Grand Trunk Games is officially partnering with 18xx Maker

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a blog titled “The case to make a game open for print-and-play”. Today, I am announcing that GTG is officially partnering with 18xx Maker to do just that.

Titles from Grand Trunk Games will be open for print-and-play through 18xx Maker. This policy is for personal use, not commercial use.

While I don’t expect anyone to rush to the printers this afternoon (since most people are just now getting their copies of 1861/1867), it is a policy I’ve wanted to adopt for some time. I have many reasons for wanting to do this, but most of those I covered at length in my previous post. In short, I think people generally have their own reasons for wanting to print-and-play games. Maybe they can’t afford the published version or maybe they want to work on a redraw project. Whatever it is, I’d like for them to be able to do so without any worries about it being “unethical”.

One thing I am especially excited about though, is making GTG titles available through 18xx Maker. It is the best tool for quickly prototyping 18xx designs as well as generating 18xx assets to use for redraw projects. In general, I feel that a community thrives most when it is “open source” where members can freely create, share, and collaborate with others. My hope is that by adopting this policy through 18xx Maker, we’ll see more folks using the tool, trying their hands at game design or graphic design, and will share their projects with the rest of the community.

If you haven’t used 18xx Maker before, I highly encourage you to check it out!