Comics & Games Retailer asked me to write a column on how the gaming industry has been in the past year from a freelancer’s point of view. Assuming you’re qualified, what’s your quick take? Please comment below or e-mail me if you prefer.

I’d like to be able to quote you, so if you respond, please append your permission if you’re willing. Thanks!

One cool thing about working with creative people is that they often come up with the best gifts. There’s the Mage Knight Santa Claus figure, for instance. Or the Darque Beer from Acclaim Comics. This year, the fine people at Looney Labs sent me a kind holiday note that included three cards to slot into a deck of their game Fluxx. For those in the know, these are “Goal: Xmas Tree” (need “Gift” and “Tree” to win), “Keeper: Earth,” and “Goal: Peace on Earth” (need “Peace” and “Earth” to win).

Fluxx is one of my favorite games, a real game designer’s game that’s easy to teach and to play with anyone. I’ve played it with my son Marty since he was five. Looney Labs has two new editions out now too: Eco Fluxx and Family Fluxx. I found out about these through their holiday card, which shows that it’s not only a cool gift but a cunning marketing scheme.

Seriously, I often keep an extra couple copies of Fluxx around during the holidays, along with games like Once Upon a Time, for emergency gifts. They’re cool, accessible games with kid-safe themes, so they make great gifts for anyone you may have otherwise forgotten.

The principal of St. Gabriel School in Hubertus, Wisconsin, asked me to chat with her older students. Seeing as how Dr. Mortell grew up next door to my mother, who would I be to say no? I’ll be speaking there on February 1, 2006. This is the first time I’ve gotten up in front of a group of 6—8th graders since I was one myself, so there’s no telling what might happen.

Seriously, I’m looking forward to meeting all the kids and seeing what kinds of questions they have about writing books and designing games. It should be a lot of fun for everyone–me included.

I just signed on to take part in a seminar at Cybercon, an online gaming convention that runs February 4—5, 2006. Come on by and pick my brain! Or the circuits of the Forbeck-Chatbot I’ll program to take my place!

I just spotted the fact that you can play Fast Break for free at CCG Workshop. Well, some of you can. The software only seems to work with Windows, so Mac users (like me) are out of luck.

Fast Break is a humorous basketball CCG I designed for WildStorm Productions, published in 1996. It’s a fun game, but the orders for it were horrible. I think we sold more into Japan than the US.

We didn’t have an NBA license, which is probably the main reason the game failed. Because of that, many of the people at WildStorm ended up as players in the game. There’s a “Matt Forbeck” player card out there with my mug on it and some terribly fictional stats.

They have some other CCGs I worked on up at the site too: Dark Eden, Doomtown, Doomtrooper, Kult, Monster Rancher and WildStorms.

That’s some trip down memory lane. If you want a CCG of mine that’s still in print, try High Stakes Drifter, which WizKids just launched last month.

It seems like I’m forever tinkering with this site. It’s a perpetual work in progress. You may notice, for instance, that I added Dead Ball to the “Recent Novels” section in the sidebar. Or that I’ve altered the background color of the pages. Or that I’ve added a new header graphic.

And, yes, if the painting in the header looks familiar, it’s because it’s me. Shane Hensley, a few of the other Pinnacle guys, and I modeled for artist Lissanne Lake at one Gen Con many years back. She used the photos she took to make a few paintings for the Doomtown collectible card game published by Wizards and licensed after our Deadlands weird western roleplaying game.

Shane and I appeared as a pair of U.S. Marshals on one card, and Lissanne used my face for two cards for a rogue named Fasthands Freddy, a pirate who terrorized the Great Maze. The new header graphic uses a crop from one of those cards. The two originals hang on the wall in my office, along with the mask of Patriot (from my Brave New World roleplaying game) and a few other cool mementos from my years in the adventure gaming industry.

If you want to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons–I mean, really learn how to play it–sign up now for this free class through Barnes & Noble University. It’s an eight-hour class done over four weeks, and James Wyatt (RPG designer extraordinaire) is handling the instructor duties. You can’t go wrong.

I posted here a while back about Ken Hite‘s occult tour of Chicago experiment being run by Otherworld Excursions. It appears the initial outing smashed it out of Wrigley Field/Comiskey Park (choose your side of town). One of the participants wrote up a detailed review, complete with pictures, so you don’t just have to imagine how cool this would be.