For the past 7 years September was a month of fear. Month of bad tension. Month of sleepless nights. Month before Essen. Month before the most important 4 days in the year.

We had very stressful events back then. First copy of Stronghold I ever saw? Essen 2009. It arrived to Essen right in time, day before fair. I had no chance to see it before fair. Pret-a-Porter? Arrived to Essen 9 AM Thursday, an hour before fair was open for public. I was never before terrified like that Thursday. First box of Robinson Crusoe I ever had in my hands? Once again – Essen.

It was all on the knife edge. One small mistake and Essen was ruined for me.

Last year we made a huge step forward. We printed all games few weeks before Essen. Everything was prepared in advance…

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However… 'Will the game be ready?’ is not the only question that puts you awake in the night before the Essen fair. There is couple more questions. Will people like the game? Will be any interest in the game? Will gamers buy our game? Will we be able to compete with all those big fishes and sell the game to many gamers? What the reviews will be like? What gamers will say?

Every year there is a few hundreds games published at Essen.

Every year there is tens of great games published at Essen.

Will my game be one of those tens?

You wait for the Essen like for the execution. Days pass and all you see are announcements from other companies. Man, they have gorgeous cover. Man, they have cool bits. Man, they have a huge hype. Man, another Feld game…

You wait. You can’t sleep.

September sucks…

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This year September does not suck. It’s sunny, warm and beautiful. Imperial Settlers was released at Gen Con. I had all those panic symptoms in July and August. I couldn’t sleep in the summer. I was terrified in summer. I was bundle of nerves in summer.

Now it is all gone.

It’s the first Essen I will visit with pure smile and fun. Total chill out. The game is released. The game have great feedback. I am ready to celebrate Essen. 4 days of games feast.

This weekend I played game called Conquest of the Fallen Lands. Published in 2005 by small publisher Assa Games it was quite successful – it had pretty good rating at BGG, it had many votes at BGG and in a fact it nearly made it to the top 1000 in BGG ranking. That’s good.

Unfortunately it was not picked up by bigger publisher, it had no foreign editions and right now it looks like pretty dead title. It’s a pity. This weekend I had a good time with it and I believe this game doesn’t deserve to be dead.

If only there is Kickstarter in 2005…

With Kickstarter this game might have a much bigger success. If published in 2014 with Kickstarter:

1. It would have much better artwork, because these days you have to have great artwork,

2. It would have cardboard tiles and good quality cards, not these thin one it has now,

3. It would have fancy markers instead of these Ikea glass markers,

With successful Kickstarter campaign designer and publisher would have much more money to produce this game. That would lead them to have better production quality. That would lead to better reception of the game. That would lead to bigger chance for bigger success.

Conquest of the Fallen Lands deserves bigger or smaller success. Rules are simple and let players engage in the game. Game play is very quick. Theme is cool. The only problem – it can’t hold against today’s production quality. Because – let’s face it – games published these days look freaking awesome. Titles from 2005 look like antique. So does Conquest of the Fallen Lands…

DISCLAIMER: NONE OF YOU HAS EVER TROLLED ME. THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT TROLLING ME BUT ABOUT TROLLING IN GENERAL, IN OUR LIFE AND IN GENERAL OVER BOARD GAMES FORUMS. I AM SUPER LUCKY THAT PROBLEMS I DESCRIBE HERE DO NOT TOUCH ME IN THE ENGLISH INTERNET. THEY, HOWEVER, TOUCHED ME VERY HARD IN POLAND. THAT’S WHY I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS SERIOUS POST.

WELL, ONCE A YEAR I AM NOT THIS FUNNY DUDE FROM POLAND. THAT WOULD BE TODAY.

English speaking geeks treat me super kind. With one or two minor exceptions, I did not meet any English speaking trolls and haters so far. I am like living in a dream where every person in the Internet is kind and nice. I know this is not true picture, I know that Internet sometimes is not a nice place, I know there are trolls and haters but well… I didn’t meet them. It’s like living in a fairytale.

What’s interesting, it is exactly opposite here in Poland. In Polish board games forum I am the most hated person. If you remember what was the reaction of people when they heard that Ben Affleck will be new Batman – that’s exact kind of reaction I get here in Poland each time I release new game. And you know, I am not exaggerating. Really, it’s super nasty here.

Last week I withdrew from Polish board games forum. I asked admin to remove my account. After nearly 10 years on the forum, I withdrew. Trolls and haters had their victory.

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When you were a kid and saw one kid bullying other, you probably did stay in defense of bullied kid. When you see some jerk acting bad you of course act. When we see inappropriate behavior in real life, it is our natural reaction to act and defend person in need. To help people who need help is obvious and natural reaction.

It’s not a case in the Internet though. When we see troll bullying other person in the Internet, we rarely act. We think: 'Oh, it’s just troll, just ignore him.’

Let me tell you – this ignore policy doesn’t help bullied person. It doesn’t stop troll or hater. It only makes him stronger. It let him think that he can do and write whatever he wants to and no one will stand against him. Bullied person in the Internet is alone. You face trolls and haters alone because others just ignore troll.

For the past few years, from the moment I published Stronghold I was bullied in Polish Internet with tremendous strength. Every week there were attacks, nasty comments and hate all over me, sometimes including even my family. I was fighting back, I was trying to defend, but for the most time I was alone.

