint Hint

This last week has been a busy one with the Tundra game license at last being signed. Once the license was signed I got a hold of a ton of Tundra artwork to be used in the game, more than I had had before when working on the rough game design. I took some time looking over all the new artwork to see what would work with the game mechanics and what would not work. I was happy to be able to incorporate some of Chad’s latest artwork and was also able to fix a few potential problems with the game mechanics. There are going to be 110 3x5 cards in full color that the players will use to obtain things such as more game money or to take certain actions such as making other players lose turns. The goal of the game is to be the first player to spell the word “Tundra”. To get each letter a player has to perform a certain action. For example; the player might have to go dog sledding to get the letter “T”. Thus, this last week I have mostly been dealing with the Tundra game. We hope to have the layout done by the end of the month (key word there is hope).

We will be at Dragon Con this year and are sharing a booth space with Ellen Million Graphics. It should be fun. This will be our first year there as vendors and we will have some products and some giveaways available at our booth.

The work on Hero’s Bane is on-going and I have been working on the skill “Runes”. It has proven difficult to develop a good set of rules governing what I want a person, who uses Runes, to be able to do. For example; I want runes to be able to be engraved onto an item to give that item added power. At the same time, I want the system rules to include a Rune wizard making a giant rune by using the walls and buildings of a city, in order to give the city some great and powerful advantage. Everything from the character’s skill, material used, and the size of the rune is going to come into play. I should have this worked out soon. However, it is more difficult than some of the other specialty skills like Enchanting.

Today, I get to start one of my other jobs, making pots for the Fairbanks fair. I have to make around 400 mugs and 300 other pots this will take most of my time from now to mid July. Sadly all of my work seems to be done indoors and for the last few weeks the Alaska spring has arrived in full force. It is amazing how fast the buds on the trees pop becoming brilliant green leaves. It truly takes only 2 to 4 days for the trees to go from being bare and brown to being covered in a light green canopy of leaves. Anytime now though, the hordes of starving mosquitoes will be let loose upon us if we so much as step outside. As a kid, I use to stand outside, listen to a book on tape, and kill mosquitoes for the fun, pretending they were little space ships attacking me, a giant space station.

Sorry for the long delay between blogs. I have been busy in the pottery studio and have been spending some of my free time doing work on Tundra and Hero’s Bane. I have also been watching The Office. I hadn’t seen the show before and I am finding it completely hilarious.

Tundra is going well all the cards have been written. The board layout is ongoing but we do have a rough layout that has been approved. The rough layout for the cards has also been approved. I don’t think we are going to make my self inflicted deadline of having the game fully laid out by months end. We have selected a manufacturer to print the game and once the layout is done it will take 2 to 3 months before we have the game in our hands. This means it looks as if we will miss the summer tourist season here in Alaska but it will be out for the holidays.

Hero’s Bane is still coming along. The skill “Runes” has been tested some and needs corrections and more testing. However, the training system for characters seems to work well, and while more testing is needed, I am hopeful not many changes will be needed. Once free RPG day is over, I plan on putting a few more game mechanics on the forum for people to look over and make comments. One of them will be the training system.

The editing process for the game is also ongoing. With hundreds of pages written, it takes time to edit everything. My writing process goes something like this: write a rough draft then send it to my mother, who is a good first draft reader and editor. She makes the first round of corrections. Then after I get the first edit back, I make the corrections and any others I want to make. Then I have my mother read the 2nd draft aloud to me and together we edit content and phrasing. The 3rd draft is then sent to my professional editor for the final touches. All of these steps can take quite a bit of time. There are other people who get to read the drafts over, searching for those invariably missed typos.

Well, off to the pottery to throw more mugs. I need to make 60 more mugs today. The weather here has been rainy the last 3 or 4 days, though we did need it to reduce the danger of forest fire. Ever since the Millers Reach fire in 1996 (I think that was the year) I am rather sensitive to how dry the forest is and what level of fire danger we are facing. The Millers Reach fire came within 100 yards of our house and we spent a week protecting our property by fighting the fire.

I promise to make more time to blog more often. Also Adam is back on the slope working and will not be back in town for a few weeks.

One more day of throwing Death Valley clay (stoneware brown clay) mugs and I can switch to throwing mugs made from BCS10 clay (white clay). I am almost 1/4th done with throwing pots for this years Fairbanks fair. I hand throw all the pots I make and do not use any molds. The technical term for the pottery I make is hand thrown cone 10 reduction fired pottery. The cone indicates the temperature we fire the pottery to, in this case around 2300 degrees Fahrenheit. My family and I use a propane fired kiln that can hold around 250 mugs (if you cram it full). Reduction firing indicates that during the high fire (the final firing) we starve the kiln of oxygen witch changes the colors in the glazes making them (in my opinion) richer with added depth.

