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01/06/2005:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH LOTR TMG DESIGNER DAVID
FREEMAN!
Laurhidil:
David, first of all thank you for taking the time to answer our questions,
as I guess you have a very busy schedule with Sabertooth, considering all
the future products that have been either announced or rumored.
David Freeman:
It is my pleasure to talk to you. Though I am fairly busy, I appreciate
that you would like to pose some questions and I feel it is important to
answer them.
Laurhidil:
How did you join Sabertooth? And what have been your assignments with STG up
to now?
David Freeman:
When the original 40k CCG was being released I saw that STG was located in
Seattle – near where I lived at the time. While checking out the STG
Website I found that they were looking for interns so I decided I should
apply.
Luke Peterschmidt called me and asked if I could come up for an interview.
I drove up and had a nice long interview and returned to Portland. They
called me back in a couple of days and said they would love to have me take
an internship. I unfortunately had to decline as I still had a semester of
college left to finish. They told me that they understood and that I should
contact them when I was finished.
I stayed in contact with the company, through a friend that had taken an
internship, and when I had finished college and tied things up in Portland I
got back in direct contact.
I started with STG in June of 2003 as
an intern moving up to Seattle from Portland and staying with friends
initially. I started out basically sweeping up and licking stamps and
sorting cards as well as play testing the base set of Horus Heresy. I then
moved into inventorying and shipping stuff basically warehouse grunt for our
little warehouse in the back along with a couple of other people, customer
service tasks such as answering support email, fulfillment of redemption and
prize support, as well as still being involved in play testing and
development for all three of our games.
After I had been there for around 2 months, they had me start answering the
scout mail queue and after I had been doing that for about a month I moved
into being in charge of our volunteer and organized play programs. I
continued with this assignment as well as still having a hand where I could
in development and testing until we started planning for the move to
Memphis. I was excited about going and with the loss of some of our staff;
my managers decided that they would like to move me into R & D. That is
what I am currently doing and I am happy to be here and love working with
the staff and our customers here at STG, EMD and GW as a whole.
My first projects as a designer were
The Hands of the Emperor Binder set for Horus Heresy and the upcoming Paths
of the Dead for LOTR followed closely by the ROTK set for LOTR as well. I
am involved either directly or in a commentary and feedback capacity on all
projects that we have going on in R & D - as is all of the design staff. We
really pull together as a team.
Laurhidil:
Was it easy to take over from Captain Miller? What do you try to do
differently?
David Freeman:
It has always – and will continue to be - a challenge. While Ryan Miller
did everything he could to help me and explained in great detail how he went
about things (which was very helpful), filling his clown-sized shoes is a
big task.
I haven’t set out to purposely do things just to be different than Ryan. I
try to bring my own thoughts to the project and be true to the direction he
had established previously.
Laurhidil:
Could you describe the development cycle of a typical product for LotR TMG?
David Freeman:
• Phase 1 – Product Idea.
This is the “do you know what would be cool?!?!” stage. Our overall team
brainstorms up ideas and out of those we pick what we feel are the best ones
to make.
After we have decided on a set/product/idea, we will start the scheduling
process so that we can project release dates and so forth.
• Phase 2 – Determine Range.
The production team and design team brainstorm again and decide how many
figures should go into a set or product and which characters/figures these
should be.
• Phase 3 – Design, Testing, Sculpting
and Paint Mastering.
The design team goes and makes up the statistics and abilities of the
figures for the range that we have decided upon. This takes a variable
amount of time depending on how many figures we are doing in a given range,
normally we schedule about a week.
After this is done the figures that were made are put into a testing group.
Whether that is the private group we run under NDA or the open play test
group that we run through our forums depends mostly on how large a group of
figures we are talking about at any given time. This testing period again
varies in length of time depending on the number of figures in the range we
are talking about. Normally we would like to spend at least a month in
testing on any given project as a bare minimum.
During this period we will play games ourselves here at the office as well
as looking at and discussing play test feedback among ourselves and the
testers.
During this same time period our 3D
Design Coordinator works with sculptors to get masters made for each of the
figures in the range. These sculpts must go through an approval process and
there is a lot of work involved in that. After the sculpts have been
approved then each master is painted and the paint job is then sent through
the same approvals process.
• Phase 4 - Hand off and Manufacturing
Normally we schedule so that the end
of design and testing coincides with the end of design and approvals on the
sculpts.
At this point the Design team will hand over stats and any applicable rules
to the production team and the sculpts will go into the full manufacturing
process which includes tooling, printing and packaging.
I am much less familiar with the time
line associated with this phase as I am not directly involved here as all my
work is off my desk at this point on any given project. This phase can be
fairly long thus we have an extensive lead time on these products.
• Phase 5 – Warehousing and Shipping to
retail
After the product has been printed
collated and packaged it is then shipped to warehouses in the US and UK
where we then ship it to retailers as well as distributors all over the
world.
That is pretty much the cycle. As I
said we have a large lead time so that we can attempt to deal with any
issues that may come up. Our current scheduling model, which differs from
our previous ones, says that most products from the point we start thinking
of them to the day they are in our warehouse take somewhere between 14 and
18 months. So the things I am working on right now are slated to come out
somewhere between 9-12 months in the future.
