The grydscaen RPG Trading Card game is becoming a reality. We are currently at the printer. The design team is working on the bleeds on the rule books because I guess I didn’t format the covers of the InDesign files correctly. No doubt that is left over points off from art school layout classes. It has been three years since I was in that InDesign class so I was bound to forget some stuff I learned. The file had a bleed on it but I didn’t put the graphics all the way to the markers. Anyway, we digress. The proofs of the box, the cards and the rulebooks will be ready for me sometime tomorrow. I will have to go to work first but I will be anticipating the call from the printer all day long.

I will love to see these cards in their pre-cut versions all lined up on a big sheet. And the dieline of the box, I guess I really did remember how to make that from my last class. It was actually the last class I took in art school before I stopped going. Art school was fine but the drive to the school was 3 hours round trip and having to be at school from 6PM – 10PM, then driving an hour and half home so I didn’t arrive until 11:30PM, then having to immediately go to sleep to wake up for work at 4:00AM was a nightmare while I was going to school those last two years.

I learned a lot and was about 3 classes away from graduating. If I get it into my head that I want the piece of paper, I might just go back. But I have a problem with people who like to go on campus and shoot students up with guns. That is another thing stopping me from going back. Sure, you could say that happens rarely but it actuality it happens too often for my tastes. So I don’t have a degree from art school. I have a few other degrees and technical certificates I don’t actually need another bachelor’s degree.

But back to the game. The printing of this game is very expensive. I could use a foreign printer but I hear that the work may not always get done right and the shipping causes damage to the content of the box so I wanted this done in country. I am supporting local business which makes me happy and though it is a little far away to travel to the printer, they have done all my print work since I was in art school so I am familiar with them and they do good work.

Next step in game production is play testing
We are actually designating two game sets just for testing. These two complete sets will be sent out to the testers who will play the crap out of the thing. I think I had it set that game play should take about 45 minutes to 1 hour. I think that is long enough. The main thing is that you need to get over that +200 Intrusion or +500 for the raid or +800 total combined stats for the final hack. Until you have that amount of combined points you are not allowed by the rules to launch the final attack. To win you have to have more points than your opponent when you launch the final hack/raid and the designated cards and tokens that go with the play.

This is critical to the timing. There is even a clause in the rule book about running out of cards or tokens before the final play is made. I pretty much went through it thoroughly when I was planning.

Now I have played Pokémon and Magic the Gathering before and the online card game Ayakashi where you collect cards and battle ghosts and spirits. These taught me a little about game dynamics and I read a few books about rule sets before I setout making the rules for the grydscaen RPG.

I had a gamer who was a former hacker read the rulebooks and he said and I quote:

“very very cool. well thought out and easy to understand… you did an awesome job with this. I hope this takes off for you and people get ahold of it.”

So that gives me a little bit of a feeling that I might have done this right. With the amount of work that went into creating the game over 4 months while going to work and creating all the iconography and artwork for the cards along with the rules, getting the tokens, deciding what tokens to actually use, getting the dice roll part down and creating the rulebook and Tarot guidebook we have been really busy for the last few months.

So onto the hardcore gamer to test and the Dr of Statistics who is a mathematician and former programmer himself. It will be interesting to see what they have to say as they play the game and review the cards and rules.

If we can get this all down we will have something awesome here.

How to price the game thingy
So the next quandary is pricing and selling. There are three venues that I can use to sell. We are still researching that. One of the venues I like because it is wide and covers everywhere. The other is more indie and may not focus on gaming so much more crafts. The last option is more hand made like selling from a social media site but that is more old school low tech way of doing it and might not get a lot of exposure. I could also sell them out of the back of my car but I doubt that would be successful.

The pricing is also a quandary. I originally talked with the Statistician about selling it for $25US or ¥2,893. But I think that is too low to even recoup some of the cost. Printing of the game was really expensive. I could cut the printing price by $70 without the creative services from the printer but then I would have to add back in 12 cards since those were printed on a previous run. So it would split the difference and be the same cost pretty much. So we were thinking more along the $39.99US range which is about ¥4,628. This is not too expensive and there are similar games with less cards and no tokens, no second rulebook for that amount. So, for now we are going to possibly be settling on that price point. The game will be available on the grydscaen website as well but we still have to find a seller home for it.

So what’s next for grydscaen?
Well, once we get book 1 of The Seer of Grace and Fire done beta’d we submit it to the publisher and go through a round of edits. I have to proofread the thing first before it can be submitted for editing and I will probably go through it 3 times before it goes in. Before that happens since we are still in beta and half way through we have to finish writing graphic noiz book 2 and we are about 10K words from being done. We are at 18K about now. So we are almost there. Then we have ComicCon which is coming up at the end of the month and will be my first con experience as a vendor/author. This will be fun. Lets talk about that a little

Being a Writer Showing at ComicCon
Well, I have been to ComiCon before as a cosplayer and a buyer but I have never had my own table. This will be a big deal for me. I will have books, manga, comics, postcards, bookmarks, cards from the grydscaen RPG, bracelets for Packrat Underground, stickers and Mr Stuart campaign buttons. We even have a black tablecloth I had to sew for the table. It will be 7 hours at my table and I am inclined to bring a chair. I will be partnering with a local publisher for sale of grydscaen books. I will also be in cosplay. It will be a costume I have only worn once before. I have more elaborate costumes but I don’t want to deal with that and also be a seller so we will go pretty simple for cosplay this time. We will just have to get a picture which hopefully I can put up on the website here. This is a big deal. I have thought about going to con as a seller, well a give-away-for-free-er for a while but never went through the logistics and cost of getting into Artist Alley. This time I will not be in Artist Alley, I will be an actual vendor. Which is much better.

Now I was able to use an online printer for a lot of the postcards that I will have on hand and they were pretty cheap. My publisher provided the other postcards which I will have for grydscaen: dissonance which was the last book published in the grydscaen series. And I am giving away cards for a free download of The Alchemist’s Ranger the prequel novella to The Seer of Grace and Fire.

Showing at ComicCon has been a desire for a while and I find with each little dream of grydscaen that I have I get to fulfill it even if I have to wait a while. My first dream was the first novel, the next it was the first manga, now it is the second manga and the grydscaen RPG game. We are hitting each dream in stride.

I hope you will stick around for the report after the con and can look forward to the experience I had and me writing about it.

And I also have to mail in the manuscript for the copyright for graphic noiz book 1 sometime this week as we already filed for it. Each little step has a meaning in this big game I am playing. Please stick around for more updates as we make this happen.

Hackers Unite. Hack Till You’re Dead!

Pokémon and Magic the Gathering are copyright their respective owners.