Thats not Che! Thats Maddox! Che obviously stole the look from him. Now to completely derail this, I love his new iPhone article.

ON topic, I might have to check out the rules. Some of the minis are pretty cool. Very unique.

Who's "Maddox"? I coulda sworn that was Che with an eye patch?

Maddox would be the guy that runs the site.

Oh my, Maddox is funny!

That Pigman is $8 I know its painted, but that will be one expensive game.

They come painted? I thought it was a traditional minis game...ie unpainted and unassembled.

Every pic I saw was painted, and I assumed with the price? Oh My, $8-10 for unpainted figures, THATS why their was some serious carping on that forum.!

I took a look at Pigskin, in the store, and right under the photo, in tiny letters it says:

"All miniatures come unpainted and unassembled."

Very highly priced then.

Arabin

Yes sir, you are right. I looked right past it. Well, forget their minis then! JEEZ thats expensive. $8 for a crazy hobo?! The thugs aren't too horrible at just under $4, but man, the rest are PRICEY.

Hey guys, hope you don't mind me buttin' in for a minute. I'm the head writer for Spinespur, and occasionally kill time on Google just poking around to see what folks are saying about us (hey, it's something to do, and it's a way to get feedback). I figured I'd swing by and just say howdy, and maybe clear a few things up if anyone's curious.

Now, fair warning, I get a little wordy at times (which is probably how I got the job I did). But bear with me, and read it if you're interested, and hopefully you'll have a little better idea of where we're coming from with the game.

I don't know anything about the miniature pricing side of things, since I'm not really an "industry insider" kind of guy, just a player that likes to write. I can't really answer any questions about that sort of thing, just because I don't really know much about it. I can guess that maybe our start-up prices might be a little high because we're still such a small company, though (that's just something I remember from an Economics class about a billion years ago, though). Maybe the "big dogs" like GW and Privater Press are just able to get big bulk-style deals on the materials involved. I'll toss SofaKing an email and see if he has any info he can share, though. If folks don't like our game, he wants to know about it and know why, so I'll be sure to pass these concerns on to him.

Now, on to the stuff I can clarify (it's even right there in my job description). The setting and characters.

For starters, there aren't child molesters in the game, directly. For the vast majority of Spinespur's residents, we've left it purposefully vague as to the exact nature of their crime/sin (whatever got them sent there). Just like watching a tv show like OZ (on HBO, dunno how many people will remember it) or any other sort of "prison drama," for most of these guys we don't go into the details of what they're there for. I'm sure some of the generic Thugs in Spinespur could be child molesters or whatever, but we certainly aren't out to glorify that sort of activity. If, while you're chasing down someone else's gang member with a chainsaw, you want to tell yourself the guy's a child rapist (so you have more fun with the chainsaw-chasing), knock yourself out. But we certainly didn't set up any single character and try to make him "cool" by pointing out he was a guy that fools with little kids. Bob (SofakingComfy) is a family man, and as fun as we might have being distasteful with certain aspects of the game (making sure the villains are villainous), that's certainly not a line we're going to cross. No one's ever going to have any sort of "touch little boy" special ability that gives him back health, or anything like that. Blech.

Now, that's not to say all these characters are wholesome! Trust me. The notorious Mr. Jingles, undoubtedly one of our most infamous fellas, is a horrible person. Personally, I think the whole character concept just spawned from Bob having some weird phobia of clowns or something, because he's just about the most screwed-up fella in Spinespur (Mr. Jingles, that is, not Bob ). He's basically just a big ugly walking bundle of character flaws, ranging from being a notorious bully and coward, a dimwitted racist and homophobe, to (hypocritically) into rough sex with dudes whether they're into it or not. He's a monstrous fella, the same way a Dark Eldar Archon (wearing someone's face as a mask!) is a monstrous fella. We're just a little more blunt about it, and made sure he was shown as being very obviously ugly and horrible, inside and out. None of this stuff grants him any special powers (except his cowardice, which is certainly a BAD trait in this game), though, or anything like that. He doesn't get a bonus to-hit against models painted with a certain skin tone, the "n word" isn't slung around in our book, there's no racial stereotyping going on -- we just point out the character is an awful, ignorant, person. Because guys like him exist, and sometimes it's fun to chase them around with chainsaws instead of just hearing about them on the news.

