Hey everyone. It's me, Martin Cline, the designer, developer, publisher, and illustrator of Xorakus. A quick warning, this post is going to be very real, authentic, and honestly it's quite sad. If you're not ready for that right now, it's okay. Just skip this one and move on with your day. Okay, ready? A couple of weeks ago, on April 19th, my brother Roger passed away. In addition to grieving his death, I've been debating with myself about how to acknowledge it with respect to this game. "Why mention it at all?" you might ask. Well, Xorakus began as a conversation between Roger and myself and I don't exactly know how to move forward without talking about it. It's true that I really did almost all of the actual work in making Xorakus a reality and my amazing wife, Brittney, put in a good amount of work on the the graphic design, but it's also true that if there was no Roger, there would be no Xorakus. Here's the story:

We were at his house in Big Spring, TX. The year was 2013 and I was there for his wife's funeral. He had been married to Shirley for about 12 years and we were all pretty devestated by her passing. I was at Roger's house after the funeral and we had this really deep, emotional conversation. It began with talking about Shirley and progressed to my concern for Roger's health. Roger and Shirley were both very overweight and she was about 54 years old when she died. I wanted him to stick around and grow old with me. I made him promise that he would start prioritizing his health more - start eating right and getting more excercise. Roger brought up the point that maybe we should make better use of whatever time we have left -we could try to connect more and spend more time together. It's not an easy task, because I live in Seattle and he lived in Big Spring. We decided that maybe if we had a project to work on together, it would help us to stay in touch, to talk more, and to bridge the distance.

It wasn't the first time we tried something like this. We had attempted a comic book together several years ealier, but it fizzled pretty quickly. We were both really into board games, though, so we decided to give that a try. The conversation moved right into questions about what type of game would it be? I think I offered the suggestion that for our first game, we should make it easy on ourselves and start with something very simple with very few components.

Roger shot that down; "That's not really the kind of game I like, though".

Me - "Okay, well, what do you recommend?"

Roger - "Well, I kinda prefer games with more meat on their bones."

Me - "What do you mean?"

Roger - "You know, games that have a lot of story and flavor, kinda similar to that Arkham Horror game I sent you."

Me - "Hmmm, you know that's really going to take a lot of work. It could take years."

Roger - "Yeah, well..." Then we both sat quietly for a couple of minutes thinking. "What would be a good game mechanic to use?" I pondered that question a little bit.

Me - "I've always really liked games, like dungeon crawlers, where you're laying down map tiles as you explore the area." I was remembering this old game that we played when I was a kid in the 80s called "WizWar" and in my memory it worked that way, but as I look at it now, it seems like I was probably mixing it up with something else.

Roger - "Oh, so you want to do a dungeon crawler?"

Me - "I mean, it doesn't have to be a dungeon. It could be a map, kinda like Civilization or Age of Empires, where the whole world is blacked out and unknown until you move and reveal the map as you go. The tiles are randomized and that way you have a unique map each time, like Settlers of Catan, except not all at once."

Roger - "Do you see these tiles as hexagon... or square... something else?"

Me - "I'm not sure yet."

Roger - "I think they should be hexagon."

Me - "Okay."

Roger - "What theme would work for a game like that?"

Me - "Hmmm... Okay, how about this? You've crashed landed on an alien planet and you're moving away from the ship to explore."

Roger - "That could work. So is it cooperative?"

Me - "Well, I guess that would probably make the most sense in that scenario. I don't know, maybe there's some possibility of a traitor. That could be fun."

Roger - "Alright, so what's the goal then, to repair your ship and escape the planet?"

Me - "I guess that makes sense. Sounds complicated though. I'm not sure where to start with repairing a spaceship. We would basically have to invent technology that we don't understand and figure out what's broken about it... and then walk players through the process of finding whatever they need to make those repairs."

Roger - "Okay, well, maybe we make a list of different systems of the spaceship and any of them can be damaged. Like, I guess there would be the hull, the engine, the controls..."

Me - "...the sensors, the thrusters... life support..."

Roger - "...the computer, the weapons system, the teleporter, the communications system."