There was me, haters and ignore troll policy. For years. Last week I gave up.

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Board games industry is an amazing industry – there is no wall or something like that between customer and producer. We gamers can easily interact with many publishers and with many designers. They are active on game forums, they are active at conventions, they are within our reach. You can have Antoine Bauza sign your copy of his game, you can have cow sketch in one of Portal Games box, you can tweet to Eric M. Lang, you go to the pub and have a great time with Stephan Buonocore from Stronghold Games… This is one big family and I find it truly amazing. I love all people who work here. This is great crazy family.

Family that can very easily be attacked by trolls. We are so open to gamers, that some asshols just can’t wait to take advantage of that. So here is my honest request – when you see troll attacking our family, fight him back. He is trolling us just like bullying someone in real life. You wouldn’t turn your back in real life, wouldn’t you?

Don’t turn your back in the Internet too. Protect our family.

Don’t let haters win. Like they just did here in Poland.

In 2003 me, Michał Oracz and Marcin Blacha wrote and published Neuroshima RPG. One of the key concepts of this postapocalyptic universe is Moloch – AI that decided to destroy humans (this is not entirely true statement about Moloch, but I will not dig into details here). 

Rulebook for Neuroshima RPG gives exact date when Moloch is born and the war begins. It is 5th of September 2020. End of the world we know. Beginning of war between humans and machines.

For the past few years we celebrated Moloch Day here in Poland and did some events to remind our fans that time is close. For today we also had something in mind. We wanted to post this super cool artwork you see above on our website as a pop up screen. When you enter Portal Games website, you see this screen.

Small celebration of 5th September.

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And this is the moment when funny story comes. As usual when Portal Games in involved, right?

For no reasons whatsoever today 02:00 AM our website was attacked by maleware, changed into some sort of f… engine to attack other websites and begin to attack everybody all around. It did a lot of ugly things. Right in the morning Polish time our website was shut down by our provider and labeled as a thread.

When I approached office today at 9:00 AM guys greeted me: 'Happy Moloch day, boss. All our websites are down.’

Our Polish site, our English site and our Retailers Online system was down. Sweet.

It took us few hours to get back online.

Well, what can I say… Happy Moloch Day. It was hell of celebration this year!

Did you read Flashback articles at BGG News? They are cool idea to look few years back for our hobby. Few days ago Scott posted Rick Thornquist’s article about Essen Spiel 2005.

Spiel 2005. My very first Essen. Lots of memories.

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I come from a small city. I had never been at any fair, big or small, dedicated to board games or to hammers and drills. I had never seen anything like that. So when I walked into halls, I had a hard reset. That was mind blowing experience that my mind did not handled well. I was mind blown.

You know, I have this – super useless – skill: I remember names and titles. I know which designer design which game, I know which publisher published this or that game, I know all this stupid stuff. If only there were TV game shows dedicated to board games, I would win billion dollar just like that.

The moment I walked into Essen halls, my system just went down. All my knowledge, all my freaking huge knowledge about games was gone. 

Too many games on my sight per minute. I just looked around, I saw This game! And this game! And woow, they have this game! And man, this super rare game! 

And then bum! I knew nothing. All designers, publishers, everything just mixed up and I knew nothing.

Major malfunction.

***

Back then I was reviewer for Polish magazine Star Pirate and aspiring designer with two small games under my belt. I was walking around halls and I felt like I was day dreaming.

I had scheduled meeting with Philippe des Pallieres. We were sitting at the restaurant and talking about possible cooperation with Portal Games. Suddenly Bruno Faidutti approached to the table. Bruno Faidutti, designer of Citadels, my beloved game. Bruno himself. He said 'Hi’ and sat with us. 

I reached to my backpack and pulled out my copy of Citadels. 'Can you sign it?’ I asked. 'I love this game.’ I added.

’I can see that.’ said Bruno. 

Well, I don’t use sleeves, you remember, right? And I played the game more than 100 times. You can imagine how my copy looked like…

We were talking and suddenly another two people approached our table – Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget. Shadows over Camelot team. OMG.

I reached my backpack again, pulled out copy of Star Pirate magazine with my review of Shadows over Camelot and asked for autograph.

Imagine that – kid from Poland sitting with 4 famous designers at one table. Pretty awesome.  

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Essen 2005 was a great fair. Days of Wonder was promoting Shadows over Camelot and Pirate’s Cove with huge 3d boards that looked like terrain for miniature game, Zoch Spiele was promoting like crazy their Spiel des Jahres winner Niagara, and Hans um Gluck was celebrating 5th anniversary of Carcassonne.

Looking back I think Cash & Guns might be one of the most important or significant game of this fair – Repos Production and their huge sombreros were one of the highlights of the fair and since then they began to grow like crazy putting one great game after another. Back then no one was expecting that these crazy guys will bring us Ghost Stories, 7 Wonders and many many more…

9 years. Not that many on one hand. Another era, on the other. Me still kid Repos just debuting, Carcassone celebrating 5 years…

I brought home quite a good number of games. Here is a pic I took when I got home.

 Do you know any of these? Few of these titles is pretty amazing.