One thing about writing tie-in or other work-for-hire books is that no one needs to let you know when they’ve sold the foreign-language rights to those books. This makes for some interesting moments when you find your name popping up on a book you’ve never seen before in a language you don’t speak.

While looking for data on Amortels, I stumbled across a couple good examples of this. The first is Blood Bowl: Blut und Speile, which my limited command of German tells me translates to Blood and Games. This is a German edition of the Blood Bowl: Killer Contract comic I wrote for Boom Studios a couple years back, published by the fine folks at Panini.

The ironic part is that German has to be the worst choice for a translation of that book. When I first starting writing the Blood Bowl novels on which the comic is based, I was told I had to make the names more Germanic to fit in with setting better. Figuring it was all a joke anyhow — Blood Bowl is meant to be funny — I just ran exactly who the characters were through Babelfish.

The main hero’s name, for instance, is Dunkel Hoffnung, which means “Dark Hero.” His horse is Pferd, which means “Horse.” While these might be funny the first time you get them, I can imagine that it could become tired if every time you come across them they read as “Dark Hero mounted his faithful steed Horse!”

But I suppose that’s funny in its own way.

I also came across this French edition of More Forbidden Knowledge called 101 Trucs Fous Que Vous Ne Devriez Pas Savoir Faire. According to Bablefish, that’s 101 Insane Tricks Which Should Not Know To You To Make, while Google translate renders it as 101 Crazy Stuff That You Should Not Know How.

I just hope they also translated the disclaimer in the book, or they probably should have called it 101 Ways to Get Sued in a Foreign Court.

This past Sunday, I was named RPG Geek of the Week over at RPG Geek. I’m flattered all to hell, of course, and I’ve been taking care of my duties over at the RPG Geek forums. These consist entirely of answering the barrage of questions the fine folks over there have been flinging at me all week.

If you’d care to read my answers to queries that range from the standard to the provocative to the odd, head on over and give it a look. And if you find you have some questions of your own that I still haven’t bothered to answer, chip in over there, and I’ll give those a shot too.

Over at Kobold Quartlery, to celebrate the release of the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, they’ve asked a number of the contributors, “What’s the first board game you fell in love with?” I gave them an answer, and they posted it this week.

Hint: It’s Dungeon, but hustle on over there to see why. While you’re at it, check out the rest of the essays up so far, from Mike Selinker and Richard Levy.

Once again, I’ll be at guest at this year’s Geek.Kon up in Madison, Wisconsin, which runs from September 9 through 11. I’m joining a fantastic group of guests, including my pals Bill Bodden, Troy Denning, Jim Frenkel, John Kovalic, Matt McElroy, Aaron Pavao, and Monica Valentinelli.

I may be at the show Friday or Sunday, but I’ll be there for sure all day Saturday, September 10. So far, my Saturday schedule looks like this:

• 9 AM: Designing Game Mechanics
• 10 AM: Ebooks vs. Traditional Publishing
• 11 AM: Autographs
• 1:30 PM: Writing for Shared Worlds
• 2:30 PM: World Building
• 3:30 PM: Writing Panel
• 5 PM: Getting Published in Gaming
• 8 PM: Tie-In Fiction
• 9 PM: Guests Geek Out Panel

Every now and then at SFSignal.com, they gather together a group of authors and ask them a question. This time around, they drew my name from the hat, and the question of the day is: “If you could reboot a book series, which one would it be?” Scroll all the way down to the bottom to read my heretical answer.