Small Press Interviews: Eye-Level Entertainment

Now is a great time to be a small-press game publisher. Printing is both reasonably priced and high quality. Thus, even if you don’t license your games to Kosmos, Rio Grande, or Mayfair, you can choose to self-publish a game of entirely professional quality. We’ve been seeing this trend for years on the European side of things. Doris & Frank, Richard Breese, and Andrea Meyer are just a few of the German publishers who self-publish well-beloved games.

Meanwhile, over in the United States, there have been small-press publishers ever since the hobbyist game movement got really rolling in the 1970s with miniatures, war games, and RPGs. However in recent years we’re seeing something different: US small-press publishers that are publishing more European-style games.

This week I’ve talked with one of the small-press publishers that’s caught my eye, Eye-Level Entertainment, producers of Nature of the Beast and E.T.I.. Continue reading

RIP, Gary Gygax

On Tuesday, March 4, 2008 Ernest Gary Gygax passed away. He was the designer of Dungeons & Dragons as well as several older miniature games and several newer RPGs. After some problems in the 1980s when he was forced out of TSR — the company he created — Gary Gygax was able to rediscover his place in the roleplaying world. In the last twenty years of his life he was widely recognized and lauded as the old gentleman of gaming. In the last decade he participated on the Internet in many forums and well knew how much he was loved and appreciated by his fans. That’s more than most of us can ask for in life.

Today I mourn Gary Gygax, because he’s quite simply, the reason I game.

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