I’m supposed to put this at the end, after I’ve lulled you into a stupor with my mellow ramblings. BUT. Because I don’t do most things the normal way, it’s here. Or rather, it’s the yellow button below.

The Kickstarter Gods (they are real) requires the sacrifice of many many email addresses so that they will notice my burnt offerings, and put me On the Page.

If you sign up right now, you will help me appease them, and make Beer Knight a success. WOOT.

Kickstarter Prelaunch Signup

ACTION PART TWO

I’ve been ruminating a lot.

But first, how about some entertainment?

Fun, right? I’m moving my drawings from ProCreate into ProCreate Dreams to make very very very1 bad animations, and then into Davinci Resolve for the motion graphics. My patron saint in animation is Terry Gilliam. Drink if you already knew that.

RUMINATION

Here I am after(?!?!?!?) spending a career creating high end advertising photographs for a living, trying to stick my paddle in the river and do a complicate spin, flip, twist move to change my course and take that weird little tributary off to the side. Also, to keep torturing the metaphor, I can see that the water levels ahead have dropped so low that it’s nothing but rubble and rock.

Put another way with 100% less metaphors: I’m trying to see if this games designer thing can be a profitable (in some sense) business. It’s all new, from building a Kickstarter Campaign, to figuring out overseas manufacturing2 to creating packaging, and doing marketing for a “Thing” as opposed to a “Person”3.

I’m digging in on this First Game, trying to be very very very4 realistic about its chances, with a goal of making the game, breaking even, and using it as a learning opportunity, so I can make Game Two5. At the same time, I am very much not doing this as a hobby — it’s a small business. I want this to be real, not a vanity project.

MARKETINGATION

I have fully jumped in the river for this list:

1. Graphic Design. My Illustrator skills have gotten Pretty Good.

2. Illustrations. My ProCreate skills have also gotten Decently Good.

3. Game Mechanics. Doing this scratches an itch. Going to rate at Very Good.

4. Animation. Building on top of my NLE DaVinci skills has been fun, but challenging. Rated at Satisfactory Plus.

I’m swimming against the current, but I am moving, for this list:

1. Packaging Design. So weird working in 2D to make 3D things. Satisfactory Minus.

2. PrePress. Taking all the stuff and then getting it ready to print ink-on-paper is so much work. Satisfactory.

And this is where I am just treading water

1. Email Marketing. Don’t even.

2. Buying Digital Ads. It feels a lot like buying lottery tickets. Ugh.

3. Building a Email List. Yikes. Trying real hard, but this one is Scary Town.

That last one. Is so. Intimidating. I know some of you thrive in these waters, so here’s the Second Call To Action:

Do you have any Advice? Help? Strongly worded suggestions? Winning Powerball Ticket Numbers? Use this button to PING ME with any/all:

DEMOGRAPHICS

And if you are wondering? The Sweet Spot is someone who likes to play RPGs, but wants a fast, fun game to play6 at the Pub, who also loves Beer in all it’s myriad styles, and —if you let them7—will talk your ear off endlessly about bottle conditioning, dry hopping, barrel aging, hazy vs juicy IPA, etc. etc.

TTRPG Nerds: I built a game that you can play without having to consult any rulebooks, but you still get to be a High Fantasy character that has cool weapons and special abilities.

Beer Nerds: I have been a Beer Nerd since I was 19. One of the first beers I bought8 was Celebrator Doppelbock. I have tried to stick a high percentage of my “knowledge” of beer into the game. Mainly in the form of bad puns and silly names, but still.

None of the Above: It’s a fun game that doesn’t rely on you knowing any RPG or Beerness to play. I’ve playtested with the None of the Above crowd, and it does quite well. The game mechanic is wonky and weird, but wonderful.

ALRIGHTY THEN

Thanks for reading.

Das Biermeister Batt

More Beer Knight More Often.

This game was designed as a “pub game” so we relish any opportunity to showcase it in its proper setting. We can handle a range of table sizes and players, and are excited to work with you to create a fun evening for your customers.

We generally host from 4-6 players (2-3 tables), but can scale up all the way to running a dozen games (24 players).

Right now we are offering this in the Portland Metro and Vancouver WA area, but we’re working on a roadshow - if you’re out of our area but interested, please reach out!

