Monday, June 11, 2012

Robbers' Roost News: POD Finally Arriving

I was recently contacted by Superior POD, who due to the success of Death Mesa, are willing to custom cut the Robbers' Roost deck cards for free! This means that much of the hang up on these cards will no longer be a problem. They will also be setting up a Web2Print store online to help with simplifying the POD process. Let me quote from the e-mail I received:

"We have several DM orders that have had to be canceled and refunded because the cards are not set up to our templates and customers are either unable to format the cards properly or unwilling to pay us the design/setup fee to do so. So if you'd like, I would be happy to put all of the decks together so that they are print-ready on our end, and then set up a W2P store for the entire Death Mesa/Robber's Roost/etc lineup for you to direct people to. Again, they will have to upload the matching sets of 'print and play' cards, but this way the players who aren't design savvy enough to set up the cards to our sheets can still get professionally printed high-quality decks. We can even work out your custom sized card deck that isn't part of our standard dimension options. The best part is that we would be happy to set this up for you free of charge. We get so many DM orders ... that everyone here agrees that making the decks more obtainable to the community is the best course of action."

So this will help with both Robbers' Roost and Death Mesa in the end. There are some issues still with color-matching, and Superior POD is going to work with me to get the best that POD printing can get. They problem still won't match perfectly, but I am hoping this won't be too problematic. For one, the Dodge City expansion cards are somewhat "off" in their color in comparison to the original game cards, so this is a bit of a problem across the board. Two, several Robbers' Roost cards come from the original game to help with balancing, so you wouldn't be able to tell which card was in a player's hand by noting the color difference. Third, with the orange module, since the orange cards have to be placed in front of you anyway, there isn't much of a card color tip off. We'll have to see how problematic it is once the card prototypes arrive.

So as for getting the POD in place, I will probably need to design the cards in a custom template for the cutting, and then I will try to get a prototype to review and correct. Anyway, I am pretty excited that this will finally be happening.

For a bit more of a news tidbit, I am sorry that I have been away from this blog for so long. I have been busily working away on my own board game, and this has taken a lot of time away from my BANG! projects. I plan on getting back to BANG!, but my own project has in the past few months had priority. Perhaps when I have the instructions book up and some prototypes available, I can get some of you to playtest my game. Finally, I want to keep this blog alive. I think it has some excellent content, and I want to continue building on top of that. Anyone interested in becoming a co-author on this blog? I would like to see some of the content you have written on other sites before I sign you up, but having others to post might be a good transition for this site given how new projects have taken up so much of my time. Thoughts?

42 comments:

  1. Awesome to hear this news. I hope everything works out, I've been wanting to play Robber's Roost since I first heard about it. That being said, I would also love to hear more about your board game. Is there another place you've been writing about that at? Or are you keeping everything under wraps at this point? As far as getting a co-author, what makes this blog great is the quality of the content not necessarily the amount, so I hope whoever you find is up to the task.

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  2. Great news Martin! Sounds like getting DM and RR will be much easier in the near future. It's always great when a company makes that extra effort for it's customers.

    I'm interested to hear about your board game too. Hope it works out for you.

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  3. Do u know roughly when we will be able to use the printing service?

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  4. Hey all, thanks for the comments! I am planning on sending Superior POD the adjusted files tomorrow and hope to hear from them soon. I know they are going through equipment maintenance from June 27th to July 4th, but I expect for sure something to be done in July.

