Dear Loyal Backers –

Thanks to you, this project is gaining not only funds, but also some real momentum. I can’t thank you enough for your support. This project seems to have a very nice, natural “lift” under it – which is a wonderful feeling.

You should be proud to know that with your contribution, you are supporting a very small company called Taylor and Gray. With the help of Kickstarter and our dedicated backers, we are slowly changing the relationship between the customer and the company; we are proving that – yes – there is an audience for strange, fun board games that are more about ART rather than INDUSTRY.

Episode #3 - The Invention of the Game and the First Version

I began working on this game last January – almost a year ago. I had a dream one night about trying to talk to someone alone in a city. We were with a group and I couldn’t quite find a moment with her alone. I got out of bed. I got out a piece of construction paper and a black Sharpie marker.

I hesitated before marking the paper. I knew that the way that I made this first prototype – the first lines I set down, the makeshift pieces I used at the very beginning – would inform the ways that I would continue to structure (and think about) this game throughout its development. Making the first marks on the construction paper was very intimidating.

Eventually, I mustered the courage to draw 9 squares on the construction paper. These were city blocks, and I linked them with crosswalks (little striped lines) that only let a certain number of people across. The game, at this early stage, was called The Intersection. The basic mechanic (of trying to consult with someone in private by crossing the crosswalks) was there; but there was plenty of room for improvement. All of that would come later….

Here’s an interesting detail about the game at this stage. The pieces were little colored corners of construction paper (red, blue and beige). The main characters (instead of Jules, Hodge and Lady Ashley) were labeled “You” “BF” (for Boyfriend) and “Her.” These were simply the characters in the dream, and I used these names as a shorthand for the characters; however, the more I thought about it, I couldn’t help but notice the profound implications of having a piece named “You” …. After all, when two players sit down to play the game – who gets to be the character named “you?”

I began to entertain the possibility of calling the main characters “you” and “me” – to double the effect – and send the problems of identity ricocheting throughout the players’ minds. I wanted to do this to make it profoundly complicated for a player to choose his/her main piece. Moreover, having characters named “You” and “Me” on the game board created some interesting problems for communicating about the game in the course of play:

“Whose turn is it?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“No. It’s you, then her, then me?”
“You go after her?”
“No, I don’t. But the turns go Me, you, her. Like that.”

You get the idea. At this stage in the game’s development, communicating about the turns and the pieces became a “Who’s on first”–type of conundrum that forced players to actually point to the piece on the board in order to refer to it. This renders the act of naming the pieces utterly useless – and creates a nice little reverberation of identities across the two players and amongst the game pieces themselves. Either the players would point to the piece on the board in order to refer to it, or the players would rename their pieces.

But it goes deeper than that. Let’s think this through.

Two players sit down to play the game. One player chooses to be you and the other one me. The words, you and me are not specific labels: they only have meaning in relation to the speaker and recipient. As I’ve tried to demonstrate, naming the characters “you” and “me” creates an impossible dilemma that mixes the identities of the two players playing the game. Yes. But there’s more. The male characters both have the same objective on the board: to leave the others and speak to the girl. You have to bear with me. Classical theater often reduces a character’s identity to an objective. In other words, in most stories, you are what you want. Objective is arguably the most express form of characterization. So if both of the characters have the same objective (to talk to Her alone), perhaps it makes sense that their identities are so dynamically interchangeable.

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Here’s the link to the project on kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1883736289/the-gentlemen-of-the-south-sandwiche-islands

Or you can join the facebook group here to show your support: http://www.facebook.com/group.php...

…Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Fortunately for all of us, the game pieces are now named Jules, Hodge and Lady Ashley. This makes it possible to communicate about the game without feeling like you’re at the butt of a maniacal practical joke put on by a crazy linguist.

Yes. Fortunately, as the art for the board game began to mature, the setting changed from this warped city intersection to a set of islands, and the characters changed from “you” “boyfriend” and “Her” – to “Jules,” “Hodge” and “Lady Ashley”; that said, in the new version of the game (on the Sandwiche Islands) there is still a trace of this original dilemma of name, character, identity and reference.

Here’s the historical spillover:

In his memoirs, Jules (the manufacturer of distorted glass) kept careful accounts of each time he played the board game with Hodge. Sitting down to play the game, it made sense that Hodge would play Hodge and his servant Trotwood (the beige pieces) and Jules would play Jules and his servant Puff (the blue pieces). However, after a long string of losses, Hodge insisted on swapping out his unlucky pieces, and demanded to play using the blue pieces. So, on the islands, when they played the board game, often they were playing the game with pieces that stood in for themselves; however, sometimes they would play the game and switch who was who by swapping pieces.

There’s always another layer of depth... But I think that’s a good stopping point for tonight.

As always, I appreciate your dedicated support.

Next week’s episode is called: Manufacturing Plastic Game Pieces in my Kitchen: learning the hard way about chemistry, safety and ventilation.

My Best,

-James Taylor

Support the Project Here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1883736289/the-gentlemen-of-the-south-sandwiche-islands