I got my Kickstarted Cheapass Games retrospective book this week!
It’s pretty neat, even though most of the book is copies of the rules for games I already have (and a number I don’t). There’s still a lot of entertaining James Ernest stories. I was hoping for more design insights into each game, but it’s usually a summary of the idea behind the game and the story of it’s development, if it’s interesting (a lot of them are).
One thing I have learned is that their game Starbase Jeff is named after Jeff Vogel, owner of Spiderweb Software, who is one of Ernest’s regular playtesters. According to Ernest, he got the game named after him when he completely exploited the playtest rules and made everyone else’s game absolutely miserable. Apparently he’s the “let me see how badly I can break this” playtester in the group.