A Conversation with Chipco

Curtis was intense and passionate as he explained to me what the design goal had been when working on Fantasy Rules!, Chipco's fantasy ruleset. "The great games for me were Tactics II, chess, backgammon, bridge, go. You can learn them in one session, five minutes to learn, but they take a lifetime to master. That's what we wanted to accomplish with our rules."

Another goal was to write rules which were clear and unambiguous. "There's a language barrier between the UK and the US," he said. "There are all these vague rules by the Brits. We didn't want that. We want to fight the battle, not the rules."

"Hordes of the Things was really awful," said Curtis. "Magic is just artillery. The game feels too restricted. Heroes are only bigger, badder units."

"Battlesystem missed the point too," he added. "Fantasy battle games need roleplaying. You don't want to stop the game to look up obtuse rules." He said that complex morale rules weren't necessary. "If guys run away, they're never coming back!"

"Everyone jokes about Magic the Gathering," said Curtis. "Do gaming a favor and kill a Magic player, and all that. But those rules were elegant and easy, they were creative, and the games were short - under an hour. We can learn something from that."

Also, he said that it was essential to get new blood into the hobby, to convert some of the Magic players to miniatures. "Most games don't have the visual appeal that Magic does. Where are those players going to go?" The answer, Curtis told me, was to make short-playing strategy games which young people - as young as twelve - could master.

He said he was opposed to long games taking seven or eight hours, in which some of the players might not even get to move their pieces. "Two hours max is the right playing time," he said. "That means in one evening you can play three games and eat a pizza."

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