Forbeck.com

As posted on the WizKids website:

November 23, 2005 (SEATTLE) - WizKids Inc., creator of the runaway hit games HeroClix and Pirates of the Spanish Main, is proud to announce the release of High Stakes Drifter, the company’s first collectable card game (CCG)!

“High Stakes Drifter is the fast-paced game of Wild West action,” said Mike Samora, vice president of Sales and Marketing at WizKids®. “The game uses betting-and-bluffing mechanics to simulate a series of challenges with historical personalities like Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp.” The game adds elements of luck to each challenge as well, with a unique kicker chip mechanic that can add a random effect to each showdown.

Each card features vintage photography and a western feel. The game play has been described as a mix between a saloon-style betting-and-bluffing game and a spaghetti western shootout.

High Stakes Drifter is sold in Starter Sets (MSRP $9.99) and Booster Packs (MSRP $2.99), and is available in hobby and specialty game stores.

Founded by 25-year game-industry veteran Jordan Weisman, WizKids is a Seattle-based game developer and publisher dedicated to creating tabletop games driven by imagination. Its MechWarrior® and HeroClix CMGs and Pirates and Rocketmen CSGs are among the most successful games on the market today, and the company has sold hundreds of millions of game pieces worldwide. For additional information, visit http://www.wizkidsgames.com.

They also have a fully searchable card gallery up on their website, just to make it easy to complete your collection. So, when you’re out shopping this Black Friday, be sure to pick up some High Stakes Drifter for yourself. Then come on back here and tell me what you think of it. Thanks! And Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

This week, Ginjer Buchanan at Ace Books sent me two of the latest releases in the Age of Conan line I edit with her. (I do my part for Conan Properties, while Ginjer manages the line for Ace.) Courtesy of Gjiner, UPS brought me at book and a flat.

The book is Venom of Luxur, the third and final book in J. Steven York’s Anok, Heretic of Stygia trilogy. It brings Anok’s tale to a rousing and triumphant close. If you’re interested in the books, you can download the first chapter of each of them and read them for free. The first two books are already out, and Venom hits stores on November 29.

As for the other thing, a “flat” is a promotional copy of the cover of an upcoming book. The publishers print these up in advance of the real thing to show distributors and booksellers what they can expect to see. Ace has done them for all of their Age of Conan titles, and I’ve gotten them for each of my Blood Bowl novels from the Black Library too. I had some for Secret of the Spiritkeeper too, and Nina Hess—my editor at Wizards—just sent me some promotional bookmarks for the Knights of the Silver Dragon line too.

This flat is for Winds of the Wild Sea, the second in the Marauders trilogy. These are young adult (YA) novels set in the Age of Conan and written by Jeff Mariotte, and old friend of mine from IDW and WildStorm fame. Gearing gritty fantasy novels for younger readers isn’t easy, but Jeff does a fine job of it, making the books good for kids from 10 to 100. The first in the series, Ghost in the Wall, is due in stores at the end of January, while Winds of the Wild Sea should be out in March.

I just got word from the Black Library that we’ve had to retitle Sudden Death (the third in my Blood Bowl trilogy of novels) to Death Match. I don’t know the whole story yet, but apparently someone else is claiming that title in a way that involves attorneys. In the grand spirit of not wasting money on silly things, it’s easier to change the title than it is to bother with a litigious argument over changing one word in the title and the order in which they appear. No matter what, as either title implies, you can be sure to get plenty of death in the book.

The Black Library has a web page up for Dead Ball, the second in my trilogy of Blood Bowl novels. Its lists the book as being due in stores in December, just over a week away. Of course, this is only for readers in the UK. Those of us in the USA and other parts of the world have to wait until January to get our copies.

For those who can’t wait, the Black Library has posted free, PDF excerpts from each book. Just go to their PDF Archive and look for the titles Blood Bowl and Blood Bowl: Dead Ball.

Wizards of the Coast has put up a page with information about The Road to Death, the next in my Eberron-based trilogy, The Lost Mark. The Road to Death is slated for a January release, which now doesn’t seem all that far away.

