THE Board Game

Hi all! (this is Scott writing by the way)

So here's some cool news regarding the board game that I've been slowly developing (the Rifts one that we've played at the last couple of family reunions).

Basically, I've continued to work on it off-and-on for the past couple of years, developing it toward something I feel could be a viable retail product.  It is now at the point where I think that, after some intensive play-testing, it will be ready to go.  I didn't want to go through all the effort of coordinating a big play-test period until I knew if the company that owns the original game would be interested, though.  So, yesterday I had an hour-long call with the owner of the company who publishes the Rifts game where I pitched the board game to him, and he loves the idea!  I have official permission to take the next step as a Palladium Books freelancer!  So what does that mean?

Well first off, it is not a guarantee that Palladium will actually buy or publish the game.  This is classified as spec-work, or working on speculation, meaning that I get to do all the work with no promise beforehand that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  This is common in the world of small game publisher though, so not something to be alarmed about.  The game will not be formally picked up by the company until all testing is completed, any final bugs worked out, and they can inspect it for themselves.

So what's so exciting about this BIG NEWS then?  Well, it means that Palladium Books wants to publish a board game, and they think that my board game could be it.  In fact, the owner of the company told me that his three biggest distributors have been asking him when a Rifts board game would be coming out; none of the company's other writers have been interested enough to work on the idea however, and the owner is too busy to do it himself.  So, as long as the play-testing doesn't reveal any major flaws, my game is it!

I can also now move forward with recruiting play-testers for the game officially under the aegis of Palladium Books, not just some schmoe off the street.  In fact, future play-testers will be required to sign an NDA and Voluteer agreement stating that basically they won't try to sue the company just because they were part of testing the game.

It is a big deal to get the green light on this, and I am super excited.  Who knows, maybe next Christmas you'll all be getting official copies of the game!  (OK, more likely the Christmas after that, but still...).  :-)