Its June 26th 2004, and we're inside a broom closet. Its a rather cramped broom closet somewhere in the decipher head quarters, and while its inconvenient, it makes us all feel a bit like Harry Potter. There's quite a lot of stuff going on outside this broom closet in the rest of the world, but we don't really care too much about a lot of it. What we do care about is where this broom closet reaches, for while no one is coming to take us to Hogwarts from it, and it doesn't lead to Narnia, this broom closet it sending out a signal over the World Wide Web, a signal that will cry out to the seething masses longing for sci-fi: WARS is imminent, WARS is upon us, and lo there shall be lots of WARS.
    We aren't alone in this dusty little place, in fact really we're only observers. The tendrils of it reach out to us, and we have grasped onto them. One by one we connect to to it, till we're all centered around this tiny box where a man is speaking into a microphone with a booming voice made for Radio. We can already tell we're going to see more of this man, he's got a great voice and a lot of passion for what he's talking about. Since we're connected into the broom closet electronically, we can move through the wires and see what this man's computer can see, like we have some Kizen power that turns us into lightening, so lets see if we can figure out who he is:
He keeps talking into the microphone, it looks like he's recording another podcast. This is a pretty new thing, podcasting. While Radio had existed for quite a long time, being able to distribute a Radio Show with out actually having a Radio Station was a difficult prospect. Sure, people had been doing it for quite a bit of time, one only has to look at the fan made audio dramas about TV shows like Doctor Who distributed amongst fans on tapes in the 80's, but their reach was always limited by how many tapes a few fans could make, and how many people they could be passed to. Podcasting put Radio on the internet, and while it to had been around for a bit, it wasn't really taking off till this year, 2004. In fact, we're a bit early it seems. Podcasting is supposed to really take off soon, but it wasn't quite there yet. As we can see looking down at the notes on the table, this isn't even called a podcast, its something called 'WARS Radio'.
    Ah! There is the name of our mysterious host among these notes as well-- Mark Tuttle. Mark Tuttle... Where have we heard that name before? Well, if we were in New Albany Ohio, which we seemingly can be since we can move through the phone lines now, we'd know that Mark was a morning show host at WNKO FM radio there-- no wonder his voice sounds like smooth chocolate, this guy has been training it up for a while now. A Radio host ey? It looks like he does more than that, he's also part of the WARS design team. Oh, now it makes sense, this Radio show was probably his idea wasn't it. Now the Narnia closet makes sense, its not like card game companies keep spaces around for people to host radio shows casually.
    Since we can travel through the phone lines, I see no reason we can't expand out powers to travel to the future as well. I'm not sure of the mechanics of how this will work, but I'm sure it will iron itself out somehow.
Ah, I see I was right. No serious paradoxes. Lets take a look at 2014: Podcasting is rather popular and common now isn't it? We can see lots of people downloading them and listening to them on the car or on their MP3 players. Lots of Radio Shows release themselves as podcasts now to! Amazing! The future is a bit boring though, and we wouldn't want to know too much about it. We don't want to know the lottery numbers or anything too drastic!
Back in time we go then. Since we've learned that podcasting is a big deal in the future, this is a big deal that WARS has one of these so early on in the past isn't it? I mean, they're by now means the founders of podcasting, but its fair to say they're early adopters, and also this is a company we're talking about, a major company that has made card games based on some of the most popular movies of all time. Sure we're expecting uncle Dursley to barge in at any moment, but who else is doing this at the time? From here, the voice of WARS shoots out to us and allows us to see inside this building.
    What we're allowed to see changes of course, and no two of us see it quite alike. We're only seeing with our ears and our mind, after all. Other people float in and out of the broom closet, we can shift time around to see them come and go so we don't have to be patient about it. There is Decipher CEO Warren Holland, there are the designers of the game, there is Michael Stackpole the beloved author, that’s a lot of people there for this place, and yet no Aslan appears.
    From these voices, we hear all about different aspects of the game. We're linked in, learning little details of the game and the world around it. Did you know Shi reproduce asexually by a form of baby making called “budding?” Of course you do! You're plugged into this system, soaking in the information. You can see the game design tables from here, and lots of art and mechanics, though the art in our minds always ends up a bit different than what appears on the cards, one of the few flaws of the little system we've rigged up. In many ways, with the name WARS, this feels like we are hearing FDR or Winston Churchill on the radio, filling us in on the day to day building of this Universe. Its strange how exciting it all is! After all, we don't really know much of anything about WARS except from what this radio show is telling us, and a few blog posts on the main website.
Though fireside chats didn't take reader questions.

