HomeRantsOSRIC Wars (Or: Stellar Battles. Or: Lizard Has Too Many Ideas.)

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OSRIC Wars (Or: Stellar Battles. Or: Lizard Has Too Many Ideas.) — 2 Comments

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    Nevile Stocken (Re-posted by request – sorry it took so long to do this)

    You appear to be describing the genesis of “Star Rovers”, except that the rejection by the Twentieth Century gods occurred soon after the release of the movie, and development of the game’s parallel universe began virtually immediately.

    Da…ve’s work was that of an on-going mentor relationship and the contribution of the now sadly lost starship combat design, which I had the task of interfacing into the main game. He presented me with the module after I showed him the work already in progress, which included the URM, which he was impressed enough by to want to join the project. His immediate response to viewing it and the concepts behind it was to hand me his own manuscript to be included with the main work.See More
    December 14, 2010 at 10:22am · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading…
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    Nevile Stocken
    I began to commute to Concord from my factory office in San Mateo two to three times a week for the next three years, armed with a tape recorder to record our sessions, as well as a notebook to confer with David on the progress of the proj…ect, transcripts of the tapes (which I had hired a temp to transpose for me), and to make what miniature deliveries were needed to keep his store fully stocked with my products at all times. Week by week, we went over the various aspects of the game which needed developing. I focused my own creative endeavours on the design of key aspects, and farmed out the rest to the other writers on the team.

    At the time, David had a small retail store where he held his own game sessions for Arduin, as well as Star Rovers tests, and my own business was strapped for cash as well. So I hit upon the scheme of paying for his time with miniatures for his store. To make it easier on him, I gave him a distributor discount rather than the usual retail – knowledge about which he kept to himself at my request, as it would have led to ill feelings with other stores in the area had they known about our arrangement. This enabled David to make a more or less regular living, and he responded enthusiastically. Ostensibly, he was supposed to have paid Archive for the difference between what his time was worth, and the cost of stocking his store with my stuff, but it soon became apparent to me that David was always cash-strapped, so I took payment for the outstanding invoices in time and work on Star Rovers. I was glad to do this. His support on the project was invaluable, and he sold a lot of miniatures! It also provided a huge write-off at tax time. He also became a great friend, and he helped to keep me focused on the game design and development througout the life of the project.

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