High Stakes Drifter Hung High

According to an article in ICv2.com, WizKids has decided to end support for High Stakes Drifter.

WizKids also said that it will no longer support its High Stakes Drifter CCG, which did not receive enough support to justify continuing it.

This is no surprise to me. I had breakfast with WizKids’ CEO Jordan Weisman at the GAMA Trade Show last week, and he apologized to me for how the company had stumbled on the launch of the game. It was the first CCG that WizKids published, and there were some growing pains. However, they’ve learned a lot from it, and I suspect that their upcoming Battlestar Galactica CCG will profit from it.

For my part, I bear WizKids no ill will at all. We all wanted the game to sell better, and they risked far more on the venture than I did. Hopefully the game (or at least the best parts of its mechanics) will appear someplace else in the future. Jordan and his crew treated me wonderfully throughout the entire process, and I’d love to work with them again sometime soon.

Hear Me Blather with Paul Tevis

When I was at the GAMA Trade Show last week, Paul Tevis grabbed me, sat me down, and interrogated me about all sorts of things. The recording of this somehow turned up on Paul’s excellent podcast, Have Games, Will Travel. (I suppose the large microphones should have been a clue.)

Give it a listen, and you can hear how I sound after staying up for more than 24 hours, grabbing two hours of sleep, and then holding a seminar on freelancing in the gaming industry. In other words, how you’d find me at most game conventions.

Patronize Wolfgang Baur

Wolfgang Baur, one of my fellow Alliterates, is taking a shot at using patronage (the ancient model for financing art) as the means of producing a d20 fantasy adventure (read: D&D module). It’s a kick of an idea, and I hope it works out for him.

What differentiates this from Greg Stolze‘s ransom model is that Wolf hasn’t started work on the project yet. Also, the patrons (those who donate to the cause) get to have some say in what he produces–before he types even the first work.

Wolf’s a fantastic adventure writer, so I’m sure the final results will be wonderful. If you’ve ever wanted to feed ideas to a professional game designer–a a cut rate–here’s your chance.

Origins Awards Nominations Announced

The Origins Awards nominations were announced at the GAMA Trade Show this past week. See the full list after the break. Congratulations to all the nominees!

(Things I worked on didn’t receive any nominations this year, but that’s not too surprising as I had little in the way of games come out last year. Also, the fiction category (in which I had several releases) apparently got cut due to “insufficient submissions.”)
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GTS 2006 Report

I made it back from the GAMA Trade Show (GTS) late Wednesday night, while the show still raged on in Las Vegas. For those who are interested, you can read the details of my trip after the break.
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GTS Moving

The GAMA Trade Show will no longer be held at the Riviera. Next year, it’ll be at Bally’s instead, and a month later in the year to boot. Perhaps not too coincidentally, this moves it away from the inaugural Games Expo, which will be held in Las Vegas also, near GTS’s traditional dates, but at the SouthCoast.

See the full press release after the break.
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