It’s… The Spoils™ Web Blarg!

by Terence Jason Dorman, Awesome Manager of Inspired Writings

With Gen-Con fast approaching, it is inevitable that Michael or Will will soon put out the call for volunteers to help work The Spoils booth and/or judge events. While I’ve only ever spent a minimal amount of time at The Spoils booth, I was Head Judge for the past two Gen-Cons and last year’s Origins, so I know the judging side of volunteer work with quite a bit of expertise.

If you are interested in judging Gen-Con this year but don’t really know what to expect, or just want some tips, this is the article for you.
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by Ken Pilcher, R&D Lead Designer

Michael stated in his last blog, “The next set after Seed 3, ‘SotDE,’ is also close to being done. R&D is on its last polish regarding the rules side of the cards (I will leave it to Ken to share some more insight regarding this in his next blarg).” With that in mind, I am here to talk a bit about what is going on with Shade of the Devoured Emperor.
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by Michael (Arcane Tinmen)

I got an email the other day from one of our retailers stating that it “seems like this is going to be an exciting year for The Spoils!”

I then smiled to myself, thinking “Hmm… I do believe this guy is right!”
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by special guest, Terence Jason Dorman

Due to being extremely busy making sure Gen-Con 2012 goes off without a hitch, Will was unable to get a Blarg to me this week and asked me to fill in. I guess April is the month of Terence as you guys have gotten doses of me three weeks in a row.

While Will usually writes about the Organized Play program as a whole and the big picture, I am unable to do that as I have never been a part of that process. I was able to cheat a little when I filled in for Ken as I was once part of the design team and have some experience in that area, but I have no knowledge at all about how to be the Director of Organized Play.

I do, however, have experience being the Tournament Organizer for a local gaming store.
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by Terence Jason Dorman, Awesome Manager of Inspired Writings

This past weekend I attended the Darkmoon Faire Baltimore event for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. It was the first Darkmoon Faire I have ever attended, plus the first major WoW event I’ve been to with the exceptions of Gen-Con and Origins.

After a long Day One (I was on thirty two hours of no sleep due to having to drive to Baltimore when I had planned on sleeping in the car) I came away with a less than stellar tournament finish, some cards I needed for my collection, and the feeling that all of the judges hated me.

How could they hate someone as awesome as me?
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by special guest Terence Jason Dorman

Due to being kidnapped and tortured by 31v35, Ken is unable to write up a Blarg post this month and kindly asked me to fill in for him. This means that all of you will get a double dosage of me this month in back to back weeks. It’s exciting, I know.

Seeing as how this isn’t my article series, though, I’m going to do my best to discuss a topic that I think Ken would talk about. With that in mind, let me talk to you all about writing within the rules.
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by Michael (Arcane Tinmen)

One of the things that has been taking up a lot of my time these past weeks have been then finalization of the Seed 3 production. We have had the files (cards) ready to go for a while now, but these things are never as easy as you would like them to be. For some reason we had a duplicate set of files, and that of course wouldn’t have been a problem if they had been exact duplicates, but one folder contained old and discarded files and by mistake these were the ones that Cartamundi received. Luckily it was caught during the proofreading process, but it did mean sending the files back and forth again as well as a new approval process.
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by Will Clark, Director of North American Operations

When we last left off, Red and I had just taken over the duties of Organized Play Directors for North America. We couldn’t rest on our laurels because our first act as OP Directors was to plan the State Championships that had been announced by our predecessor but never fleshed out. After much debate between Red and myself, we scheduled the events on various weekends at different stores across the U.S. with the winner in each state getting free entry and a bye into the National Championships at Gen-Con 2010. After this we had a couple weeks respite before the events were due for both Origins and Gen-Con. Red and I were new to the whole event planning process but our love for the game drove us to make the events as memorable as possible.
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by Terence Jason Dorman, Awesome Manager of Inspired Writings

In my last post I mentioned that I would continue sharing my history with The Spoils and my service as the first Judge of Great Justice. While I certainly wish to talk about that further, I’ve decided to take a moment this week and address an issue that I find a lot of judges across all games struggling with. I don’t think any judge is excluded from this issue as I know I went through it when I first started out, and I imagine that most (if not all judges) had a similar experience. For the sake of simplicity, though, I’m only going to refer to The Spoils and Spoils judges throughout this piece.

The issue I’m referring to is how to deal with the pressure and power of being a judge.
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by Ken Pilcher, R&D Lead Designer

I am no psychologist, nor am I a sociologist, but understanding what our players and society want in a game, more specifically our game, is very important to its success. Being the R&D Lead Designer it is my job to make sure that every player finds something to fall in love with about The Spoils. Other games have analyzed player psychologies and I agree that this is highly important. The different mentalities of each psychological profile can be broken down to fairly clear and specific archetypes but in the real world these definitions are usually mixed at different levels for each person.

I would like to introduce you to five profiles of gamers. We have named them Dominic, Deckster, Victor, Artimus, and Archibald. While other games have come up with other names, we have decided to identify each profile with an intuitive name. These intuitive names were chosen to help identify the overall psychology and make them easier to remember. Let’s enter an arena where we can meet these “players” and look at what makes each one of them tick.
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