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Guy frequently keeps this blog updated with thoughts, challenges, interviews and more!

Category: What I’m Working On

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It is an exciting time here at the Audatia headquarters.

ringen
Guy experiencing some Ringen action.

We are busy working away on the Liechtenauer Expansion deck, and the Patron’s own character deck, which is also based on Liechtenauer’s system. I thought you might like to know how we are handling the specifics of the Liechtenauer system, and making these decks compatible with the existing four (Galeazzo, Boucicault, and Agnes character decks, and the Armour expansion).

The guards were easy enough. We started by mapping the similar ones onto each other; Alber to porta di ferro la mezana, for instance. Vom tag is not posta di donna destra, but is sufficiently similar that with some tweaking of what it can do, it’s close enough for a card game. Posta di donna destra gives you +2 strength, because it is chambered so far back; Vom Tag gives you speed instead, because it is chambered further forward.

The strikes likewise; for our purposes, the difference between a right oberhau and a mandritto fendente are so small that they cannot be applied in the game. As the original German sources don’t have convenient terminology distinctions regarding left and right, we have called all mandritti “right” and all roversi “left”. So “left mittelhau” for “roverso mezano”, and so on. We balanced the decks differently though, and allowed some German blows to be used differently to their Italian equivalents, to take into account the overall preferences of the systems as I understand them.

The skill cards were where the real action lay. We began, of course, with the Meisterhau. Can’t have a Liechtenaur deck without them!

Zornhau ort will work exactly like a counterattack of mandritto fendente, without the tedious necessity of having more celeritas; you’ll need prudentia instead. (Yes, there was no way round keeping the Fiorean virtues; I don’t think Master Liechtenauer would mind.)

Krumphau will work similarly, in that you can parry and strike with a single card; and of course you can use it to attack a left ochs. Because the Master says so!

Schielhau again works like a counterattack (because it is one!) though it will (uniquely) require that the opponent is stronger; it’s supposed to work against the “buffalo” opponent.

Zwerchau will work like another counterattack, of course, and we have figured out how to let it continue from the other side (helicopter of death-style) if the first one is parried. This is one of my favourite cards now.

Scheitelhau was the hardest in many ways, as it is an attack, and also a sort of continuation; basically an angulation around Kron or Frontale.

Then the real fun began. How to incorporate Indes? We came up with this:

Play Indes to take initiative as attacker, after defender’s parry, so you do not have to wait for their riposte; therefore works like audatia entry, but you can continue with any eligible strike or stretto remedy. That action can be countered normally.

Vor and Nach are implicit in the turn-based system of the game; we will make sure that these terms are in the rules, but couldn't find a sensible way to make cards out of them. We also squeezed in Fuhlen, Ringen, and some special plays that the Patron asked for; currently TOP SECRET.

The Patron considers his options...
The Patron considers his TOP SECRET options…

Winden, Zucken, Duplieren and Mutieren fit nicely into the stretto plays; my understanding of the two systems suggests that where Fiore might enter, the Germans might wind, bind and do some funky actions on the blade. Winden is the German general remedy to the stretto situation, and, with Zucken, basically allows you to get back to largo plays from the stretto, because the strikes that Winden and Zucken make here are countered like any other thrust or cut respectively.

Don’t worry though; our Liechtenauer-trained players will have some pommel strikes and other close-quarter mayhem available to them.

We are play-testing the decks now, and Jussi, artist of DOOM, is working on the images as we speak. So while we are late, we are on our way!

Are you thinking about starting a crowdfunding campaign? Then this post is for you.

Crowdfunding is both an extremely useful and effective way to raise funds for a project, and a deadly trap in which your reputation can be permanently destroyed. It is also a rather new development, and therefore many people are trying it for the first time. Which may be why, so far, only 43.5% of Kickstarter projects have succeeded, and, according to this article, less than 10% of Indiegogo campaigns (my platform of choice) make it. I have run four campaigns so far, with gradually increasing success: my first “failed”, raising only 37% of its target; my second raised 102%, my third, 249% and my current one  has two weeks left to run and is already at 489%. [Update: it finally raised 13,510€, 676% of its goal, and the book was published in July.] I am planning a series of blog posts about what I have learned along the way. As with any art, there are fundamental principles and specific skills. I will outline the principles here, and cover the skills in later instalments.

There are lots of different platforms (Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Funded By Me (see here for a helpful list)); types of campaign;  types of funding; and so on. In this my first post on the subject I thought I'd start with the foundation that is common to all successful crowdfunding campaigns regardless of type or platform. Three basic principles that if you put them first, will dramatically help your campaign succeed, and even if it should it fail, follow these guidelines and the failure will do you no harm. I cannot overstate the importance of this last point: run a campaign badly and any future efforts will also fail. Run it well, and even if it fails, you can pick yourself up and try again with no harm done.

The three principles of successful crowdfunding as I understand it are:

1) Transparency

2) Credibility

3) Value.

