Black fortress at Bad Moon Cafe, an unexpected Success

August 21, 2022 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Blackstone fortress is a now slightly discontinued game by Games Workshop. It was basically half board game, half RPG in which you play a session, save your progress and then take that progress on with your now upgraded characters in the next session.

It had a couple of advantages over a lot of other board games, in that it was cooperative, you CAN play on your own and that it also had a tonne of expansions (See the pictures at the bottom), it also still has an awful lot of community support, both in terms of extra scenarios and extra support for characters, + third party 3d printed stuff etc, etc, etc.

So it was strange that something so popular and so beloved got cancelled.

As I had just got the first boxset this was a bit of a pain as a number of the expansions were more than a little rare and so would never get a reprint, however with the help of a couple of friends, we managed to get everything before the scalpers got us.

Then we settled down to the solid job of painting. Blackstone is famous for the quality and diversity of its models, We got the base box painted and then sat down for our first game. It was a bit steep on the old initial learning curve but we got the hang of it, however we’re mainly painters not gamers. So once we’d had one big session, we put it back in the box and got on with painting miniatures.

Then comes the move away from my office to the far more communal setting of Bad Moon Cafe, and with that comes people coming up to you and saying “Hello, my name is X. Can I join you?” It’s a very open and easy going place like that, that was how our little group started to grow, soon the option of playing actual games came up, not being hard bitten wargamers various less stressful games were mentioned, then Blackstone came up,

“you’ve got Blackstone!!? painted?. Let’s play that, I’ve always wanted to”.

So I bring the initial box, and a new person joins us starting that day, because for some reason its a game people want to play. now Blackstone is very much like 40K Rogue trader, in that while just the players can control it, and you can even play it totally on your own, it benefits from a bit of DM’ing to bring out the best in it.

Initially the guys had the normal battle with the rules, but one offer to do the DM role later and we are having a very, very high speed fun game.

Everyone was very enthusiastic, with multiple people coming up and checking/confirming what the game was, and could they join in future weeks (not a problem its easy for people to drop on and off with out causing issues with the campaign).

Again why GW cancelled the damn thing I will never know.

Anyway, here we are, and we’re going to do a long term game and report it here. and if there’s multiple people, or people get out of sync, we’re not gonna get over excited about it. We’re going to run multiple scenarios and report all here.

So a brief overview to those of you who have glared at Blackstone’s rules and wondered what was going on.

Basically is a number of short scenario games.

They could be a small skirmish battle with a layout, or they could be a card challenge, or they could be just a series of dice rolls.

Each one of these encounters can take between 30 seconds and half an hour.

And you get rewards for completing these “encounters”. These come in 2 forms 1) Upgrades for your character. 2) Clues for a chance to fight the big boss(s).

Fight 4 big bosses and you get a chance to fight the biggest boss.

That’s basically the core idea. Each expansion added on to this makes it more and more involved and more and more complex, and can take the same characters all the way along, in the meantime they’re adding extra characters, extra diversity etc etc

A good fun game once you got the hang of it and perfect for a setting such as Bad Moon.

I would actually like to apologise to Bad Moon Cafe at this point. I booked our normal painting table with an option for playing Blackstone on it. Then didn’t do any painting, blocked line of sight with a huge painting box. Barely ordered any food and drink, occupied three tables, forgot to pay the gaming charge. Basically got in the way, then finished everything in a flurry and left exhausted.

Sorry, it’ll be cleaner next week If you let us back, however the pizza was great.