    As for my other projects, I have been drawing a TON for a philosophy themed poker deck with one of my friends. The art can be seen on this post: http://uttercerebration.blogspot.com/2012/04/even-more-art-for-philosophy-themed.html

    As for my board game, currently named Jolly Pirates, I have been working on it daily for at least an hour or two. I have completed the "dump phase" for the project where I scribble out of all my ideas. I have done a clean up phase where I have trashed certain ideas and rethought others. I have been working on an instructions booklet, and have been working on assigning coin values to cards. I hope to have something to share soon, and then I will do some quick playtesting on my own with my wife. After I get that cleaned up some, I hope to do a bunch of playtests with willing folks! For a brief explanation of the game, Jolly Pirates is a strategy game with RPG elements (but not fantasy elements, much like BANG! in that respect). Players are grouped into 2-3 pirate crews who compete with one another to gather buried treasure on an island. A crew wins when either it collects the most treasure of a finite amount OR the other crews' pirate ships are destroyed. The game will include elements from many board games I enjoy (randomly constructed maps, variable player powers, maps where terrain has functional differences, different playing card decks used in each game like Dominion) as well as fixes to things I hate (such as removing player elimination and little out of turn involvement), and hopefully some pretty rare unusual things too (team controlled units--units that any team member can move on his turn in addition to his own units; characters that can level up). Since the game is bound to be too complex, some more ideas will have to go. I am thinking of having a "basic" and "advanced" version of the game; some people are less hard core in terms of strategy and the basic setup would be preferible to them.

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  5. Oh, and I have learned a lot since working on BANG!. I designed this board game the whole time with POD in mind, so people should be able to order directly online. Of course, it would be nice to find a publisher, but the reality remains that it is not likely to occur. At least it will be easily available!

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  6. One other thing I am excited about with Jolly Pirates is that I have really tried to break away from typical strategy/role-playing attack elements, which on the whole I detest. Thus, there will not be "dice fests" (a la Risk), random cards that you hope will give you attacks/defense (BANG!), or annoyingly complicated counter stats (a la war games). Instead, I am hoping that the wise use of terrain in conjunction with an Action Point system will create more satisfying strategic gameplay.

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  7. i want to play your pirate game bag! i have been looking for a good pirate game for some time!

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  8. I wish you the best of luck with the game devellopment
    The pirate theme sounds amazing and I hope for more news as soon as you can!

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  9. sorry to bother, I just found this wonderfull blog. I wonder where i can POD your fan extentions. Is there a site or can i just use any professional printer ? In the second case do you have the reference of the paper used by DVgames for the cards? thanks again for your hard work. I can't wait to test your orange mod live with some friends.

    Jean, French Fan.

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  10. Currently there is no POD for Robber's Roost (though it's getting there), there are instructions on how to POD Death Mesa (though after the SuperiorPOD relaunch, I don't know if those instructions still work). Hopefully very soon all of that info will be here.

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  11. Any idea on how much this would cost?

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    1. I looked recently and the card cost was good (about $5 for DM) but the shipping was terrible at $25(It always is from UK to Canada)Mileage may vary on that though.

      I am sort of waiting till i can order multiple PoD decks at once.
      DM RR maybe Eldorado or OK corral too.

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  12. I will also join the Que for your awesome sounding fun pirate game, if your putting half as much effort in to it as you did DM and RR I know its gonna be good.

    Just thought i would pop in here and say thanks for all the hard work you put in on Bang! and the great blog filled with useful info for people who love the game and people that want to make their own expansions as well.

    Zaxxon Valdez

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  13. Hi,
    I know that this is not the best place to put this comment, but I tried to print the new Robbers' Roost guide and it went all wrong. Can you make the new guide with one page per sheet, as the old one was?
    Thank you.

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  14. Really love the Philosophy deck. Sad not to see Heraclitus in the mix though. He's my favorite ancient and possibly my favorite philosopher.

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  15. Is there any update on this? I really want to get my hands on a copy :D

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  16. Martin, if the offer still stands...I would be honored to be the co-author of this BANG! blog. I'm not technologically savvy, but I have a strong interest in bringing more interaction within this site.

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  17. Tom, I'll definitely take you up on the offer. What ideas did you have for more interaction?

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  18. Martin, do you have any idea when we will finally be able to purchase RR?

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  19. Martin, I'm also looking to get Robber's Roost... any idea when we can order? How about pre-orders?

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  20. I too would love any kind of update on the availability, ordering, pre ordering, anything really.

