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Playmates interviewed me about the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice game the other day, and they’ve just posted the conversation at the new website.

They also have a new page up with shots of the game and its packaging. Scroll all the way down to see the Thing dice chucker. Man, that’s cool.

Playmates tells me that the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice commercial started airing yesterday. Staff Sergeant Brian Bird reported seeing the commercial on Cartoon Network yesterday, and it’s supposed to be running on Nickelodeon, Fox Kids, and maybe ABC Family too.

This is the first game I’ve worked on that’s had a national TV campaign behind it. The concept of how much money goes into mass-market products like this can boggle the mind. But it’s a good boggling.

The people at Playmates would love to see some reviews of Marvel Heroes Battle Dice. If you spy any (or write any), please let me know about it. Thanks!

I just learned that Keith Parkinson (who passed away last year) and Tim Truman used to play in a band together. Several bands, actually. Tim—who is set to take over the reins as the writer of the monthly Conan comic for Dark Horse Comics later this year—met Keith back when they both worked as illustrators at TSR, creating fantastic artwork for Dungeons & Dragons. Years later, they ended up in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area together.

In honor of his old friend, Tim is getting the rest of the band back together for a benefit concert. Proceeds go toward funding the First Annual Keith Parkinson Scholastic Art Awards, to be given to a senior illustration student at college of art and design near or in Lancaster.

See the full press release after the break.
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Playmates just launched the brand-spanking new, official Marvel Heroes Battle Dice website. Stop on by and check it out!

It’s a bit light on content at the moment, but I’m told more is on the way shortly. Also, keep an eye out for the commercial starting tomorrow. It should run alongside a lot of kids’ programming for the next three weeks.

I just got my copy of Fleshworks from the Black Library. My pal Lucien Soulban wrote this Necromunda novel, and it looks like a blast.

Funcom recently updated its community portal for its upcoming Age of Conan MMORPG. If reading the novels whets your appetite for adventure, soon you’ll be able to join in with your own swinging blade!

The people at TDMonthly have posted a streaming video that shows a bit of Marvel Heroes Battle Dice played at high speed. The video has the herky-jerky feel of an old Keystone Cops action sequence, but it crams a lot of details into a few moments. Check it out!

In his recent interview with the Onion’s AV Club, Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report admits to playing Dungeons & Dragons. Not only that, but he goes on about how wonderful the game is and how much he enjoyed it as a kid. I can only agree.

Chris Rhinehart, of my old employer Human Head Studios, will be on Attack of the Show tomorrow night (1/23/06) at 7 PM Eastern. He’s there to show of the latest build of the long-anticipated Prey. Check it out, and you’ll see why this game is reason alone to pick up an Xbox 360. The 3DRealms’ website has all the details.

My friend Jeff Mariotte just posted an excellent appreciation of Robert E. Howard and Conan for Howard’s 100th birthday. Jeff worked at WildStorm Productions when I co-designed the WildStorms CCG there, and he edited my Dracula’s Revenge comic for IDW.

This past year, the tables turned, and I edited his new Age of Conan trilogy, the Marauders. Look for the first, Ghost of the Wall, at the end of the month. Jeff did great work on the series, and his love for all things Conan shines through. if you’d like to know where it comes from, be sure to check out that appreciation for details.

Today (or, arguably, Tuesday) would have been the 100th birthday of Robert E. Howard. As the creator of Conan, King Kull, and Solomon Kane, he invented the sword-and-sorcery fantasy and wrote in more than a half-dozen other genres for pulp magazines of all types. He cut his own life short at the age of 30. We can only guess what other works of genius he would have wrought had he held on with us a little longer.

I’m honored to be able to work on the Age of Conan novels for Ace Books. Recently Del Rey released The Conquering Sword of Conan, the third and final volume collecting Howard’s Conan work. This completes the Howard canon that we go by when working on the new novels. Be sure to check it out, and raise a glass toward Cross Plains, Texas, when you can.

The title for the new official Peter Pan book coming out this year is Peter Pan in Scarlet. As I’ve mentioned before, the rights to Peter Pan are a bit of a mess. According to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, they own the rights to Peter Pan forever in the UK, until 2007 in Europe, and until 2023 in the US.

But Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson seem to have ignored that for their book—although I’d be surprised if their decision hadn’t been vetted by a team of lawyers. The hospital doesn’t get any royalties from them, but because it has an arrangement on Peter Pan films with Disney (which published the Barry & Pearson books through their Hyperion arm) if any movies of the Barry & Pearson books are made the hospital would benefit from that. (The Wikipedia entry on Peter Pan has more details.) In any case, Barry & Pearson have offered to play a benefit concert for the hospital with their band, the Rock Bottom Remainders.

I saw the RBR in concert at an American Booksellers Expo in Miami back in 1993. I went with the Wieck brothers from White Wolf and Tara Gallagher and Jill Lucas from FASA. (I worked the show for ICE.) I didn’t have a ticket, but I scalped one from a woman in line. When we got inside, no one seemed to understand the set-up, which included tables around a wide-open and completely empty dance floor. With no one between us and the stage, the five of us strode right up to the front row and waited for the music to start.

Stephen King headed the line-up, and he did a fantastic version of “Teen Angel” while a hairy-chested man in a bloody prom dress chased him around the stage with a knife. Later he tossed ear plugs out at the crowd. Amy Tan came out in a black leather outfit and commissar’s cap, stiletto heels, and a whip, and blasted out a great cover of “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

During the show, a pushy lady shoved her way through the crowd to stand next to me and shout at King, “Stevie! Stevie! Jimmy wants to say hi!” I turn and see that she has Jimmy Johnson on her arm, looking a bit embarrassed and waving up at the stage. He’d just coached the Cowboys to two consecutive Super Bowl victories and then left the team. Three years later, Johnson took over for Don Shula as the coach of the Miami Dolphins.

I guess he had a great time in Miami too.

Over at GamingReport.com, the inimitable Ken Hite shares choices for his annual Outie Awards in his latest Out of the Box column. He also recaps 2005 in gaming and does a fine job of it. Ken’s one of the most imaginative souls working in RPGs these days. For a free sample of why that is, be sure to check out his blog, where he’s been giving an illuminating tour of the best of his bookshelves.