From time to time on Dice Hate Me, someone will shoot me an email with a different sort of proposition. This time around, it was Jason Kotarski, designer of The Great Heartland Hauling Co., and he wanted Dice Hate Me to feature an interview he did with another designer, Jeremiah Lee. Designer on designer, and both with awesomely fun games? How could I resist.

Jeremiah Lee is probably a werewolf. Or maybe a spy. Or a zombie. Or maybe he’s just a really nice guy. This stay-at-home dad/game designer may play a lot of different roles but deep down, he’s just a normal guy who loves his family and friends and likes to play a good game every now and then. After the success of his solitaire print-and-play game, Zombie in my Pocket, it wasn’t long before Jeremiah found himself signing a publishing deal for a multi-player version of the game with Cambridge Games Factory. When not “unschooling” kids (look it up, it’s a thing), he serves in a marketing capacity for Indie Boards and Cards. He’s also developing a new game based on the original ZimP for Valley Games and running a Kickstarter project (Check it out now! There’s only a few days left! ) for a new company called Stupid Awesome Games, which he started with friend, Donn Stroud. We were able to spend some time chatting about game design, his favorite games, and his current project Zombie House Blitz.

Jason Kotarski: Let’s start with the standards. Tell me a little bit about who you are and how you got into hobby gaming?

Jeremiah Lee: I’m a full-time father of four young children, I’m a gamer, I’m a distracted designer (most of my ideas don’t make it to the prototype stage), and I’m always doing more things than I should be doing at one time. I got into gaming many years ago, as a kid, but I didn’t really get into the designer board game “life” until late 2007, when I happened upon some board gamers at a local game convention. I didn’t even really know what someone would do at a game convention (I didn’t know you had to buy tickets, sign up for events, or anything like that). I sat down, played Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix, and was hooked. I looked it up on BoardGameGeek the next day, and now I have less money but more fun. I had played some games in college, but it wasn’t until this event that I really got into gaming. Read More

In this video review, I take a look at Triassic Terror – a current Kickstarter project from Eagle & Gryphon games that is chock full of dinosaurs! Is this tile-selecting area control monstrosity worth the somewhat-hefty price tag on Kickstarter? Come watch and find out!

Happy gaming!
Chris

Dice Hate Me Games is pleased to announce the addition of three new games to its projected product line-up for 2013.

VIVAJAVA: THE COFFEE GAME: THE DICE GAME

VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game, or, more simply, VivaJava Dice, is the successor to the well-received 2012 release of VivaJava: The Coffee Game. Just as in its predecessor, players of VivaJava Dice take on the roles of employees at the VivaJava CoffeeCo., scouring the globe for the best beans to keep the company on top while keeping themselves one step ahead of the rest of the executives.

Also as in VivaJava, VivaJava Dice has players making the crucial decision between blending beans and research, but with a quick, new twist. Players must now use the dice in their pool to blend – using the beans to create a best-seller for quick points, and then whether to press their luck in subsequent rounds for bigger points but less dice as the blends degrade – or to research, and use their valuable beans to gain an ever-changing variety of dice-manipulating abilities, new ways to score, and paths that lead to aiding a competitor for a later payoff or hindering that competitor for immediate gratification. VivaJava Dice also offers a unique system of cooperative dice-rolling that can help you rise to the top, but at the price of someone else riding your coattails

With an astounding mix of plug-and-play research abilities, subtle social play in semi-cooperative mode, and the chance to hog all the glory and blend the best for yourself, VivaJava Dice is all about choice, making each game fast and furiously different.

VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game is a game for 2 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and designed by TC Petty III. It is set for a late-Spring Kickstarter campaign with a Q4 release from Dice Hate Me Games.

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The usual trio (me, Darrell Louder and TC Petty III) hit the road and pick up a fourth voice – that of game designer Benjamin Rosset. We manage to cram in a ton of gaming at a laid-back Virginia con that all of you should plan to attend next year, and the years beyond.

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Hello, dear readers – it’s been awhile! But I’m back, and I intend to stay. Today, I’d like to share a few pictures from this past weekend’s venture to Charlottesville, Virginia to Prezcon, an annual gaming convention that features board and card game tournaments, much like at the World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster in August. Prezcon is a little bit smaller than the WBC, but has the same relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, so it was the perfect place to kick back and unwind after the long – but wonderful – Compounded Kickstarter campaign. Enjoy the pics and mini-reviews, and happy gaming!

The main gaming hall is always full of interesting games and gamers, new and old. Sanctioned scheduled or tournament games are easy to locate by the large table markers, like that for Carcassonne in the foreground.

