From the messy desk of the brand manager...

As I sit here preparing for Gen Con and what is sure to be the largest Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) event ever, I wonder how I got here. In college, I studied chemistry and wasn't very good at it but since I was paying for my own school I wasn't about to change majors in midstream. I was also heavily involved in our game club but equally involved as a guitar player for a well-known (but very silly) band called Buddhist Priest.

After school, I took a job as an archaeologist working Native American sites in the Northeast and a few early settler houses--a job I was totally unprepared for. But it was a lot of fun. (Someday I'll have to tell you the "prehistoric donut story.") I got that job at the last minute, and I almost felt guilty about it because it was a job that Archaeology majors would have died for.

After a couple of months of playing in the dirt, I took a job as--imagine this--a chemist. I didn't mind the work; unlike with school chemistry, I was pretty good at "business chemistry." That was when I decided that, while the job was great for paying the bills, it was lacking in other areas. I tried to better myself, took management courses, got a few promotions, joined the company volleyball teams, and participated on the employee recognition committee.

While I enjoyed the extra challenges and responsibilities, I knew I was destined for games. I told myself that even if I never worked in the gaming industry, I was going to make sure that I was constantly working towards that goal in my free time. I had to give it a shot. I did this very methodically, by targeting the company I wanted to work for, doing things that would show that company how serious I was and how, while I was a fan, I was also a professional. After a while, this paid off with two job offers on the same day!

After many jobs in the industry, I ended up here at my messy desk, looking forward to Gen Con again. These shows are an amazing amount of work, but they also highlight the reasons that I'm not a chemist anymore: games are fun, and most gamers are as cool as hell (not true of chemists).

Companies often have "fiscal years" that don't always map to calendar years. I always think of the year, however, as Gen Con to Gen Con. I am going to make a dangerous prediction here-especially dangerous because, by the time you all read this, Gen Con '99 will be history--this Gen Con will mark the successful start of a new era for L5R. The new era has already had challenges, to be sure (some would say we can't count to thirty-two anymore!), but we set our sights high so that even if we miss our goals occasionally, the end result is still a better product. The Pearl Edition set is clearly the best basic set to date, the cards and packaging look better than ever, the art is getting better every set (including alternate art of the more commonly printed cards), Morikage was a breakthrough event the Siege of Sleeping Mountain set has brought new players into the fold, and the Honor Bound set introduced a new card type and foil-stamped cards that add to the current storyline format. Button Men, Clan Wars (the miniatures game), the RPG, the live-action events, more cool stuff from Eric Devlin and Kirby Signcraft, a better website ... the list goes on and on. It's an L5R world. And oh yeah, next August the first L5R novel will be out, with a cover by Brom.

Continuous improvement is the samurai way.

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