Frustrated Incorporated

It's time for me to vent and let off some brain-steam. I'm frustrated. About what you say?

Well, truth be told, none of these bothers are earth-shattering frustrations. Rather, they're smally niggly bits which are eating away at my patience; a patience which most friends and family members claim that I have an enormous amount of.

Let's take them in turn...

#1 = WORK
I'm in the process of changing gears work-wise, switching my day-to-day emphasis on baseball related activities (data development, sales, tech support) and returning to a heavy immersion in wargame design, development, and playtesting.

I'm excited to change gears and am really looking forward to doing new things. The preseason and early-season baseball rush always causes me to suffer a bit of burnout, so switching to something radically different is a big boost to my mojo.

The niggling frustration I'm having right now is that I want (and need) to become like Butter. I need to get "on a roll" with my game development & playtesting, but I haven't found that steady flow of inner-brain magic yet. Oh, I'm working diligently and making progress. I just need to get in the zone. That's something that software designers, programmers, artists, architects, and even athletes can probably relate to.

I can't explain how to make it happen. It's not a switch that you simply flip and suddenly, you become inspired and enormously productive. But if you focus on something long and hard enough, eventually magic happens. Ideas flow like cheap wine. You do three days worth of work in one-day. Inspiration bubbles up. You find yourself thinking up brilliant ideas right before dozing off to sleep and while in the shower the next morning.

Anyway, that's what I'm missing right now. I want it to happen... NOW. I guess I'll just have to keep plugging away and stay focused. Sooner or later, it's gonna happen.


#2 = ROTISSERIE BASEBALL
I have never finished dead-last in any fantasy baseball, football, or hockey league that I've participated in. And I've been playing in various leagues for well over 20 years. I'm used to finishing in-the-money, and I've won my fair share of league championships. But currently, in my HARL Baseball league, my favorite fantasy league of all time, I find my Sevy Rhinos team in dead-last. Yikes!

As frustrating as being in last place is, I have faith that things will improve for my ballclub. Experience tells me that you cannot really gauge the strengths/weaknesses of your rotisserie team until 6 weeks of the season have elapsed. On paper, I was pretty happy with my team when I looked it over post-draft. The offense looked very strong, and the pitching seemed decent, although there were a few question marks to consider. But man, has my pitching staff totally sucked so far! Their total implosion is the major reason I'm dwelling in the cellar right now.

My starting pitching staff (this is an NL-only league) consists of Jeff Francis, Oliver Perez, Tom Gorzelanny, Randy Johnson, Joel Pineiro, and Shawn Chacon. Of my top four hurlers, only Oliver Perez has been any good. Francis started off poorly, but his last 2 starts have been solid, so he fortunately appears to be returning to form. Gorzelanny may be hiding an arm injury. His control has been dreadful, and that's very unlike him. The Big Unit missed the first 2 weeks while resting on the DL. He's been decent so far, and I'm hoping he returns to his form of 2005 and leaves his 2006 Yankees season as an aberration. Arizona has a good young team, so the Unit can't help but benefit from that.

The rotation hasn't been my only worry. Prior to this past week, my bullpen had been lit up. Jose Valverde and Tom Gordon have been like kerosene matches standing next to an open flame. Ryan Madson hasn't been much better. Only Kevin Gregg has kept his ERA down and helped my club. Fortunately, things appear to be turning around, as all four relievers combined to bolster my staff last week with Wins, Saves, and quality outings.

So things are improving. I even stuck SP-Odalis Perez into my flex slot to get more Innings Pitched and hopefully whittle down my bloated ERA and WHIP with some quality statistics. Of course, banking on Odalis Perez to be reliable is like hoping that Paris Hilton disappears from the tabloids. But hey, when your options are slim, you gotta gamble sometimes!


#3 = BOARD GAME CLUB
Getting my local board game group to show up and play games on a regular basis has been a major point of frustration for me. I have played a bunch of board games with my friends over the past 8 months or so. They've been extremely enjoyable gaming sessions. I just wish they could happen A LOT more often!

Let's face it, organizing anything is always a big challenge. It's especially tricky when you're dealing with adults who have very busy schedules and kids. Plus, since this is just a fun thing and not a formal event like a class or work project, or participation on a sports team, people tend to blow these things off when squeezed for time. I can understand, but it's still frustrating, especially for the person (me) who arranges everything.

Plus, some of the problems with maintaining a steady gaming schedule has been my own fault. I was extremely busy working overtime and doing other activities during off-hours in February through the first half of April. Nobody else picked up the ball and ran with it, so the game club basically went on hiatus for a few months.

