One hot Tuesday in Australia, I was supposed to be varnishing the deck. Naturally, since it was almost the last thing that I wanted to do, my mind was elsewhere, and in particular, I was thinking about Albedo the Role Playing Game, for which I had been running a campaign. I’d been struggling to find suitable miniatures to use on the tabletop, and, in the process, had established that there were none.

Through the magic of the interwebs, I was able to find some other fans, including Chase Murphy, and make contact with Steve Gallacci, the creator of the comics on which the game was based. He said that if by some remote chance I managed to find anyone silly enough to make miniatures, he’d be happy to licence them. I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but that was the gist of it.

So, I wrote up a pitch document – two pages, if i recall correctly – and sent it off to Chris Abbey, our illustrious host. To my utter amazement, he was interested, and after a few discussions, had started developing concept art for miniatures.

The first minatures to be produced were, ILR Trooper, EDF Trooper, EDF officer and a Spacer. They are still in the product line, and treasured parts of my personal collection. Then, I was amazed to see the vehicles being produced. I’m certain that Chris and his team found me very annoying, firstly in my obbsession for getting the details right – as close to the comics as possible given technical limitations, and secondly in my tardiness in producing the books that went, with the minature collection into our first successful Kickstarter.

First Edition

That kickstarter was an eyeopener for me. Previously, I had thought that there might be a handful of people who were interested in this game – which is clearly very niche within the Science Fiction / Comic community. But 154 backers pledged £15,592 to make it happen. Of course, all this hapened at a very inconvenient time for me. I was in the process of packing up my life in Australia and moving to Europe. It was all a bit stressful, if the truth is to be told, and I did the final edit with Ann on the Abbey’s dining room table in the chill of Yorkshire.

Everything seemed to be going well. Books were shipping, product was moving and then COVID-19 arrived and the world stopped for a while. The momentum that we were starting to build evaporated, because people couldn’t go to work, and couldn’t gather to play games. I spent a lot of time doing unit cards to go with the Almata campaign books. Powerpoint is still my friend in that regard.

And we have expanded the Albedo universe. Steve Gallacci was impressed enough by our work – especially on the sourcebook – to include it all in the official canon. This is Chase Murphy’s painted sample ILR trooper, and the orignal artwork for ILR uniform collars. (I know about the typo.😊)

And then my life changed again, as we moved to France and took on a massive renovation project. I haven’t personally played a tabletop game with other people since the end of 2018 – at Partizan – and all my gaming has been via Zoom or solitaire. I’ve also had a fairly stressful job, to be fair, and my mind has been elsewhere.

That’s not to say that things stopped in Albedo land. There were subsequent Kickstarters, which were moderately successful. I love the Penguin Spacers and Chris has done some great things – who would ever have thought that we’d have a 28mm AV-4 Aerodyne to put on the table? But it’s not all beer and skittles. Brexit has made it much more expensive for me to buy games, it’s been difficult to find a gaming community near where I now live, and consequently my hobby interests shifted in other directions. (Do not ask me about toy trains!)

Also, like a lot of people, I nearly drowned in social media. Through all this, Chris has been gently nagging me to write some more stuff, and we’ve made a few false starts, but to be honest, my heart hasn’t been in it.

Now

What we have here is a game that is fully modded, but not played much. The folks who do play it, like it but there’s not enough of them/us.

Honestly, the miniatures are so cool, the rules are solid and the canon is really rich. Also, from a gaming point of view, you can use the rules and components to simulate a lot of interesting modern warfare scenarios without any political baggage. It’s too good not to play, so I want to spark some interest again.

But it’s difficult. This shouldn’t be about me creating things and hoping people will like them. It is much better to ask people what they like and then try to produce that. So, I’m looking for an element of community involvement here. On our Facebook page, I’ve started a series of polls that will guide my creative juices – hopefully not in the Boaty McBoatface direction – while I continue to work on the ‘Wave 2’ material.

No more forums, no more static web pages. Anything that detracts from the actual work of writing (and doing all my other stuff) will be avoided.

There is a line in one of my favourite Madness songs that contains the words: “Each day is a gift, that’s why we call it the present.” Apparently, Suggs stole the line from Eleanor Roosevelt, which is surprising but not unexpected. My house currently has half a roof, the yard is full of builder’s waste and it’s raining. There’s so much I desparately need to do, that conditions are perfect for writing. This is because I’ve learned that do my best work when I should be doing something else.

So, expect more Albedo related product, available cheaply or for (cough) free because, more than anything, I want people to play and enjoy the game.