S&S Update: Graphics and typesetting coming along

I've been working on the Showdowns & Shootouts book for a few days (off and on). It's now my "after hours" project and I'm trying to get as much done as I can each evening after work, or during the day during downtime.

So far I've got the Table of Contents, Intro, and the the first adventure set up.

This little fella will be part of our page
treatment for the online resources in
the Showdowns & Shootouts book.

I know this doesn't sound like much, but the first adventure includes all the typesetting and design decisions that will be used throughout the rest of the book. So, from a technical viewpoint, this is pretty big.

Yesterday and today I finally settled on the icon and treatment we will use to reference the Online Components to the book -- that is, the PDF Maps Packs and character sheets that are on the Website. Although we'll include thumbnails of these in the book, we're not going to reprint them in the entirety because they would really be a waste of paper.

After all, each adventure includes all the character stats, weapons and info, so even if you didn't have access to the online character sheets you could fill out your own.

The Map and River Packs from the later adventures will be covered a bit more fully in the book, but we still won't be reprinting each and every tile (there are 9 tiles in Dion Duran's "I Hit a Vein!" adventure). There's just not enough value to be had by printing each of the tiles -- but of course, we'll print the one-page map overview.

Anyway, things are definitely picking up steam. Once I finish the page with the online references for Al's adventure, I'll move on to the next. And that one (and the subsequent adventures) will definitely go much faster than the first.

I'll keep you posted as we make progress!

Brainstorming with Paul

I had a great brainstorming session with Paul "Mad Dog" Mauer tonight. We spent about an hour on the phone talking about some ideas for two new convention games that we could playtest this spring and roll out in short order.

I have to give Paul his props when it comes to helping me sort out my thoughts. Even in the early days of our game development, he was right there to serve as a sounding board to tell me when we were on the right track, or when we were shooting into the weeds. For example, it was a long and heated argument outside of Midnight Comics -- after one of our early playtest games in the summer of 2004 -- that Paul's nitpicking with me forced us to hash out the concept for our retaliation shot and to solve the serious problems we were having with rifles and shotguns.

In those early drafts, "the rifle was god." There was no reason to ever carry a different weapon. Paul and I stood out there (more than one evening) outside the store hashing things over and over and over until we figured out what was wrong and made it right.

By the way, I'm not diminishing Murphy's involvement at this time -- he had a work schedule at that time that made him have to leave the very second the games were over. Paul and I, on the other hand, had more flexible hours and we could actually stay up until 2 am on a work night... and least once a week and come in late that day.

But Back To Tonight

I love running convention games, but I've got to admit that after running the same game -- Last Man Standing -- over and over again, I'm interested in trying something new. So Paul and I worked on some new material to shake things up. And potentially change some of our existing melee rules. I don't want to go into too much detail, but suffice to say that things are definitely heating up this spring!

Stay tuned for more updates, saddle pals.

Mike Mitchell

Happy New Year

From all of us at Hawgleg Publishing, we wish the best to you and your family for the new year.