Question: Do you think that WARS Radio was ahead of its time?
Answer: Clearly, it was, in many ways. Sadly, it was also ahead of its time a bit too much, as podcasting hadn't quite taken off when the game launched. While it was much more popular in the middle of the game's run, that's a very different situation then launching a new thing into a void, as opposed to launching one into a fervor, especially when no one was searching that area of the void to begin with.

Question: So you're saying that WARS Radio was a wonderful idea, but it couldn't do anything if no one knew about it?
Answer: Basically, yes. Unfortunately WARS was very unknown at this point. The people who were interested though needed to have something to hold onto, and WARS Radio was a constant source of news and information streaming into our laps. WARS Radio wasn't something you'd give to someone to say “hey, this is what WARS is”, it was what you'd tell them to look for once they were already interested. It was a great way to get people to keep paying attention to WARS, but they had to notice it to begin with.

Question: Like a blog posting about WARS on its anniversary?
Answer: Hush now, we're getting a bit too meta.

    We pull back away from the 4th wall, and just listen to some of what this podcast is. For something recorded in a broom closet in 2004, its remarkably professional and well done. If it didn't mention dates from a decade a go, the production values are high enough you might not realize it isn't current, it might even be better than some of the podcasts in that strange future of 2014. But it is also a voice singing to the choir. While we can hear it, and it is giving us this tour of Decipher games, its hard to not be aware that this is a private tour. Its just us, and really that is the way it should be. The average Joe isn't going to care about this, and the average Joe isn't going to want to listen to a podcast about how exciting an upcoming tournament ten year ago was, but we still do. Because we're fans, and we listen.
    The depth of the coverage impresses us to: listener questions are answered, game mechanics, tournaments, the setting, the art, the development, the future of the game... All of them are covered here for us. This was our first real chance to understand WARS if we cared about it as well. This wasn't just a press release, or even a detailed rundown of the setting. This was WARS for those of us who really cared, and we did, and we listened.
    WARS may have had problems, but talking to us wasn't one of them. If anything, they might have treated us too well for the tiny amount of us there were. We're so happy they are talking to us, but we isn't a big number, and while we wait for more things to come, we're well aware we won't be able to sustain this. But that is the future, and we're getting ahead of ourselves. Mark Tuttle is speaking into the microphone, and we can hear those words in the past or the future or right now. If we just close our eyes, that lost world of the excitement and drive to makes WARS is still bubbling out of our speakers. We smile. We open our eyes, we gaze back down at the notes.

We shouldn't peak.

We peak.

“A Matter of Life and Death” by Michael Stackpole

Is that a story? Is that a story about WARS? Is that the next chapter of this saga, fiction?
We all know the answer to that questions.
And we also know we heard it here first folks, on WARS Radio.