In case you can't tell by now, I'm a firm believer that many of life's problems -- in Spinespur, not real life! -- can be solved by chasing people with chainsaws.

Which leads to the whole "death" cycle in Spinespur, of course, our other big point of interest to lots of folks. We haven't pinned down exactly what Spinespur is in the fluff yet (only theories are in the first book, nothing concrete) so I don't want to spoil it or anything -- but most theories agree, Spinespur is essentially a prison of some sort. It's a punishment to be stuck there, and once you're there you are stuck. You can't leave, you can't age, you can't really die in a permanent sense. Once you're there, you're there. Forever.

Which leaves us with the wargamer's conundrum -- if you can't die, why should you be scared of fighting and dying and all that bloody stuff? Well, because "dying" still really sucks, that's why. So we were left with trying to fill that in in the background, explaining just how bad it was to be conscious and trapped in a body that didn't work, stuck just laying there while the guy who just shanked you stole your stuff, while you got nibbled on by rats and stuff, and tossed onto a cart to be taken off to the graveyard. We didn't want people to think of it just like a video game where you pop back up, whole and healthy, a few seconds later. We didn't want it to be as clean or neat as the Highlander type immortals, where you get shot and then hop back to your feet the next minute, just irritated at the holes in your shirt. No, it takes about a year (if all goes well) before you're back on your feet, and even then you're shaky and weak (just like someone who's had a long, long, hospital stay).

So we went out of our way to make sure the death/rebirth cycle was pretty gross, and tossed in Rufus Tith mostly, believe it or not, to lighten things up a little. The setting as a whole is plenty dark and grim, and what's in there that's really "over the top" (Mr Jingles, to an extent, falls into this, too) is partially there to kind of lighten the mood some. A little black humor to keep the whole book from just being depressing. Not every story has something really off-the-wall in it, and some of them were pretty heavy stuff (to write, too!) as a result.

Trust me, though, the notorious Rufus Tith and his unique sexual tastes aren't directly "in the game." There's no model for him, and no plans for one (unless Bob decides to make one for a special limited edition release just 'cause so many folks talk about him!). He's pretty much just there as one last bit of "eww, man, that's nasty! Dying sucks!" to be a little silly, and partially as a way of siphoning off a few corpses to get stuck going to the madhouse (because we wanted to think of a way to keep a steady stream of "patients" headed to another character's Institution).

Obviously someone is crazy if they'd "pretend to be dead" just to "seduce" Rufus Tith, right?

But, just our luck we made a little too big a deal out of Tith, and lots of folks are worried about necrophilia being all through the game, or something. He's only mentioned in the Hurst's Survival Guide (there on our web site), and in one piece of fiction in the back of the main book (where the story's narrator goes through the death/rebirth cycle, and ends up not the object of Mr. Tith's dubious affection). There's no model for him, no rules for him, and thankfully no pictures of him.

I promise, it's not a rulebook that's chock full of necrophilia and child molestation. There are three headed werewolves, big crazy guys with chainsaws, men with laser pistols who think they're on a mission from God, a nutter with a pig's head he wears as a mask, zombies, zombies, zombies, and all sorts of other colorful stuff, though.

There are rules for taking the weapons right off a corpse after you've killed a guy (you'll just hand over the stat card for your fancy shotgun or crude club or whatever, and from then on your opponent gets to use it!), rules for tossing a guy out a window and into the street, rules for getting cut so bad you accumulate "bleed tokens" and the damage keeps on coming, even rules for bringing a corpse marker back into play as a zombie right there in the middle of a fight... plenty of horrible violent stuff, but no rules about raping someone right there on the battlefield, or anything like that.

Please feel free to keep this conversation going if you guys are interested in tossing me any questions, or writing me a PM here, or even coming over to our forums and asking about any issues over there. We're starting to see a lot more traffic as our on-line store has opened up, several players have begun posting pictures of their painted minis, and we'd be glad to chat with anyone that wants to stop by. The one thing everyone involved in Spinespur had in common before Spinespur was that we're all gamers -- so we're trying to look at everything we do from a gamer's point of view, and make ourselves plenty open and accessible to address any issues people have, answer any questions, and stuff like that.