Why run a Beer Knight Beer Night?

• Brings in new patrons looking for game-friendly venues

• Encourages longer stays and repeat visits

• Increases drink sales

• Flexible for weekly, monthly, or one-off events

• Great fit for game nights, brewery events

What We Provide

• Game Stuff: 1-12 copies of the game (cards, dice, scorecards)

• Hosts: 1-3 hosts to help people learn and play the game.

• Other Stuff: We can provide battery powered lamps for the tables to help facilitate play and dice trays to keep the dice rolling in the game and not on the floor.

• Press Kit: We have a Digital Press Kit with artwork, logos and social media ready posts.

The game is easy to learn and competitive in a fun, light-hearted way. Most rounds end with laughter and another round of drinks. Current game rules found here.

What We Ask of You

• Space: a group of tables next to each other and time to set up before the event.

• Promotion: posts in your Social channels and emails at least 2 weeks before the event using our Press Kit.

• Giveaways: swag to give away at the end of the night.

• Selling: ability to sell copies of our game at the event directly to the players.

Optional Asks – these aren’t required, but definitely help drive traffic

• Drink Specials: whatever works best – free drink tickets, Beer Knight “Special” brews, event pricing.

• Giveaways: always nice to leave the pub with a six-pack of local beer, or a sweet T-Shirt.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for pubs and game stores that:

• Have a space for gaming

• Want to build or expand a Community Night

• Like the idea of light competition paired with good beer

Advanced Beer Knight™

Want to co-host a Beer Knight night tournament? We’re in. We have a competitive version of the rules that can be adapted to number of sessions and players.

Are you interested in a repeated monthly event? Let’s talk!

Sponsorship and Outside Sales

Do you want to get your pub involved more directly? We have different levels of sponsorship available, from becoming a named sponsor on our website and social media, all the way to becoming a Beer God in the game itself! Just ask.

•••COMING SOON•••We are excited to be able to offer Counter Sales for your pub as well. We offer wholesale pricing and a small footprint merchandiser so you can sell Beer Night.

Get in Touch

If you’re interested in hosting or want to learn more, reach out:

📧 andy@knight.beer
🌐 Knight.Beer

📍 Based in Portland, OR
📦 Decks and materials shipped or delivered locally

“Lose honorably. Drink responsibly.”

*Friendly Local Game Store — and now you know!

** I mean, maybe. Is your basement really nice? And not up on a mountain somewhere outside of cell range, where the nearest store is 5 miles away, and the local law enforcement kinda just ignores whatever goes on up there? We’re in!

This will be short1. Promise. Mostly. I’ll try. I’ll probably rant a bunch and then go back and remove most of it.

I just watched Will Smith eat spaghetti. He’s gotten a lot better about it. I won’t link to it because AI doesn’t need more likes or whatever, but you can find it. And I just checked in on Adobe Creative Chicxulub2 and found it progressing nicely— soon all businesses can just eliminate the art director, copywriter, studio artist, photographer, filmmakers, set crew…. and on and on. Even the influencer is on the hit list. You feed Adobe’s AI your marketing drivel, and it spits out images, copy, headlines, videos, animations, brand stories, instagram posts, yadda yadda yadda.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER, YOU OLD MAN YELLING AT CLOUDS?

Well, because I’ve always believe that the CRAFT matters. Set aside “Art” vs art. Craft is the pride in job well done. In knowing how to achieve the best results from your tools. In creating something that expresses your creative goal through the making of that thing. AI can’t do craft. By definition. By the fact that, outside of a singularity event, all AI does is mimic. It’s a good mimic, and it’s getting better, and lots of people will decide to give their money to AI. But it can’t do craft, because it has no intention.

But wait, you say, what if an Artist uses AI? HAHA got you! Sure. You totally did. And Richard Prince is a real artist and not a conman. Look: know your enemy, right? I had a Midjourney subscription for a while. It was fun. And creepy. And if you want to smear Studio Ghibli all over pictures of your dog or whatever, go for it. Indulge.

And in the right context, AI is super useful stuff. I use it in image retouching. I use it DaVinci Resolve to remove ambient noise from audio. My friend the Neurosurgeon uses it to mine datasets to help her do cutting edge research. When AI is used as a tool, when it’s under the strict guidance of an artist/researcher/scientist/etc and the AI itself is not the end goal, it’s good stuff. It’s a good tool. I’m not anti-tech.3

It’s when the “end user” starts mistaking the tool for the artist that I have a problem.

