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To paraphrase one of my favourite childhood movies, let’s set the wayback machine for about three years ago. Enter a wanna-be game designer with aspirations of rocking the world.

Yeah, I wrote a little thing for an ancient Game Chef contest, and I’ve been hammering away on it ever since. It’s got a hold over my creative energies and time, and it’s meant that other projects have been back-burnered.

But it’s worth it.

I’m so very proud of The Adventures of Sir Swords-a-Lot and the Brave Knights. It’s repeatedly done what I want it to do, and each time I play it, I learn a little more about my hobby. (As an aside, it also does stuff I don’t want it to, but that’s ok.)

Swords-a-Lot grew out of a desire to build a game for my then-four-year-old-son to enjoy with me. In fact, it originally bore his name (“A Game for Philip”). It’s seen several iterations, some outside playtesting (some very successful, some very unsuccessful), and a fair bit of open playtesting by yours truly at conventions (hey, Hammercon and CanGames, who loves ya?)

I’m finally satisfied with everything important about the design. It’s now a often-enough-requested-event at my house to feel satisfied with it, and I’m quite happy with all of the mechanical fiddly bits’ complexity and integration into the imaginary action. It feels right.

So, I’ve been using some of my time granted me by being laid-up by a hideous back spasm to sit down and do the awful work of re-writes. The game is done, it just needs to be written.

To give myself a side-goal, I’m going to spend the next little while talking about the process I went through to bring Sir Swords this far. Hopefully, one guy’s experiences over  four years hold your interest.

I’m calling this series of posts “In praise of taking it slow” both as an act of apology for its duration, but also because I think that more people should. Take the time; do it the way you want; if this isn’t your living, you don’t have to act like it is!

Also: the image is one of the earliest cover sketches for the game, by the excellent Marc Meyer.

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Sir Nimble and Sir Ungainly are assaulting the hilltop fortress of Dread Lord Redblade.  Their quest?  To discover a digital document format that allows hyperlinking within itself. They’ve looked at HTML, and they don’t like having to use a web-browser interface. They like .pdf, but their sovereign can’t seem to make Acrobat Professional 7.0 do this.

They need your help.  This is their most desperate hour.  You are their only hope.

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It’s called the Double-Tap Edition in public.  But in the dark, hoary corners of the world, it’s the Korova Milk-Bar Edition.

I couldn’t very well truck off to GenCon without some copies of Black Cadillacs in tow, now could I?  The problem was, I didn’t have any Steel-Toe’d curbstompers left.  In a frenzy of illicit photocopying, doubly illicit punching and a positively labyrinthine quest for coils, this beauty was born.

Physically, she’s the polar opposite of the Steel Toe’d edition.  Sleek plastic covers, belly-banded (for the rules updates, neh?) and a full 3mm thinner than last year’s.

And what is that behind those two 9mm holes?

Get one and find out.  I’ve got about ten left, and you can mailorder them for $13CAN + Shipping.  Email me to sort this out:

These are the glory days of the Great Patriotic Push.  Do not be left out.

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So, Ron Edwards is a pretty convincing kind of guy. Not in a used car salesman sort of way, but in a “Here is this very logical argument, and you’re welcome to ignore it if you like” kind of way.

The long and the short of it is that I’m going to GenCon Indy 2009, and I now have exactly five evenings to put together another print run of Black Cadillacs (five! crap!)  I’ll be demoing at the Forge booth (#1912), and running at least one full-form game at the Games on Demand room (Omni Fisher Ballroom.)

I’ve dubbed the second print run the Double-Tap Edition. I just completed proof of concept on the physical object, and it is going to be hot. Think of how rugged and brutal the Steel-Toe’d edition was. Now, picture something that’s sleek and arty, but to the same extreme. That’s the Double-Tap edition. So hot.

This is all part of the last great patriotic push. I’m actively looking for playtesters who want to hop in a trench with me and get down and dirty. Black Cadillacs focuses on the ambiguities of war through the eyes of the people doing the least ambiguous thing – the killing and the dying.

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I just signed on with Vincent Baker’s Indie RPG unStore. Right now, the un-storefront is in a public Beta version, but it’s got good room to grow.

This is no way impacts whether or not you can purchase from me directly.  In fact, the unStore is populated exclusively by fellow publishers who are fulfilling their own sales.

Check it out!

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The title says it all, doesn’t it?

If you’re interested in the ashcan process, you may very well want to pick up a copy of the Steel Toe’d Edition of Black Cadillacs.

The book is $15 + Shipping (Canadian funds.)  Fire me off an email, and I’ll get you a proper shipping quote.

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A preview copy of the Steel Toe’d Edition of Black Cadillacs is available for download.  Black Cadillacs will be at the Ashcan Front at GenCon Indy (booth #2039).  Once GenCon is over, I’ll be offering the remaining copies of the Steel Toe’d Edition for sale through www.achtung-spiel.com

In addition to demoing Black Cadillacs at the Ashcan Front, I’ll also be running some scheduled games at the Indie Games Explosion.  If I read the GenCon event directory correctly, there’s still room for a few folks in my Friday and Saturday games (both run from 2pm-6pm.)

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