Let's take them one at a time.

Transparency

This is where it all starts. You must be completely open and honest about what your project is about, who you are, what you are doing, what mistakes you make, everything. Your potential backers will recognise transparency in the way you present the campaign, which will enhance your credibility; they will also reward transparency with trust when you make mistakes, fail to meet obligations, or in any way err. And you will err, often and publicly, if you are a) human and b) doing something new. You can survive almost any mistake, so long as it is a) honest; b) you are transparent about it; c) you apologise; and d) you offer restitution. For a trivial but amusing example: I wasn’t 100% sure we would get the pdf version of my game, Audatia, out on the deadline of 20th March. So I promised 10 push-ups for every day we were late. We were a day late. Here are the push-ups.

Warn your backers immediately of any likely delay or problem; imagine the worst-case scenario; estimate accordingly, and be transparent about your progress. People hate being kept in the dark more than they hate being let down.

Credibility

You need to establish not only that your project is way cool, but also that you (or your team, ideally) are able to make it happen. So, credibility is about three things:

1) your skillset

2) your ability to raise the funds

3) your ability to execute the plan in the time and with the money specified.

Your skillset must be clearly sufficient for the task in hand. Let’s take this example: the Roost. The video here shows the designer physically making the high-tech laptop stand. No question about his skills. Or here: the choose your own adventure Hamlet. The video makes it 100% clear that this chap can do what he says he will do. For my own projects; nobody would doubt my ability to write a decent book and get it to market, nor teach swordsmanship. But when we were raising funds for Audatia there was no reason to believe I could design a card game, and quite right too. I couldn’t. But we didn’t go live until we had a playable draft of the game; the campaign was not for me to make a card game: it was to pay for the artwork and printing. Just to make sure, we had draft artwork for some cards already. Backers could see what artwork they would be getting. No credibility problem.

People generally won’t back a campaign that they think won’t make its target, so setting a realistic goal works both ways. You must raise enough money to get the job done, or you end up bankrupt, credibility shot to hell. But if your target is too high, people will be reluctant to back it because they don’t want to get on board a disappointing train. We had this problem with Audatia: the goal was 23,000€. That’s a lot of money for a first-time game company. We could see on message boards etc that there were people who wanted the game but thought we’d never hit such a high target, and so didn’t back us until after we crashed through it. I’ll deal with the art of goal-setting in a separate post, but bear in mind here: your goal must be credible on both fronts: enough to get the job done, but not unrealistically (incredibly?) high.

Then you have to lay out for your backers how this money is enough, combined with your skillset, to make good on your promises. Your personal credibility is at stake.

Value

Ultimately, your campaign is selling something. It could be a physical product, a service, or a feeling of creating a better world. Whatever it is, you have to offer value. A reason for people to buy your thing now. A great example of this is giveaways to backers only; sure, you can buy this in the shops in a year’s time, but our backers not only get it first, they also get this other cool stuff. Wait to buy my longsword book, sure, it’ll be on Amazon by July. But buy it now and you also get most of my back catalogue as free ebooks, and a whole new book not yet published. Good value, if you like swordy books. [Update: This is no longer available, of course.]

For most backers, in my experience, the key added value is that they become part of the process. You, the artist, producer or whatever, need them to make it happen. Your magic widget or fabby-do zombie film, cannot happen without them. They get to be Lorenzo dei Medici, you the humble artisan (eg Michaelangelo). Be sure to let them know that you need them. It’s the truth, after all.

At the moment, I am getting on with making good on my campaign promises (we are working on fulfilling one of Audatia’s stretch goals right now, the Lady Deck, and I’m editing Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers and Martial Artists), and so am not writing the next Crowdfunding post just yet. While you are waiting for the next instalment, you might find these other resources on the subject useful.

Tim Ferriss: how to raise 100,000 in 10 days… well, maybe! Lots of useful stuff here though.

Wikihow: not a bad place to start.

Indiegogo‘s own “playbook”.

Plastic Hallway: how not to do it! Some good advice.

If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, please share it with your friends by hitting one of the buttons below. The speed at which the next post on this subject (how to set your perks for maximum effect, which is the blackest of black crowdfunding arts) gets written up, will be proportional to the number of hits this one gets.

Thanks for reading, and for sharing!

I am learning modern Italian. It's about time too I hear you cry. And rightly so.

So I have changed the name of this blog from Ragion de Spada, which is how Vadi spelled it in his 1480s manuscript, to Ragion della Spada, which is still odd usage to the modern eye, but there is only so much violence  I can do to Vadi before I'd cry. Violence with Vadi, now that doesn't make me cry at all…

I am about to go down to Australia to swing swords about, so I hope to see my Antipodean readers down there; I have a post that will go up automatically while I'm down there, but I'll probably be quiet after that until I get back.

No need to heave that sigh of relief quite so loudly.

Ciao bambini!