When making mugs, I weigh each lump of clay to 1.5 to 1.8 lbs. I wedge (knead the clay to remove any air bubbles and form the clay into a cone shape for throwing) 20 future mugs at a time and throw them on a clay boss wheel. My father stole back his old wheel (my favorite wheel) when his newest one broke leaving me with the clay boss /sigh. Once thrown I let the pots dry till they are leather hard then trim away the extra clay and if doing mugs pull the handles and attach them. Once trimmed, I let the pots sit until completely dry. Once there are enough dry pots I can put them in the kiln for the first firing called a Bisk. I will give more information on how I make pottery as I go though the steps.

On Free RPG day Adam and I are going to be at the Bosco’s game store in Anchorage, Alaska if anyone wants to meet us I am planning to be there around 12:30 to answer any questions about our free giveaway.

Got more artwork from Mark this weekend, he is nearing completion of the monster pictures for the Bane’s Guide. The latest monster was an Ogre and he looks awesome, not a creature I would ever want to meet and if I did, I would be running away as fast as I could.

It has been awhile since I posted. Mostly I have been busy making pottery. I am almost completely finished making mugs, thank goodness. Mugs are very boring to make. Soon I will start making other things such as bowls, vases, pie plates, jars, etc….. lots of different stuff.

Free RPG day was a disappointment personally since our local hobby store did not receive a copy of our Quick Start Rules. I spent Monday and Tuesday finding out what happened. I did a spot check on 14 of the stores that participated in Free RPG Day. It was a pleasure talking to several store owners and their employees. Most of the stores did receive the Quick Start Rules however, several did not. I then talked to Aldo, the organizer of Free RPG Day, and he explained about a mess up at his warehouse where some of the boxes went out without our product. So if you’re one of the many people who did not see our Quick Start Rules, please download it free from our site. Despite the mess up, I am happy with Free RPG Day. I received several positive comments from the stores I talked to. Also, Aldo is a very friendly and helpful guy and we plan to continue supporting Free RPG Day in the future.

Good news is that we are planning to release most of Hero’s Bane for free. The free aspects will be released in 2 or 3 parts digitally here on our website. This will be considered a beta version of the game, giving gamers a chance to make comments or suggestions before the game goes to print. I am really looking forward to hearing what people have to say about the game as more of it is released. I plan on posting some stuff in the forums on things such as Training and some skills for people to read over that much sooner.

Time to get some corrections done I have the rough edit of the magic system and history sitting on my desk staring at me. Time to load up iTunes and get to work.

I started to write my blog when my wife Mara stole the laptop from me and decided to write it for me. So without further ado, here is what she wrote. Farewell.

Well, the long months of pottery are at last over. I am in Fairbanks for the Tanana Valley State Fair and the last stage for this year’s work, selling my pottery to the eager masses. It’s currently hot and smokey from all of the forest fires burning in the interior of the state. We woke up this morning to a lovely layer of fine ash covering everything that was left outside. Last night, the sky looked apocalyptic with a blood red sun. The only thing that was missing was the death cries of a thousand bloody, mutilated bodies. Ah, that would make this whole experience much more entertaining. If only I didn’t have to deal with the thousands of people walking into our booth, rudely interrupting my precious reading time and making me be friendly. The thing that irritates me the most is people that walk in and say ‘Your stuff is beautiful, I love it’ then leaving without buying anything. REALLY people?! Just buy something already and help a starving artist! What a waste for my limited amount of friendliness….
We’re THIS close to getting Tundra to the printer. I was hoping to get the layout and approved before I left, but time was not on my side. I also have to write up the text for the back of the box. I don’t suppose ‘Just buy it!’ would be appropriate. If I could just get 5 days to myself in a nice, peaceful atmosphere I could have the game out by Thanksgiving. But nice and peaceful does not exist in my household. Therefore, I must get rid of my family! My daughter is starting preschool soon and as soon as I can find my wife a job, freedom will be mine! But then again, who will be around to make my blog NOT boring? Yikes!
We’re still receiving artwork from our various artists for Hero’s Bane. We’re very excited that Tiziano will be doing some more work for us. It’s an unexpected but pleasant surprise. He did the amazing covers for our books and I am really looking forward to seeing the new stuff.