In the lower suites of Lucas Oil Stadium, Rock Manor Games gave Sequential Planet a peek at some of their upcoming games at Gen Con.
The publisher, most known for Set a Watch and Maximum Apocalypse, opened their presentation with an expansion for Merchants of Magick. This expansion includes various upgrades and tweaks in addition to new mechanics. Much of Dangerous Business is about taking the base game’s feedback and improving it.
“One of the critiques we got was that you could get a high-scoring card sort of randomly dealt to you,” says Mike Gnade, Founder of Rock Manor Games. “To address that we have taken all of what we now call advanced orders and are worth higher points and gave them a separate deck.” After rolling dice, players have a simultaneous selection process where they choose an action to perform. Players can entice customers, steal them from other players’ shops, collect potion recipes, brew potions, or advertise their stores to bring in high-paying customers.
“One of the great things about this expansion is that you can add and remove different pieces of it. You can play with everything, or you can just play with the board and take away the new monsters and the heroes and play with the old components,” says Gnade. “It’s very modular in nature and you can make it as complex, deep, and crunchy as you want.”
Merchants of Magick: Dangerous Business will launch on Kickstarter in Fall 2023. Rock Manor Games is reprinting the base game of Merchants of Magick along with the Dangerous Business expansion on Kickstarter.
Gnade also offered insights into two games that couldn’t make it to Gen Con due to shipping delays, an obstacle that was common for many publishers at the convention.
The first game, Brass Empire is a reprint of the first game that Gnade designed. Brass Empire has been revised and redesigned with enhanced mechanics. It presents players with corporate factions and unique faction cards with a different strategy and approach to deck building. The game also features a tableau-building mechanic with opportunities for sabotage and building efficient engines.
The second delayed game, Lawyer Up Season 2 picks up where Lawyer Up left off. Lawyer Up Season 2 features divorce, private eye noir, and casino heist cases. Much of Lawyer Up is still the same, but Rock Manor Games has added a few new changes, especially to the divorce case. Rather than the two players competing to sway a jury, they will instead be fighting over the assets of their clients. Everything from the kids, the dog, and even the board game collection is up for grabs. After hearing about how ‘real’ the divorce case could feel, the various media outlets attending the presentation made some nervous jokes filled with laughter. “To make it less personal, the story is we have a celebrity divorce,” says Gnade.
“One of the things about divorce is each asset sometimes leans heavily towards either the prosecution or defense side,” Gnade says as he explains one of the key mechanics of the divorce case. Each client has assets they want more, affecting scoring. They also have an emotional state that is dealt with at the beginning of the game. For example, a character might be spiteful and go after the dog that the other party loves dearly. Each of the three cases has plenty of variation and customization, keeping that experience fresh through multiple plays.
Gnade also revealed that Lawyer Up is being reprinted as Lawyer Up: Season 1 and includes all of the expansion cases in one box.
The final game shown was a prototype set to hit markets in 2024. Star Driven lets players run their own spaceship with a crew. Players navigate their ships through space, complete missions, gather power and maintain their crew. The game also features solo play with AI opponents and offers diverse factions with unique abilities and playstyles.
Stay tuned for more coverage and reviews of Rock Manor Games’ upcoming titles. You can purchase Lawyer Up and Merchants of Magick: Dangerous Business on the Rock Manor Games online shop.
