DESIGN DIARY - 10.30.00 Tom's Interview, Joe's Library and Chuck's Rule Revisions "You again?" That's Tim Ellington, who's currently writing the lore for Jedi Knights. Somehow, every time I leave my office to go have a word with someone involved in the development of the game, Tim is already there, talking to the person I wanted to get ahold of for my Design Diary. So naturally, we've developed a mock rivalry out of that peculiar situation. I push Tim aside (I'm sure he was done anyway) and sit on Chuck's desk. Well, I sort of lean on it. "I'm up to version 19.5 of the rules, now," Chuck says. "And we're getting ready to send the cards and the rules to Lucasfilm for approval." Chuck is obviously excited about this. So am I! It means that we might be able to share even more of the good stuff with you, our faithful decipher.com visitors. Speaking of which, Jared Greenwald was asking me when we'd be ready to put up something that looks like a rulebook on the web site. So I pop the question to Chuck. "Well, not before we get approvals, that's for sure," he answers. "That should take about a week. And then we'll take maybe another week or two to make really sure we're happy with wording and stuff like that. Maybe after that we'll let you post it on the site." If Chuck hadn't smiled at that point, I would have asked him if he preferred to twist his knife clockwise or counterclockwise. I'm told I'll have to ask our VP of Product Development & Sales, Ross Campbell, for a precise "revelation" date; but Ross is currently in Germany with the bulk of our Marketing staff, trying to recover from Spiel 2000, the world's biggest and craziest game convention (and they do that every year). I'll catch up with Ross later this week. But while we're discussing rules, what's the difference between versions 19.4 and 19.5? "We're always trying to make things clearer, explanation-wise," says Chuck. "It's mainly rewording work now. We're also doing that with the cards: we go back and make things as clear as possible. We also try to use complete English sentences all the time. Words like "the" and "is" don't appear often on Star Wars CCG and Star Trek CCG cards, and we want to avoid having to use techno-lingo as often as possible with Jedi Knights, in order to make the game more user-friendly." I scoot over to Tom's area. Tom is adjusting the major deck types (or "themes" as we like to call them) to make sure they're well balanced against each other. "I have a lot to do, " he says, "and I also need to find time for an interview with TheForce.net. It's going to be a hectic day." That's my cue. :) Downstairs, someone is already at Joe's desk. Tim, of course. This time I wait patiently until Ellington is finished with whatever business placed him in my path once more. While I'm waiting I start writing today's Diary entry in my notebook (yep, a real paper one!). After a short while, I look up - no Tim in sight. Time to make my move. "I'm spending my day on organization," Joe says. "I'm getting in touch with our different teams of artists to make sure that everyone has the latest files. We've been creating this very large library of 3D images on the fly, and someone needs to keep it organized." That someone is Joe - and he's doing a great job. "So I'm playing librarian today. At the end of the day, everyone will have the same, updated copy of Darth Vader as everybody else, and so on." I wish I too could have a computer-generated copy of Darth Vader, updated or not. No, I'll pass on computer-generated Tim. Francis K. Lalumiere The Juggler