My fellow Alliterate and pal Lester Smith just launched a new website: PoemTee.com. Here Les sells t-shirts emblazoned with his own haiku. Stop by and take a read.
ACD Games Day Report
Last night, I drive up to Madison to catch the after-hours action for the ACD Games Day, a small trade show run by the #2 distributor in the adventure gaming industry. I would have gone up during the day, but with the kids in school my schedule wouldn’t permit it–not without a lot of juggling. So, it’s a quick evening for me instead.
Write for the Black Library
For those aspiring authors out there, the Black Library is holding a new short-story competition. Winning entries will be purchased for a new Warhammer anthology based around the theme of invasion. The deadline is October 11, 2006.
Unlike many other competitions, you don’t need to submit a full story from the get-go. You only have to come up with a synopsis and a short writing sample to start. Either way, this could be a great way to get your foot in the door at the Black Library. Best of luck to anyone who decides to submit.
Gen Con 2006, Day 5
The epic tale staggers to an end on August 13, 2006.
Gen Con 2006, Day 4
The saga continues on August 12, 2006.
Titanic Games on the Horizon
The fine folks at ICv2.com report today on the activities of Titanic Games. This includes a deluxe version of James Ernest‘s Kill Doctor Lucky, the first game he published through his own Cheapass Games. It’s a mirror-universe version of Clue, in which the player compete to be the first one to murder the good doctor and get away with it.
Next up, according to the article, comes Stonehenge, an anthology board game. It features one set of components with five different games, each with their own rules. The all-star line-up of designers includes Richard Garfield, Bruno Faidutti, James Ernest, Mike Selinker, and Richard Borg. Mike showed me the game at Gen Con, and with all those great designers working on it, it’s hard to see how it could miss. Expect many good things from Titanic.
Appearing in Northern Illinois During Teen Read Week
The folks at the North Suburban Library District have asked me to come speak during their upcoming Teen Read Week in October. I’ll be at the Roscoe, IL, branch (at 5562 Clayton Circle) on Monday, October 16, from 6:30—7:30 PM, and at the same time at the Loves Park, IL, branch (at 6340 North 2nd Street) on Wednesday, October 18.
I’ll talk about what it’s like to be a writer and game designer, and I’ll show a bit about how role-playing games work. I also hear a rumor that Wizards of the Coast may have donated many free copies of Secret of the Spiritkeeper for those teens who attend. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop in and join us and (if you’re a teen) grab a free book!
Edit: Whoops! Those are bookmarks! Free bookmarks! My apologies for the confusion. It’s my error entirely. That’ll teach me to read my e-mails more closely.
Queen of Death in the House
FedEx just dropped off my author’s copies of The Queen of Death, the third and final book in my Lost Mark Trilogy, set in Eberron. The cover looks much better in person than it does on the product page.
I’m looking forward to having this in stores and hearing what people think of it. Endings are the most important part of a story, especially in something as large and sprawling as a trilogy like this. I hope you all enjoy it.
Queen of Death, First Chapter Free
Wizards of the Coast has posted a product page for The Queen of Death.This, the final novel in my Lost Mark trilogy set in Eberron, is due out October 10. If you can’t wait that long to get started though, click over to that product page and download a PDF of the first chapter for free!
In the meantime, here’s a shot of the cover to whet your appetite.
Great Ideas and the RPG Market
Brian L. Bird asks of concepts for new games:
Define stunningly good?
Also what is your take on the future of roleplaying games?
Stunningly good games break molds, form new categories, and are strong enough to inspire others to sign on, either as employees or investors. Such ideas are rare, of course, and it’s hard to recognize them when they come along. The idea for Magic: The Gathering wasn’t an obvious hit, for instance, not when Peter Adkison decided to publish it, but it clearly had the potential to break out and become a major success. Other games have seemed to have the same kind of chances but never took off, for any number of reasons.
As for RPGs as we know them, I believe this is a mature market with a number of solidly established major players which have already staked out the best ground. New successes in RPGs aren’t impossible, but they’ll never amount to more than a small fraction of Dungeons & Dragons. If you have aspirations of being a large and wealthy publisher as a newcomer, this is a cement-like row to hoe.
Fortunately, other business models for RPGs have cropped up beyond the traditional three-tier system (publisher-distributor-retailer). Ron Edwards and the crew at the Forge led the charge of the low-budget, high-quality RPG, for instance, and RPGNow.com brought PDF publishing to the gaming industry in earnest. While these games might never have the kind of colossal sales that provide a full-time living for their creators, publishers, and assorted staff, they allow for their own kinds of success. These venutres can prove more profitable than traditional publishers in many cases.
RPGs will never die. I don’t think we’ll ever have a hit on the level of D&D again–or even Vampire–but that doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of room for innovation. If something does break out like that, chances are that most of us wouldn’t recognize it as an RPG, but as a gaming omnivore myself, that’s fine by me.