Renaissance
Release Date: Summer 2000 (Guillermo)
Publisher: Stone Press
Designer: Bill Fogarty
Artist: Merald Clark
Guillermo was produced just for fun by a small group of renaissance enthusiasts called The Oldenfeld Players. Guillermo is left-handed, which explains the location of his numbers. Technically those dice should be interpreted as Auxiliary or Reserve Dice, as in the Sailor Moon Button Men expansion, but of course that's not really the point.
Five button men by Bill Fogarty, published by Stone Press and available through Cheapass Games as a complete set of five.[1]
This set has an odd history, having been released in waves. After the final wave, approximately nineteen sets were available through the Cheapass Games webstore a month after Fairies and Studio Foglio became available.[2] On official sites from the vintage time period, only Guillermo can be found listed as far as when he was released and his tournament legal status. Thus, it is assumed that only Guillermo is considered tournament legal. Lascivia, a button with an excessive amount of Poison Dice, is especially difficult to beat. In the Greater than Games livestream during the play of Fish Cook, James states that he could not remember if the Renaissance set was playtested.[3]
According to Bill Fogarty himself during an interview conducted via Boardgamegeek messaging:
Thanks for asking about Renaissance Button Men. It has been a while since I thought about that set. So here is the story of the set:
I was working with Cheapass Games as an early demo monkey and did a bunch of Gen Con shows in the booth. When Button Men came out, I asked James about a license to produce a small set and he agreed. Additionally, as I would be working the booth, he agreed to sell them out of the booth as well.
The idea behind the set was based on a theatrical company that I was a part of. The Oldenfeld Players was a commedia dell arte style company performing original short plays at Renn Fairs, carnivals, etc. The actors each had a stock character or two that we would use in the scripts as needed to make the story and the jokes work. We had art for our promotional materials that included drawings of many of these characters. This art (which looked like the actors), and the characters, were the basis for the set.
The first year, I released Guillermo as a solo button. James and I worked on the statistics for all five of the buttons. Guillermo (a dim, but overly-brave and overly confident soldier) was one of my characters, and the design was a fairly simple one, but, as the character was left-handed, the numbers were on the left side of the button (rather than on the traditional right side). Later, putting dice on the right side became a thing, so Guillermo is a bit strange in that regard. As a side note, Guillermo was the winning button in the very first Button Men Tournament at Gen Con.
The following year, I release the next two characters, Lascivia (a saucy tavern wench who is always looking for a con or an angle, played by Susan Pace) and Dr. Speculo (a deranged “Man of Science” played by Ben Armstrong). Lascivia, so I am told, was so dangerous, that the online version of the game banned her from tournament play (a fact that amused and delighted the actor who created and played the part). The Dr. Speculo character was used by us in a later project we worked on, a television show called Tales From 6 Feet Under. It ran for 2-3 years and we received an Emmy nomination for one of our Halloween Specials.
The third set included MothMan (again Ben Armstrong) and Harry Pudding (played by Merald Clark, who was also the graphic artist), two jester characters. The set had a very short run and is the only one that I don’t have any copies of right now. I believe that I have some unmade pieces to put a few together, but I don’t know where they are off the top of my head.
With the extra few that I had, I put together a few complete sets that were sold by Cheapass before it shut down the first time. I assume that they don’t have any left but am not sure.
Buttons[edit | edit source]
Dr. Speculo
(6) (8) (12) o(Y) o(Y)
Guillermo
(6) (10) (20) (X) (Y)
Harry Pudding
(4) (7) (2/20) (2/20) (10)
Lascivia
(4) zp(12) (20) p(X)
MothMan
(8) (8) (12) (16) (Y)?