WARS TCG announced to Launch in October 4 May 2004

"When the screen is rolled up the great sky opens."
– Wu-men kuan

Its May 4th 2004, The United States has been at war in Iraq for over a year now, not to mention that we're still in Afghanistan. Things aren't really that great. Star Wars Episode 3 is coming next year, so that will be exciting, but in the meantime at Decipher games, Star Wars is the problem of the day. A few years ago, Lucasfilm decided to give the license for creating the Star Wars trading card game to Wizards of the Coast, which was a problem because Decipher had been making a profitable Star Wars TCG for years with a huge built in playerbase. Sure, Decipher had other games: the Lord of the Rings Card Game was doing well, and the Star Trek game was moseying along well to, but Star Wars had been the cash cow that had really made the company, and not everybody wanted to switch over to Hobbiton adventures.
    What was decided is obvious to you reading this: a new card game would be created, one using the same rules as the old Star Wars CCG, but with a new setting created and owned by Decipher so that they would never lose the rights to it. The plan was ambitious: despite Decipher's extensive CCG experience, all of their most profitable games had been from licensed properties from other companies. They had made their name off of making games from movies and TV shows, and had practically perfected the art of managing to take tiny details in the background of images and creating whole new cards and characters out of them. To make their own game, they would need to create their own art for the game, not to mention create a whole new setting the game could be set in.
One has to wonder if at some point someone working on WARS didn't throw up their hands and wonder if they could just get the rights to Battle Star Galactica and make a card game based on that, or some other Sci-Fi property: just pay the license fee, reuse the rules, move on with life. That probably would have been economical, though also a pretty cheap money grab. Instead, the most creative and daring option was chosen: A new game, a new setting, a new adventure. Out with the old, and in with WARS.
    The optimism surrounding WARS at this point was, depending on your point of view: sad, naive, inspiring, or just corporate spin. Getting down on WARS is easy, after all it did fail, and unfortunately there were plenty of people at the time down on WARS for reasons entirely unrelated to the quality of what Decipher was creating at the time. Decipher had a hugely bestselling game with their Star Wars Collectable Card Game, and they continued that with their Lord of the Rings game, but Decipher made some questionable business decisions with its Star Wars Game that tainted the opinions of many players, which we will discuss in more detail later. Essentially, many shop owners were reluctant to carry the WARS Trading Card Game from the moment it was announced, and their reluctance was a hurdle the game never really overcame.
    I myself remember going excitedly into my local game store, the former “Bower Street Cards and Games” (now “Realms Games” in a different location) and asking if they were going to carry WARS. The owner just laughed for a moment, and said no. I was crestfallen, but no one was really that interested at the store. No one was interested in pre-ordering boxes of the game, and people seemed more interested in the remaining supply of the old Star Wars Card Game than Decipher's replacement for it, and most of the players had jumped ship straight for the Lord of the Rings Cardgame, myself included.
    What this meant was that WARS' announcement wasn't so much an announcement of the continuation of the Star Wars CCG as it was an entirely new endeavor that for all it tried to be like Star Wars, wasn't going to be accepted as just the fill in for Decipher not having the Star Wars license. The announcement needed to pack a punch.
In many ways it did: we learned that John Howe, the famous Lord of the Rings artist would be designing aliens for the setting, and Michael A. Stackpole would be writing stories for it. Those two names alone are pretty impressive credentials: Howe was at his height of being a big name artist, with the popularity of the Lord of the Rings movies and his prominent role in the art and designs for them. Stackpole was a New York Times Bestselling author, and was one of the most beloved authors of the Star Wars novels, having written five novels for the X-Wing Series, the novel “I, Jedi” and two of the most well received entries in the controversial “New Jedi Order” book series. Getting both of them was a big deal, and important in the Public Relations game of selling WARS as being not just relevant, but a successor to Star Wars. Both are very talented artists in their own right, but securing them was as much a victory for the game as the work they would do. You didn't even have to see what they would create as their reputations spoke for themselves quite clearly.
    While the names are exciting for fans of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, they aren't particularly well known outside the circles of those fandoms. Neither of them are in the colloquial sense of the term, rock stars. Indeed, it focuses the message clearly: this is a game for the fans we already have. This is what you like? This is what we are giving you! While drawing in the old crowd of a popular game is a pretty good move, we're still left with one big problem: how is Decipher going to draw in people who are not already familiar with the Star Wars CCG?
For now though, they are focused on the old guard, and the enhancements to the old game seem downright delectable. A streamlining of the often overcomplicated rules of the original game? A single card-back instead of the two card backs that the old Star Wars Game had? Yes please! The press release also cites a figure from Warren Holland, Decipher's CEO, stating that they had received tens of thousands of emails asking them to continue the mechanics from the Star Wars CCG, and that this new game would allow them to control the destiny of the game for its players.