Anyways, hope no one minds my hopping in real quick and trying to shed a little light. Have a good one, fellas!

Yes you are a writer.... now that was a big block of text - there should be an Emoticon for such.

I have to say I'm currently chewing my way through Threshold (the corebook) and find the pros are a work of magic - not blowing smoke up your @ss as I was going to give a rund down after I had absorbed some more of the book.

As Critias states the game plays on horror - the kind of horror that you or I might feel, the now day horror not the stuff of yesteryear.

As for the layout of the book - clean crisp text that is kind on the eyes - black and white pictures or photos that are very clear. The book is softcover (a little bit of a bummer) which as kept the price down US$24.95 (Aud$33.00).

As for the minis pricing - nothing more then Reaper price range and surely not as much as GW.

As I post this I'm kitbashing my Bits of Mayhem to fit the city.... just you wait and see. I have plan to do a 2'x2' table for demos at the store I got this at - Good Games in Sydney.


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

Thanks for posting Critias. Very wordy, but you do explain away a lot of the issues that cropped up here.

While I know you can't comment on pricing, do the miniatures come with the weapon cards you mentioned or are the miniatures just on their own, and the cards are all in the starter set or something?

Lord A - I guess Reaper must charge a lot in your neck of the woods, as the Spinespur minis are a lot more expensive. $8 or $9 for a single figure is about double the single figure (normal sized) price of Reaper. Even Rezolution is only $7 for normal sized characters and they come with the stat cards.

Personally, I only pay more than $5 for a really superb figure (Hasslefree, Heresy) or ones that comes with game components (Rezolution). Hopefully the Spinespur ones do come with something to explain the cost.

While a small startup company might think it needs to charge more to break even, that's false economy really. The main thing a new game/company needs is market penetration, followed by high number of sales. If you go for large profit per sale, there will be less sales, and the game will slowly disappear. Having said that... Infinity charges very high prices and seems to be doing really well globally so I guess they hit their ideal target audience.

Arabin

Actually, the mini's are by themselves in the blisters. The rules for each miniature (and each weapon) are in the main book...and they're all going to be available on our web site, for free download in pdf form (sometime in the next few days).

They're just all going to be on-line so folks can print just the ones they need if that's all they want, print them all out if they want a full set (gotta catch 'em all?), and all that fun stuff in between. Force building in Spinespur is pretty unique, at least to my knowledge, in that there are a variety of ways to do it, from an open construction (which is maybe 2/3 of the miniatures in the whole line, in one army) down to a very specific single-Agenda (like "only Men of G.O.D." or whatever)...there's plenty of reasons for any given gamer to want access to a lot of stat cards, or only a few. So instead of charging people for 'em, well, why not just put 'em up on-line?

As an added bonus, we did this because...well...just in case we're not as perfect as our moms told us, growing up. There's always a shot our crack team of ninja playtesters missed something, and that "something" won't become obvious to us until the players get ahold of a certain model and maybe find something that works not quite like we planned. This way if there's a need to make a change to a model or a weapon's stats, rather than people suddenly having a bunch of worthless cards (and a scribbled down bit of errata somewhere), all we have to do is update the stat card on line, folks print up a new copy, and voila. Everyone can get back to gaming!

In addition to weapon stat cards being handy to swap over to your buddy when he's done looting a corpse of yours, and to, well, keep track of the stats of a weapon....appropriate weapons will have special rules (like "bleed" for chainsaws) right there on them for ease of reference, and others will have ammunition counters (shotguns, pistols, that sort of thing) you can just mark off with a dry-erase pen.

Like I said, we're all gamers at heart. We tried to design the whole thing, from the ground up, as a sort of "wish list" of a game. We're hoping our players enjoy it as much as we do!

This pdf is about 9bm, it contains the cards for the first wave. I printed them out on glossy heavy weight paper and they have come up very sexy. I will run it though the lamination later.





I have about 20 minis for this (most of wave one) which will be sent off to be paint today. Quite excited about this.



Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

Dammit Lord A! Those are very Sexy and I already spent my wad on other mini's. I need some of these and how!!

Guess Septembers budget is going for Spinespur!!

CCotD'

These are my figures back from a semi-local painter aptly named SinisterButt. I still have to hit these with some dull coat to take the gloss out of them.
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Lord Abaddon of Wormwood