The Dead Stop Tales

by Ross Fertel, Second Edition Brand Manager

3rd November 2017

After every expansion, I like to come in with what I consider neat behind the sense stories about the cards. With more cards there are more stories. Dead Stop has nine, two of which have stories I consider neat. If you're looking for cool things to do with cards, look elsewhere. If you enjoy thing such as bonus content on DVDs, look no further.

Data – The lore was just a nightmare. I really can't think off the top of my head of a lore that's caused so much consternation in the past.

This isn't the fault of the Creative team. They just went off the episode. When it came to proofreading, they wanted to know if this matched what Shakespeare wrote. I pointed out that it didn't have to match that text written centuries ago, but it did have to match what Moore wrote. One thing led to another, and I ended up looking at the text while watching the episode and, for the record, it matched up entirely.

But that wasn't the end of it. His text didn't fit on the card! This is something that happens every now and then when cards are templated. In all honesty, I was absolutely shocked that the dilemmas all fit on the cards and didn't require any editing. Thankfully, we just needed to cut the lore and I let creative know, while ribing them a bit about rewriting Shakespeare. They were less amused than I was at the prospect.

Jadzia Dax – This set was designed 'top down,' meaning that cards were put together with a specific story in mind. Usually, it's the reverse but in this case, it helped things go along, at least from a story perspective. This means that Cowboy Tucker was always Cowboy Tucker and Princess Dax was always Princess Dax. Of course, creative came along and did their things to flesh them out.

But of course, that wasn't the end of it. It wasn't clear from the subtitle and lore that they had kept this version of Dax. It got a big muddled when a certain vice-chair volunteered to write an article by pointing to her avatar. This of course confused a certain Second Edition Brand Manager who didn't know if he should look at the character or the costume in said avatar. This culminated in a staff meeting where we went through the sequence of events in the episode of Dax speaking Klingon to Worf, and all was right in the world.

Normally when I write about an expansion, I thank all the departments. I've mentioned them almost all of them above with a great example of how well they work together. I haven't specifically mention Rules, but they worked hard to make sure that the cards fit in the realm of what design wanted. I'm very proud of all staff and the work they did on this set, especially both on a short timeframe and hot on the heels of a prior release.

Dead Stop is legal next Tuesday and the Spotlight Series resumes next week. Be sure to thank Maggie for letting me take the month.

Remember, this is Halloween!

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