The Best Surprise of All

[Raynor]

This has been a long and wild ride and we're only half way through, Brimstoners. In between mine crawls, dark stone prospecting, and tromps through other worlds I wanted to take a moment to sit down this Thanksgiving and give thanks... for our brilliant new Flying Frog Production game. And I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past year and all the ups and downs I have experienced on this journey, before finally acknowledging what is perhaps the best surprise of all.

Shadows was my first kickstarter. I was fairly confidant that FFP would deliver on the goods, meaning the actual finished product. Let's be honest, that's the first hurdle for a lot of these crowd-sourced projects. I have neighbors who have been burned on multiple kickstarter gigs. The element of risk here, however, wasn't only about the completion of the game but the game itself. Would it be good? We had no demo or print and play version. For goodness sakes, we had no rule book! That was the real make or break question for the life of the project.

Before you start shouting at me, loyal FFP fans, I want to be clear. I have owned every FFP product that has hit the market, minus a few promos and expansions. I would say each game was good enough but we live in an age of gaming where shelf space for a small family not to mention time is limited! I've given away or sold a number of my FFG games that just didn't hit that sweet spot. There was every chance that Shadows of Brimstone might not live up to the amount of effort FFP was putting into it. It might just be a decent game that didn't demand being played again and again.

So when I was sitting at my computer almost 14 months ago, nearing the end of October and weighing my options, I made the decision that I would be happy with what I got regardless of what happened. I plunked down the full $480 for the final level of Minecart, and attempted to let it be and just enjoy the ride.

We've had the anticipation, the entertainment in the updates and just the sheer experience of being on a kickstarter for the first time and not in a small way. They were all worthwhile experiences but somewhere deep down I realize now that I was pretty much resigned to a standard FFP clone of some of their earlier games, expecting not much more than a big box of toys to play with when everything was said and done.

You know though, that after a year of following production updates, months of waiting for it to show up in the mail, half as much time complaining on the forums here that the game wasn't here yet, a week of putting things together once it did arrive on my doorstep, and finally a few days of actual playtime, the best part of this whole experience is that Shadows of Brimstone is no holds barred, actually a really FUN game!

It's good! In fact, it might even be great. Plain and simple. I think the first good sign was when the game hit shipping and people started getting it before me, I didn't hear any rumbles of discontent on the interwebs. That's a big thing! I didn't even hear any "Oh it's okay." People were oddly quiet. And then we started playing the game, and exploring the rules.

I'm playing with some folks I've played DnD with before and this harks back to those days but it's like we have some amazing automatic invisible DM standing behind the scenes. There's SO much that's built into this game to do and I haven't even opened more than one of the TWO starter sets!!!!

After my first game, learning the rules with a friend from work he told me he'd buy the game that night if it was at the local game store because he's big on single player games and he had a great time.

Then I got a few other folks to come over and start an actual campaign with me and these Ultimate Frisby athlete dudes were like "Dude I LOVE this game" and "I can totally see myself playing this for 12 hours at a time." I'm inviting them over for other unrelated things like playing Magic or watching a movie and they show up and are like "Yeah we could play magic... but we left our Magic cards at home... on purpose. We're playing Shadows of Brimstone." When people are trying to schedule gaming sessions with ME instead of the other way around I KNOW I have a hit with the group.

This is dragging on now, so I'll wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving, where ever you are in the world, and finish this with a big THANK YOU! To Flying Frog P. The kickstarter was great and the models are great and the tiles and art are great. It's all great! But the greatEST part of all is this is a genuinely darn GOOD game.

[Old Dwarf]

Nicely put .

OD