Forbeck.com

Just a reminder that I’ll be at the Barnes & Noble in Rockford, Illinois, tomorrow (Saturday, April 29) to meet readers, chat, and sign books. I’m scheduled to be there from 3–5 PM, so please stop by and say hi if you’re in the area!

I just turned in the manuscript for Queen of Death, the third and final book in my Lost Mark trilogy for the Eberron world. This started with Marked for Death, which hit stores in March of 2005, and continued in Road to Death, which saw print in January of 2006. The whole thing should wrap up this October, and I can’t wait to see it happen.

This also marks the first time in what seems like forever that I’m caught up on all my deadlines. Between the novels for Wizards and the Black Library, working on Marvel Battle Dice and REVs for Playmates, tackling countless smaller projects, and helping raise five young kids, it felt like I might never get back on track again, but here I am!

My next novel isn’t due until mid-June, and since it’s a shorter book (my next Knights of the Silver Dragon installment), I should be able to get that done on time. Woot!

In the latest issue of The Escapist, legendary game designer and Manifesto Games CEO Greg Costikyan offers up a history of tabletop gaming and shows how such games have inspired and informed the computer games of today. He argues that tabletop games will continue to do so, and I hope he’s right.

This essay should be required reading for any student of adventure games. The historical notes alone are well worth the time—and it’s all free for the reading.

My pal Richard Dansky commented on my Blood Bowl novel on his blog today:

You can tell this book was written by a Packers fan in, say, ten to fifteen seconds. Lots of fun and a good ride, though I’m disappointed that there weren’t more exploding spiked footballs.

Rest assured, I’m taking notes.

My latest novel, Blood Bowl: Death Match, hits store shelves in the US today! This is the third in the Blood Bowl trilogy, and it wraps up most if not all of the loose plot threads I left dangling throughout the first two books. The climactic match takes place in the Realms of Chaos. Talk about one Hell of a game!

To celebrate, this Saturday, from 3–5 PM, I’ll be at the Barnes & Noble in Rockford, Illinois, to chat with folks and sign books, games, or anything else presentable. That includes fresh-off-the-truck copies of Death Match. If you’re anywhere in the area, please be sure to stop by and keep me company for a while!

SuperHeroTimes.com is running a Marvel Heroes Battle Dice contest. To sign up, you just have to register in their forums and post a note saying you’d like to win. Those who do win get a free starter pack and a dice chucker to go with it.

Board game super-fan Tom Vasel writes tons of great reviews and interviews game designers and publishers of all stripes. On the website for his podcast, The Dice Tower, Tom presents excerpts from several of those interviews, in which he asks for advice for aspiring designers. It’s well worth the read.

I get a phone call at 3 AM on Saturday, and the first thing I think is that it must be something horrible—or a wrong number. No one calls with good news or to say hi at 3 AM, so I’m really hoping for a wrong number when I pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Forbeck?” Ouch. No wrong number here.

“Yes?”

“This is the Beloit Police Department.” Oh, dear.

I’m home. My kids are home. Has someone I know died, or do I have to go bail someone out?

“Yes?”

“The dome light in your car is on. We wouldn’t want your battery to run down.”

I pull back the curtain and peer out the window. Sure enough, there’s a squad car sitting behind my car, in which the dome light is on. (I think one of the quads turned it on while messing around in the car on Friday morning, and I never saw it.)

“Um, thanks. I’ll be right down to turn it off.”

By the time I get outside, the cops are gone, disappeared into the night without sticking around for my personal thanks, just like the heroes they are. But my battery—and by extension, my upcoming morning—is saved.

People contact me from time to time and ask me what kind of advice I can give to aspiring or beginning freelance game designers. This morning, my succinct response was:

Do the best work you can, do exactly what your developer asks (within reason), and hit your deadline. If you manage that, you’ll go far.

It’s easier said than done, of course, but most things worth doing are.

As ICv2.com reports, Palladium Books (publisher of the Rifts roleplaying game, among others) is on the ropes. In an open letter to the company’s fans, president Kevin Siembieda announces that the company fell victim to treachery from within to the tune of $850,000 to $1,300,000.

I don’t know if it’s that Kevin can’t or won’t pin down an exact number. Either way, that’s a crippling blow to any small publisher, even one with such a long and illustrious history as Palladium’s. Many RPG companies don’t gross that much in sales in a year.

To help keep Palladium going, Kevin is asking fans to purchase a special, limited-run print entitled “A Megaverse United.” In addition to that, he’s had a 25th anniversary open house in the works for months.

On top of that, I’d add that if you’ve ever considered buying a Palladium game, now’s the time to do it. Check with your friendly local retailer or get it directly from Palladium, but do it soon.

I’ve never worked with Kevin or for Palladium, but I have tremendous respect for what he’s built there over the past 25 years. Help make Palladium’s open house a celebration instead of a wake.

GAMA just launched a new program called Games to Troops. Publishers who wish to donate 168 games can have them sent to US military Moral, Welfare, and Recreation locations around the world. I’m wondering if I can find 168 authors’ copies of things around here somewhere.

No matter what my opinion might be of my country’s leadership, I always support the men and women risking their lives out there, doing the job they pledged to do. If you’re a publisher, I urge you to do the same.

On Marvel Heroes Battle Dice, Squashua asks:

Hey Matt; I’ve seen these things on the shelves at Wal-Mart. If you stuff a figure into a die, doesn’t that unbalance (load) it?

Good question, and it’s one I gave a lot of thought to while designing the game. Because of that, the rules are such that it doesn’t benefit you much to roll one particular number, or low or high. High numbers are good because you get to add them to your stats, but the low numbers allow you to choose which stat to battle over. All numbers have their benefits. This makes it harder to justify loading a die.

The figures are light enough that I don’t think they’d put the dice too far off true, no matter how you loaded them. I set the rules this way they are to help allay any concerns about cheating. After all, it would be easy to glue a coin to the bottom of the inside of a pop-die—even if that would clearly be wrong—and that would load the die far more than any figure.

Playmates Toys has announced that Marvel Heroes Battle Dice Series 2 will be in stores by July 1. Also, DC Battle Dice should be in stores by November 1, just in time for the holidays.

In the meantime, Web of Webhead has a kind review of the original game.

Also, MarvelBattleDice.com updated its figure gallery to include game stats for each character. Better yet, they also have a full checklist of the rules inside the game’s pop-dice.

The auction for the first-ever copy of the first edition of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game is over. The boxed set went for a staggering $810.00. Congratulations to a2jeff, whoever you are, and to Greg Stafford too!

Greg has a whole new raft of auctions up too. This includes the first-ever copy of Reich, a boardgame published by Chaosium before it was even incorporated.

There’s even Greg’s author’s copy of Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a charity jam book to which I contributed an essay too. You can find a free copy of “What Was I Thinking?” on my Downloads page. If that inspires you, put a bid on Greg’s copy of the book and get a dead-tree copy complete with his autograph.