I just made a number of changes to my Appearances page, and I wanted to highlight them for you. First, I’ll be at the Nexus Game Fair in Milwaukee next weekend, June 19—22. This is a new show but with a lot of familiar faces, including Harold Johnson, Jolly Blackburn, Mike Carr, Chris Clark, Zeb Cook, Jeff Easley, Ernie Gygax, …
The 2014 Diana Jones Award Shortlist
Last night, the Diana Jones Award committee, of which I’m a part, announced its shortlist for its 2014 award, which honors the most excellent things in tabletop gaming from 2013. This year’s list includes: Evil Hat Productions, a publishing company run by Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks Hillfolk, a roleplaying game written by Robin D. Laws (Pelgrane Press) Paizo Publishing, …
Free Story Today!
“Friends Like These,” the first short story in my Shotguns & Sorcery fantasy noir setting is free for the Kindle today. It first appeared in Robin D. Laws’s anthology The New Hero 2, and it serves as a prequel to Hard Time in Dragon City, Bad Times in Dragon City, and End Times in Dragon City. Go grab it, read, and enjoy, and please don’t be shy about telling …
Monster Academy and Storium
The folks over at Protagonist Labs have been blazing through their inaugural Kickstarter for their debut game, Storium. It’s an intriguing new kind of game that blends online forum gaming with more traditional roleplaying game elements, and it lends itself to being played in all sorts of different settings. They explain a bit of it in the pitch video below, and …
The Monopoly Aftermath (Includes Special Offer)
The bit I wrote earlier this month about why Monopoly sucks taught me a few things. Most people agree with me on this subject. A few people are still passionate fans of the game despite that. And as long as they’re having fun, more power to them! Altogether, these people are capable of crashing my site. I was just about to head out …
This Weekend: C2E2
I’m heading down to Chicago for C2E2 this weekend, the best geek-centric pop culture convention in the area. I’ll be on two panels with my traditional partner at the show, Ken Hite. Sadly, despite notes in the convention program to the contrary, Will Hindmarch won’t be joining us this year, as he’s off to North Carolina for the excellent ECGC. …
Monopoly Sucks and This Will Make It Worse
I have a rule against tearing down other people’s creations in public. I appreciate the hard work that any creator puts into their work, and I prefer to encourage that rather than crush their dreams in front of others. Even bestselling authors are people–I count several as friends–and just because someone’s successful doesn’t mean insults don’t hurt them. I make …
Launch Pad and Other Events
Yesterday I was notified that I’ve been selected to attend the 2014 Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop. It’s a week-long summer science camp for established writers, held at the University of Wyoming, with the aim of giving such folks a solid grounding in real science so we can go write inspiring things about the stars. They only accept 12 to 15 people …
Free Sovereign Stone Fiction!
Last year, my pal Tony Lee of Timeout Diversions ran a Kickstarter to launch a new edition of Sovereign Stone, a tabletop roleplaying game set in a world created by fantasy art legend Larry Elmore. Larry had a lot of fantastic help with the earlier editions, including rules from Don Perrin and novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. This …
The Crossing the Streams 2014 Winners!
As I mentioned back on February 19, me and a dozen and a half other authors joined up once again under the auspices of the amazing Ari Marmell to run a multi-author contest called Crossing the Streams. We did this back in 2012, and after taking a year off, Ari spearheaded the effort once more, to a rousing success. The …