On the plus side, I haven't given up hope yet. I love board games, wargames, and card games. And I have a bunch of new games (at least to me) to try out, as well as many old favorites to continue to bring to the table. Despite my disappointment in not getting enough traction going amongst my gamer-friends to put the game group on auto-pilot, I still think it can be done. It's just going to take time and plenty of patience. The fact that I own a bunch of cool games and don't want to see them languish on the shelf for eternity is a driving force behind my continual efforts to light a fire under people's butts.

So I shall start again. People need to come to the realization that having FUN with family and friends is a critical component to a healthy, happy life. It's too easy to get overly caught up in work and day-to-day trifles which are not important in the big scheme of things. So I'm trying to do my part in spreading the joy. Hopefully it will work!


#4 = WRITING TO THIS BLOG
I have three blogs going right now. There's a private one dedicated to the development of my tabletop miniatures wargame called And On the 7th Day They Created Severnia. That's where the project team members and I post our thoughts, ideas, and observations about the Sword of Severnia fantasy wargame we're involved in developing.

I also maintain a blog for my HARL Baseball league, where I write about my fantasy baseball league and share information with the league members. There's also an associated website called HARL Central where members can download weekly stat reports and view online reports.

And then there's this blog, a personal journal where I discuss board games, card games, miniatures, wargames, software development, fantasy sports, and anything else that strikes my fancy.

Keeping all 3 blogs up-to-date can be a challenge. Of all three, writing to this one is the hardest. Experiences designing software/games and with my fantasy baseball league help to generate articles for the other two blogs without much of a problem. But writing to a personal journal is different.

While I almost always have something to say, sometimes I wonder if it's really worth saying. I mean, there's only so much people can read while surfing the net. So I frequently ask myself the question, "what makes this blog worth reading?" Why bother writing at all if I don't have anything interesting, informative, or captivating to say?

That's probably something that a great many bloggers struggle with. Sure, you can use blogging as a pure ego trip, gaining satisfaction in the simple fact that your voice is on the internet somewhere. Or perhaps, you just want to write for cathartic purposes; because it makes you feel good to share your feelings and get things off your chest. They're both valid reasons I suppose.

For me, I want to inform and entertain. The thing that I hope for is that a reader learns something and has fun doing it.

I know that I don't always succeed. I'm still learning what makes a good blog post, what's useful to write about, and what people enjoy. Truth be told, I'm probably overthinking this. Perhaps that's why I'm frustrated about not writing to this blog often enough. Four or five posts per month is not enough. I want to be more prolific and not let things get too stagnant. Posting 12-16 times per month would be oh so much better!

But for an increase in posting to occur, I'm going to have to take a new approach to this blog. Perhaps I should be willing to write shorter posts? Perhaps I should feel free to just brain-dump and not feel guilty about it? Perhaps I need to stop worrying about being informative and just starting writing? It's very possible that could be holding me back.

So I'm going to try something new. I'm just going to LET GO and WRITE and see what happens. At least I can't be frustrated about lack of posting any longer if I take that approach!

Until next time... BE GOOD.

Pictures from Cold Wars -- Volume 3

Here's the final installment of pictures from the Cold Wars 2008 miniature wargaming convention in Lancaster PA. Unlike the previous two photo installments, these pics were snapped by yours truly (Steve). I took them on Saturday, March 8 while meandering around the Host with Geoff, another wargaming buddy of mine.


What's a pirate themed convention without some ships? Here's a bunch of them...

Meanwhile back on dry land, we've got some more gnomes duking it out for supremacy. First off are some Swiss fellows, followed by Germans riding giant bunny rabbits!




What's in store for you next? How about some large tabletop battles, leading off with the spectacular eye candy of the "big game" in the Host lobby.

And lastly, we end with some ancient hordes, a cavernous dungeon bash, and American Civil War action...

I hope that everyone enjoyed this little photographic journey through Cold Wars. Hopefully, we can take a lot more pictures at this summer's Historicon convention to share with wargamers everywhere. God bless and good gaming!

Good Customers vs. Bad Customers

I've run my own tiny software business since 1995. Before that I worked in a corporate IT department for 8 years. Over the 21+ years that I've been in the business of creating, selling, and supporting computer software, I have run into all kinds of customers. I'm sure that anyone who has been in the software industry for a long time has their fair share of heartwarming stories as well as utter horror stories to tell.

