Mark Preuschl lives here in my hometown of Beloit, Wisconsin, and he takes some fantastic photographs of the place. He does a great job of capturing the beauty of the place, something it’s all too easy to take for granted in the rush of daily life. I especially like his shots of the refurbished Beloit Corp building as seen from the back of the Beloit Inn, the Old Water Tower, and just about everything in his 2006 Beloit Area Calendar.
Origins Awards Voting Open
The voting for the annual Origins Awards is now open, but only until June 6. If you’re a gaming industry professional, you can join the AAGAD and vote for free. So please do!
If you’re not an industry professional, you can still take a gander at the nominees for this year’s awards and bask in their reflected glory. I don’t have anything on the ballot this year, so this time around my announcement is stunningly plug-free.
Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids
I just finished reading Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids by David Kushner. It’s the story of how Jon Finkel, a Magic: The Gathering player, went from high-school nerd to world champion, joined a casino blackjack card-counting team, and then decided to take on the World Series of Poker too. It’s a fascinating study of a generation of gamer geeks that I could well have been a part of were I 10 years younger.
I’d long known about the top players on Magic‘s Pro Circuit, and I’d heard stories about how some of them were now winning poker tournaments, but the book goes over it all in loving detail. It’s really a coming-of-age story for Jon, one that many gamers can probably identify with. As gaming becomes more and more mainstream and mass market, it’s wonderful to have a record about those who were there at that cusp and see how they helped define the culture that’s arisen around gaming of all kinds. The fact that I know some of the people named in the book, like Peter Adkison and Richard Garfield, added that much more life to the story.
Game Company Spin-Offs
It’s inevitable that people who work for a game company sometimes leave. Maybe they got laid off, maybe they left on their own. Lots of times they leave the industry for good, but just as often, it seems, they find some way to stick around and keep working at having fun. By way of example, check out Crafty Games and Hyperion Games.
Last year, AEG laid off a number of employees and cut support for its fantastic Spycraft game. One of those laid off–Patrick Kapera–gathered some of the others who had helped out on the latest edition of the game (Alex Flagg and Scott Gearin) and formed Crafty Games. They just released their first product: the PDF of the second printing of Spycraft 2.0.
I never heard that Brian Wood had left Fantasy Flight Games, but he did. Now he’s the brains behind Hyperion, which just released its first board game: Vapor’s Gambit. Hyperion also just announced its first big license, for the Dilbert board game.
Good luck, guys! I can’t wait to see how well you do.
Xombies!
If you’re a fan of the undead (and who isn’t) and you haven’t seen James Farr‘s Xombie, you’re cheating yourself. I had the honor of working with James on a project this year, and he’s flat-out amazing. Xombie shows why.
New Site Functions
I’ve been tinkering with the site again. If you look at the bottom of each post, you’ll see a pair of new icons. If you click on the printer icon, the post reformats into an easy-to-print style. If you click on the e-mail icon, a pop-up window allows you to send the content of the post to a friend.
At the bottom of the sidebar, I’ve also included a plugin that permits automatic translations of the page into 11 different languages via Google. I realize that the translations will often be wonky at best, but it should make it more convenient for non-English-speakers who would like a rough idea of what I’m going on about.
DC Battle Dice Previews: Starro
To cap off the week of Battle Dice previews, we have one more from the upcoming DC version of the game: Starro the Conqueror. If you thought MODOK was weird, he has nothing on the giant starfish alien who controls the minds of his victims via miniature, face-hugging versions of itself. Better yet, Starro takes the blame for the discovery of Earth-C, home to Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!
You just can’t get much more trippy than that. Still, I enjoy Starro stories, and I read lots of Captain Carrot as a kid. I can only hope the influences don’t show too often.
Dragonstar Deal
Fantasy Flight is having a Memorial Day weekend sale on its website. Among the roleplaying game books available for only $5 each is Dragonstar: Guide to the Galaxy, of which I wrote a good-sized chunk. It’s a great price for that book, and you could pick up a number of other neglected tomes while you’re there, like Grimm, Spellslinger, and the Fireborn Player’s Handbook and Gamemaster’s Handbook.
Cathy’s Book on the Way
According to Publishers Weekly, there’s a new kind of book on the way, and Cathy’s Book is the first of its kind. Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart showed me a mock-up of this book at the BEA show in Chicago two years back. It’s essentially a hardcopy take on the kind of ARGs that Jordan and Sean invented (or at least brought to national prominence) with the Beast (a game of which I wrote a number of small bits).
Cathy’s Book is a mystery story about a girl investigating why her boyfriend dumped her, but it spins wildly from there. It includes web addresses and phone numbers as part of the clues, and these are all live and working for the reader to follow up on, enriching the whole experience.
I’m looking forward to seeing if this grand experience works. Knowing Jordan and Sean, I have high hopes for it.
DC Battle Dice Previews: Starfire
This time around, we have our first preview figure from the upcoming DC Battle Dice game. Starfire was one of the founding members of the Teen Titans, and she’s been with the group through many of its incarnations. She became even more popular as one of the lineup for the Teen Titans animated series on Cartoon Network. Nothing like a scantily clad alien princess with glowing green eyes to add an exotic dash to a superhero team.