Me - "Yeah, alright, and I guess you could shuffle them and draw some number of them at the beginning. Those would be the damaged systems."

Roger - "True." A little more thinking. "So are you just generic crew members or are you each playing a different character?"

Me - "Yeah, you're probably playing different characters. I mean, I don't have much of an idea about what those are yet, but..."

Roger - "Okay, maybe you think of them as archtypes of different sci-fi characters. Like you have the captain, and the pilot, and the doctor...

Me - "...the navigator, the engineer, the scientist...

Roger - "...communications officer, security officer..."

Me - "Wait, what kind of crew is this? It's starting to sound very Star Trek."

Roger - "Were you thinking of it as more of a rag tag crew like in Firefly?"

Me - "Yeah, maybe. I guess I was just trying to leave that part open for now to see what makes sense later. Maybe it's okay to have some Star Trek archetypes, but I may be a little bit more partial to Star Wars.

Roger - "Maybe you have something close to a Jedi."

Me - "Okay, yeah... but also, maybe we have a space marine, like Halo."

Roger - "...or Warhammer 40K."

Me - "Sure, or Avatar or Aliens."

Roger - "...maybe there's a droid."

Me - "So, my friends and I have been really into deck building games and it would be kinda fun to see if we could bring that in somehow, like, maybe the characters have a deck of skills that they're managing as they explore."

Roger - "So, what would you have, like fighting skills?"

Me - "Yeah, maybe it's specific to the character, so the space marine and the Jedi have plenty of fighting skills, but the scientist has more sciencey skills, and the engineer maybe has more skills for making repairs."

...and on and on it went, late into the night. By the time I left for home a day or two later, we had covered most of the concepts of the game. Some ideas came later and of course there was still all of the actual work to do, but there's a lot of Roger in the DNA of this game. When we finally launch this thing, it will be dedicated to the memory of Roger & Shirley.

Obituary:

Roger Dewayne Cline, 54, Managing Editor of the Big Spring Herald, a job he loved, died Wednesday, April 19, at Shannon Rehabilitation Hospital in San Angelo, following heart surgery.

Roger was born in Baltimore, Md., April 9, 1969, to Raymond and Janet Cline. He grew up in Port Arthur, and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School where he was known as The Voice of the TJ Band. He had parts in a variety of school plays including Luck be a Lady, Little Theater plays including The Music Man and Brigadoon and an opera while attending Lamar University in Beaumont.

Roger attended the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and held two degrees from there. A Bachelor of Science in Computer Science he received in 2015, and a Bachelor of Arts in English in 2004 when he graduated Summa cum Laude.

Roger was always a newspaper man and began his journalist career in 1998 as a reporter for the Port Arthur News where covered city and county politics, hard news and features as well as some sports coverage.

His career with the Big Spring Herald began in July of 2001 as a reporter where he covered the city and county beats, hard news and features and often had his stories picked up by the Associated Press.

Roger left the Herald for a time and spent a couple of years working for the Snyder Daily Herald, but eventually returned to Big Spring and Herald where he remained until his passing. He was promoted to Managing Editor for the Big Spring Herald August 2022. A position he truly loved and couldn't wait to return to.

Although the majority of his career was spent as a newspaper journalist, Roger also dabbled in teaching. From 1992 to 1994, he was a teacher's aide at Pease Elementary School in Port Arthur and from 2010 to 2013 he worked as a substitute teacher for both Big Spring ISD and Coahoma ISD.

He married Shirley Wyrosdik Limones, They enjoyed more than 10 years together, traveling, exploring, and sharing a love of life. For several years the couple served as Santa Claus and Mrs. Santa Claus for the Big Spring Christmas Parade. She preceded him in death in 2013.

Roger loved to read Fantasy and Science Fiction, play RPG video games and a variety of board games.

He loved and was devoted to his cats Thelma and Louise.

He is survived by his parents, his brother Martin Andrew Cline (Brittney) of Seattle, WA, and step-children Bubba Limones and Bryan Limones, plus five step grandchildren who called him “Pop.”

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