*Insert humorous greeting here*

Good afternoon from sunny Wales where the sheep are in full bloom! My lady and our little girl are out shopping, so I'm lounging in bed with our dog T-Bozzle trying to learn how to be a successful Boardgame Designer.

I've been at this about a year now. It started lst year when a friend and I were discussing how there seemed to be no gateway adventure games like Heroquest about. We talked a lot about how Games Workshop were doing themselves a disservice by not catering to that market and that moved on to a month long discussion about how we would make a new Heroquest type of game. We quickly realized that we were way out of our depth with that project, despite some strong ideas and some decent planning having started. It was just too much for 2 newbies to take on. We'd like to go back to it one day, but not until we have experience and credibility.

During that month I had another idea for a very different game that we both felt was more manageable and started work on that. This ended quickly when Neill started working on combat mechanics and created a separate game just to test them. We found that this game had real potential and have been working on it for about 6 months now. There has been 1 small problem though. Neill is a full time teacher and has limited spare time to dedicate to this project. I went about 3 months without doing anything with it whilst waiting for school holidays to crop up. In that time I developed a dozen potential projects but nothing stood out as something I could really get stuck into, until finally one did, and thid is the game I am currently working on. Neill has taken primary on the other game as it was his project and I have my project which is coming along very nicely indeed.

As Ive been designing my game, Ive spent as much time as possible trying to learn the business aspect of the field, Ive spoken at length with my local game store owner about distribution, pricing and how the whole retail end works, as well as reading interviews and blogs about getting games published and manufactured. I still find myself needing more guidance though as I have no clue what I should do once the game design is finished. I was incredibly thankful yesterday when a Dice Tower video mentioned this site as this is exactly what I need. Once I find my feet here a bit more, I'll start showing/talking about my game in more detail. I'll need to work up to that though as Im still in 'my baby' mode right now.

I look forward to getting to know you all and perhaps meeting up at conventions in the future.

Cheers, Steve.