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Let’s take a jump into our Wayback Machines and revisit the early days of GrandCon, shortly after Brian and I got together.  If you’re going to put on an event of any kind, especially one of large scope, one of the first things you have to do is figure out where it is going to take place.  It’s one thing to have a game day of 10-15 people.  It’s another to have a party to
accommodate 50 or so.  But to have an event whose hopeful attendance begins at 200+ is a horse of a different color.  And based on some conversations we’re having, we may see attendance of 1500!!!

My wife has had great success chairing my kids’ school auction for the past few years.  One of her primary duties was finding the space, and so it was to her we turned to do our initial scouting.  After many phone calls and an organized spreadsheet, Brian and I had about 15 different venues to visit.  Of those 15, we were able to narrow it down to 5 that seemed like true prospects.  And so we set aside a day to go around town and visit with the various locations.

I had initially begun an entry weeks ago to let you know about all of the nuances of scouting for a location, but it began to get very long.  Let me just highlight a few of the details that ruled out some locations:

Location #1: Starting price was $7,000!  Yes you read that right.  As Brian and I are cash-flowing this out of our own pockets—no loans, no credit cards, just good ol’ American greenbacks—they quickly eliminated themselves.

Location # 2: Beautiful though the facility was, it was located in a terrible area.  Parking and safety are genuine concerns.  No one wants to visit a venue where you have to worry about being shot or robbed on the walk from your car to the front
door.

Location #3: Ideal in many ways, but had a minimum food order of $4,000, not negotiable.  Not sure that we would even
have that many people to feed, I could not imagine having a need for that much food.  And so another one bites the dust.

Location  #s 4 & 5: Our final destinations of the day were another hotel and a conference center on a college campus.  When all was said and done, both of these facilities had what we were asking for: they were each in a good location, the price was right, and the interiors were fantastic for our needs, though they were very different.  The hotel had what you might view as a very traditional convention style layout: a hallway with conference rooms to either side that could be divided as we needed.  The conference center had a much less traditional layout, but the interior was so much more than your standard
conference hall.

Then it came time to negotiate.  There were issues with space pricing, food pricing, what was taxed and what was not, and probably a few other things that I am forgetting by now.  As a first year convention, we were watching our budget very
closely.  Both facilities had what we thought we needed, but at the end of the day, one came in about 25% higher than the
other.  All other things being equal, the decision was made, and we were proud to place our convention at the Prince
Conference Center, located on the Calvin College Campus.

Heretofore I have mentioned a lot of things, but I have not mentioned customer service.  The rep at Prince has been and continues to be fantastic.  She has over a decade of experience in her field, and has been incredibly receptive to Brian’s and my ongoing vision of what GrandCon will look like.   So while not set in stone, I’m excited to lay out what GrandCon will
look like in September 2013 (details are subject to change):

Welcome to the Prince Conference Center!

The Great Hall will be divided into 2 areas.  2/3 will be for our Dealer Room, for both retailers and artists.  The remaining 1/3 will be in use for our MTG Mox tournament and draft play.

The frontroom is called the Fireside Room because its atmosphere is dominated by two flanking floor-to-ceiling fireplaces at either end.  We can’t imagine a better room in which to place our 9 tables of RPGs.

A roaring fire to set the mood for some role playing.

The Willow Room to the rear of the building that holds over 100 gamers.  That will house our game library, and it is
with great joy that I can say that our new convention will be home to the same game library that visits Gen Con, with over 1000 games.

And the final room, the Boardroom, will be home to our seminars, movies, and LARPers.

This state-of-the-art room will host films, seminars, and LARPs.

***UPDATE: Since the original time of this writing back in December, we have taken up the very last room, the President’s
Dining Room, which will house even more scheduled gaming!!!***

The Prince is also attached to a 69-room hotel, and we have negotiated a reduced room rate for our convention attendees.   When you come down from your room you are greeted by a complimentary breakfast, and the convention is no more than 30 feet away.   Coffee, water, cookies, and other snacks will be available to our attendees all day long, free of charge.

Refreshments await our convention guests

We have worked hard to give our convention the feel of a mini-Origins or –Gen Con, and the details, big and small, are coming together to make it happen.  The Prince Conference Center is an amazing place to hold our inaugural event, and we can’t thank them enough for their service. We’ll see you there!
Marc Specter

Manager, GrandCon

Recorded 15 February 2013

It’s a packed house on this episode as Darrell and TC continue their stellar jobs as co-hosts on the new State of Games and we’re joined by a truly super guest who never sleeps, makes his own weapons from steel and sweat, and bears an ever-so-striking resemblance to Joseph Gordon Levitt.

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