YOU DIDN’T REALLY ANSWER MY QUESTION

Fair. I guess this matters in this context because I was working on my Kickstarter and hit their official, Did You Use AI to Make This section. And have been thinking on that. All my ART is hand drawn. I use digital tools like Pro Create and Adobe Illustrator4 to make it. All the copy is my own. The mechanics are my own. But I’ve used ChatGPT (gasp!) to help brainstorm some ideas, I’ve fed it my rulesbook to ask it to check for inconsistencies, and to clean up the grammar. I tried to get it build a massive spreadsheet to do some analysis of the cards and their relationships — it failed, but spent about 14 hours swearing it was almost done. I’ve been using it as a tool, and not treating it as a creator.

So I am trying to own this, not tell a lie, and figure out how to talk about it. And at the same time, I spot AI used in the wild constantly, from AI Slop articles appearing in Real Newspapers, to AI images used in online ads (as if there are any other kinds anymore), to Grok spouting white supremacist nonsense — I guess I hope that people do care. That all of this weird effed up push to turn AI into the creator/artist/writer will blow up, that AI will return to being a tool. I mean, Djinn’s go back in the bottle right? As long as you don’t get tricked. You can, if you take time, put toothpaste back into the tube. Counterpoint: Cats didn’t want to be in that bag in the first place, so screw that.

TIME FOR THREE ARTS

The Dark Knight of the Soul is an Irish Dry Stout. She’s a bit melancholy, but is quite the warrior, and takes her fights seriously. Dry Irish Stout — of course we’re talking about Guinness, the mothership of Dry Stouts. My friend Dan once put up an Art Show at the Bug Jar, and his payment was unlimited pitchers of Guinness. I don’t think they understood how much Guinness we could drink. We def. tried to drink it all. It was a very very woozy walk home that night.

She’s riding Richmond, the Goth Horse. Richmond’s hair reminds me of someone… can’t quite put my finger on it tho5. His name tho, is from one of my favorite Goth’s of all time — locked in the basement, away from all sources of natural light, as is the Goth’s true habitat. I was never Goth, but was frequently Goth-Adjacent. The CURE was my first exposure to the genre and it pried my mind open for all types of music. Thank you to the guy I worked landscaping with whose name I don’t remember, but for the sake of a good story I’m going to assume was Rich. He lent me his stack of CURE vinyl which I listened to and duped onto cassette so I could blast The Head On the Door over a shitty car stereo on the way to my landscaping job. Those were the days.

She is bringing Stoutbringer into battle — to quote the BeerKnightIpedia:

Stoutbringer is a magic sword featured in a number of beer related fantasy stories. It’s described as a huge, black sword covered with strange brewnic runes, created by the forces of Dark Beer Magic. The sword has a will of its own and it is hinted that the sword may be controlled by an inhabiting entity.6

I read voraciously as a Young. And the Fantasy Genre was a different place back then. Every once in a while, you’d bump into something Strange and Weird that jumped so far off the well worn tracks of Tolkein’s Hobbits and Elves or Anne McCaffery’s Dragons — for me Elric of Melniboné was an important Weird. The stories of Elric were twisty and bizarre, frequently psychedelic and hard to parse. Which made them stick.7 Elric’s best friend and enemy was his sword Stormbringer, which was just sad and not triumphant. It was a weapon unlike any other fantasy weapon. It wasn’t Sting, or Excalibur. It was moody AF. It was as likely to turn on Elric as it was to help him. So when I needed a weapon appropriate for the forces of Dark (Beer) I had my goto all set.

STEAL THIS

To wrap up, I read a thing that said people engage with you if you tell them to “Steal this ____” . Have you engaged yet? Hmmmmm. OK…. not sure what to do with that answer. What if I gave you a CTA? That’s the way the military says Call To Action8 - fancy right?

When I officially put the Kickstarter into pre-launch phase I need my supporters to go sign up for the Kickstarter PreLaunch Notification. In order to get my KPN numbers up I need a STRONG EMAIL LIST. Kickstarter breaks down with Pareto’s Principle — 80% of my backers will come from my list and 20% will come from Kickstarter. If I don’t have a strong list coming in — say at least 500 people, preferably 1000 — there’s a good chance the KS will fail to launch. Which will be a bummer.

