As a pick-your-holiday gift, I present to you “Inn Peril” (1.5 MB PDF), a Dungeons & Dragons 4E adventure designed for use with five 1st-level adventurers. This originally appeared in issue #114 of Game Trade Magazine this past summer, and a PDF of it was posted on the magazine’s website for free. The magazine has since retired the adventure, but I’m giving it a …
Amortals Away!
It’s been a long time coming–longer than I thought it would be–but I finally finished Amortals and shipped it off to the fine folks at Angry Robot. It seems like this fall has been a rigorous series of disruptions designed to throw me off track, but the book is done and in the hands of Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris, …
Pledges for Tu Publishing
Stacy Whitman–formerly one of the editors at Mirrorstone, the YA fiction imprint at Wizards of the Coast–is planning to start Tu Publishing to bring multicultural science-fiction and fantasy stories to kids of all ages. To launch this new effort, she needs some seed money, so she’s put up a page on Kickstarter.com. So far, the effort is about 63% of …
Those who say a computer game …
Those who say a computer game can’t make you cry haven’t seen a kid lose a puffle in Club Penguin.
Holiday Music in Beloit
We’re about to get slammed with snow here in Beloit, so I spent some time this morning putting up the Christmas lights, trading out bicycles for sleds, and making sure the snowthrower is in working order. I also ordered tickets for the Beloit Janesville Symphony Orchestra‘s “Home for the Holidays Family Spectacular.” The concert is held December 20 at 2 …
Games as Art
As we hurtle toward the monster consumer frenzy that is Black Friday, I thought I’d take a step back and mention three different efforts to create tabletop games that qualify as art. At TAGIE last week, I met a USC graduate student named James A. Taylor. He’s creating a board game as part of his studies at the School of …
Novels for 2010
The fine people at Angry Robot have announced the release dates for both Amortals and Vegas Knights, my first two original novels. Amortals should be out in the UK and Australia in April 2010 and in the US and the rest of the world in June 2010. Vegas Knights is slated to hit the UK and Australia in June 2010 …
Games On Demand
One bit of advice I gave people at TAGIE was to limit their risk with new games, especially when starting out. Rather than blow five figures on a short run of games through a traditional printer, try a POD (print on demand) service first. You’ll learn more about what you’re doing, and you won’t be out nearly so much money. …
What a Card
At this year’s Gen Con, my pal Dan Tibbles of Bucephalus Games gave me the birthday present he’d been threatening me with for months. I had no idea what it might be, and when he handed me my very own card for his company’s game Bill of Rights, he caught me by surprise. I had the chance to play the …
TAGIE/ChiTAG Report
I had a fantastic time at the TAGIE/ChiTAG conventions this weekend. I drove down on Thursday morning and made it in time to join the panel on “Design and Development,” moderated by my friend Mike Gray of Hasbro. It’s always a kick to join Mike on one of these panels because I remember sitting in the audience of one of …