 

 

 

I have been working for the last nine months on creating a teaching tool for students of Fiore's art: a card game called Audatia. The game has been designed from the ground up as a way to make the abstract elements of Fiore's system, such as the terminology and the overall tactical structure, easier to learn. I know next to nothing about designing games, so of course I hired a professional, and as readers of this blog should know by now, I didn't do it all by myself. I have been working as part of a team, and my job is to keep the game faithful to the Art it is intended to serve.

Over the weekend we took the game to the gamers, by setting up playtesting at Ropecon. We were supposed to be on for two hours a day, over the three days, but three of us were at it non-stop for an average of 5 hours a day. Folk were queueing up to have a go, and many came back for more. It was fantastic. We learned a lot about what we had got right, and more importantly, what we had got wrong.

The best negative review we got was from an ex-student of mine, who said: “it's too realistic. You might as well just pick up a sword and fight.” Not an error I intend to fix.

It also proved itself as a teaching tool; the players, usually with no swordsmanship experience, quickly learned what an opponent in tutta porta di ferro could do, and what their best option was if when the blades meet you are in the zogho stretto. If tutta porta di ferro and zogho stretto are all Greek to you, then you need this game!

In class last night, a student asked a question about the uses of posta breve based on her experience playing the game at Ropecon; a question that might never have occurred to her if she had not played. That gave me the theme for the class, during which I realised that the game needed a tweak to make its representation of the guard more accurate. So the game proved its use as a teaching tool, and not only that, it set up a virtuous cycle of learning and development.

We have clearly hit some kind of a nerve, as we have been storming ahead on our indigogo project, having raised over 7,000 euros in under 7 days. If you haven't backed us yet, please do so now!

So, Audatia matters because:

1) it will help students of the Art of Arms pick up the theory side of things more quickly, encouraging them to engage with the system more closely, and helping to drive our understanding of this system forward.

2) it will draw new scholars into the Art, folk who play the game may well take up the practice of swordsmanship.

3) it will help bridge the gap between those who get why swords are cool and those who don't. If you're addicted to swords, you can use this game to help communicate why to your friends outside our sub-culture.

4) it is one more way in which those who have no idea that European martial arts exist can find out about them.

5) it will, if it does well, go some way to counteract the appalling misogyny in gaming culture today. We intend to create female character decks, because there were some fearsome women warriors in the middle ages. (I'll be blogging about this in detail soon.) And guess what: they will be wearing armour that would effectively defend them against deadly weapons, not pander to the prurience of little boys.

I think that's five excellent reasons, don't you?

 

 

 

 

Playing Audatia with Joonas Laakso.
Playing Audatia with Joonas Laakso.

For the last nine months I have been working on a card game, Audatia, which is intended primarily as a training tool for students of Fiore's Art of Arms, and secondly as a way to spread knowledge of the Art more widely by making a fun and accessible game that anyone can enjoy. By playing it, you accidentally pick up the basic tenets of the system, including the Italian terminology.

This has forced me to think about the system in an entirely new way, and to think about how it can be presented to people who have never even thought of holding a real sword. It has been a steep learning curve for me, and it would have been impossible without my business partner in this venture, Rami Laaksonen, and the superb efforts and skills of the game designer, Samuli Raninen, and the graphic artist Jussi Alarauhio.

We will be presenting the game in public for the first time this weekend, at Ropecon (please note, that stands for Ro(oli) Pe(lit) ie roleplay, Co(nvention). Not Rope-con, for aficionados of hemp, cord and string. If you are coming to the Con, please stop by and have a go at the game: we will be at the official playtesting area, Käpyaula, there from 4-6pm on Friday and Saturday and 12-2pm on Sunday. My annual presentation, Realities of Steel, will be on Saturday from 12-2pm, and I will spend much of the time describing the process of developing a game from a swordsmanship system. I will also hold a swordsmanship demonstration on Sunday from 11-12, where we will not only demonstrate the Art, but also allow members of the audience to experience for themselves the difference between blunt and sharp swords.

I hope to see you there! If you catch me between demos, feel free to ask for a go of the card game. The more people who play it, the more feedback we get, the better the game will become.

We will be launching an Indiegogo campaign tomorrow to raise the 23,000 euros we need to finish the game. I'll post again here the moment it is live.

 

My armour is coming along, and hit a milestone yesterday. My arming jacket finally had the necessary pointing holes for attaching the arm pieces, which have been ready since December. So this is the first time they have been tried on properly. And oh my, what happy bliss to be clanking about in STEEL!!

There will be some adjustments needed to the arms to get them fitting perfectly, but the armourer, Marko Saari, is a genius and a craftsman of the highest order, and so perfection is well within the realms of possibility.

This piece is a reproduction of the Avant armour, held in Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum, and the closest surviving example to the armour we see in Il Fior di Battaglia, especially the Pisani-Dossi MS.

Helmet next. Then legs. Then proper gauntlets.

 

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