Over the years, I've encountered customers who are highly intelligent, creative, tech savvy, friendly, polite, and downright funny. It's always a joy to meet these nice people, even if it's only in the context of a business relationship.

What might be surprising to learn is that many of my best customers have turned out to be people who needed a little help when they first started using the software. These folks were not afraid to ask for assistance during the inevitable "learning phase" that occurs when you start to use virtually every software program of at least moderate complexity. Nor were they "too proud" to ask for help. They simply asked, got help, and went on to become longtime happy customers who purchase new products every year. I treat these core customers as I would treat my friends; going the extra mile to keep them happy in return for their years of continued support. The kind comments that I've received from these "good customers" has been the fuel that's kept me going for many years.

But as they say, every rose has it's thorn. While MBA's and politically correct blowhards claim that "the customer is always right" and "there are no bad customers", the simple reality is that in any business, 5% to 10% of your customers will be jerks and idiots. If you don't agree with that, then start your own business and get back to me in 10 years. And believe me, there's nothing quite like technology (i.e. computers) that brings out the absolute worst in people.

There are several common types of bad customers that I've come across. Here are a few of the classics:

Mr. Last Minute

This is the guy who buys his fantasy baseball draft prep & tracking software at 10 PM on Friday evening, even though his draft is being held at Noontime on Saturday. Five minutes after he orders, he sends an email to the customer service staff demanding his software unlock code. After 10 minutes pass and he doesn't get a response, he fires off another email saying "where's my code" and complains of shoddy customer service. Although the company website clearly states that all emails are answered within 48 hours and that the company offices are closed on the weekends (it's a regular Mon-Fri business), he calls the company hotline and leaves an urgent and somewhat snide message. He needs his code NOW. After all, he only has a few hours to use this software until his draft tomorrow!

When I logon to check my business email on Saturday morning, I see Mr. Last Minute's messages and hear his urgent phone plea. Although I'm not woking today, I'll still make it a point to send the man his unlock code. Inevitably, I will get a followup from Mr. Last Minute on Sunday telling me that he never got his unlock code or it was too late (he had already left for his draft). And surprise surprise, he wasn't able to learn the software in 2 or 3 hours and setup everything for his draft. Oh, and he wants a refund.

Not only is Mr. Last Minute the worst kind of procrastinator and unreasonable in his demands, by ordering software 14 hours before his baseball draft he's also just plain stupid. What he really needed was a $7 magazine, not a sophisticated software program.


Mr. Know It All

You will run across Mr. Know It All in all walks of life. He is particularly frustrating to deal with in the software world.

Mr. Know It All has setup his software and database, but something isn't working quite right. So he emails you saying that "I setup everything exactly as I was supposed to, but the software just doesn't work." He doesn't give you any details about his problem to speak of, so you politely respond to his email with a request for additional details about what his problem is. He gets back to you with some very flimsy information, but since you developed the software and have many years of experience helping people, you have enough of an inkling to guess what he did wrong. You respond with a solution. He replies saying that you're wrong, don't know what you're talking about, and basically tells you why your software is utterly broken. He did everything 100% right. There's absolutely NO WAY that he could have made a mistake.

Sometimes, this guy will threaten you and demand a refund if you can't help him. So you resort to having this schmuck send you his database. You hook it up in the lab and discover what he did wrong to screw up his data. You send the database back to him with a detailed explanation of where he messed up. He will never say thanks for helping. That would be admitting that he actually doesn't know everything. But at least you have finally shut him up, at least until the next problem comes along that in NO WAY POSSIBLE could be his fault.


Mr. Half Wit

I'm not trying to be mean, but there are some people who should simply not be allowed to touch a computer. When people say that education is declining in America, they're right. I have seen it first-hand. The number of people who write wholly unintelligible emails is astounding. I read messages with absolutely no punctuation, with incoherent run-on sentences, and with spelling errors that would make a 5th grade English teacher cry. Not to mention that I actually receive tech support emails along the lines of "my Rhino don't work, can you help?". Ummm... that really narrows down the problem for me Tex.

Mr. Half Wit doesn't know all that much about computers. He's not quite sure how to download a file, and he doesn't know how to look at the folders on his hard drive. Nevertheless, he just plunked down a pile of Hamiltons to use an advanced piece of software to run his fantasy baseball league. He doesn't read the Help files because "I don't learn too good by readin', I'd rather you walk me through it over the phone". Mr. Half Wit is in WAY over his head. Couldn't the league members have found somebody a wee bit more competent to be the league commissioner?