Peter Muraszewski writes:

I know you’re extremely busy with writing books and designing games, so I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. I loved your novel Marked for Death, and I eagerly await The Road to Death. I would love to become a writer too. I read on your site’s FAQ that you try to write 5,000 words a day. I have two questions. Is this a reasonable and attainable goal for a beginner? My other question would be what’s the average number of words you write in total for a book. (I read that 50, 000 words is a novel.) Any feedback would be appreciated, and thank you very much for your time!

Honestly, 5,000 words a day is a lot for most writers. On some days, it’s a lot for me. Helping care for my kids cuts into a lot of my time now, so I usually shoot for 3,000 a day. At the moment, I’m under a hard deadline, and I’m working for 7,000 a day.

Remember, though, that I write full time. I treat this like a job and work at it at least eight hours a day, five days a week—although I sometimes do more.

As a beginner, I’d try to set a reasonable goal and see how long it takes you to hit it. Most beginners can’t devote a full day to writing, so you might only want to go for 1,000 words a day or even 500. The trick is to find what a good daily pace for you is, something you’re comfortable working with, that keeps you on track for your long-term goals without burning you out. This word count differs for every writer and can change with the circumstances in your life.

Once you find that range in which you’re comfortable, see if you can better it. Try to hit your goal early and keep going. If you manage to do that consistently, move your target up again. Keep doing that until you hit a wall, and then keep at it.

It’s important to know what your average rate of writing is, as it lets you know if you can hit a deadline your editor proposes. If you know it’s going to take you six months to write a novel, there’s no point in agreeing to a deadline only three months away.

As for a novel’s length, they can vary a lot. Some of the genre awards define a novel as any work over 40,000 words, although that doesn’t always reflect the writer or publisher’s intentions.

For instance, my Knights of the Silver Dragon novels run 40,000 to 45,000 words. Of course, these are intended for a younger audience and so need to be shorter. My Blood Bowl novels run about 95,000 words, and my Eberron novels are around 100,000 words.

I missed the TV show Lost the first time it aired, but I tried it out over the summer, and it hooked me from the first scene. One of the best parts about the show is the island itself. In the DVD extras, the creators described the show as a central character. In that sense, it’s the main character, the one around which every other character and the main plot revolves.

Yesterday morning, it struck me that I know where and what the island is.

Out of respect for those who don’t wish to read such things before they’re revealed on the show, the details of my theory appear after the break. If I’m right, these are spoilers. If not, I’m just harmlessly blathering. Either way, you’ve been warned.
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If you’re looking for something to play during National Games Week, you can’t go wrong with High Stakes Drifter, the latest collectible card game I’ve worked on, published by WizKids. The game should be in stores across America and beyond on November 23, this Wednesday.

High Stakes Drifter is set in the American West. You play characters called “dudes” and equip them with gear cards and other cool things. You pay for these with poker chips—and special chips called “kicker chips”—which you can also use to bet and bluff on the outcomes of each showdown.

I designed three or four versions of this game before I came up with something close to what will be published. The original brief was to create a poker variant with a game that you played after the showdown. I pulled it off, but it was awful. The most climatic moment in a poker game is the showdown, and if you have to play another game after that to come up with the real winner, it destroys the beauty of the game.

Eventually, Jordan Weisman and I sat down and asked ourselves what the best parts of poker were and how we could apply those to a collectible card game. We decided that the betting and bluffing bits in the game, along with the showdown, could make the leap, and that became the basis for High Stakes Drifter.

See for yourself this Wednesday—and beyond!

GAMA has asked me to deliver two seminars on freelancing in the adventure games industry at this year’s GAMA Trade Show. For those interested, they are:

Monday, March 13th, 2006, 10-11 a.m.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Freelancers
With so much riding on every release, publishers need to choose wisely whenever they outsource projects. Learn the qualities a freelancer should make sure they embody, for themselves and their publishers, as well as qualities publishers should look for in the freelancers they hire.

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006, 10-11 a.m.
Advanced Freelancing
For the committed professional who now derives the majority of their income from freelancing in the game industry, there are whole new challenges to consider. Topics of discussion include: effective time and project management, tax planning for the self-employed, handling royalties, and legal recourses for the Freelancer.