Campaign 1: Current progress

Explorers: Janus Draik, Pious Vorne, Amallyn Shadowguide, UR-025
Upgrades: None (they have not been back to Precipice yet)
ArcheoTech: 12 Points
Clues: 4
Discovery Cards played: 5

A slight background for Blackstone

As you can see above, there is a huge mixture of bolt-ons, add-ons and bits and bobs for Blackstone. There are several major expansions that introduce game changing rule differences. There are a myriad of smaller expansions which add extra characters and a few specialist challenges. Then there are tonnes of rule expansions + campaigns and such like, that came out in white dwarf, that were compiled into annuals, and then finally, there were all of the naughty little GW ways of getting you to spend more money, which is to bring out a rule in white dwarf that requires you to buy a box-set to get one miniature, we managed to get them all and then in addition there is one company that did all of the 3d scenery, which fit Blackstone. This alone occupies about two large boxes. we have not painted all of these but we will get round to it. But as you can see, they will really add to the game.

Corporate phrase: “Dr Jones”

August 17, 2022 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Explanation:

This is a “phrase version” of this post A “Dr. Jones”, is a term taken from the fan theory for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, In that Indiana Jones makes no difference to all the key ending and deliverables of the movie (Ark gets found, Nazis all die, etc etc) and all he does is make a mess and a lot of pointless noise, this matches a set of managerial behaviour, that even after causing lots of activity and running around nothing useful or helpful happens. An example of this would be if Person “A” had been asked to do a task by a manager but they are busy, they have stated to said manager they are busy, and will deal with the task in a day’s time. That manager might not accept that, he will then escalate to a different manager, who will then allocate it to somebody else who they think might do it. That individual will then go back to Person “A”, as in reality they are the quickest way to get the job done. Person “A” will do it within a day and the net result will be just as if the manager had not escalated. Because of that escalation, It has required about three people’s time for a total of an extra three to four hours worth of effort, meaning that the manager has actually done nothing productive and it’s only wasted people’s time. I always think of this as a less irritating form of “seagull management” Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Management Nugget No 15: “Maximum Parallel Streams”

August 15, 2022 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Nugget 14: “There is a maximum number of parallel streams any team can take before slowing delivery”

Explanation:

Every project and organisation has multiple parallel work streams and often multiple ones are high priority. Despite what people will say you cant make them into a simple 1.2.3 list, this does not make any logical sense after all if you go to a granular enough detail you will be able to find out which of 2 tasks is more important than another, but it does make practical political sense, i.e. you are simply not going to be able to politically hold off one person who wants their task done while you fully complete something else that is only a little bit more important elsewhere , you HAVE to show some progress on both items.

So while people at the Coalface might be upset and push back on you to put them in an order, there are times you wont be able to do that ,and the team is going to have to parallel process.

HOWEVER it is your job to ensure that the actual number of streams that you are running simultaneously is not beyond your team’s capacity to cope with.

For me the definition of “too many” is when the administration load of flipping between streams and areas of decision, actually means that your total delivery time noticeably goes down.

Your definition of this might vary according to the different type of work you’re doing. For example, you might have developers that can only cope with one deliverable at once. So therefore, you can only have as many streams as you have developers. But ultimately, your job as a manager is to determine this. you have to run the balancing act of accepting more work and not appearing restrictive as a team. and knowing when if you accept one more thing, even when pressed by a senior manager, the delivery of all of your other items will suffer and ultimately the project will be damaged, at this point gather your evidence and hold firm with you senior manager, while presenting the best options you can.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Corporate phrase: “Investment resource”

August 12, 2022 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Explanation:

An “Investment resource” is somebody that does not bring anything obvious to the team. But you’re willing to give them a go in the hope that they do. They are in contrast to an S.M.E. (Subject Matter Expert), who brings something very obvious to help, be that technology, Business experience or something like that. An “Investment resource” is a nice way of saying they need help to get up and running. the team are going to have to spend time and effort on the resource that will be taken away from delivering on the project. But are doing it in the hope that they will actually come up with something useful and long term, and will give back more than you require, so will be worth it. The positive use of it is with graduates who are learning and just need some coaching, but it is also used for an external contractor who doesn’t quite have the skill sets you need, but is jammed in as a warm body in the hope that they will get the job done (make sure you get a discount on them if a consultancy tries this) and lastly it is sometimes used with senior people who just want to be in on the cool thing, take up the teams time with meetings and confuse things by taking credit. “The value of your investments can go down as well as up” Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone, Get ready!