I understand that not everyone is a smart cookie, and I try to be very very patient with everyone. I will help Mr. Half Wit as much as humanly possible, but it's a major waste of my time and a huge money loser for my company. He'll eventually move on to something else next year, drop into oblivion, and cease to be your problem. But the time you wasted on helping him for free costs you lots of money, and it would have been far better had he never ordered from you to begin with.


Mr. Impatient

This guy is sort of a mixture between Mr. Last Minute and Mr. Know It All. He buys your software, uses it for 2 days, and then abruptly demands a refund because it's "too complicated", "takes too long to setup", or is "not intuitive enough".

Counting high school, college, and professional work, I've been involved in the computer software field for close to 30 years. Without any shame whatsoever, I will say that there's simply no way that I can learn to use a new software program in 2 days (unless the program is quite trivial). But hey, Mr. Impatient is utterly outraged when he cannot learn your program in a day or two; a program that took you 2.5 years to develop (just for version 1.0).

Mr. Impatient is not only terribly unrealistic in his expectations, he has an enormously over-inflated ego. He believes that he's so smart that he can learn in 2 days what it takes everyone else 2 weeks to learn.

There are two types of responses that you'll get from Mr. Impatient. The first goes something like this: "I use computers a lot and am not a newbie, but your software is just too hard to use even for someone like me. How can you even sell this program?" Obviously, Mr. Impatient thinks he's such a computer wiz that if he can't figure things out in 2 days, well then your software must be complete crap. What a load of hooey. I guess all those happy users we have amassed over the years don't matter, huh? Anyone who thinks you can stay in business for 13+ years by selling crap software must be smoking crack.

The second type of response you get from Mr. Impatient falls along these lines: "setup takes too long. If you skip over some of the setup steps, the software won't produce the results I want." Well duh! For a supposedly smart person, Mr. Impatient gets an "F" in logical thinking. He wants the software to spit out customized results tailored to his particular settings, yet he doesn't want to waste the time entering any of those settings. He must be hoping to get results through pure magic. You load the software, it reads your mind, you click a button and poof, instant results!

Of course, Mr. Impatient will never ask for help when you offer it. Actually working through a problem would fix his issue, but he doesn't have the time for that. He has no time for help manuals or tech support emails. If he can't figure it out right away, you're history.

Dealing with Mr. Impatient is a very good reason why your software company should, if at all possible, offer free trial software. It allows people to download and install the program, take a quick look around, and decide if they want to actually buy a full copy. Hopefully, this will weed out the Mr. Impatients in your life. You pray that these guys realize what you already know, that unless you're really willing to put in the time to learn a new program, don't even bother buying it.

Mr. Bullshitter

At last we come to Mr. Bullshitter. You've been using the software religiously for years, and you KNOW that it works great. Countless customers have sent you kind notes telling you how much they like your product. You get lots of repeat sales.

But along comes Mr. BS to ruin your day. He buys your product, installs it, and then sends you an angry email telling you that he gets continual errors when he uses the software. Not only doesn't X function work, but Y and Z are broken as well. The darn thing just crashes all the time. It's junk and you're a shyster.

You offer to help Mr. Bullshitter and ask him to explain exactly what's troubling him. He never sends you any details, any screen shots or files, and he'll never let you see his database. He just rants and raves and insults you. In essence, he never gives you the chance to PROVE to him that the software does indeed work as advertised.

Basically, this guy is just a Class A jerk. There's nothing you can do about him since he resists your efforts to help him. He'll either just fade way, or if your company offers refunds you can give him his money back and say good riddance.


IN CONCLUSION

Fortunately, I would say that 90% of my customers are pleasant to deal with. They're certainly not jerks, egomaniacs, or morons. And I respect them because they treat me and my company with respect. If they need help, they go about things the right way to get it. They are polite and say thank you when it's warranted. They're reasonable. In short, they're GOOD customers.

If there was some way to screen the small percentage of BAD customers before they bought products from us, I would jump on that in a heartbeat. They waste your time and make you lose money. They put you in a foul mood. They make otherwise sane computer software developers question why they ever got into this field to begin with. But that's life folks. You can NEVER please everyone. Some people will love your product, and some will hate it. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it... except to maybe vent about it on your blog!

What Time is it? It's Rotisserie Baseball Time!

Ah yes, it's Easter season. The onset of warmer weather is here. The blossoming of spring flowers is right around the corner. The rebirth of all that is good, cheerful, and sunny is upon us.

