What is the difference between a designer and a developer? It’s roughly like the difference between a father and a grandfather. Like the difference between a mother and a grandmother. The mother gets up at 2 am to feed the baby, while the grandmother sees the baby on Sunday after dinner, chats with them, says sweet nothings, proud of her grandchild, as if it couldn’t get any better! The father rocks the baby in his arms for two hours because the baby has colic and is screaming so loudly that he can be heard throughout the neighborhood. The grandfather, on the other hand, comes around during the holidays, tells a nice story, gives a gift, offers some advice, and then goes back home. He went through all of that, now let the young parents struggle, he’s too old for that.

Testing Thorgal gives me wild joy. I come, play, give my opinion here and there, ask for something to be changed or added, and then I go back to my duties. Let the young parents…

We all have been there. You buy a game, you are so excited, you love it and… Yeah, your beloved partner doesn’t like the game. You will not play it. You awesome game gets stuck on the shelf.

I had it with Lord of the Rings: Confrontation. Dungeon Twister. Railways of the World. And so on and so on…

***

That’s why you have a son, right? It takes time, I know. It took me like 10 years of waiting, but the day have come. I took Dungeon Twister from the shelf. Believe me – layer of dust on the box was really thick. I opened the box with my hands shaking. I read the rulebook again. I explained rules to my son. We played.

He hated it. He said the game sucks and he won’t play it again with me. I put the game on the shelf again.

***

I have daughter. One day I will have grandson. Yes, I know it will take some time to play with him but I am patient. I can wait. But I tell you this. If this ten years old jerk fails me and won’t like Dungeon Twister… His grandpa might be really pissed off.

Just sayin’

Me and Stephan Buonocore record Board games Insider on Sundays. Except these Sundays when we can’t record because we are at convention. Which means most Sundays. In these cases we have to improvise.

Last Sunday I was in Modana at Play Festival and recording of episode #4 was impossible. We set recording for Monday. Our episodes are released on Tuesdays, so I belived we will be ok. We record on Monday evening, I edit it on Monday night and on Tuesday it is aired.

Timing was important, because on Wednesday I had to go to Germany, to meet my friends from Pegasus Spiele.

Monday, 6PM my time. Everything is set and we start recording. After 11 minutes something happens…

Ignacy, where are you?

After 11 minutes of recording I lost Internet connection in my home. My provider has some problems and suddenly I am offline. No way we can continue. I send message to Stephan that I am very sorry and we decide we will try tomorrow evening, at 8PM.

Wednesday, 8AM my time. Provider fixes problems and I have Internet.

Wednesday, 6PM my time. I loose it again. In two hours I should record and I am offline again. I am really angry. And I am not going to give up. „Nothing gonna stop us!” I say and I drive 20 km to my office.

Wednesday, 8PM my time I am at Portal Games offices and I am ready to record this damn episode.

We record. We have it ready. Stephan says he will send me his audio file. I will edit it early in the morning and then I go to Germany as planned.

Wednesday, 7:20AM my time, Merry wakes me and tells me that we have Internet back and I can do podcast. I get up, I check email, I click link to Stephan’s file to download it and I go to bathroom.

When I am back, I can’t believe what I see. Transfer speed 1,6 kb/s Estimated time to download the file: 9 hours.

You must be f… kidding me.

My suitcases to Germany are packed, Merry is prepared to start our trip anytime. But well, nothing gonna stop us, right? I take pendrive, I copy my file of audio and I say: „We go to Portal office. I will download Stephan file there, I’ll edit podcast and then we go to Germany.”

Merry is not happy. We go.

You remember when I told you that my office is 20 km from my home? It wasn’t a case on this particular Wednesday. Exactly today they began road works on a path between my home and Portal office. Believe it or not. I need to take detour. We need 40 minutes to get to the office, that is 20 minutes more than usual. But #NothingGonnaStopUs

I turn on my office computer, I download file from Stephan. It goes fast. Good. I will edit his file with mine. I put pendrive with my audio file.

Computer doesn’t see this pendrive. I can’t copy my file, because this damn laptop is not reading this damn pendrive…

I am gonna explode in 3, 2, 1…

I made it. 4th episode of Board games Insider is online. It was ridicolous serie of events. It looks like made up story, but it is 100% real story of 3 days of unlucky events. It really happened.

Give it a try. I hope you’ll enjoy it. I work really hard to give it to you!

Link to Board games Insider.

@GreyElepntGamin @trzewik That beach is littered with the bones of first timers.

— Indie Cardboard (@IndieCardboard) May 20, 2014

@ArtSafarov @trzewik Bad rolls. Bad decisions. Carmen was working on the roof and died. Friday had already died. I had 2 hearts. I die soon.

— Tim Norris (@GreyElepntGamin) May 20, 2014

@trzewik @Jonny5isalive1 @GreyElepntGamin I would second this. Especially if you have a high threshold for pain and heartbreak!

— Nonsensical Gamers (@LeagueNonsense) May 20, 2014

@trzewik @IndieCardboard Did you get the Death Medal? :0)

— Tim Norris (@GreyElepntGamin) May 20, 2014

@GreyElepntGamin @trzewik That medal is made of 97 percent Death, 2 percent Broken Dreams & 1 percent Yellow Dye No. 5.

— Indie Cardboard (@IndieCardboard) May 20, 2014

@trzewik @GameritisGuy „I can’t get into a theme about the fashion industry!”, but have no problem with theme of putting apples on a boat

— Dave Lartigue (@daveexmachina) May 21, 2014

Well she got rescued. But I hate her so much. At least help clean the camp! #damnjenny #RobinsonCrusoe @trzewik pic.twitter.com/bo6l2xzt6p

— Zen (@zenxacred) May 3, 2014

@trzewik @GreyElepntGamin You’re island is the George RR Martin of Islands…

— Board Game Quest (@BoardGameQuest) May 14, 2014

@trzewik Stop tweeting and get to work ! :p

— Antoine Bauza (@Toinito) May 15, 2014

@trzewik I always joke with my buddies that sleeving cards is like wearing condoms. It’s still fun, but it could be so much better! ;0)

— Tim Norris (@GreyElepntGamin) May 14, 2014