I
went out hawking my wares today -- there's a local gaming group in my town that plays Warhammer 40k, and Elena and I met with them to see if I could drum of any interest in Blackletter. It's a funny thing getting in with these communities; I do love a lot of things about Warhammer (mostly aesthetically), but I really can't stand the "game talk" that goes on about it. The way the designers of the game constrain the kinds of conversations that can be had about it is pretty incredible. It's always about which armies are good in the meta, about pining for the company to do something to improve the speaker's army, about which models are illegal now, complaints about the current edition, excitement about some new combination of abilities -- I find this kind of thing dreadfully dull, and think this is how hostages speak. The "game" is not an independently existing entity that players may use at their pleasure, it is a sort of excreted by-product of a corporation, at whose teat these gamers must suckle for their sustenance. Its ever-changing fluidity is the point, from a profit perspective; it is the well to which one must always be returning.
Anyway, I only got to play a game of Blackletter with Elena since the rest of the group was taken up with playing some indie RPG or other, but I got a couple of 40k guys interested, and hope to play some games with them in the coming weeks. I really do think that people are hungry for another way. A lot of 40k gamers go to smaller skirmish games in order to get at some actually fun rules, but I think there is a dearth of games that can handle relatively large armies with intuitive rules. I'm hoping this is where I can come in. We'll see what they think.