Random Musing

6/18/18

Just back from Origins Game Fair. I ran four different Matrix Games: Harry Potter Adventure, Burn the Witch, Fairy Tale Assassin League, and Thunder Hamsters and the Temple of Cheese. They went over well.

Harry Potter was supposed to be about the characters from the books and movies. but I foolishly brought my Cthulhu character cards rather than my Potter one so I had to punt and make the game about Hogworts in 1920. Visiting professors HP Lovecraft and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spiced things up nicely. These games started with the problem, the next disaster that will afflict the Earth will start here at Hogworts (the previous ones were the Great War and the Spanish Flu). They had to make up the problem and then stop it.

Burn the Witch was set in 17th Century New England and was literally a witch hunt. Old people, young people, Quakers, Indians, African slaves and of course women in generally were accused. The players used all the modern arts of fake news. They even attacked a local friendly Indian village. It appeared to simulate mass hysteria very well. I think it could be an evergreen.

Fairy Tale Assassin League was a card game I put out in 2013 I think. It used cards to give cues to players on what to do next. I think it could be run just as well or better with my most recent Matrix Game rules. There were a lot of dice rolls with the old rules that had no functional effect on the story. The other games had very few rolls (maybe one or two per game).

Thunder Hamsters was a board game that never made it to market. It was about Hamster Heroes running into the Temple of Cheese to steal cheese. It used matrix arguments with a referee setting rolls for "tussling" with things and for unexpected events. Fun but I don't think I'll trot it out every year.

After the show I decided I need to do art work for a variety of characters from different times and places so I can mix and match pretty much any game I want to do. When I get them done I'll put them up on this page for free down load.

6/1/18

It is now over thirty years since I started working on Matrix Games. I started in 1987 on a Pre-Matrix Game game called "Cognitive Pyramid" that used a verbal matrix of information to run a role play game. This lead to a conversation with a friend in the winter of 1988 about how to role play entire countries. I thought a verbal approach might work. He thought that it would need numbers. The Matrix Game evolved from the work I did after that. I wrote the first Matrix Game article which was published in the NUGGET that spring. I wrote a second article that summer and coined the term Matrix Game.

I had the notion right off the bat that this was new. It seemed like a worthy project to work on. I had they idea that if I was willing to do the work that they would be successful. So I set a goal. Tell people about it, and keep on telling them until someone asked me why I was saying the obvious. I can't even begin to say how much work followed that. For 5 years I put out a news letter called "The Experimental Game Group" , EGG for short, and wrote over 60 articles published in many different magazines. I ran games at Gen Con and other game conventions. From 1995 to 2015 I ran a small game publishing company called Hamster Press and put out around 40 different commercial Matrix Game products ranging from ones that looked like role play books, to board game versions, to card games, and miniatures games. Along the way I learned a lot about publishing, book manufacturing, accounting, distribution and marketing. And I learned that I suck as a businessman. But I kept on beating the drum and slowly but surely what I imagined in 1988 happened.

Though I've done a lot of work I don't feel that my work was successful. My projects in the end did not get many sales or convert many players. The success that Matrix Games now enjoys is due overwhelmingly to Tom Mouat. Huzzah to Tom! And to the other people in Great Britain who did the real work that got noticed. I'm honored to have been able to help you.

I hope Matrix Games are not about my ego. I always thought they would go beyond me and I decided long ago to be happy about that and to encourage others to do their own work. All I've ever asked for is for people to credit my work. Which they have. Made my ego proud! It is a curious thing being in on the ground floor of something like this. We all think about doing this but mainly don't. Have to say it is a mixed bag of memories. For the most part it was just a lot of hard work and endless exchanges where people did not know what I was talking about. In many ways it was like walking through water at chest depth. Slow hard going. But if I hadn't done that, what else would I have done?

A lot of cool things happened along the way. I won a few prizes. I got to have Steve Jackson tell me that Matrix Game players would have to have masters degrees in philosophy to be able to play. I got encouragement from Hal Thinglum, Editor of the Midwest Wargamer Association Newsletter MWAN from early on. I had Greg Novak, then of GDW shove a saddle stapler in my hand and tell me to saddle staple my newsletter (a stapler I still have). I got to meet and be friends with Frank Chadwick, John Hill, Todd Kershner, Dean West and more game designers. Got to be friends with Howard Whitehouse, who runs the best miniatures games on earth. Met Duke Siegfried. Got to be mentored by Dave Arneson, co-author of Dungeons and Dragons. Had Dave introduce me to someone as "This is Chris. He make the weird games." Been able to game with Guy McLimore (author of the first Star Trek RPG) and Stefan O'Sullivan who wrote FUDGE (the precursor to the FATE RPG). Been part of the Dealers Hall of Gen Con for more than a decade and much more. I may not have made much money from Matrix Games but they have made my life rich.

So now I'm largely out. The last big Matrix Game project I did was in 2016 when I wrote my sections of a professional Matrix Game book that should be coming out in 2018. I imagine I will publish some anthologies of all the Matrix Game rules I've written over the years and I'll put together some archives of my rules drafts and my journals but I doubt anyone will read these. They are long, boring and repetitive. Beyond that I'll continue to make convention games that I'll post here for free, and use Matrix Game in my D&D game but that is about it.

I'll post ideas here from time to time of course. I will try to stay focused on games and leave politics and current events out of it. There is enough of that elsewhere to meet everyone's needs. So with that said I'll wrap this up.

Thank you your support.