Call To Action: Steal this post, and send it to two friends and ask them to sign up. According the folklore, if that keeps happening I’ll have everyone in the world backing Beer Knight. Or at least 2 more than I had before this email.

OK> Thanks Fans!

Beermeister in Chief, BeerKnight Batt Out!!!9

Sorry Greg, it’s as short as I could make it. I even went back up and removed at least 3 or 4 words.

What do you get when you cross a beloved icon, with a beloved film from the 1970s, and a beloved mustache owned by the star of said film? You get SATIRE. This is definitely satire, which means I am not stepping on anybody’s toes. For reals. I hope.

SMOKEY THE BIER, KNIGHT OF REYNOLDS

Like a lot of Knights, this one just kinda popped into my head. I decided to add a Rauchbier — and even though I’ve had a lot of excellent local smoked micro beer, my inspiration is Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier — which can be found over at the most excellent and super tiny but packed with good Geramn stuff Edelweiss Market.

And yes, SMOKE is a polarizing flavor — but if you don’t want yours, just slide it down the bar to me. I love a good smoked beer.

Smokey The Bier. Just use the simple formula (Beer + Bier + Bear) + Bandit = Burt/(Smoked *Smokey) and tada, now you have a tiny idea of the weirdspace inside my noggin. How often do you get to use the word noggin in real life? Not very. And because we are in the B words, he’s got a battleaxe on this shoulder.

SMOKESHOW

STB’s ride went through a bunch of iterations to get here. At one point, he was riding a Smoke Monster (shoutout to my LOST crew)… and I do think the Smoke Monster will be back in some form. Maybe a Monster Challenge? Anyway, the whole time I had this weird mashup in my head of the Kim Carnes song Bette Davis Eyes, and the famous photo of Marylin Monroe from Seven Year Itch. And the whole time I thought that there is NO WAY I can possibly take those two things and add a Horse and a Beercan and pull it off.

Smokey Eye’s is definitely one of the weirder drawings I’ve done. I think it’s the “human” lips that pushes it over the top.

WEIZENWHACKER

Allow me to present the latest in War Hammering — the Weizenwhacker. Take one german style wheat beer, add the soul of a stand up comedian not above kneecapping a critic, and you get a blunt weapon that non-stop tells really bad jokes while giggling.

Behind the Scenes - Second.

I knew it was a 2 player game. I knew it was targeted at the Gamer Geek who enjoys both D&D, Ticket to Ride and Exploding Kitten s — who also lives at the VENN intersection of Beer Nerdom. I am not saying that I’m making a game for me. Because as you all know, I exist in a weird bubble outside of normal space time and demographics. But there’s def. a lot of me appealing to me in this game. I felt confident that I also know enough people in general that also occupy that space, and that they had two friends, who also had two friends, and on and on and on until Beer Knight is the only game played in the known universe. MUWAHAHAHAHAH.

Moving ON.

I had BEER, I had DICE, 2 players, and the goal of creating a pub friendly game. As BeerKnight Friend #00001 Sage says, “It’s the kinda game you throw in your bag on the way to the pub”*

I wanted to appeal to the D&D player who wanted to play something that touched that universe, but required 99.9% fewer rules, did not require an internet connection, dndbeyond subscription or any fealty to WOTC.

And BEER. Beer comes in cans… Knights in armor are also in cans. Sorta. Close enough. And if you have a Knight, they need a Steed to ride and a weapon to swing. Beer also comes with some handy built in stat blocks. ABV, IBU, SRM — each brew has three primary stats — the Alcohol By Volume AKA Strength, the International Bitterness Units** AKA How Bitter is this Beer? and The Standard Reference Method — not a particularly enticing name, but a very accurate gauge of the color of the beer. If I assign a very very very simple LOW, MEDIUM and HIGH value to ABV and IBU, I can generate a POWER rating for that beer. The SRM comes in when breaking the beer into Categories like GOLDEN, AMBER, DARK etc.