Screw that and gimme some damn BASEBALL!

Yes sports fans, it's baseball time again. Or more importantly, rotisserie baseball time (or fantasy baseball for you more politically correct youngsters who don't want to piss off the powers that be who own the rights to the term "rotisserie baseball").

We just held our annual HARL player auction on April 5. It was 5 jam-packed hours of bidding craziness, friendly banter and seeing old friends, and mind-sapping mental arithmetic. In a word, it was FUN. Or in two words: GREAT FUN. Or in three words... Well you get the picture.

This was our 22nd annual draft. I started the league in 1987 and am still running it. I don't know how many of you have ever done something for 22 years, but that's a friggin LONG TIME. I guess you could say that I have a love affair with fantasy baseball... err... rotisserie baseball.

I won't bore you with anything really deep about my league (HARL) right now. I'll save the analytical stats babble for another time. It's late after all and I gotta go check some boxscores. If you reallt want to find out more about my league, head on over to the HARL blog (for news) or HARL Central (for reports).

Oh yeah, one more thing... GO RHINOS!

Oh Thanis, How Lovely art Thou Skeletons

I've done a little dabbling on eBay recently, although not too much as I've been spending most of my free time preparing for my rotisserie baseball auction coming up on April 5th.

I got sniped on some nicely painted WarGods Spartans (damn West Coast auctions just kill us East Coast folk who don't stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning), and backed off a couple of other really nice fantasy minis that wound up selling for fairly expensive prices. I just can't see paying $75 bucks or more for one masterfully painted 28mm mini unless you're a very serious mini collector and intend to show these little gems off in a display case somewhere. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for high quality and I admire the top-of-the-line masterworks, but I want to play games with my figures too. The thought of having 3 or 4 heroic minis, worth a collective $300, get chipped or broken during a wargaming session is too much for my fragile mind to bear.

I did end up winning one auction, however, and this little pewter lass is a real beauty. Her name is Thanis the Bonecaller, and she's a female necromancer from Reaper Miniatures. She was painted by Mark Engle (KimEngle is the ebay id). Here are some pictures of this gorgeous mini:

I've got to admit that I've never thought of a necromancer as "sexy" before. Typically, they are gaunt, fallen wizards adorned in tattered robes and often with a hefty case of "face rot". Thanis is more along the lines of a succubus, beautiful yet deadly. She could also serve as a "good" (non-evil) necromancer or witch, raising fallen soldiers to fight on behalf of a noble cause (similar to the dead coming to the aid of Aragorn in the Lord of The Rings)?

All I can say is, "oh Thanis, how lovely art thou skeletons". You slay me girlfriend.

Pictures from Cold Wars -- Volume 2

As promised, here are several more pictures from Cold Wars 2008 courtesy of my picture-taking pal Kevin Sarnowski. Hope you enjoy Part-2 of this 3-part visual goodies series!

We start off with some photos from the beautiful Gnome Wars game. The Sikh gnomes are invading the village, and it looks like they have company. Is that a band of Ice Trolls heading in from the coast?

But wait, are those German gnomes advancing!

We liked this neat medieval village atop the cliffs, and admired a World War II game with scads of paratroopers dropping in from above...

Here's a big American Civil War battle, followed by some ship battles...

And finally, some close-ups of airships from a Sky Galleons of Mars game, and preparations for Roman chariot racing...

And that's the scoop for Part-2. I will hopefully get some pics that I took on Saturday (3/08) offloaded from my digital camera soon. I'll share those once they're ready to show.

Pictures from Cold Wars -- Volume 1

Back on March 7 and 8, I made my way down to Amish country and attended the Cold Wars miniature wargaming convention held at the Lancaster Host hotel & convention center in downtown Lancaster, PA. I thoroughly enjoyed my two days at the convention, which is the first of three HMGS East conventions (Historical Miniatures Gaming Society) held throughout the year in central Pennsylvania.


I had the pleasure of hanging out at the con with my longtime friend and gaming pal Kevin Sarnowski on Friday the 7th. We had a great time shopping in the flea market and vendor hall, took some time out to stop by the Paint & Take to paint up some French Foreign Legion infantrymen, and wandered around observing lots of ongoing wargames in the scads of rooms that make up the meandering layout of the Host.


I also really enjoyed talking to lots of nice chaps in the Vendor Hall such as:

• David McBride from Splintered Light Miniatures, a young southern gentleman and all around nice guy. I'm a 28mm gamer, but I've gotta say that their 15mm fantasy minis are quite cool and very tempting. I encourage you to give them a look-see.


