My meeting with Alan Bahr, professional game designer

This last week I was supposed to meet with Alan Bahr. Alan Bahr is a professional game designer, meaning that his entire job is literally games. Unlike most every other game designer, who also has a full time job to support themselves, Alan doesn't; games are his full time job.

Anyway, I say was supposed to meet him Wednesday because what happened was during that time that we were supposed to meet he was on an important conference call contacting the manufacturing plant in Hong Kong with the miniature designer trying to work out what type of plastic the miniatures were supposed to be in because the company got it wrong the first time. Alan tried to email me about this, but it got stuck in his outbox so I never got the message. I emailed him after waiting around for about an hour and he got back to me apologizing and wrestling for the next day.

So, Thursday was the day I actually met with him. We met at Chipotle and he bought me lunch, and we talked about his job and I told him how I loved making games. He asked me about money, about if he liked the idea what I had in mind for payment. I had previously thought about this a lot and said that I'd like some sort of precipitance from each sale. I did research and for larger companies the designer gets about 3-4%. He nodded and said that they'd probably pay a little more percentage that that.

He talked about how to get the game on the market if he liked it, since I was a first time designer. There were a couple of different things they've done in the past, one was the game also went through the hands of a more well-known game designer and he makes a few tweaks to it (with the permission of the original designer, Alan was sure to add) and then both of the names would go on the box, so that the famous designer's name on the box would help it sell. After eating I got out my copy of Somerset and showed it to him.

He asked if you played as a certain character, I said no. He said he was a little bias toward Arthurian themed games (which Somerset is). He looked through the rule book and nodded a few times. He then looked through the pieces and asked me questions about them. Like I had little houses which he thought would be used as settlements but I said that those went on the government track but in reality just the little circles would do, like they did for white.

He said there might be a lot there, and for the first printing we could cut the magic book and spells, because he felt that that was the most complex thing in it, but then that could be used for the first expansion. That way it not only got an expansion right off the bat but also the main game could come with less parts, making it cheaper, making it so that more people could buy it.

Alos for a selling point, his company owns Pendragon and he said that if they did buy it they might relabel it under the Pendragon franchise to help it sell more copies. (Kind of like how Lords of Waterdeep is under the Dungeons and Dragons franchise.) I said I was fine with that (because let's be real, as long as it gets published it really doesn't matter to me).

He said that he liked the idea. He asked me what set it apart from any other game out there. I said that it was a worker placement game where you don't juts get your workers back a the end of every round, but you actually have to care about where they're at in relation to the other actions and care about how they move.

He siad he didn't want to take my copy of the game, but he wanted to play it. He said, "I'm definitely interested and I definitely love the idea." What he wants me to do so that he can get a copy of it to play is to upload my files and such and create a game on the game crafter so that he can buy a copy of it so that he can play it. So my next step is putting Somerset together on the Game Crafter and making it avertible to buy, then sending Alan the link so that he can buy it, play it, and (hopefully) want to publish it.

But even in parting he said that if if he liked it and their company decided not to publish it he would recommend it to other game companies (because, you know, he those kinds of connections). I thanked him and he said no problem.

Anyway, that was our meeting. So I'd say that it went super duper well. I can't think of a realistic way it could have gone better. So thanks for all your prayers and thoughts everyone!

Overdue blog post

Okay so I didn't post the last two weeks; my bad.

General Conference was great; I put up a whole bunch of notes here onto the blog but when I checked again they had all become deleted somehow, and I'm too lazy to write them all up again, so just know I took notes. Speaking of taking notes during General Conference, somebody else did as well! You all know him: it was Henry! (Pictures below)

Two Sundays ago was my 27th birthday! Yay getting older! (Verbal irony.) But my parents did get me Dominion: Hinterlands for my birthday, and $30. Then I went onto Amazon and what did I see? Dominion: Empires for about $29. So I got it with my birthday money (after tithing, of course, who do you think I am, some less active?). Then Hannah got my Dominion: Alchemy, and so now I have every single Dominion card ever made! (Including Dark Ages which my parents got me for Christmas and the update packs for the base set and Intrigue, which my parents also got me for Christmas.) I spent quite a bit of time updating my box(es) for Dominion, and here they are:

Henry's birthday was the 12th! He turned 2! Yay getting older! (No verbal irony, although we will miss his cuteness.) His grandparents Perazzo got him some books and colored pencils, because he loves books and more especially colored pencils. His parents got him some Fisher Price toys. Look at how big he is!

Heather, meanwhile, went down to Lytle Ranch in southern Arizona for a biology trip. She's working in a lab right now at BYU (although it's not for money. Yet.) and there were several different trips she could go on but she decided on last week's trip because I had Spring Break that week and thus was home all day to watch Henry so that we didn't have to freak out about finding a babysitter. Here are some pictures from her trip (including one where she played Dominion with her co-biologists).

Because Heather had the camera, I didn't, but if I did I would have taken pictures of Ryan's visit. Ryan and his girlfriend Emilyn came down to visit Provo after they went to a wedding in Colorado. They arrived right when I was dropping of Heather on campus to meet up with her biologist friends to go down to southern Utah.

Thursday and Friday Becky also came over for a bit and all four of us played games. We played Somerset twice, and Becky won both times. We played lots of Dominion (you know, due to having every card and having them superbly organized). We also played People Zoo, which was one of the games that my Game Design class designed. Also: Bang!, Guillotine, Cover Your A$$ets, Sushi Go!, Hey, that's my Fish!, Yinsh, Feast and Famine, 7 Wonders, and Mystic Vale. And Labyrinth and Dragonwood. And we probably played some more that I can't remember right now. We didn't play Alhambra, but Heather loves playing that game and we've played many times already just the two of us.

On Saturday was our ward Easter Egg hunt and breakfast. Henry got to run around and find eggs, but he wouldn't put the ones he found in his basket, insisting on holding them himself, so he only got about four eggs. Ha, once he went up to another kid and went over to their basket--only to put one of his eggs in their basket. What a sweetie. Once again, no pictures, but Heather did get back Saturday afternoon.

This upcoming Wednesday the 19th I am meeting with Alan Bahr, a professional game designer, and pitching him the game Somerset to hopefully become published. Pray for me! It's super exciting. I think I've worked all the bugs out. I got some good feedback from Eric, Ryan, and Emilyn. And Becky too, she played twice and won both times. So I think it's about ready to be shown off.

I think that's all the exciting news that has happened these last couple of weeks.