And blammo I now have a spreadsheet of numbers to work with — I pick 24 different beers, figure out their powers, step those down to the matching mount, and I have a working combat system that has a consistent logic*** that I can use to create an expansion deck (Kickstarter #2 already in the works) of 24 new Knights and Mounts.

My approach to Weapon Powers… that’s another story — AKA-– I need a week to figure out how to explain it ;-)

K. If you’ve read this far, you deserve a beer. Pick something nice. Maybe go visit your local pub or bottle shop and ask the beer nerds there to introduce you to something amazing. BTW it’s Beer Week in Portland and Stormbreaker is (was?) pouring 5$ pints of their Alt beer and their Triple Double IIPA — SO GOOD. They did not pay me to say this. They totally could though.

Alterior Motive German Style Alt | 5.2 ABV | 33 IBU | Fermented cool, and lagered for three weeks. Clean and crisp amber with light maltiness and a touch of roast. Finishes dry with a nice hop bite.

Triple Double OBA 2019 Gold Medal! N. American Beer Awards 2019* Silver Medal! IIPA | 8.5% ABV | 90 IBU | Mosaic, Citra and Amarillo hops give this brew juicy flavors that balance the slight upfront bitterness.

Until next time.

BEERMEISTER OUT>



*Sage, feel free to correct my most likely misquote. I believe I got the message right, but probably munged the wording.

**Alpha Acid Units — yes these are probably a better measure and when I buy hops for homebrewing I’m looking this number and not the IBU, but IBU is still prevalent and easy info to get, where AAU is probably not showing up on your beer can (yet).

***That I immediately try to break with adding special abilities — more on that later.

I have a bunch of rules for things. Surprise surprise to those that know me. Anyway. Like a “good” TV spot needs to work with the sound off. Or to be a good portrait, a photograph of a famous person would still work with a “regular” person in it (of similar characteristics).

For a logo, or a piece of brand artwork, it’s the t-shirt test. Is this ________ cool AF enough that I don’t care what it’s for, b/c it looks rad on shirt? If you take away the “brand story” is it cool?

The t-shirts I choose to wear follow that rule. If they don’t they either don’t get worn, or I use them for gardening or whatever.

So here I am 120+ illustrations in and I’m trying to figure out if they work on a T-Shirt? And if they don’t, what’s next? Part of this comes as I try to figure out the marketing perspective on this game. It’s a big small thing right? I’ve put so much time into the game mechanics, the art, the writing, the bad puns, the screwy references — all that stuff that swirls together and makes it into a game. I’ve even been doodling some bigger art pieces that I *think* will work for box art.

But what typeface do I use for my main marketing font? What about the secondary typeface? What colors should they be? How does my word mark work for this game? Do I need a logo? And if I self-publish, my DBA identity goes on the box and that’s an entire second level of the same questions.

All that stuff is so important to get right. You create a weird clash with typography and the product feels wrong, or unfinished, or unprofessional — all of which can keep that finger from hitting the BACK THIS button on Kickstarter.

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Since my brain is mine and not yours, it comes back to T-Shirts. Did I want a Mörk Borg t-shirt before I ever read the game? Yes. Yes I did (note to self: go buy t-shirt).

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Which leads me to jackass art. I lump my drawings into this category — and wait before you get all whatevery let me explain. IF I decide that my drawings can be jackassed — they don’t have to be “good” or “art” or “well done”, if I am freed up from the burden of drawing “properly” — you know, from memory or from a live figure, or one of those wooden creepy posing dolls, or with charcoal sticks or however you are “supposed” to do it —— welllllll —— now, now I am free.

Free to work with a digital pen and undo, to use tools that let me draw nice curves and straight lines, to use clipart and found art to help me figure out the lines, to basically ignore any point perspective, or the any of that stuff.

Not that I’m knocking it— I would love to freehand draw a superman leaping through the air with the correct perspective and hands that look like hands and a body structure that looks normal (for an underwear pervert anyway), with shading that describes the exact kind of light in that scene.. and and and.

I have shelves of amazingly drawn graphic novels that I would love to emulate, but it’s not my skillset, and if I wait around for me to develop those skills, I’ll be waiting a long time.

And yes — if you all back this game, and it goes well and lets me move forward, and create the other games I have in my notebooks I will totally hire some sweet artists and let them do what they are good at! But right now, it’s all me all the time.

