We’re so excited to exhibit at our very first Gen Con! Find Parallel Games in booth #1641 with our friends at Artana.
Stop by our booth to demo or purchase City of the Big Shoulders or to check out this sweet, limited edition lapel pin we’re selling! We’re so excited to be at the con, and we’re looking forward to the best four days in gaming, so be sure to stop by and say hello!
Hey friends,
We got some fresh updates for you, hot off the presses. 🙂
Origins was a blast! The con started off with Edward and I crashing what I assummed to be a very important meeting between Clay and the legendary game designer and force behind Winsome Games, John Bohrer. 🙂
and thanks to our friends at Tabletop Game Cafe we had booth space to exhibit and show off the game on a budget.
At lot of people stopped by to take a look at the first production copy from the factory. It was great to meet you all in person. Sadly, we didn’t yet have enough to sell but we did get a chance to get a few games in with some backers and supporters.
The Capstone Games room was cold, cold, cold so Clef from Punchboard Paradise (@Punchboarders) convinced me to go down to the Origins merch booth and buy a hoodie. He’s a trendsetter, that one. Clef also was kind enough to introduce me to Irish Gauge (which I preordered) and to Navegador (which may be the first rondel-based game I’ve played that I liked). 🙂
My three favorite moments from the show is:
#1 The family that rushed to the booth to buy a copy “while they still could” after checking out the game in the Origins Board Room game library and playing through 2 rounds. That’s like the best compliment that a game designer can get and it really brought a smile to my face to see them later on playing a second time after the exhibit hall closed. 🙂
#2 Dinner with Edward and Jess from Heavy Cardboard at The Pearl in the Short North along side my girlfriend. It was the nicest, low-key, heartwarming, and storytelling experience I’ve had yet with industry folks. It’s great to connect with other creators as people and just laugh and have a good time. Something is telling me, it might become a bit of a tradition. 🙂
#3 The short form interview with Edward, where Emily finally had a chance to talk about art direction and give input on her perspective for helping make this game a reality. Emily has been so pivotal to this project, and unfortunately she doesn’t get all the screen and air time she really deserves. Her passion for creating great games really shows in this interview. Keep an eye out for her on HeavyCardboard.com. (it should be posted in a few days)
Lastly, we were able to meet up with Tommy Hong at Meeple Realty and hand off a production copy of the game, so that he can get started on a wooden insert. Keep an eye out for that one. We should have more news and take pre-orders for that in a few weeks. 🙂
Well… that’s kind of true. What’s more important is all the important bills have all been paid. We’ve paid our final invoice to Panda and to Quartermaster Logistics. It’s a bit surreal to tell a bank teller you need to wire over 50 grand to someone (and then over 40 grand to someone else, right after that). 🙂
So we’re all paid up at this point! The games are done. They’re being kitted at the factory and loaded on pallets right now. Soon they’ll be on the boat, and not long after — on your doorstep.
It’s the final stretch now!
So… we’ve had it planned for awhile to sport some kick-ass poker chips that match the theme of the game at Gencon in August. When we learned that Roxley was launching their Iron Clay campaign we reached out to them for a bit of a partnership. They’re going to hook us up with chip sets for the show!!! As a backer of the Brass campaign, I can tell you these chips are gorgeous and I absolutely love them. So of course, I backed the Iron Clay Campaign going on right now at the 400 chip Wooden Chest level, and I think you should pick some up too. If you decide to go with the 200 chip set, make sure you also get a sleeve of the $2k chips because it will help a lot during final payouts but otherwise it should be enough for the game. If you play a lot of economic games or think you might want to get into 18xx then the 400 chip set is the way to go.
Check out their campaign by clicking on the image below.
Thank you again for your support and for backing City of the Big Shoulders!
We hope to see you at Gencon!
Cheers,
Raymond
Parallel
It’s official, Parallel will be at Origins! We will be at the con demoing City of the Big Shoulders for a limited time.
Visit us in the TableTop Game Cafe booth (#358) on Friday 10am–2pm and Saturday 2pm–6pm. We will be demoing City of the Big Shoulders, fresh off the presses! Stop by and say hello!
Hey friends,
I’ve got a few updates to share. Well… more than a few. 🙂
Things have been moving steadily along, and without hiccups since we approved the Pre-Production Copy a few weeks ago. We’ve been in the mass production stage for the last couple weeks and are now prepping freight shipping with Panda, OTX, and QML. So all our planning up front paid off and it’s smooth sailing (literally) from here. 🙂
We will have an MPC at Origins Game Fair, and will be demoing the game out of the Tabletop Game Cafe local retailer booth. Please come see us and check out the game. You won’t be disappointed!
You guys really stepped up on this one. Thanks to all the help and hard work from the folks who offered to help us, we’ve finished the first round drafts of the rulebook for Italian, Polish, Thai, Swedish, Chinese, Greek, Dutch, Portuguese, and French.
I’d like to introduce you to a few of the folks who are coordinating the rulebook translations.
Unfortunately, the Spanish, German, Korean and Russian rulebooks were not able to be finished in the first round drafts although some progress has been made on all but the Russian rulebook. If you want to help, please shoot me a private message through Kickstarter. We are offering a free game to our principal translators who help draft the first version, and help with editing based on feedback from our backers. 🙂
For the rulebooks that are done with the first round of drafting and editing, there is another way you can help. Please click any of the links below and review them. If you spot any errors or think there is a clearer way to state a rule, please leave a comment in the Google doc and our translators will work your feedback into the rulebook. Once everything looks good, Emily will take these translations and drop them into the graphical rulebook, which we will publish on our website and on BGG. 🙂
This is sort of the elephant in the room at the moment. It’s on everyone’s minds. I’ve heard from a few backers that some other creators are raising shipping prices last minute or asking for more money to help out. We won’t be doing that!
