I’ve said it before, I made a lot of mistakes with ElementaliS. I think the fear of future mistakes is what’s holding me back with my other designs. No matter what I try to work on, I keep coming back to ElementaliS and what I could have done with it.

That brings me to Phoenix Ash (Working title).

Phoenix Ash will be a completely rewritten set of ElementaliS rules that can be played with the base game and some new, printable cards.

From what I’ve worked on so far, the game is drastically simpler to comprehend, and WAY less fiddly. It’ll actually be the first of several card packs, each one dealing with a different element. The thing to keep in mind is that this isn’t an expansion, it’s a full game meant to truly replace ElementaliS.

Phoenix Ash obviously deals with Fire.

I can’t say when it’ll be released as I’m taking my time with it. I really don’t want to rush things.

I’m just hoping I’ll be satisfied and can move onto future projects.

It’s been 4 years. It’s time for something new.

Anyway.

Cool news! I’m now a daily reporter over at Purple Pawn!

Purple Pawn is a news site that posts about tabletop games, from board games to RPG, miniatures and CCGs. I’ve been posting there for around 2 weeks now, and I’m still growing into it. I never really knew how hard it could be to find interesting tidbits of news to post about every day.

So go check it out! You may just find something right up your alley.

Unfortunately more important priorities have arisen in life. Without going into too much detail, the play testing of the Spellbook has not been as thorough as I’d like it to have been. As of right now, I’m putting the Spellbook on hold.

I still continue to work on other designs, as well as some content for Sean’s HDL books, and will still soon release the first version of the ElementaliS Living Rulebook. I hope to come back to the Spellbook eventually, but have no idea when I will be able to.

ElementaliS has done very well, and even though I made a lot of mistakes along the way, I’m very proud to have gotten the game released. The Spellbook was to be the final expansion, and I cannot consider the game complete without it. Once things settle down, I hope to bring ElementaliS to a close.

1. Play more games.

2. Play War of the Ring

3. Play Descent: Journeys in the Dark.

4. Publish a new design.

I’m happy to say that 1 and 3 where a success! 4 was a mild success. I managed to publish the expansion set to ElementaliS, but not a totally new design.

As for 2, we’re moving that resolution to this year

Five and Dimes for rkalajian from January through December 2008

It is coming along, though, and I should be able to release it Q1 of next 2009. Of course, it will be downloadable for free like the other expansions. At this time we don’t know if we’ll also offer a print version.

This isn’t one of those posts.

I am super excited about this transistion.  Days of Wonder has released a bunch of sub-par expansions for Battlelore so far, and made the mistake of only sticking to Humans, Dwarves, and Goblins for units.  The game had so much hype, and so much potential when it first came out, and it was not even close to living up to the expectations.

Not that Battlelore is a bad game!  It’s on of my favorite games of all time, but it’s grown stale.  Where are the undead?  Elves?  DRAGONS?

I have a feeling Fantasy Flight might remedy this problem.

So bring it on!  Days of Wonder realized they couldn’t support another game system.  Fantasty Flight has the bandwidth to handle Battlelore, which frees Days of Wonder up to producing new games, and supporting their current game system (Memoir 44).

I see good things in the future.  Good things for each company, but overall, gamers.

There has been one change, though.  The rulebook will no longer be able to fit in the box.  Unfortuanately, to keep costs of doing this on-demand down, the rulebook will now be 5.5″ x 8.5″, just a bit too big to fit in the box.

This is unfortunate, as we wanted everything to go into the box, but it came down to a last minute decision, and we didn’t want to have to cancel the whole printing.

I could see lots of uses for this, especially housing game prototypes.  I’ve got a bunch of boxes lying around at home, and I’ll have to try this out.

I’m also trying to get together some art for the book.  While ElementaliS has been a very minimal design from day 1, I’d really love to show everyone what these mages and their world looks like in my head.

The last section of the book will contain some strategy tips, world building, and design notes.

This expansion, like all the others, will be free to download.  No word yet on if we’ll be offering a print version.