So I don’t know if I’m drawing “A” Art. Or even “a” art. I do know that I’m making ridiculous images that make me happy, and so far, seem to resonate with playtesters.

I hear terrible things about publishers who buy games and then throw out the existing artworks and do them all from scratch. I refuse to have Beer Knight become a family friendly game with anthropomorphic zoo animals with giant Anime Eyes where they drink juiceboxes or some such crap. Publishers, you have warned!

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Here’s the part you came here for anyway — maybe you just scrolled down for the Hot Pics — Totally cool with that.

Meet Sir Robin — he’s not going to run away. Of course not. He can if he wants to, but he’s actually quite brave. As with many a young man who loved WEIRD SHIT, I found Monty Python running at the small hours of the night on my local PBS station. It was amazing. Like, gut busting funny but not quite sure why but oh my god what the hell funny. If I could go back and experience a TV show for the first time again, I think it would be Monty Python. The Flying Circus led to their films, and The Holy Grail became a beacon of shining comedy.

Sir Robin is a Coconut Porter. Coconut porters are funky — even though they all def. fall into a narrow band of flavor profiles, your (my?) experience drinking them can be all over the map. One will be so incredibly balanced, with just a hint of sweetness, some toasted coconut in there with the roasted barley, deep, rich dark and robust and I could drink it winter or summer, in quantity. The next one tastes like you’re gargling carbonated suntan lotion that some spilled some corn syrup in.

Anyway. Monty Python leads to Sir Robin. Sir Robin “rides” a horse that is just Terri Gilliam clomping coconut shells together. And that gives us both Sir Robin the Coconut Porter Knight and the lovely Terry and Terri, the pantomime horse.

A Pantomime Horse is another Britisher concept that I had no real idea was a thing until watching the Pythons. And I know that I lack a proper understanding and cultural respect for the “panto” being a non-British type person. I do know that the Pythons made me laugh.

I mean, just read this:

Champion... how many years have you been with this firm? (Champion stamps his foot three times) Trigger? (Trigger stamps his front foot twice and rear foot once) I see. Well, it's a difficult decision. But in accordance with our traditional principles of free enterprise and healthy competition I'm going to ask the two of you to fight to the death for it. (one of the horses runs up to him and puts his head by the city gent's ear) No, I'm afraid there's no redundancy scheme.

That sh*t is funny.

And lastly, here’s a cool ass sword I drew called the Baltic Black Blade — for Baltic Porter of course. That’s a Porter that could beat up just about any Stout — a high strength, rich dark brew made by lagering. Man. Baerlic has one on now that is so good, but at 8% you gotta respect it. Like this sword.

Alrighty then, glad you hung out with me this far. Go find the links below and follow and stuff. Or not. This substack is the best place for you and me really — the other stuff is because “I have to”.

More Beer Knight to come, more playtests, another printing round, box art and design, and yes I am going to figure out how to make a F**KING COOL A** T-SHIRT and sell it to you b/c it’s going to be so rad you will have to have one.

BEERMEISTER IN CHIEF,

andy

Last year in 2024 — right about spring-nowish — my co-conspirator in this madness Eric said something that stuck. Not in a good way like I’m Gonna Be (500 miles) by the Proclaimers does* but much worse, like Gangnam Style**. Sorry about that. Anyway.

His words were something to the effect of “You know there’s other people who like doing all the stuff you don’t like doing? Right?”.

Huh.

I’m an artist. It’s a title I have fought for, have climbed over metaphorical bodies for*** and bled for. It’s also a term that gives me so much imposter syndrome that it’s crazy. But yet, I look at the things I make, and am kinda left with the impression that it would be nice to go back 20 years and tell myself to stop worrying about it so much. Or maybe even last week.

My current Imposter Syndrome is that I am not an illustrator. Or maybe not a good one? Anyway, 125 illustrations in on this and maybe I guess I am one. Time will tell.

I came up through Photography, made a turn into Film/Video, and had some detours into design. Now? I’m parked in the Game Design lot.

I’ve played a bunch of games of all types but have nowhere near the ‘shelf of shame’ that some of my friends have. I have a bunch of ridiculously cool RPGs that I hope someday to have the time to run/play. I’ve GM’d a homebrewed D&D campaign since December 2019, and slowly over 2024/2025 I’m finishing up my first GM session of ALIENS RPG (which I freaking love).