• Craig Acheson from Acheson's Creations, who is one of the most enthusiastic, creative, and downright friendly people I've ever met at an HMGS convention. I came away from Craig's booth with a painted celtic hut, a colorful painted mushroom piece, and an unpainted viking long house. Great stuff; great guy.


• The happy-go-lucky Soderquist brothers from Bronze Age Miniatures, who drove all the way from Utah to come to Cold Wars and sell their awesomely cool martians, norse gods, and skeletal pirates. Now there's dedication! I bought some of the Norse Gods and can't wait to paint them up -- they're full of character.


• Neal Catapano from The WarStore, a big-hearted Italian American whose online store has become my #1 stop on the internet when looking for gaming stuff. My wife, who bought me a batch of Christmas gifts from The WarStore sums it up nicely... Neal rocks! It's really great to see a WarStore booth overflowing with goodies at the HMGS cons. I hope they can make many more of these in the future.


• I was surprised to bump into the always friendly Igor Olshanky in the vendor hall (he's IGWARG for you TMP-ers out there). Igor paints some very nice minis, and I've had the pleasure of buying painted figures from him in the past. Hope you did well in your Warhammer tourney Igor!

Suffice it to say that there are some really great people in this hobby if you just take the time to stop by and chat with them.


Moving on... Kevin brought his camera and snapped quite a few pictures of the various participation games. There was plenty of gorgeous eye candy for wargamers here. With Kev's permission, I'm going to show off some of his pictures on this blog. This will be part-1 of 3-part series. I hope that you gather some inspiration from these photos. Enjoy!














More pictures to come in Part-2. See you soon!

He Lives!

Wow. Has it really been 2.5 weeks since I last posted here? It seems like even longer than that! Hopefully my readers haven't totally abandoned me. I'm not dead folks. I do live!

So where have I been since March 5 and what's been happening?

Rhino Software

Well, for starters, I have been mega mega busy with work at Rhino Software for the past month. Being that our flagship products involve fantasy baseball software and a weekly baseball stats service, the preseason (especially late February, March, and the 1st half of April) is always totally crazy for me work-wise.

On the plus side, orders for software and stats services have been steadily rolling in these past few weeks. I'm very grateful for the business, but of course, I wish there was even more. The fantasy sports business is extremely competitive nowadays, and it's tough for a tiny company like ours to compete in a world that's dominated by the giant media companies such as CBS, ESPN, Yahoo, and MLB.com. But we offer products a little outside of the mainstream, and our customers are a little more experienced and do-it-yourself than the typical fantasy sports fan. The really great thing is the nice batch of repeat customers who have stuck with Rhino with many long years. I've lost track of how many folks are in our Gold Club; it has become quite sizeable. Serving these people, who have become my friends in many ways, is really what makes all the thankless years of hard-work worthwhile. Thanks for keeping me going guys!

Rhino Baseball

Despite the fact that Rhino Baseball has been around for 10 years, I know that it could still benefit from lots of added exposure. Perhaps I'll eventually force myself to make the time to create some updated video demonstrations of the software via YouTube or another online movie/demo tool. Rhino Baseball takes some time to learn because it's a pretty deep program, but man, it is a very cool program once you learn what it can do. I wish more people could really see that by having an expert user like me show them all the neat stuff it can do.

I obviously love fantasy baseball, having played in and run a league for 22 years now. But I can honestly say that I probably would have given up on fantasy baseball many years ago without Rhino Baseball. It just really adds so damn much to my enjoyment of projecting player stats, doing draft prep in the preseason and tinkering with plans/strategies, tracking my picks & progress at my annual player auction, running my HARL league in a smooth fashion, and being able to provide my league-mates with some fantastic analytical reports such as in-season dollar values, impact ratings, team point graphs, top-30 roto leaders, and other neat reports during the regular season.

Blecho Sicko

The flu bug has really bitten my family and friends hard this year. Just about everyone that I know has suffered through some bout of illness this winter. I was healthy up through March 10 and then BLAMMO! On March 11 it struck. I came down with some nasty bug, which knocked me on my tookus for almost 2 weeks. I'm still dealing with the tail-end of it as we speak.

Needless to say, being sick in bed for many days, with occasional forays into the office to take care of some pressing business needs, put the kabosh on my blog-writing for awhile.

