The Evolution of “Expansion or Extinction” (EOE) is an article series periodically appearing in InsideGMT.  It features articles from the designer regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release. Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found here and here.

---

Today’s Topic:  Introducing a new map!

Let me begin today’s blog post by making a confession: I am not an artist.  This is a sad but true statement. When I sat down to design Expansion or Extinction, I was totally focused on creating a game which worked — I was not concerned about the aesthetics of the game at all. I knew that once the game was finished and sent to GMT, they would send it to professionals who would take my ideas and convert it to something which looked good as well as being functional. I was surprised by how quickly GMT accepted my game idea and published pictures of my playtest game. Being a first time game designer I had never anticipated them being out on the internet! I was equally surprised by some of the reactions of folks who saw pictures of my playtest game. 

The first thing that needed to change was the names I had given the various star systems. If you were curious, the names on my original playtest map came from my three favorite space themed series…Star Trek, David Drake’s Hammer Slammers, David Weber’s Honor Harrington, and David Pournelle’s Falkenberg’s Legion Series. Copyright issues would have prevented them from being the names of the star systems when the game was actually produced. I hope that the various authors involved accept that I used those names as homage to their fine work, rather than copyright infringement! Knowing that things needed to be changed, I reached out to a play-test friend who is also in the aerospace industry for help. He did research on potential star systems and where they are positioned in relation to Sol. 

The second thing that needed to be changed was the map itself. It became apparent after a number of playtest games, that there was too much “space” in my universe! Therefore I needed to condense things. The new map brings players closer together, which adds tension to play much earlier in the game. As an added bonus it removes the totally symmetrical “snow flake” design of my first map.

Third was to make the map more appealing to the eye. One of the players in my regular gaming group happened to have some extra time on his hands (due to the Federal Government shutdown). It was my good fortune that he has the talent and was willing to work long hours at convert my very amateurish hexes draw on foam board into a work of art!

I would like to publicly express my heartfelt thanks to these talented gentlemen:

Ron Draker:  Initial EOE map and unit design

David Swanson:  Stellar research

Robert Foster:  Current EOE map and fantastic artwork

I hope you enjoy the map, and the evolution of Expansion or Extinction!

Thank you for your interest in EOE…is there something you’d like to know about EOE? Let me know and it very well might end up as a blog article here at InsideGMT!

---

Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4