Laurhidil:
Sabertooth has acknowledged in the past that some figures do not have the
right cost (if we understood well mostly due to a rounding effect). Even
though STG is adverse to an official errata, why not publish an unofficial
list of revised costs to give players that want to use these figures an
opportunity to play them? Don’t you think that Sauron is overcosted?
David Freeman:
To my knowledge there was only one
figure in the BS set that Ryan felt should have had a slightly different
cost on it, costing 30 instead of 35. We have avoided errata because the
feeling here at the office has been that issuing errata on the bases so that
they would be played as having different values than they were printed with
would be excessively confusing for most players.
The idea of “right cost” is somewhat troubling to me since a figures value
will change as the pool of available figures widens, a figure costs what it
costs. You have an opportunity to play any given figure every time you sit
down and play a game. If you feel a figure is not up to the level of
efficiency you are looking for or doesn’t do what you would like it to then
don’t play it. This decision about which figures are useful and which are
not in any given situation is part of the collectible gaming process. As a
player and collector I would say that there are always going to be pieces
that people feel are useless to them at some level of play or in most
situations.
With scenarios and your own play at home please feel free to do whatever you
like with the game and pieces you have purchased from us.
As to Sauron I feel that due to the nature of the game it is hard for a
single model to stand up to a horde of figures, Sauron functions much better
with a group of his own troops to lead and killing blow particularly
benefits groups of figures in a combat chain. So while Sauron may not stand
up well in a Sauron VS 2000 pts. Army game he really starts to shine when
you get him into larger armies, say 10,000 pts.
Laurhidil:
With LotR TMG Sabertooth has both a reputation of good product quality but
also of released that are delayed (The Troll pack, The Fellowship and the
Two Tower Expansions). Is it because producing a figure game has very
different issues compared to card games?
David Freeman:
Yes, we have had some delayed releases
due to a myriad of difficulties that I cannot get into here. While the game
design process is similar and we are able to transfer most of our
experience, production of the actual TMG figures is truly a different
proposition than producing cards and the care and feeding of this new type
of animal has been a learning process for us and everyone involved.
Laurhidil:
What are the main guidelines you try to follow when creating new figures for
the game?
David Freeman:
The figures we make are meant to reflect a character at a specific point in
time in the story. I will look at whatever scene of the movies or part of
the book that I feel the figure or aspect of the character I am trying to
capture is portrayed in, and then give them abilities and statistics that in
my mind reflect that point in time. Somewhat straightforward I know but I
trust my gut and go with my feelings about the character and the point they
are at in the story or world.
Laurhidil:
What was the most memorable event of your career with STG so far?
David Freeman:
For me the most memorable thing was when we received the Hands of the
Emperor binder in house. As I said above this was the first project I
worked on as a designer and this was the first time that I had seen my
efforts turned into a tangible physical finished product.
There have been many memorable moments, learning that the company was going
to move to Memphis, moving to Memphis, meeting various GW staff that have
been heroes of mine since my childhood, going to shows and conferences
across the country, making great friends with my co workers, etc…..
Out of all these the moment where I got the actual finished product of
something that I had been directly responsible for was huge for me. For me,
like I suspect for many of you, it has been a dream of mine to get to make
and develop games since grade school.
Laurhidil:
What is the LotR character that was not in the movie that you missed the
most? Now that Sabertooth has the rights to the books any chance we will
see this character in the future?
David Freeman:
The character that I missed most was the Mouth of Sauron. I would say the
chances are good that you will see him in the future.
Laurhidil:
Evil has already many Premium figures released or planned (Trolls, Sauron,
Balrog, Fell Beast,...) and Good has only Treebeard so far. Will we see
Eagles? And more generally can we expect some Premium figures for the Good
faction, even if they are not supersized?
David Freeman:
All I can say about eagles at the moment is that they will be awhile if they
get made.
If you look at the movies and the books there is a lack of these sorts of
large scale creatures for the good side in general. This makes it hard to
create a varied range of PL products for the good side.
To me the Paths of the Dead set that is upcoming should help redress some of
this. Also, there are non large PL figures in each box set so far.
Laurhidil:
Some people are afraid that the game will not go on after the Return of the
King expansion. How do you see the game evolving once the three movies have
been covered?
David Freeman:
Well I think as long as demand is there then it is possible for us to keep
thinking up products to go along with the game. As you can see from our
product cycle it takes us a fair amount of time to get any idea to market
and so we have products planned for at a minimum of about a year from any
given time. In short, there are more things coming out after the ROTK set.
Laurhidil:
Can we expect other games using the Combat Hex system?
David Freeman:
This has always been a consideration
thus the separate branding of Combat hex. There is nothing I can talk about
right now but we have looked at many projects for the future in this regard.
Laurhidil:
Anything you'd like to add for the player community?
David Freeman:
Thank you all for your support and happy New Year!
Laurhidil:
Thank you very much David and keep on designing these marvelous figures for
us!
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