August 8, 2022 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

This article came from a question asked by a young software developer. Recently out of university he was challenging a decision that I had made for how his time was to be spent and the methodology used to allocate that time.

The thing is, that everything he challenged and everything he said was utterly, utterly true. But also not practical. So I faced up and instead of giving him the normal platitude answer or just ordering him as his boss, I gave him the complete and utter truth.

Being a smart human he accepted it. He didn’t like it, but he did understand and accept it. and it came to me that we really should lay this kind of truth out more. It’s probably already been laid out in thousands of books already, but I want to lay it out in a way that makes sense to me, so here we go.

In any large organisation there are 3 basic zones of decision and information.

The Coalface:

Zone one, the operational zone, or as we will call it “The Coalface”. This is the zone where the truth lays, where actual work is done. This is where you sell to customers. This is where you deal with real data. This is where you deal with the minutiae of small problems,

If you live in this zone your main issue is that you are so close to the immediate needs of your problems and their delivery that large scale threats are tricky to see.

The Fantasy Zone:

Zone three, the upper zone, which I’m going to call the Fantasy Zone, This is where dreams come from. Goals are designed, The big thinking, the blue sky decisions, all that kind of stuff, where the directors live.

Its main issue is that the people who live here often have no idea of the impact their wishes have elsewhere and in the worst cases they don’t care, also its residents are so used to people telling them they are right, they start to think that any decision they make will by definition ALWAYS be right.

( The Audio clip is from the arcade game Space Harrier, which I always think of when I hear the words “Fantasy Zone” )

The DMZ:

And the middle zone, which we will call the DMZ. This is where management skulk.

Their true job is to convert real life issues into the simple statements that the senior people can understand, and by response turn the blue-sky thinking that directors come up with into actions that make logical sense to people at the Coalface

Its main issue is that people in this zone, spend so much of their time trying to smooth out and simplify the real work hump/bumps and delays that happen in the coal face that they end up believing that a happy fantasy zone resident IS the actual deliverable, rather than a genuine quality product or result.

The Problem:

So now the question is, how do we solve this problem of different people with different perspectives working together?

And I think the answer is, you can’t!.

Humans are humans. Humans are weird. You will not get people to prioritise other peoples problems over their own. All we can do is to give them better communication and the opportunity to work in a less self centred way and show them the advantages of doing such.

From one side we can explain the issues to the people in the Coalface, that the Fantasy zone are facing.

Let us take our young software developer as an example. He wanted to know why we were breaking with the most efficient way to solve a long term problem, And the reason we were breaking it, was that we had a short term delivery that we had to meet. The short term delivery was purely a Fantasy zone delivery, it made no difference to the coalface but as the money that needed to be allocated to the coalface came from the Fantasy zone and this short term deliverable was a threat to that money. Then the Fantasy zone’s short term delivery overrode the most efficient long term solution in the coalface, a point of view that people in different zones can work with.

And understanding going the other way is just as important. One of the core parts of understanding that the fantasy zone needs to grasp is that all the members of the coal face are not interchangeable cogs. They’re all humans with foibles. The fantasy zone members may not like that. But there are holiday time periods for people that are at the coalface that force things to go on slowdown. There are difficulties in yanking people up and moving everybody wholesale to a different problem that will damage long agreed delivery times, etc etc, they might not need to get into the nitty grtty, but they should understand real world problems in broad brush strokes,

People in the DMZ have to take on this responsibility. and rather than just going for a meeting and hoping to escape with only kind words from the fantasy zone, you will occasionally have to bite the bullet and provide detailed information on Coalface issues to help one zone understand another.

As a final fun note, I was so pleased with the neatness of “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone, Get ready!” that I wanted a t-shirt of it, thankfully there is a great redbubble one

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.