I had planned to do some reporting on my experiences at the Cold Wars convention in Lancaster which I attended on March 7 and 8. Those reports will be coming real soon -- they'll be part of one of my next 2 blog posts. It was a great weekend. Perhaps I caught "wargamers disease" from the teeming masses of damp gamers (it was rainy that weekend)?

The Blog is Back!

So although the blog was on hiatus for the past few weeks, the Six Sided Rhinoceros still lives. Over the next few weeks, you can expect:

• A mix of miniature wargaming stuff as I report on my adventures at Cold Wars 2008, share some pictures taken by my friend Kevin (and some of my own), and discuss the cool toys that I bought there. It was a very good con for painted minis!
• A few words about the coming fantasy baseball season. I've got 2 weeks to prepare for my upcoming draft (HARL Draft Day is April 5), so my head is swimming with rotisserie thoughts right now.
• Some fresh boardgaming stuff. I've also been on a tabletop gaming hiatus for the past 5-6 weeks, simply do to lack of time and being sick. Once early-April rolls around and my fantasy baseball draft ends up in the rear-view mirror, I'm hoping to get back into the swing of board gaming and wargaming again.
• Some thoughts on Sword of Severnia playtesting. Spring sees the kickoff of playtesting of the much anticipated computer-assisted miniature wargame that I've been developing for Rhino Software for the past 2+ years. I'm probably going to go ahead and share some thoughts on that process and the wargame's development progress here. Maybe I'll even share some designer notes as well, although I've got to be careful not to reveal too much before the game is officially released (hopefully later this year).

So stick with the blog and come back often as the posting frequency should increase now that I'm healthy again!

Cheers!

Ogre Power!

Sheesh. This time of year is just crazy for me. I've been so busy with work lately that writing to this blog was put on the backburner for awhile. Hopefully, things will calm down a little so that I can write more often. Anyway...

About the only fun, game-related thing I've done in the past 2 weeks involved an eBay purchase of some painted miniatures. I won an auction for a warband of 5 Ogres from the GW Dogs of War range. These were painted by Phoenix Painting Service (Oriental Dragon Trading Co.) of Hong Kong. Yep, that's right, I took my first ever plunge into buying stuff from the orient.

These babies are colorful, well detailed, and full of character. They look just fantastic in the flesh. Here are a few pictures of the Ogre boys:

And here's a shot of their heroic leader (in the center)...

Another cool thing is that these guys are on magnetic bases, which is perfect since that's exactly how I base my figures (i.e magnetically based minis on metal-atop-wood movement stands. Niiiice.

Until tomorrow, when I hopefully squeeze in a preview of things I'm eyeing at Cold Wars this coming weekend, peace to all you Ogre Lovers out there!

Too Many Games?

Lately, when thinking about my tabletop games collection, I've been pondering the $100,000 question, "how many games is too many games?"

That's not an easy question to answer.

Most avid gamers have a hoarding mentality. They like to collect lots of games and admire what they've amassed, even if there's no realistic chance that they are going to actually get to play all of those games. TMP did a recent poll where they asked miniature wargamers if they were "compulsive hoarders", and the majority of people claimed that YES, they were indeed pack rats. I'm sure that if the same poll was presented on BoardGameGeek, the same answer would be received. The lure of collecting new games is an addiction bordering on kleptomania for many gamers.

But there comes a point in every gamer's life when reality sets in. The moment of truth may occur when you run out of shelf space to store more new games/models. For some very sad, unfortunate gamer geeks, it strikes when they're so far gone that their weekly expenditure on games out-strips their weekly spending on essentials like food and utilities. And for folks like me, it hits when the opportunities to play games with my circle of friends falls far short of the sheer variety of games that I have readily available to play.

When this ultimate breaking point is reached, what's a puzzled gamer to do? To me, the obvious answer is that it's time to streamline and downsize your game collection to much more reasonable levels. And that means selling off games, be it on eBay, at conventions or yard-sales, or selling them to your friends who had the sanity not to go overboard and amass way too many goodies. Perhaps you'll even want to go the philanthropic route and simply give away some of your games to those less fortunate. Whatever your approach, you know (and I know) you've just got to do it!

But before you undertake your own personal great games sell-off, just how many games should you keep? That number will vary greatly for everyone, but my general rule of thumb is to base it on the typical number and type of gaming sessions that you host each year.

Let's look at an example of how you can figure out this target number for yourself.

