BLOG: He is not that dude

Apparently, he likes to make things harder. I mean, he could just take few new ideas for cards, mix them, put into one box and sell for 10 bucks per copy.

But, no! Ignacy Trzewiczek is this dude that tells stories, huh? So he had to come up with something more sophisticated, than just this, like, for instance, to plan ahead few expansions and build the whole story arc around them. Merge rules and new abilities with the history of the whole freaking universe of Alien Artifacts. Yeah, that sounds like him. He put it all on the paper, he looked at it and he smiled.

That’s gonna be a ton of work.
That’s gonna be a lot of fun.
Let’s go for it, he said.

***

Ignacy approached Rafał Szyma, art director at Portal Games, old-time RPG player, a writer, a dude who put a ton of thoughts into each faction in Alien Artifacts when ordering artwork back then in 2017. Believe it or not, but these were never just random pictures. Each faction, each portrait, each player board illustration had a ton of background story created. Rafał just never felt like telling the world about it.

You saw a pretty picture.
He saw the whole faction, the empire, the culture, the people.

That’s why Ignacy approached him. ‘Stop this bullshit.’ he said. ‘You have it all created, you put all the work building worlds and literally nobody – including me – knows about it. You gonna write about these factions. You gonna write short fiction for our website. Let people know more.’

He said ‘Yes.’

For the next few weeks, we published a couple of short fiction pieces. Rafał was setting the stage for Ignacy.

Setting stage? For Ignacy? How’s that?

***

The big story arc. It all starts with the discovery. Community faction mines the abandoned planet and finds something – mysterious, old, powerful resource.

Rafał’ was setting the stage – short fiction catches up with the big story arc and suddenly everything clicks. You buy the expansion, and you get 18 new resource cards, the cards mentioned in the lore of the game. These powerful, mysterious resources you read about.

You get new ships that can harvest, you get new planets that have a new resource, you have new alien artifacts. It all clicks. It all makes sense.

***

Ignacy could just take few new ideas for cards, mix them, put into one box and sell for 10 bucks per copy. But he is not that type of dude…

Links
Link to the expansion announcement
Link to the game page with all the stories


Originally posted on BTTS Blog on BGG Forum: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/74492/he-not-dude

Welcome to PORTAL GAMES

We are bookworms. Movie maniacs. Story addicts. We grew up reading Tolkien, Howard, Herbert, Dick, Lem… We were watching Willow, Blade Runner, Never Ending Story, Robin Hood…

And yet, we don’t write books… we don’t make movies. We don’t make those things, because we make games. We make games that tell stories.