When we budgeted shipping and freight costs before launching the campaign we put in a huge contingency on our costs to cover this in case it happened, and to cover other things that might cause a problem too.
Unfortunately, these tarrifs will end up costing us nearly $8,000 in added costs that we hoped we would not have had to pay. It is harming our business, because that is money we could have spent attending another gaming convention, putting towards the second print run or investing into art on our next game and if any other things pop up in the process, well… now our contingency is gone and we’ll be forced to take out loans as a result. It’s a really painful pill to swallow, but we will get through this!
This will probably lead us to increasing the prices on games we publish in the future. We’re not happy about that, but we want to grow Parallel into a truly special tabletop game publisher, and that means we need to make a profit on the games we make. I think as a result of these tariffs we’re likely to see retail pricing of all tabletop games to climb 5-10% over the next 3 years in the US. 🙁
For now, just be confident that your games will arrive sometime in August, and things will continue moving along gracefully in the meantime. 🙂
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That’s all for now. To summarize: Production is good. Shipping is good. Translation is moving along, and we need your help. Tarrifs are bad, but we’ll manage and get through it. 🙂
Thank you again for supporting us and our dream to make excellent, beautiful, and challenging games. It means the world to us, that we get to do this and it’s all because of you! <3
Don’t forget to come see us at Origins and say “Hi!”.
Cheers,
Raymond
Panda sent us our PPC copy of City of the Big Shoulders! Check out the photos below!
Well friends,
Here we are. The final hours of our campaign. We’ve raised more than double our funding goal, and unlocked every bit of content and upgrades we wanted to put in the game …and then some! Thank you!
I have held this moment — right now — as a dream of mine since 2006 after studying under Dave Arneson in college and falling in love with modern board games.
Two years later, after reading a whitepaper by K. Robert Gutschera I started working on a game called Red Tape, which I used as an experimental platform to study game mechanics, and multiplayer political dynamics in games. Meanwhile, I worked as a computer programmer in enterprise and government environments.
It didn’t take me long to realize how much I disliked doing software development in large organizations. So in 2010, I quit my job for the glory of the tech startup scene.
I reached out to a local entrepreneurial hub here in Columbus and I found several mentors who guided me on how I could build a successful technology company. To help pay my way through the startup world I worked 14 hour days. Six hours each day I spent consulting, and eight hours each day on my own projects.
In 2012, I met Dirk Knemeyer when he hired me as a consultant for a tech company he founded. While I did work for Dirk, I continued to work on crazy tech startup ideas. Crazy… because they were doomed to fail before I even began. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time, but you know what they say about hindsight.
I fell into this grind for nearly 6 years, but as I continued to work on Red Tape and other games I slow (very slowly) realized that my heart just wasn’t in technology startups either.
My heart was in the hobby. I made excuses to duck away from meetings, to go to gaming groups, to go to conventions. I stayed up all night playing werewolf and slept in the next day, missing important appointments. The startups I was working on I started working on less and less. I spent as much free time as I could studying, playing and designing games.
I eventually learned that Dirk was working on publishing his own games he designed through a company he created called Conquistador Games. So, I approached him and asked if he would be interested in helping me publish Red Tape. After playing the game together, we came to an agreement. We would work together to develop and design the game and he would publish it under his new Artana brand.
Somewhere in the middle of our design partnership on Corrupted Kingdoms, I pitched him another idea. If I remember correctly, it was one of those conversations you have as you leave the office and end up in the parking lot chatting.
“Hey Dirk, What if someone merged an 18xx game with a euro-game?”
“That could be interesting, Ray. You should try it and let me know how it goes.”
Meanwhile I began helping out at the Artana booth at Origins and Gencon. There I met people like John Coveyou, Nils Herzmann, Matt Fantastic, J.R. Honeycutt, Donna Prior and Morgan Dontanville. I met the folks at BGG. I met a ton of podcasters and media folks. I even got a chance to play the tail end of a playtest of a Scythe Expansion with Jamey Stegmeier. It was a good time.
Then in 2016 Corrupted Kingdoms came out… and it bombed. I was disappointed but Dirk never wavered, he never flinched. He just gave me words of encouragement, and advice.
“The first one is always rough, Ray. Don’t sweat it.” 🙂
A few months later, I read “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg, went to CABS on a Friday night, sat down with our group of train gamers and played 1846. I thought “Hmm… why’s Chicago so great, anyway?”.
Not long after, I started working on City of the Big Shoulders. A few months into the initial design of the game, Joe Wiggins reached out to me and asked if I wanted to come over to a playtest party that Capstone was holding here in Columbus.
There, I got to meet all the great folks at Captstone. Clay, Joe, Tim, Justin and I sat down to play my game. They loved it and wished me good luck. Clay told me to reach out to him if I ever needed his help with anything. Little did we know at the time we’d be launching two awesome games on Kickstarter at the same time. 🙂
Soon after that party I met Emily. We spent the next 2 years developing the game, working on the artwork, and demoing it at Gencon and Origins and now, finally we are here.
It’s inspiring to me how life tends to lay this groundwork for a path you don’t really realize you’re on and yet when you are on the wrong path life tends to throw you lemons. It’s a beautiful and tragic serendipity.
Carl Sandburg once wrote that nothing happens, unless first we dream. I think dreams are the things that guide our path, and lay foundations if only we learn to listen to them.
Thank you so much for joining me on this path. At this precious moment, because of you, my dream is a dream no more.
Now, I think we got some work to do. 🙂
Cheers, Raymond
