S&S: Why did it take so long? Part 3

The next gap is almost a year long, and it's harder to explain from the news headlines. I was almost put in the hospital again during that time, but was able to recover with bed rest. And Arnica started selling in earnest. And the 10th and 11th adventures we selected were BIG adventures. They were probably overly ambitious because they each included some really cool extras. Dion Duran's "I Hit a Vein!" has a PDF map for a poster-size underground gold mine that can be printed out, one page at a time, on your color printer. And Tom Reed's "White Water, Bloody Boulders!" comes with 13 pages of map tiles to simulate a wild escape on a white water rive raft. Both of these bonuses took extra time to flesh out... But I (for one) think the wait was worth it. These two adventure accessories will turn any game into an ace high fandango!

Remember, you can get all of these adventures for FREE over at our Website: http://www.hawgleg.com/2007_contest_winner.asp

The Last Hurrah

I think the hardest part to explain is the final big gaps. It took us almost a year to publish the 12th adventure, and then another year for the three of us to force the matter and actually vote on who won. That honor, of course, went to Tom Reed's "The Great Dry Gulch Bank Robbery!" Now, part of that delay did come from the fact that we had wanted to print a 13th adventure to make it a baker's dozen. But we finally realized that this had been sitting idle for far too long and we just had to end it. So, end it we did.

And then came the next delay, which is entirely on me. We needed to set up a software solution for people to vote on the winner of the Jury's Prize (that is to say, second place). The problem was, I couldn't find an available solution that we could afford (honestly $99 to run a contest for one month?). And the freebie solutions didn't have the functionality we needed to capture email addresses, or if they did, they limited us to 100 respondents. Since we couldn't find what we needed, we decided that I should write it myself.

The really sad thing is, I got about 80% finished with the coding and back-end tools in two weekends, and then my work schedule went crazy and my computer crashed (my work was safe online but I didn't have an ASP development environment set up on my new laptop). That's when things REALLY slowed to a snail's pace. Countless distractions and other issues just kept putting S&S on the back burner until -- you guys really should thank him -- Paul got me to focus on it again so we can finally put this puppy to bed.

And that's where we are: Finally putting it to bed after starting it five years ago. This puts us 3.5 to 4 years behind schedule. I've got to say... Hawgleg has the most patient fans on the face of the earth. I think they always knew we'd get it done... it was just a matter of when. And, of course, that "when" is now.

Putting it all into a nutshell

I've had time to think about what happened and why. There were some reasons for some of the delays, and hospitalization and hurricanes are darned good reasons as to why we got thrown off track. But (and you decide if this is a reason or an excuse), I think it comes down to this: We underestimated the time and resources we would need to complete all the projects we had lined up and, because of that, we lost momentum on the S&S contest. 

I think we've managed to lasso the momentum right now and will manage to keep it going for the last mile of this journey. We're going to get the prizes awarded and delivered to the patient winners. And then we're going to pull the material into a book for the people out there who would like to purchase a permanent hard copy for their records and, let's be honest, to give one final thrill and some serious bragging rights to the fine gents who entered this contest. When all is said and done, they will have their work printed in a game book that they can show off to their buddies and to woo the ladies (okay, I suspect it will be more showing off than wooing, but you never know...).

By the way, just because we are collecting the Showdowns & Shootouts material into a book does NOT mean we are taking the original adventures offline. Our intention is to keep those up there as free downloads for anyone who wants to mosey by and take a gander at them. After all it's taken to get them up there, it would be a downright sin to do anything else.

Tuesday, come back for a rules discussion on Movement & Modifiers. 

Showdowns & Shootouts: Get ready to vote!

As ya'll know, the Showdowns & Shootouts adventure writing contest took a LOT longer than anyone ever thought it would. You know, we had the usual delays... work, family, hospitalizations and hurricanes. But even still, we had no idea we'd lollygag so long on this contest.

Still, in spite of the long delay, it's actually been a big success in that it did exactly what we wanted it to do: We got some great ideas for Gutshot adventures. We collected about 50 submissions that are all fantastic. Honestly, there isn't a dud in the bunch. We had no problems at all selecting 12 adventures to develop into complete, printable material. You can find them here on the Winners page at our Website.

We finally printed the last adventure and selected the winner last summer. It was Tom Reed who won by penning The Great Drygulch Bank Robbery! It was a classic blend of cowhands, outlaws and a sheriff desperate to keep the peace. All in all, just the sort of thing that -- if it had been a classic Western movie -- might have starred Gary Cooper as the man with the tin badge. As the Judge's Prize Winner, Tom won a whole slew of goodies:

• Whitewash City 6 x 4 feet felt game mat (approx. $40 value)
• $60 Gift Certificate to Scale Creep Miniatures
• 25mm painted stagecoach with team from Knuckleduster ($80 value)
• Arnica, Montana resin Main Street Starter (5 buildings: $40 value)
• Whitewash City Starter CD ($15 value)
• One item from the Gutshot General Store (approx. $20 value)
• One copy of the Showdowns & Shootouts collected book (approx. $20 value)
• Gutshot miniature: ($5 value)

With the adventure finished, the last thing we had to do to finally put a bow on this thing was to have the readers vote on which was their favorite adventure. But there was one thing that had been holding us back. The survey software. I know this sounds minor, but we just couldn't find the right software. As sad as it sounds, we just didn't find the right software to collect the info we wanted. Okay, that's not true. For $25 a month (minimum) we could do it. But... we're cheap. Um, scratch that... we're frugal. We just didn't think it was a good time to dump a bunch of money into something that, in the long run, isn't going to be used that often.

So, I finally sat down and wrote it myself. I finally got it finished (well, except for one or two cosmetic things I may or may not address at this time). And I need to write a reporting module to tabulate the results. But, again, that's a back-end piece that I can do later, or just tabulate the results by hand.

So, at long last, the Voting is open to the public. The voting will open Thursday on March 1, 2012. At that time, I will add a link to this blog, and to the regularly scheduled update on Thursday.

You can cast your vote until midnight March 31, 2012. Oh, and did I mention that there is a prize being given to everyone who votes in this? We'll talk about that on Thursday.

Day 1, Post 1

Howdy, ya'll. What we got here is yet another way for us to reach out and spend some virtual time with our friends and fans. Already this year we've moved added Facebook to our repertoire of new media, and now here we are on Blogger.

I strongly suspect that there will be some crossover between what we discuss on Facebook and this here blog. In general, though, you should still focus on using the Hawgleg Forums as your main venue for posting rules questions and discussing specific aspects of our games.

Now, I reckon you might be wondering why you should check our blog if the the Hawgleg site is still our main soapbox. Frankly, I don't blame you for scratchin' yer heads about that. Truth be told, we ain't 100 percent sure ourselves! After all, blogging is something new to us.

For the short term, I'll probably do the same thing I do over at facebook, which is post small updates about what I'm personally working on at the moment. For example, the last few weeks I've actually been working on some fiction that ties into our upcoming game, Gutshot: Night of the Living Deadwood. Some of it has been posted in the Lounge over at theminiaturespage.com, but that's only available to folks who are supporting members of TMP. Hey, we're not trying to be elitist or nothin' -- we just wanted to float a few short scenes by a smaller audience until we get 'em polished up and edited a little. The stuff at TMP is all very rough at the moment. Once it's cleaned up, we'll post the material here or at the Hawgleg site so you can all read it.

In the meantime, I've got to get back to work. Gotta whole slew of stuff to do and, as my grand pappy used to say, "We're burning daylight here."