Goblins and Grenades

Janae and I have been re-arranging the bedroom slash office in the aftermath of me acquiring a new (and much smaller) desk to replace the 1950’s behemoth that was taking up entirely too much space in our apartment.

While doing the required cleanup I stumbled across an old sandwich bag filled with several dozen game cards cut out of cereal boxes and hand-drawn upon. It was Goblins and Grenades, a card game I prototyped about sixteen years ago (even saying that makes me feel ancient)!

A by-product of a web comic I was actively updating at the time, Goblins and Grenades is a competitive card game where players take the role of a goblin in the aftermath of the discovery of an old arms dump where dozens of live grenades have been discovered. The goal is to destroy the other goblins with the munitions available without exploding yourself in the process.

Since the goblins in the affiliated web comic were very culinary focused, a number of cards were about food as well.

Back when I designed it, I’d intended to somehow produce a short, professional quality run for myself and the approximately dozen fans of my web comic who would actually be interested. Sadly, between my food service industry job (I’ve cooked a lot of french fries in my twenties) and the lack of any meaningful “print on demand” service for cards, I was pretty out of luck. I’d play the game with my friends with the cereal cardstock deck and be left to dream.

Well, it’s the year of our Lord 2017, and there’s all sorts of options for the indie game designer. So over the next few weeks, in between my other projects, I’m going to convert the cards into some good quality modern design files and card formats and put them up on a POD service. It’s a gift to past me from present me.

Sorry you couldn’t do this, buddy. I’m living the dream for you.