For me and my busy circle of gaming buddies, the hope is that we can hold 1 game session per week (or 52 sessions per calendar year). So far in 2008, gaming sessions have been held more like once every 2 weeks (or 50% of available weeks) . But if I factor in Monday evening gaming sessions that I've gotten to play with my family, the total has been more like 3 out of every 4 weeks (or 75%). So I'm looking at hosting roughly 40 gaming sessions per year.

If I analyze those 40 gaming sessions, how many games do we play during each session? For me, it's usually just 1 game. But occasionally, perhaps 25% of the time, we'll play a 2nd filler game that takes 30 minutes or less. So taking 40 x 1.25, I need about 50 games to cover every session I'll be hosting per year.

But realistically, you don't always play a different game each time you host a game session with your friends. There are those favorite games that you play multiple times per year. Out of my base of 50 games, perhaps 33% of the time I'm going to replay a personal favorite like Battlelore, HeroScape, Lord of the Rings Confrontation, and so forth. The math is actually a bit more complicated than this, but for easy figuring let's deduct 16 games from my base number (50 x .33) yielding a net of 34 games. I prefer to round to the nearest 5, so that means that 35 games in my collection should do the trick for me.

But I like to factor in one more thing, called the gamer's "security blanket". The idea here is to add 20% to 25% worth of padding to your target number to ensure that you've got enough extra games to feel warm & cozy. I'm going to choose 25% for myself since my target number is pretty low (under 50 games). So with 25% padding factored in, my new target number equals 45 games (or 35 x 1.25, rounded to the nearest increment of 5). For gamers with higher targets (over 100 games), you may want to use the lower 20% padding factor.

The idea of padding is simple. Perhaps you break out a new game only to discover that you absolutely hate it the 1st time you play it. You're going to sell off that puppy right away, and you need a much better game to take its place. Or maybe you want a "special game" that's only pulled out on very rare occasions (e.g. a zombie game on Halloween, or a golden oldie that you play with a childhood friend when he or she comes over for a rare visit). By having some extra games in your collection, you have the security to cover those special circumstances.

Looking at my target number of 45 games, I cry inside a little. Man, I'm going to have to take a hacksaw to a good portion of my collection! My heart has dropped three feet and my hands are starting to shake.

An aside here:
I currently have over 140 games in my tabletop games collection. Some of these are miniature wargames that I own strictly for research purposes. I'm a game designer and like to understand and compare & contrast other wargame systems in an effort to find those game bits that I love, elements of play that I really dislike, pitfalls to avoid, and things that encourage me to devise new concepts/mechanics that haven't ever been done before (or at least done in the way that I envision doing them).

If you ignore all of my minis games, I still have over 100 board games and card games in my collection. Apparently, I'm a bit of a hoarder too! Yikes.

In order to get down to 45 core games, I could get rid of all my board games rated 6 or less (on my personal 1 to 10 rating scale). Even then, I would still be a little bit over my 45 game limit. But there are some well-rated classics that I've kept around for nostalgia's sake, and I could probably part with them simply because I don't foresee getting to play them again. I'm unlikely to ever play Sports Illustrated Baseball or SI Football again. Cutting games like that would probably be enough to get me down to the limit.

What really bothers me is that there are almost 100 new games on my BGG wishlist. For every new game that I add, I'll need to purge an older game from my collection in order to keep things balanced. That brings me to the stark realization that unless I really envision liking a new game and foresee playing it multiple times with my current circle of gaming friends or family, then it's just not worth buying.

So unless I can suddenly finagle more gaming sessions, and consequently increase the number of playable games in my collection, then I'm going to have to purge the wheat from the chaff.

On the plus side, that means focusing my gaming attention on playing the games rated 10, 9, 8, and 7 in my collection. In essence, we're talking quality over quantity. And after all, playing good games is really what it's all about.

On the downside, I'm going to have to get choosier in my game-buying habits. Taking chances on iffy games is not something that I want to do if it means sacrificing a well known, quality game already in my collection. When you're an addictive game hoarder, it's extremely tough to just say no. Perhaps someone will invent MethaMeeple for us addicts? A little injection of this drug before you browse BGG or surf on over to ThoughtHammer, FunAgain, Time Well Spent, FairPlay, or The Warstore and you're good to go! No more hand shakes and nervous eye ticks.

So there you have it. Once Spring rolls around and my spare time frees up, I will begin the purge. Visions of eBay will dance in my head. But then, maybe my fledgling game club will grow and that 45 game limit will grow to 50-60 games? I can only hope for the best.

By the way, what's your personal games target number? I'd love to hear from you Six Sided Rhinoceros readers out there.