Wizards of the Coast has posted the answers to the D&D developer’s test I mentioned earlier. Best of all, the answers are those that recent-hire Mike Mearls gave when he took the test, and they feature comments from Jesse Decker, who explains how well Mike did.
I’m not surprised Mike did so well. He’s one of the best designers to emerge from the d20 movement, and I’m sure he’ll do great things at Wizards.
WizKids just posted the latest version of the rules for High Stakes Drifter, along with tournament rules, and PDFs of a demonstration deck and a set of kicker chips. Download the whole shebang and try the game out for yourself, nearly a month before it’s due to hit shelves. There’s also an article on how Side Bets work in the game too, in case you still hunger for more after devouring the demo game.
Jeff Grubb posts that he’s donated $200 to the Red Cross, $1 for each request for his new RPG Dyvil. If you haven’t made a request of your own yet, check Jeff’s post for the details on how to get it. It’s not only free to you, it’s for a good cause.
John McLintock (who I met at Bill King‘s wedding) has posted a review of Blood Bowl. Thanks, John!
Decipher just announced that it’s going to release some new books for its Lord of the Rings and Star Trek Roleplaying Games as PDFs through DriveThruRPG.com. This may include some books in which I had a hand back when I worked as Decipher’s Lord of the Rings RPG developer. Or not.
Honestly, it’s been more than three years since I left that position, and I can’t recall the titles of everything we had in the works at the time. Jeff Tidball carried on in my stead, and I’m sure the lion’s share of what may see the light of day will be the excellent fruits of his labors. I’m happy to see the material will finally be available to the public.
I just saw a preview of the TV commercial that Playmates is going to run early next year to promote Marvel Heroes Battle Dice. This should get heavy rotation in lots of regions of the television lineup that I usually only see while peering over my kids’ shoulders. It looks great, and that’s even before they add the animated bits. Woo-hoo!
On September 21, I left the US for Prague, to witness the marriage of one of my best friends, Bill King, to the love of his life. I got back on the 28th, and I’m just now caught up enough to spend time on this website. As you might guess from the slew of new posts, I’ve had lots of things building up in the pipeline here, waiting for my attention.
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Here’s a shot of the Spitfire Grill sign I won in a raffle from the New Court Theatre this summer. It looks great over our stove.
Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy is now available as a PDF download through Lulu.com. This is the big, RPG-industry charity jam book I mentioned before. It came out fantastic and on time, both of which should amaze anyone who’s worked on a project like this. It features RPGs, RPG adventures, short stories, and essays–all with a Big Easy theme. Aaron Acevedo, Aaron Axelsen, Scott Bennie, Jason L Blair, Leanne Buckley, Heather “Squish” Cornelius, William Edmonds, Crazy Elf, Matt Forbeck, Caz Granberg, Seth Johnson, Adam Jury, Mischa Damon Krilov, Lindsay Labanca, Mur Lafferty, Jason Mical, Veronica Pare, Jeff Preston, Mikko Rautalahti, Sean Riley, S. John Ross, Janice M. Sellers, Angi Shearstone, Geoff Skellams, Adam Tinworth, Ursula Vernon, David “Doc Blue” Wendt, Stacy S. (Niedecker) Wendt, Michael Wendt, and Brook Willeford all chipped in both time and effort.
For my part, I wrote up the “Naked Room Service” tale I referred to here a few weeks back, as a tribute to one of my best times in the Crescent City. (Anyone know that name from my RPG work?) That’s a fun story for everyone, but if you’re a gamer it’s the least of a fantastic lot. The book includes a couple short but complete roleplaying games, for instance, and some damn good writing all around. For $10, how can you go wrong? The only reason not to buy it now is that you’re waiting for the $20 dead-tree version to arrive in a couple weeks. You could get both!
Wizards of the Coast is on the prowl for new talent for their Dungeons & Dragons staff. I chatted with Bill Slaviscek about this at Gen Con, and he said that for the first time they don’t care if you have previous publication credits or not. They just want great designers.
If you’re interested and think you have the chops for the job, here’s you chance to prove yourself. Go take Wizards’ RPG Design Test. Even if you’re not looking for that kind of job, I found it fascinating to see just what the top RPG publisher in the world looks for in a new designer these days.