Not sure if this is really newsworthy, but I know that Kettlefish thinks it's a big deal so maybe it is.
Gantry and I live about 30 minutes from each other, but we'd never actually met. We're just two out of 2.5 million people who live in this part of the world. When Kettlefish decided to send him one of the surprise packages, she insisted that I had to deliver it to Gantry in person. Gantry does a lot of travelling, both for work and for fun, so it took a few weeks to find a time that would work for him. We met at a little Mexican restaurant a few blocks over from where I work, which I found interesting because I had no idea it was there and because there aren't a lot of Mexican restaurants around here.
We talked for about an hour on a variety of subjects. I brought him up to speed with regards to what's been happening with the Complete Annotated Rules, the Carcassonne Shoppe, and the work Kettlefish has been doing around the Carcassonne community (which Gantry thinks is fantastic by the way). Like myself, Gantry hasn't had an opportunity to play Carcassonne for a long time, so he feels lost when somebody is asking a rules question regarding an expansion he doesn't know anything about.
Gantry told me more about the history of Carcassonne Central. He was a regular user of BoardGameGeek, but found the forums difficult to use. (I think many of us can understand that feeling.) He tried to reach out to the guys who ran the site, but never heard anything back. Eventually, his frustration with the BGG forums led to his decision to create Carcassonne Central. He found a fan site about the game by Matt Harper, an Englishman living in Germany, and sent him an e-mail. (Matt's web site is still available here:
http://carc.mjharper.de/) They collaborated on building a community around the game; Gantry was the technical "make it happen" guy, and Matt was the rules answer guy. Matt created the Complete Annotated Rules and posted it on BoardGameGeek, with a note that updates would only be available at Carcassonne Central, and only to members. Thousands of Carcassonne fans signed up just for the privilege of getting their hands on the latest version of the Complete Annotated Rules. Most never made a single post, but a core group of people arose. Some of those people moved on, and others took their place. Somewhere along the line, we started churning out fan-made expansions on a weekly basis. I feel like this coincided with a time where official expansions weren't being published by Rio Grande, and the community wanted more.
Something that we talked about was our ideas for the future of Carcassonne Central. Gantry shared some ideas with me that had been rattling around in his head. He had a few specific ideas, some of which I found appealing but I'm not sure if they're all possible. My ideas are more general: I'd like to see us back in our former glory, churning out expansions and variants on a regular basis (not necessarily weekly, but monthly would be good).
We also talked a bit about what we do for work, and interesting things we've done in the past. I used to be in a similar line of work, so it was fun for me to hear about things Gantry had been involved with, and for me to tell him about things I'd done. Some stories are only interesting to people in the same industry as you.
I suspect a few people will be disappointed that we didn't play a game of Carcassonne, but that might happen in the future. We both agreed that our meeting should have happened a long time ago, and we're both interested to meet some of the other people on here as well if we're ever in your area.
Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=307.0
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May 30, 2014, 02:36:51 PM