In all of that I have found that games break into two brainspaces for me:

1. STORY — this connects deeply with my photography, filmmaking and design. Story is everything. If you are making art without story, it’s pretty like candy, but has no nutrional value, like candy.

2. MECHANICS — this appeals to the part of me that loves structure, rules and levers. If Event A happens, what do the players do? How can I give them toys to play with that gets them to the next thing? What levers can I set up that creates an effect if they pull them? What’s the game logic?

When Story Meets Logic is a terrible movie title, but that’s where I’m living with Beer Knights. And I am having so much fun in the creation of this game. It’s hard work, but it’s so cool to see someone play and get joy from my creation.

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I made this game in response to Eric saying make something cool and creative and other people will help you figure out what to do with it.

It came out of a long rambling conversation about D&D, TTRPG, IPA, ESB, NEIPA over at my local (shoutout to Baerlic on Alberta). As I was walking home that night I kept hearing the phrase BEER KNIGHT in my head. I think I texted Eric a block away from the pub something like “It’s called Beer Knight. Not sure what it is yet, but that’s the name.”

The next day I started scratching out the rules, and drawing some truly AWFUL BEER KNIGHTS that I will show you eventually. If I show you them now you’ll just close the browser.

Many many revisions later I’m into a 10th test printing (the latest ones are real nice thanks to DriveThruCards) and about to start our next big round of “Friends and Family” Playtesting, which should lead quickly to our first blind playtest.

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Lord Ed was the first Knight I drew that Frankensteined a 12oz beer can with an illustration of a Medieval Knight.

Here’s Lord Ed in all his glory. Note those Jalapéno Eyes****

Lord Ed is a tribute — and most of my Beer Knights are tributes — to specific beers. In this case it’s Ed of Crazy Ed’s Cave Creek Chili Beer. Take one bottle of basic Modelo-eque light Mexican Lager and stuff an incredibly HOT PEPPER into it and let that steep for a good long while. Chill it way the F down. Now drink it on a hot-as-balls day. Your brain will asplode. It’s hot out, so the cold beer is great. But its also crazy spicy. So you drink more cold beer. Which cools you down. And then your mouth is even more on fire. REPEAT UNTIL DRANK. Then, once you’ve sworn you’ll never have another, you find you’ve opened another and are already deep into the cycle.

I got Ed’s Cave Creek as part of a Beer of the Month club subscription that I got from my OG Partner in Beer Crime, Dan Wolf. One month a sixer of this crazy ass beer showed up and I was hooked. It’s so bad it’s great.

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BEER ADVOCATES REVIEW Crazy Ed’s Cave Creek Chili Beer

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Lord Ed needed a matching ride, and I needed more bad puns, so here’s Jolly Peño (Get it? Huh? Right?) his Picante Pony. I’ve redrawn Jolly a few times, and this is the closest to making me happy. But knowing me, I’ll probably redraw them a few more before this game becomes “real”.

And because these substack game designer posts are all supposed to feature a Knight, Mount and a Weapon illustration, here’s the Gunter Glieben Glauten Glaiven. Extra points if you know. And because a Def Leppard always wants to start a fire, it’s a four bladed flaming glaive. This one came together fast, and still makes me happy so it’s probably going to stick.

Alright, that’s enough. Plenty of wordage and really, you are probably here just to look at the sweet art. I’ll do another post soon that explains more about how to play.

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TOOLS

I draw using an ancient iPad and ProCreate. Big shoutout to True Grit Texture Supply, Retro Supply Co. and Kyle’s Brushes. I do my design & prepress work in Illustrator. I make RGB magically become CMYK in Photoshop. My game trailers are all edited (or will be when I make them) in DaVinci Resolve.

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FOOTNOTES

* You can hear it, can’t you? You’re welcome™
** They are battling right now for headspace aren’t they?
*** Not really but it just sounds kinda cool to say that. More like I helped someone else who got knocked down stand up.
**** Whoa — you caught that? Really. Good for you. Wait. Are you talking about the song by Mr. Mirainga? Or that Ed’s Cave Creek Chili beer actually had a Serrano in it? I claim artistic license to comingle these memories and stand by it.

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