AN IMPORTANT BLOOD BOWL ANNOUNCEMENT!
The following announcement will also appear in Journal 45, which will be out in the U.K. in August.
The Future Of Blood Bowl
It's been a just about a year now since I joined Fanatic, and boy what a roller coaster ride it's been! I must admit I was a bit like a kid in a candy shop when I started at Fanatic; for me it was the perfect job, and gave me the chance to do some more development work on
my favourite game systems. To say I got a little bit carried away would be something of an understatement!
There were two places where, with hindsight, I can see that I got rather carried away. One was the Adeptus Titanicus II rules for Epic, and the other was the 4th
Edition rules for Blood Bowl. The mistake I made in both cases was to make sweeping changes to the game systems as almost the first thing I did - or to put it another way, I just did too much too soon. The changes I made left Epic players and Blood Bowl coaches reeling; they went from a situation where GW did nothing at all for the games for
several years, to almost the opposite extreme where they found themselves confronted by numerous changes and modifications. It also has to be said that some of the changes would have
benefited from rather more rigorous playtesting. Oh hubris, your name is games designer!
So, suitably chagrined, I have decided to backtrack a bit. The effect this has on the Epic
rules was explained in the last Epic magazine and the rest of this
editorial will explain what the future holds for Blood Bowl, in terms of the game rules at least.
In a nutshell, I have decided to make the 4th edition rules changes 'experimental rules' rather than 'new rules'. This means that they are no longer an official change to the BB rules which you must use; instead they should be seen as a set of suggested modification
we would like you to use in order to help us test and develop them. The 4th edition rules, or parts of them, may become official 'new rules' at a later date, more of which below, but
only once coaches all over the world have had a chance to feedback to us about them.
To help me decide what changes should be made to the Blood Bowl game rules, I have gathered together a select group of Blood Bowl aficionados who I have called the 'Blood Bowl Rules Committee'. This august group consists of myself, Fanatic's own Andy Hall, Milo Sharp, John Kipling Lewis, Chester Zeshonski, Stephen Babbage and Dean Maki. It's their job to help me decide whether an experimental rule becomes an 'official new rule' or an 'unofficial house rule'.
Our plan is to have one month each year where we discuss the rules of the game, and then at the end of that month announce any official changes that we have decided should be made. These changes will apply from then on. This will be the only time
that official changes can be made to the Blood Bowl rules, and such changes will only be passed by a majority vote of the committee. Note that we may publish errata or Q&A
after October if a new rule is poorly worded, and we may publish additional experimental rules during the
year; we just won't be able to change the intent or add further official new rules for another year. We have decided to make October each year the 'rules change month', in honour of the publication of the 4th edition rules in BBMag 1 which was published back in October last year.
I like this system for a number of reasons. For a start it will allow coaches who think there is a problem with the game or something that needs changing to lobby and argue
their case to the committee. It also means that decisions will be made by a group of experts who will consider any changes very carefully indeed. It means that any changes will have a least a year of testing before they can possibly be modified
again, this avoiding constant tinkering with the game rules. Last, but not least it means any changes to the rules of Blood Bowl will by people that play the game as well as those that help sell it,
which has to be a healthy state of affairs if you ask me.
But that is not all, oh no that is not all, for I have also asked the members of the rules committee to help me set up an organisation we plan to call the 'Blood Bowl Coaches
Society', or BBCS for short. Our aim is to help create an independent organisation that acts as a focal point for the Blood Bowl hobby. The BBCS will work with Fanatic in term
of developing the rules of the game, as already described above, but more importantly it will encourage the formation of Blood Bowl leagues and the holding of Blood Bowl
tournaments all over the world. It's still early days yet, and to start off with the committee will be concentrating on helping me with the game rules, but expect to hear much, much
more about the BBCS over the coming months. | 
