Forbeck.com

Over the weekend, WizKids posted pictures of the prizes for High Stakes Drifter tournaments held in November. These are all limited edition kicker chips, which can have incredible affects on the game. It’s great to see WizKids giving High Stakes Drifter the full treatment, including supporting organized play.

Some of the greatest people in the comic book industry have gotten together to auction off some truly amazing pieces to raise money for relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina. They call their effort Inkwell Relief, and they’re auctioning off all sorts of things on eBay, with all net proceeds going to the American Red Cross. If you’ve been looking for a good way and a good excuse to give more money to this cause—and you’re a comics fan—you really can’t beat this. I’ve already put up a few bids myself, although my guess is I’ll get spanked by some fans with deeper pockets than mine.

I already donated some money directly to the Red Cross, though, with a match by the good people at DealMac.com. I also contributed a short story to Beyond the Storm, a gaming-industry effort to raise money with a creator jam book. Unlike most of my work, this is non-fiction, a telling of the “Naked Room Service” story I mentioned a while back—which took place during a GAMA Trade Show in the Big Easy. The book should be out around October 1 in both PDF and POD (print-on-demand, dead-tree) versions. I’m going to buy it myself, and I hope you will too.

One of the interesting things about raising quadruplets is trying to figure out who did what. For instance, a couple years back, I had to take Nick to the hospital for a gash in his forehead. He got it while we were in another room, and while he had a brother near him when he was bloodied, we’ll never know if Nick was attacked or simply fell into something sharp.

This morning, as I hustled the kids out the door for school, I spotted a pool of fresh vomit on the kitchen floor. We’ve had an illness or two running through the house, and it’s hard to predict who’s not feeling well without some detective work. The first question I had to ask is, “Who did that?”

Fortunately, Helen confessed, and all evidence corroborated her claim. Now she’s home with me while her brothers are off at school. I’m confident we found the right culprit though, and hopefully she’ll feel better soon.

I just got the galleys (final proofs) of The Road to Death in from Wizards of the Coast. This is the sequel my Eberron novel Marked for Death, the second in The Lost Mark trilogy. So far, it looks great. Mark Sehestedt did a fine job polishing my prose, and he tells me it’s a far better book than the first.

I have to agree with him. I learn more about writing novels with every book. Each presents its own challenges, of course, but it’s amazing how much you pick up as you go along from book to book.

Anyhow, the book is off to the printer early next week, and you should expect to see it in stores in January.

The latest preview for High Stakes Drifter, my new CCG from WizKids, is up.

I keep forgetting to mention Yu-Gu-Oh! Capsule Monsters, a new collectible figure board game that saw its first public showing at Gen Con Indy. It’s based on Capsule Monsters Coliseum, the videogame for the Playstation 2. You can read an article about it on the excellent ICv2.com.

I didn’t design the game (that honor belongs to Mattel’s Tyler Kenny and friends), but I wrote the rules. Once Tyler and his team finished with the design, they needed someone to come in and turn their notes into a polished rulebook. They gave me a call and had the refined rules back in their hands in a matter of days. Look for the game in stores in time for the holidays.

The brand-new International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) has a brand-new website designed to help promote tie-in fiction and its writers. If you browse through some of the articles on the website, you’ll see my comments peppered through a few of them.

Tie-ins, for those unfamiliar with the term, are works of licensed fiction based on TV, films, games, etc. All of the novels I’ve written for Wizards of the Coast and the Black Library are tie-ins, so I’ve become a charter member of the group. If you’re a tie-in writer too, I encourage you to join us.

My good friend and fellow Alliterate Jeff Grubb is hoping you’ll make him a poorer man on behalf of victims of Hurricane Katrina. If you e-mail Steve Miller, Steve will send you a copy of Jeff’s new roleplaying game Dyvil. Jeff wrote it in 30 minutes and edited it in another 30, so it’s short, sweet, and to the point. Knowing Jeff, it’s a lot of fun too.

For each person who grabs a free copy of Dyvil, Jeff will donate a buck to help Katrina’s survivors, up to $500. You can get all the details from Jeff’s eloquent post on his website. So, do something to help out those who need it, and entertain yourself at the same time—for free.

High Stakes Drifter made the cover of this month’s Game Trade Magazine. This issue also features a short article on the game by fellow Alliterate Jason Mical.

The fine folks at WizKids have updated the High Stakes Drifter website. This includes full details on starters and boosters, details on how a Dude card works, and a sneak peek at Doc Holliday.

The fine folks at FlamesRising.com recently reviewed Dracula’s Revenge.

In my last rambling post, I mentioned a gaming industry charity project devoted to raising funds to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The website for this effort, known as Beyond the Storm, is up. It’s a bit bare bones at the moment but should have more details soon. If you’re a gaming professional interested in contributing to the effort, do stop by and sign up.

I haven’t written anything about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, mostly because I’ve been reading about it, sitting in front of my computer, stunned by it all. It destroys me to spend too much time thinking about it. I’ve donated to the Red Cross and had the great people at DealMac.com match my donation. I’ve signed on to contribute something to a charity RPG project to raise money to help with disaster relief in New Orleans. But there’s just not enough I can do.

I’m angry about this, absolutely frustrated, and I want to scream at the people who made this situation so much worse than it had to be. (Who could have predicted this? Scores of scientists and experts over a dozen years or more. Hell, I’ve known of the threat myself for years, and I live thousands of miles away.) But that’s not what this note is about.

I’ve been to New Orleans four times. The first time, I spent a sunny afternoon there on my way back from Mexico, after driving down there from Ann Arbor on spring break. I sat there in Jackson Square with my best friend and two young ladies, one of whom later became my wife.

The last time I was there, I watched from the rafters of the Superdome as Chris Webber called a time-out the Wolverines didn’t have in the last seconds of the NCAA basketball final against Duke.

Most people have probably forgotten this, but GAMA held two trade shows in New Orleans after getting kicked out of Las Vegas in the early ’90s. I had a great time at those shows. Unforgettable times. Legendary times.

There’s the “Naked Room Service” story, which is too long to go into at the moment, as is the explanation for how I ended up dancing a tango down Bourbon Street with a woman I’d never met before, as she used her lips to take a long-stemmed rose from between my teeth.

Let’s just say I miss the place more than I can say, and the thought of how devastated it is right now is painful. And when I say “it,” I don’t mean the buildings, the bars, the restaurants, or even the whole of the French Quarter, the whole city, or the swath of the Gulf Coast that got flooded out. It’s the people who lived there who made the place what it is, what it was, what it may someday be again. My thoughts are with those people who have had their homes—families, friends, memories, communities—torn from beneath them like a cheap magician’s rug.

Though the Big Easy is reeling from a knockout punch, though, it’s a long way from out. New Orleans is more than a collection of buildings that can be washed away. It’s a living, breathing culture, and it’s long since infused the world with itself. Cajun cooking. Zydeco music. Dixieland jazz. Beignets. Abita Beer. Even if the French Quarter is bulldozed (as one prominent congressman has suggested might be best), it can’t ever be destroyed entirely. It’s always going to be there, in my heart and in the hearts of everyone ever touched by that fabulous, fantastic place, whether they ever walked its streets or not.

At least in our hearts—and hopefully again soon on our maps—we’ll always have New Orleans. Always.

I’ve been trying to get to this for days, and I realized I just need to take a flying dive at it right now rather than wait for the right moment to tackle it. So, here goes.
(more…)