Brettspiel-Forum

Hallo zusammen!

Ich habe mir gerade auf der Vorschauseite der Nürnberger Neuheiten den Spielplan von Clippers (Eurogames) angesehen und meine, dass es sich hierbei um das 1992 bei White Wind erschienene Santa Fe handelt. Was meint ihr?

Gruß Wolfgang

Ja, "Clippers" klingt in der Tat nach "Santa Fe"; und "Santa Fe" war ein gutes - m. E. sogar das beste - Spiel aus der Reihe der bei White Wind erschienenen Spiele von Alan Richard Moon (noch besser als "Elfenroads"/"Elfenland").

Mit verspielten Grüßen
Erhard

Alan R. Moon hat zu dieser Frage in amerikanischen Newsgroups Stellung genommen und mich gebeten, hier eine deutsche Übersetzung seiner Antwort zu posten. Aber ich denke, die meisten haben keine Probleme mit englischen Texten.
KMW

I am constantly amazed at some of the assumptions people make about game
designers, about game companies, about the financial situations of game
designers and game companies, and about sales figures for games. Many times
these assumptions are at least partially incorrect and often they are
completely wrong. Several people have written to me asking how two games
based on SANTA FE can be appearing at almost the same time. This is my answer.

A little history.

A year or two after SANTA FE was released by White Wind, I started thinking
about doing a second game using the same basic system. This game was called
BALTIMORE & OHIO. When I decided to stop publishing games for White Wind, the
idea died. I never playtested B&O, but I still have the prototype so it could
still appear someday.

After winning Spiel Des Jahres for ELFENLAND, Amigo said they were interested
in possibly publishing a new version of SANTA FE. I worked on the game a
little bit and sent them the prototype with a South Pacific sailing them
(let's called this CC1 for CHINA CLIPPER #1). They tested it but thought it
was too long and complicated. They returned the prototype and asked me to do
some more work on it. Unfortunately, I was putting in long hours working and
traveling a lot for Ravensburger/F.X. Schmid USA so I never found the time or
enthusiasm.

At some point in early or mid-1999, GMT asked me if they could publish SANTA
FE. I thought about it for a few months, then gave them a prototype with some
of the changes and additions in CC1 added to the basic SANTA FE. This became
SANTA FE RAILS and is the game due out from GMT sometime this year. I only
gave GMT the USA rights though, because I still wanted to finish and sell
CHINA CLIPPER to a German company the European market.

In the beginning of 2001, having left my job at Ravensburger, I started work
again on CHINA CLIPPER. Over the next few months, the game went through quite
a transition. The biggest change was getting rid of the cards and using
markers on the board to show what cities were controlled by the players. I
got this idea from people who when playing SANTA FE used little wooden cubes
(like those in ELFENROADS) to make their cities on the board after they
played the City Cards. This led to quite a few others changes and all of a
sudden CHINA CLIPPER seemed to be quite a different game from SANTA FE or
SANTA FE RAILS.

I showed the game for the first time at the Goettingen Game Designer
Conference in June last year. Two companies were immediately interested and
wanted to take the game to test. I only had one prototype though and I wanted
to show it to several other companies the following week during visits to
their headquarters. On the following Friday, I went to Konstanz where the
German Manager of Eurogames Uwe Walentin lives. It was my first trip to
Konstanz and I was amazed what a beautiful city it is. Konstanz escaped the
bombing in WWII because the residents cleverly left the lights on and fooled
the American bomber pilots into thinking it was part of Switzerland. But I
digress.

I played the game with Uwe that day and he immediately offered me a contract.
Now let me tell you, this doesn't happen very often. As we walked from his
home to his game store called The Sea Troll, I considered my options. One
other company had asked me to wait to make a decision until the following
weekend when we would meet again at the SdJ weekend in Berlin. I had told
them I couldn't promise but didn't think the game would be sold before that.
But as I looked around Uwe's store, I realized things just felt right. That's
how CHINA CLIPPER became CLIPPERS from Eurogames.

Eurogames wanted the international rights. When I told them GMT had the USA
rights to SANTA FE, they asked me to ask GMT if they would allow them to sell
CLIPPERS in the USA. I wrote to Gene Billingsley, and Gene being the nice guy
he is, agreed.

Alan