Unlike in past years, in which a panel has presented these seminars, I’ve been asked to take on these topics solo this time around. I’m sure I’ll miss the help I had in the past—and not just in the evenings after the exhibit hall closes. I’ll do my best to fill in for those missing few, though, and if you’ll be at the show I hope you’ll attend and learn what you can.

Today marks the start of the second annual National Games Week. If you haven’t signed up to take part in the week yet, don’t fret. You can find local events on the NGW website. Even if you can’t participate in something official, you can still get together with your friends and family to play games, and the NGW site has some good guidelines for how to set up your own event in your home.

So, Happy National Games Week! Play hard!

According to ICv2.com, Tom (The Punisher) Jane has just been cast in the lead role (Mitch Hunter, I presume) for the upcoming Mutant Chronicles movie. The Mutant Chronicles was a roleplaying game I worked on in the early and mid ’90s for Target Games, then the largest game publisher in Sweden.

The game’s been out of print for years, but I still remember it well. The setting provided the background for the Doomtrooper CCG and the Warzone miniatures games, each designed by former roommates of mine (Bryan Winter and William King, respectively), as well as a video game or two. The film has been in development hell since before the game fell out of print, and I’ve read a couple versions of the script. I’m looking forward to seeing the latest soon, as this is all being done under the auspices of my friends at Paradox Entertainment, who also run Conan Properties.

I met Tom Jane and his wife Patricia (Medium) Arquette at the IDW party at Comic-Con International in the summer of 2004. (Perhaps not coincidentally, I ran into Fred Malmberg of Conan Properties there too.) They were chasing after their young daughter, who’s about the age of my quadruplets, and I helped them corral her for a moment. They seemed like a happy couple and great parents.

Tom will be perfect in the Mitch Hunter role. He has the looks, the athleticism, and the wry humor for the part. I can’t wait to follow along as the movie develops.

The November 2005 issue of Game Trade Magazine has a High Stakes Drifter dude card bagged with it: Jesse Woodson James. While there’s nothing else about the game in the issue, the catalog portion shows details for my upcoming novels Dead Ball and The Road to Death, both of which arrive in stores in January.

Only 10 more days until the official HSD release date though. Be sure to hit your local store on November 23 and ask for it by name.

My copies of Games Quarterly Magazine #7 showed up in the mail the other day. I wrote an article about gaming-related fiction for it, which appears on p. 70. It also features articles from James Ernest, Jeff Tidball, Ken Hite, and Mike Selinker, along with interviews of Kevin Siembieda (of Palladium) and Loren Greenwood (of Wizards of the Coast) and lots of other gaming goodness.

It also focuses on National Games Week, which is coming up soon: November 20–26. If you want to order a promotional package for your NGW event, they just extended the deadline to November 13, so there’s still time if you move fast. As an NGW member, you can get solid discounts on some great games, many in bundles set up just for National Games Week. Membership is free, and it’s a solid group of people working for a good cause: to promote gaming as great entertainment. Check it out soon.

A few days after the World Fantasy Convention, now, some things still stick in my head enough for me to have to share them.

Lucien Soulban, being the great Canadian he is, brought two spirits made from maple syrup: a cream liqueur and a whisky. Both were delicious and would either make great toppings for an ice cream drink or for a wicked wake-me-up stack of pancakes. Not so coincidentally, I first met Lucien when he made me my best-ever swag offer at a game convention: a six-pack of excellent Canadian beers for a copy of my Brave New World RPG.

Rich Dansky wove an incredible tale of his days at White Wolf that covered the evolution of the Trinity RPG. It was born from the ashes of near-disaster, and although I knew good chunks of the story from before, I enjoyed hearing it from a fresh and perceptive perspective.

Mike Stackpole kindly asked me to record a few tags for his Science Fiction Podcast Network and Gaming Podcast Network. If you’re into either topic and enjoy listening to podcasts, you’ll find some true gems there. And you might even hear me putting on my best radio announcer voice to say, “You’re listening to the Gaming Podcast Network!”