Since 2009 I had a fun at Essen. I was doing interviews, demos, was signing games and basically hang out with gamers. Coolest job on that planet.

It was possible, because my friends from Rebel Games (they are my distributor) took care of all business stuff. I did not need to do any business. Only fun stuff.

Unfortunately, this year things gonna change. Portal grows. Rebel grows. We have too much to do at fair. Rebel can not do my job for me anymore. We are friends. We help each other, but at some point we just have to make hard decisions. One of them is – Essen is no longer a party time for me. I need to go to work.

*

I am telling you that because for the past few years at Essen I was super available for you. I was always having time to chat, always time to sign box, take photo… I was at Portal Games booth nearly all the time just to have fun with you, gamers.

This year it is gonna change. For most of the time I will be sitting somewhere at business lobby and do serious stuff. Sign contracts, not boxes.

Since some of you may want to talk to me at Essen, ask some rule questions, or whatever else and many of you at my Twitter feed was telling me that will drop by to say hello, I am more than afraid that someone could be disappointed coming to Portal Games booth and see no Trzewik there. I decided I will post here hours when I will be sitting there for 100% available for you to chat, have fun and talk about games. I am happy to meet you at Portal booth:

Thursday:
10:30 – 13:00

Friday
14:00 – 16:00

Sunday
12:30 – till end

Not too much. I know.

For the rest of the time I will be running here and there, from one meeting to another. I will try to be at Portal Games booth as often as possible, between meetings, but I have many many of them this year. I am sorry I can not be as available for you as in the past.

But! (there is always a but!)
I have an idea! We can meet on Thursday, 24th of October at pub! After halls close, me and Portal Games team will go to Drago an der Gruga, Alfredstraße 122 45131 Essen restaurant that is VERY close to Essen halls.

I will try to reserve tables on Wednesday. We can hang out, have a good time and talk there! (Next Wednesday I will post right from Germany confirmation that reservation of tables is made.) I hope we will have a good time there!

What is more…
Let’s be honest! This time I am not author of new Portal Games release! You guys shouldn’t hunt me anyway! You need to hunt Michiel Hendriks! Have him sign your copy! Take picture with him! Congratulate him great game! 

I am happy to say that Michiel is our guest and will be at Essen at Portal Games booth all the time. He will be available for you, running demo games, smiling, signing boxes. Although he can’t draw a cow (like I do!), but on the other hand he looks much better on the pictures than I do!

This year Michiel is in the spotlight!

What is more…
What is more, we will have Mateusz Bielski at our booth too! Author of amazing art for our games, responsible for many great artwork for Legacy, Convoy, Theseus…

Mateusz will be there with us. He will sign cards, he will sign boxes, he will draw you cool drawings. And let’s face it, Matuesz is like superman – he can draw a cow and he does look better on the pictures than me!

What is more…
What is more we will have Marion who co-developed with me and Robert (and army of great testers!) Voyage of the Beagle. If you want to meet most devoted Robinson Crusoe fan in Germany, Marion will hang out with us at Essen every day and will present you Voyage of the Beagle and gossip about developement process!

We have great games, we have great guests, we will have great Essen! You are all invited! Hall 1 booth E142

***

And since I like to have always something interesting for you and always try to have a surprise… I am happy to announce that next Thursday, 24th of October I start small project on Kickstarter! I have this small crazy idea and I want to see if this small dream can turn into reality. 

You will be first to know.

Next Wednesday I will announce it. I hope some of you find it interesting. Trzewik goes Kickstarter!

(yes, drawing of cows are involved in this project!)

***

And because my blog is about good stories and today’s post has nothing to do with a good story I would be very disappointed to provide you only boring stuff and you would be disappointed too…

But… (there is always a…)

There is a man who few days ago wrote funny and really amazing post about me, Portal Games, Michiel and Legacy. I am happy to redirect you right to his blog and I wish you great read of his post. He has a good story for you in place of me today…

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/23935/what-trzewiczek-portal-and-legacy-did-right

See you at Essen guys! Looking forward to meet all of you! Wish me luck at Essen

I was afraid of 2013. No, really. Look at our previous years. There was a sad cycle going on…

2007
We published Neuroshima Hex. It was amazing success for our small company then! We were first time in Essen, we got great reviews, licenses were sold to ZMAN and IELLO. We were in heaven.

2008
We published Witchcraft. I love this game, but we had no success with it. It wasn’t popular, it was too abstract and heavy, barely we managed to sell all copies. No reprint ever done. No licenses sold…

2009
We published Stronghold. Man, that was ride of my life. We were sold in a few weeks, we sold licenses to US, German and French market. Countless nominations for awards. Great ratings. We were in heaven indeed.

2010
We published 51st State. It wasn’t that bad. Although we screw up with rulebook, with tokens… We did lots of mistakes… Game got good ratings, got some nominations for awards, was licensed… But it was few miles away from being in heaven…

2011
Well, 2011 was far from heaven. It was quite opposite than heaven. We published Pret-a-Porter. What a crazy idea that was! Yeah, game had great ratings at BGG. Yeah, was nominated to IGA, Polish Game of the year, even Tom Vasel said he may like fashion… But sells were terrible. After two years we barely sold all copies. No licenses sold. No commercial success. Never again I will do a game about fashion

2012
OK, that was heaven. Robinson Crusoe. What can I say. You know everything…

2013
And here we are, 2013. I was scared. It seemed that for the past few years we had this sucking cycle – after very good year for us, there is a year of much smaller success. It seemed like for small company like ours creating worldwide known game is very exhausting. Game that goes year after is never that popular. It is good, it has good reviews and ratings, it even gets awards, but it has no commercial success.