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  21. Enhances my knowledge a lot but the way you describe it inspires me a lot...

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  22. So I was wondering If these expansions are good to print and play? I just discovered this site. Sadly it looks like I'm a year to late to catch it as an active one.

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  23. Yea Nelson, I used to go on this site several times a week. It died out maybe summer last year? I guess the blogger (Mr.Martin) decided to do other things. Pity really.

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  24. hey, do any of you guys know if we'are allowed to combine all expansions pack or not? i mean, i have all the official expansions, but am i allowed to combine it to play by myself? thx :D

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  25. Hey, did this ever come out? I really want to purchase this

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    1. I just e-mailed Superior POD about it and I got a response saying that all you have to do is order a 54 card deck for Death Mesa or a 90 card deck for Robber's Roost and then put in the comments/order notes, which deck you want and they will print it out for you, no uploading or anything.

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    2. Did you ever this this printed and delivered? is it pre-cut already and does it come in a standard deck?

      if you can link us to a page where we can order it, i would love to do that. I emailed them too but haven't heard back. Which address did you use?

      Kilan

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  26. Hope you are doing okay, Martin - I just found your blog after buying Bang! 10th Anniversary edition and was blown away! Between the new family and "Jolly Pirates" and the rest of life, Bang! may seem less critical. :)

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  27. I've prepped the cards to print off at another POD, and made some minor cosmetic changes like wording. But I really do not prefer Death Mesa's "Unfinished Business" card's mechanic where you can pick a player whom you must kill (proved through deduction). It can often be difficult to identify the roles. You might be so sure of yourself but be surprised in the end. And some players just like to play illogical moves for kicks (which I think can be fun). I don't think a player should have to "prove themselves" when they play a card.

    Any thoughts on this? The simplest thing is to just pick any live player, but that is too strong and you are now hoping your last attacked is dead so you could get that choice.

    (I know this post is about RR, but it's the latest one.)

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    1. Hello Arkemist,

      looks like this forum is dead. Any idea how you printed off the other cards at a PoD, we wanted to try RR and Death Mesa but I couldn't find a right POD that would print it. Any instructions on how you did it would be fantastic!

      Kilan

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    2. Manually. I extracted each card from the PDFs, tweaked them, and printed online at PrinterStudio. PrinterStudio needs images of individual cards.

      Two issues upon printing: alignment and colour of card backs. Colour is not a huge deal for character cards and no problem with Death Mesa, but not good for Robber's Roost. Colour issues were mentioned by Martin in various posts.

      I should have done a test run or just printed 54 cards, not both decks at once... I can test the alignment at home and may throw up a PrinterStudio link to DM if/when I print that. But I'm still thinking/hesitant to start trying to correct colour. It's going to need a throwaway print run at least. I'd really like to get DM/RR printed as well and PrinterStudio prices are not bad, but the total cost of al this reprinting might be higher than what I want to bother with right now.

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  28. I wanted to warn those of you looking to create custom components for your games considering using Superior Pod. My experience was initially fantastic. The personalized customer service was absolutely phenomenal. THE OUTSTANDING COMMUNICATION AND CUSTOMER SERVICE ENDED THE SECOND THEY RECIEVED MY PAYMENT.
    It's been over two months. A series of polite emails inquiring on the status of my order went unanswered. Phone calls to the company as well as visits to their online chat room go unanswered. An inquiry through the Better Business Bureau? You guessed it, unanswered.
    Jeff Valent, the president of Superior POD, oh so helpful at first, has essentially stolen my money and my time.
    If anyone has any honest businesses for custom game components I'd be very interested in hearing from you.
    Here’s some feedback from others who were less than satisfied with Superior POD:
    http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1157718/custom-gaming-pieces-and-counters-superior-pod-re

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  29. I would pop in here and say thanks for all the hard work you put in on Bang! and the great blog filled with useful info for people who love the game and people that want to make their own expansions as well.

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