Back on the Road

Published: Mon, 06/13/16

Hey !

Wow, it has been a little while since I sent out a letter! I guess that's what happens when you develop a singular focus on finishing your stupidly large game as quickly and efficiently as possible. Other things start to fall to the wayside.

Looking back on it, the whole project turned into something rather ridiculous. For more than a year, I have been trying to get Gloomhaven finished and to the printers. Over a year of full-time work. The biggest creative weight you can imagine, just slowly sapping all my energy. Now I know how George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss feel about finishing their book series.

Not that it's been bad. I somehow found the​ perfect job for myself, and it has been loads of fun. It's just that, at some point, you want to be finished and move on to new and exciting things.

So that's what is happening now. As I write this, we are getting all the Gloomhaven files ready for the printer. For the past day or so, I haven't had to edit a file at all. That labor is over, and while there is much more work to be done before Gloomhaven arrives in people's homes, that work is on someone else's schedule for the most part, leaving me time to do other things.

So what have I been doing? Well, aside from some much-needed video game breaks, I've started writing more posts for my website, and I've also finally got around to writing you. Yay!

The latest post on my site, actually, talks about a new game I am working on as well. It's a little weird to ask yourself, "Where do I go from Gloomhaven?" because the game is just so massive and epic. It feels so important to me and has dominated my life for so long, what could replace it? Well, I think my new project is a great enough idea that it will live up to the Cephalofair name. I'll probably give you some more details about it in the coming months, but, for the record, this isn't the game I was talking about last time. The play tests for that went well enough, but I just love my new idea more.

The other thing I'll be doing as sort of a vacation is attending Origins later this week. I won't have a booth and I'm staying at the "Cabalist House," which is a house rented by a bunch of fans of the Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. My intention is to play as many games as possible and have as much fun as possible. I have set aside time some time to run some Gloomhaven demos, as well, though, so if that interests you, let me know, and I'll get you in on it.

I'm also building a preliminary prototype of my new project to bring to Origins, so if you've ever wondered how big of a broken mess a game can be in its first iteration, I'll show that to you, as well.