So here we are, 2013, year after Robinson. My experience say this year may suck. I was really scared.

***

Last week I announced pre-orders for our bundle pack, for Legacy, Theseus and Voyage of the Beagle. 

Soon after you decided to send me an email.

Yes, you. I mean… All of you.

I should expect unexpected…

This weekend I sent 290 (two hundred and ninety!) emails as replies to your pre-orders and questions. There were moments when I almost cried in front of monitor. I spent whole damn Saturday and whole damn Sunday answering your emails. It was hardcore weekend.

I replied one email, I received 2.
I replied one email, I received 3.

At some point, Saturday evening I got breakdown. After spending 6 hours with my laptop replaying emails, I got more emails in my inbox, than before I start replaying. Never had such situation in my life before. emails were coming faster than I was able to answer…

But I survived. I will remember this weekend for a long time, but I survived and I replied every single email I received from you guys.

***

Today I am happy to announce that it looks like Portal Games has grown up. We are adult company now. We had a tremendous success with Robinson Crusoe and this year, second time in a row we are doing damn good again, this time with Legacy and Theseus. 

At this moment I have twice as much pre-orders for Legacy as I had for Robinson.

And you keep sending me new ones. Every. Single. Hour…

Essen 2013, we are coming. Second time in a row, we are going to rock and roll!

A very talented designer with a very hard name… [http://files.neuroshima.org/ready7a.mp3] 😉

At the beginning Theseus was called Pandora. We really liked the name, it was easy to remember, it had great connotations with mythology, it was widely known word. And there was one tiny problem – there were 5 different games with that name in BGG database.

So we had to find something new. That’s how we found Theseus.

*

Pandora was inspiring word. At some point Michal came to office and said that he has this idea for fifth faction. It’s called Pandora. 

’It will be a disease’, he said. 'It will grow and affect enemy in a nasty ways. Very different, very unique faction.’

Yeah, idea was cool. But I had to make his dream collapse.

’We can’t afford 5th faction in the box. My budget is already very tight. We aim for 36 euro box. We have unique boards, lots of cards, wooden pawns… There is no way I can add something more. Keep Pandora for expansion. We design game for 2-4 players, we will have 4 factions. I can not put more cards and boards into box, sorry.’

Michal said he understand it.

We got back to testing 4 factions. Weeks passed. Finally we changed name from Pandora into Theseus. I forgot about 5th faction…

*

One Wednesday Michal came to office to play-test Theseus. 

’I have Pandora with me’ he said.

’It’s called Theseus now. Get used to this name, man!’ I said smiling.

’I mean fifth faction. Pandora. I have it ready.’ he said.

’I told you I can’t afford it. Production of the game is already very expensive with those all unique boards.’

’Let me show you’ he said.

He took zip bag and poured few tokens. He looked at me with pride with his eyes and smiled.

’Can your budget handle few more tokens?’ he asked.

’That’s it? Few tokens?’, I was really stunned.

’Yes’ he said.

’And it works?’, I couldn’t believe he really did Pandora faction.

’You will love it’, he said.

*

So here we are. We have game for 2-4 players with 4 different factions… and he have 5th faction in the box. It’s added because we have dreams. It’s added because we believe impossible is possible. It’s added because Michal is stubborn son of a bitch and couldn’t agree budget taking control over his game. He spent as much time as needed and used his talent and passion to design faction that will fit my budget.

We give you more than you expect. We want you smile when you open the box. We want you think: „These guys at Portal really love their job…’

***

Me and Michal have one history – we both have RPG roots. Portal Games was founded in 1999 as a RPG company. We wrote together few RPG, dozen of expansions, countless number of articles and adventures for RPG. 

We both love good stories.

However, our approach to board game design is totally different. I design story driven – often too fiddly – huge games like Stronghold or Robinson. He designs quite abstract, very clear games like Neuroshima Hex or Witchcraft.

(What is funny, both of us think that our games are super thematic.)

At some point, when I was talking with Michal about Theseus I was really surprised with his approach – it looked like all faction cards have not only rules but also a story behind them. Michal exactly knew why each card was in the game not only in terms of rules and balance, but also in terms of story of this faction.

He knew exactly what’s going on on this space station.

’We should show it to players.’ I said.

’What?’ he asked.

’Show them why these factions are on Theseus and why are they fighting.’ I said.

It took us few weeks to find a good way to show you this story…

*

Do you know term gamebook? Have you played or at least hear about Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy? Played Freeway Warrior created by Joe Dever?

We have RPG roots. We can tell stories. We can tell you what’s going on on Theseus in a really fun way…

*

I must say, it was not easy. I must say, it was much more work than we expected. I must say… I was crazy when I got this idea about writing 4 small gamebooks, one for each of the 4 main factions. 4 short stories that will unfold mysteries of Theseus. I admit, it was insane dream. Dream that showed me back of each faction board hiding QR code that heads player to small PDF file with a gamebook dedicated to this faction…

We didn’t have to do it. This is effort no one expect from us. This is something that isn’t industry standard.

It’s added because we have dreams. It’s added because we believe impossible is possible. It’s added because we want to raise bar.

We want to add more than you expect. We want you smile when you open the box. We want you think: „These guys at Portal really love their job…”

***

Dear gamers,
Yes, we love our job.
I believe that none of you, who read this blog doubt it.
Expect unexpected. And watch us raising bar.

Ignacy Trzewiczek
Portal Games