    Which leads us back to an annoying point: this game wouldn't exist if Decipher hadn't lost the Star Wars license, and its creators seem more than a little miffed that they did. For a game that is continuing the legacy of an older game, and courting its player base, one can't help but sense a bit of underlying anger, real or imagined, that Lucasfilm left them high and dry. While everyone involved seems very excited and happy to be working on something with no chain and no master, if the game fails Decipher is going to be in some serious trouble.
Yet, despite all the 20/20 Hindsight and previous doomsaying, its hard to say that the decision to make WARS wasn't a sound one from a business perspective. Decipher had a devoted following from the Star Wars CCG, and its players had given huge lipservice to wanting to continue playing with the mechanics of that game. Decipher could reap all the profits from the game if it was successful, without having to pay a large license fee to Lucasfilm. Decipher could finally have its own game that could run forever like Magic the Gathering, unrestrained by how many movies there were to make into cards, and unhindered by how long its license for the game would last. Let me stress: this was a gamble worth taking, and it was one that while costly if a failure, Decipher could afford to take barring some huge unforeseen misfortune that I am not foreshadowing at all whatsoever.

    What shape WARS will even take at this point is still unclear as well. The press release quotes an ancient book of Buddhist Proverbs, which is technically the first words anyone reads about WARS. It says its in our distant future, and concerns aliens invading through “the Mumon Rift.” Whatever this universe is, we really have no point of reference to it. After all, its not like there is a movie we've watched about this setting or anything.

    Which takes us to a shift in topic: The name “WARS” for the game. The first mention of WARS has it called “The Mumon Rip Wars”, which sounds a bit silly. Luckily some fans suggest the word “Rift” rather than “Rip” and a much better name is born. “The Mumon Rift Wars” Card Game it is! Unfortunately that wasn't to last however, as there was another game being made called “Rifts” that was rather unhappy there was another game using the word “Rift” in its title. To belay any controversy or legal action, Decipher changed the name to just WARS. Out of all of the decisions about WARS, this one might be the worst. While I'll be picking through and over-analyzing every WARS release ever over the next few weeks, and slowly talking about my analysis of why things did or didn't work, its hard to put off the very name of the game itself. Lets just be clear about this: I love WARS more than any other Sci-Fi Universe ever, its my favorite game, and my favorite setting, but WARS is a godawful name for it.
Try Googling WARS. What comes up? Its not this game, that’s for sure, and it wasn't even 10 years ago. In order to get to WARS you have to put in other keywords like “Mumon Rift”, “Decipher”, “Grail Quest Books”, etc. The name literally cannot stand by itself.
WARS is clearly meant to associate the property with Star Wars, but it also ties it to Star Wars so intently it cannot really break free of it. Trying to explain the name WARS can result in this comical exchange I've had several times:
“WARS, and its Sci-Fi?”
“Yeah.”
“So like, WARS in space, like some sort of... Star Wars?”
“...Yes.”
    WARS could definitely use a better title, even to this day. While the branding of WARS is slowly latching people onto the name WARS, if the name was changed to something like say... “The Mumon WARS” it would be a lot easier for most people to remember, search for on the internet, and talk about. A plus side to the name is its short and easy to spell and remember if you do care about the property, but I don't think that outweighs the name's many downsides. If a better name had been chosen from the beginning, one that was more individual and distinct, maybe WARS would have stuck in people's memories better and the game would have survived on for far longer than it did. Maybe. Its all just shrugs and guesswork on that front. We can't know the alternative future from that for certain, but it does seem like the name is a sticking point even to this day.

    But it is what it is, and the game was announced. Decipher had built a dream, and the dream was spreading out into reality, taking its form. Now we just had to wait for our first real taste of the setting, but before that, Decipher had one innovation with WARS that is really quite remarkable, and dare I say it, far ahead