Subject: CE status report From: njs@peerless.dnrc.bell-labs.com (Nicholas Sauer) Date: 1997/06/19 Message-Id: <5obdat$b7l@nntpa.cb.lucent.com> Newsgroups: rec.games.board.ce As Tom mentioned in his previous post, CE was designed by a group of people. They use the group name of Future Pastimes for their design team. The core three members of the group are Jack Kittredge, Bill Eberle, and Pete Olotka, but includes others such as Ned Horn and the individual Tom mentioned (whose name escapes me for the moment). These are the same people who were Eon games. They used the Future Pastimes name on most of their externally published (i.e. non-Eon published) designs. For the rabid completists out there, this would include Avalon Hill's Dune and its two expansions, Ravensburger's Eins, Zwei, Drei which they were not actually creditted with on the box or rules (and which, I would argue, is probably a desirable thing anyway), and two software games called Lords of Conquest (Borderlands for PC/Commodore) and Weather Tamers. Also, Pete and Greg (Pete's son) Olotka did a game for the nature company based upon their Terratopia comics. While I don't think it carries the Future Pastimes name (I would have to check my copy to be sure), it definitely has the "look and feel" of a FP product. Anyway, in an attempt to save David some leg-work, I called Pete Olotka and ended up speaking with Greg for a bit regarding CE. There is a sort of good news/bad news situation regarding the game. First of all, the rights have reverted back to the Future Pastimes folks. The bad news is that there are currently no game companies interested in picking up the game for publication. However, the FP guys are still interested in licensing such a product to any game company interested in publishing it. The good news (and where the FP people seem to be focusing most of their efforts at the moment) is on the software front. According to Greg, there is pretty serious talk of getting a software version of the game produced that would allow gamers to play over the internet. Greg seemed to feel that this was a more profitable effort than a manual board game version of the game (which is why most of the effort is probably focused in this direction). So, that is where things stand at the moment. As a side note, as Cedric mentioned, there was a completely new set of alien power art done by SF artist David Cherry for the game. I got a chance to see this at Origins last year (thanks to Tom Smith for bringing it out). The word that leaps to my mind to describe it is "stunning". The aliens really looked alien. While there were a few "human" looking aliens, the vast majority where completely non-anthropomorphic. There was one (I think it was Wrack or Assassin) that really stood out in my mind. It looked like some sort of horrific cross between a face-hugger (from Alien/ Aliens) and a spider with no obvious eyes/sensory organs (which probably lent a great deal to its intimidating appearance). In any case, I mentioned this to Greg and, he is looking into whether the art could be used for this software version of the game. These where the highlights of our conversation. If anyone has any further questions please feel free to ask and I'll try to respond (in a timely fashion, even). Nick Sauer