Do your research!

I have a new lesson for you today.  Make sure you do your research before you get locked into a project.  You don't want to launch a game that is grounded in real history to be historically inaccurate.


I played a game on the old TRS-80 back in the early 80's called Taipan. The player is the Captain of a ship trading goods from the Japanese city of Nagasaki to many ports all the way down to Batavia (know known as Jakarta).  The game was inspired by the novel Tai-Pan and I am almost positive that the game inspired future games like Sid Meier's Pirates.

For years I thought Taipan meant Captain.  But I just recently discovered that I have been wrong all this time.

tai·pan

¹    [tahy-pan]  Show IPA

noun

(in China) the head or owner of a foreign business establishment.

Because of this I am going to make some minor changes to the back story.  Also, the Captain Cards I was working on will have a much wider variety of looks.  Now I can have them be English, Russian, as well as any of the Asian nationalities from Japanese, Chinese, and Thai.


In addition to this I have decided to allow you to give me some feedback on what you think.  I have created a Poll that you can add your voice to what themes are interesting to you.  Feel free to select multiple entries.

DM-Press Interview

I just finished my quick interview with David Craddock of DM-Press.  He has been working on a book about the glory days of Blizzard north and the development of the Diablo games.  Having just spent almost 10 years there, I had a lot to say.

The original Diablo box cover.  Classic!

Not sure when the interview will be up but you can go there now and find out all about the book "Stay a while and Listen" slated to be out sometime...in the future.

http://dm-press.com/books.php

On the Taipan front, the game is ready for the next play test session, I just have to find the time and players who have the time to play.  In the mean time I am still working on more art and continuing to work on the rule book changes which can be found here:
TAIPAN RULES
Feel free to check them out, make some comments, suggestions or if you spot any glaring problems that I have overlooked, please let me know.