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I launched this blog/website just over two years ago, and it’s been a wild and wooly time since. I’ll leave the analysis of the past year and predictions for the next to others (or for a later time, at least). For now, let me wish all of you and yours the very best 2006.

According to the listing on Amazon.com, Blood Bowl: Dead Ball hit store shelves in the United States on December 27. This is the second volume in my Blood Bowl trilogy. If you’re in the area, be sure to go out and grab your copy right away!

The Road to Death hits stores in January, and Wizards of the Coast has posted the first chapter of the book for free. This is the second in my Eberron trilogy, The Lost Mark. My editor, Mark Sehestedt, tells me this is a much better book than the first, and I agree. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned about writing novels in the past couple years, and I think it shows here.

One of the best things about living in the Information Age is the ability to stumble upon websites built by people you haven’t seen in years. Case in point: Tim Pollard.

Back when I worked in the Games Workshop Design Studio, Tim and his pal Russ had desks in the same room with me and Bill King for a while. The four of us—and anyone who wandered through—kept each other in stitches most of the day. Which is why management moved Bill and I to a different office soon after.

In January of 1990, I joined a large crew to watch the Super Bowl at Tim’s house in Nottingham. I left England a month later and haven’t seen or heard of Tim since. But now he has his own site, complete with a blog, detailing his adventures as none other than Robin Hood. Too cool.

Back when I was president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group, we used to give the entire company the week off between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Now that I’m back to freelancing again, I no longer have that luxury. There are deadlines to chase after, so things like extended breaks don’t make a lick of sense. I have high hopes, though, that this will be the year I’ll get well enough on track to think about things like long vacations.

This year, you see, I booked up lots of novels to write. Then I landed the gig with Playmates Toys for Marvel Heroes Battle Dice, and it was too good to pass up. This meant I had waaaaay too much to do. Still, it was a good kind of busy, and as any freelancer will tell you, it’s hard to pass up work—especially if you’ve ever gone without.

Best wishes to you and yours during this holiday season, whether you choose to observe Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, the Packers-Bears game, the New Year, or the fact you’re still kicking!

The creators of ecto, the desktop blogging software I use to post on this site, are giving a 20% discount until December 26. If you’re in the market for an excellent Mac OS X blogging tool, you really can’t beat ecto. Do yourself a favor and check it out. (And, no, I don’t get a dime for recommending them.)

My friends at AEG have licensed their Spycraft espionage games to a brand-new company, Crafty Games, co-founded by Patrick Kapera. A ways back, Patrick edited my Brave New World RPG in the days that AEG published it. I always enjoyed working with him then, and I wish him and his partners (Scott Gearin and Beloit College grad Alex Flagg) the best of luck with their new venture too.

SuperheroTimes.com has an article about Marvel Heroes Battle Dice, complete with photos of an opened starter set. As it states:

Battle Dice consists of “pop dice” that open to reveal themed dynamically posed action figures making up six different armies. Each figure has six different attributes including speed, strength, durability, intelligence, energy projection and fighting skills, plus symbols and numbers signifying the strength of their power.

Players battle by loading their dice with action figures, then rolling simultaneously with their opponents. The player with the lowest number selects the attribute to be used and the battle begins! Each battle can involve one, two or many characters in a player’s army and victory depends on each character’s strengths versus those of the opposing forces, meaning figures must be strategically selected before each battle. With every roll of the dice, the lives of your characters are at stake because defeat means surrendering your figure to the opponent’s army.

The first player to collect all of the opponents’ figures wins the war and the game. Game extensions included in the instructions make the game more complex and intriguing.

For those who wanted to know a bit more about the game play, I hope that helps.

P.S. They also have a larger gallery of images from the October Toy Show.

Earlier this year, Playmates asked me to work up a background for an upcoming toy line they’d designed. Having done similar things for lots of game lines in the past, I took to it like a fish to water, although it’s swimming in a far larger pond than that of the adventure gaming industry. So far, everything seems to look great, and I hope to be able to post more details when the various International Toy Shows start cropping up early next year. In the meantime, all I can say about the material is that my eldest son thinks the drawing are all cool.

Rebecca (R. Sean) Borgstrom (of Nobilis fame) has posted an essay entitled “Structure and Meaning in Roleplaying Game Design.” It’s brilliant (like most of her stuff) and well worth a read if you care about RPGs.

My host (BlueHost.com) is moving me to a new server tonight, so the site will be down for about four hours. As part of this, my service gets upgraded from 4G of storage to 10G and my bandwidth goes from 100G to 250G, far more than I ever expect to need. Overall, it’s been a great hosting service and reasonably priced, plus it integrates well with WordPress, the blogging system I use to run this site. If you’re looking for one, consider this a recommendation for BlueHost.com. (Disclaimer: If you click the links here or at the bottom of the page, I’ll get a referral fee.)

It’s always wild to see what the various companies I work with send out as holiday cards or gifts. I already mentioned the holiday cards for Fluxx, from Looney Labs. Today, WizKids sent me their Pirates of the North Pole card for their Pirates series of constructible games. It features the festive ship The Sleigh, run by none other than the jolly Captain Whitebeard himself!

I’ve gotten a couple cards from Wizards of the Coast, too, including one with Mr. Potato Head holding out his tongue—in his hand—to catch snowflakes. Human Head Studios sent one with monsters from their upcoming game Prey, decked out in holiday gear. Add those to the ones from friends and family, and my mantel runneth over.

WizKids has posted the prizes for the February events for High Stakes Drifter. It’s good to see them supporting the game so strongly, both with tournaments and cool prizes.

I also got my designer’s copies of the game in the mail today: a couple displays full of starters and boosters. It looks to me like these might make great gifts this holiday season, just to share the High Stakes Drifter love.