Cthulhu Cards & Goblin Quests

At the moment, I’m tangentially involved in two different monster-themed Kickstarters: Cthulhu Claus Holiday Cards Wave 2 and Goblin Quest.

In the first, the talented Jody Lindke (who provided illustrations for Monster Academy: I Will Not Eat People) returns for a second round of holiday cards featuring the creepy yet merry Cthulhu Claus. These feature inscriptions from the master of all things Lovecraft, Ken Hite.

I backed the first set (of course), and the cards were just as excellent as you would expect. They’re almost too good to send out, but at the same time too much fun to keep to yourself.

I’ve been friends with Jody’s husband Christian for many years, which is how I wound up having Jody’s excellent artwork in my first Monster Academy book. For this drive, she’s offered to come up with illustrations for the second Monster Academy book as well–if the project funds.

That’s not “if we make it to a higher stretch goal.” It’s “if the project succeeds at all.”

That’s terribly generous of Jody, but the project does need some love. It’s just over 40% of the way funded at the moment, and there’s only three days left, so please check that one out fast.

Up second, game designer Grant Howitt has a hilarious tabletop roleplaying game called Goblin Quest up on Kickstarter right now too. This project has already raised more than five times as much as its initial funding goal of £2,000, and it still has nine days left.

Grant lined up a number of famous game designers to write sets of short adventure seeds for Goblin Quest. The pack I’m in already funded at the £10,000 level, so if you back the game, you’ll get some fun bits from me for sure. And there’s an excellent chance you’ll see more pieces from folks like Robin Laws, Rob Heinsoo, James Wallis, and even Ken Hite, who’s writing the Cthulhu Claus cards too.

While I have your attention, allow me to call out a few other drives I’ve backed with my own hard-earned cash.

  • Girls on Games: A Look at the Fairer Side of the Industry: A book about women in tabletop games, edited by Elisa Teague and featuring friends like Nicole Lindroos, Peggy Brown, Tanis O’Connor, Gaby Weilding, Teeuwynn Woodruff, Jennifer Brozek, Carol Monahan, Jessica Blair, and Mike Selinker.
  • Hero Happy Hour: On the Rocks: A graphic novel by Dan Taylor and Chris Fason. Funny stuff about superheroes and their favorite bar.
  • Designers & Dragons: A history of the roleplaying game industry by Shannon Appelcline. I helped Shannon with a few facts for the excellent first edition, and this one promises to be even better.
  • Mutiny of Dreamers: A book project about achieving your dreams, by Melissa Hawks, who used to live here in Beloit.
  • Kaptain Brawe 2: A Space Travesty: An adventure video game written by Steven Ince.

Announcing the Shotguns & Sorcery RPG!

oe_upright_logo_webI’m happy to announced that I’ve licensed the setting for my Shotguns & Sorcery novels to Outland Entertainment for both tabletop roleplaying games and enhanced ebooks. You can read the full press release below, but the tl;dr version is this: Kickstarter for the RPG coming in October. RPG to debut at Gen Con 2015.

It’s still early days as far as the game goes, and we’re nailing down lots of details, but this feels like coming home. I originally created Shotguns & Sorcery as a fantasy noir setting for the d20 RPG, way back in 2001, and licensed it to Mongoose for publication in 2002. Life interrupted that when my wife became pregnant with quadruplets between those two points, and she and I and our three-year-old son wound up welcoming three more boys and a girl into our house that summer instead.

Flash forward to 2010, when I revived the setting for a short story for The New Hero anthologies Robin Laws was putting together. That became “Friends Like These.” I had such a great time with it, I wrote another story, “Goblintown Justice,” which appeared in an anthology edited by Steve Sullivan. (If you’d like a taste of the setting, you can grab that one for free.)

Then in 2012, as part of my 12 for ’12 challenge, I ran a Kickstarter for a trilogy of Shotguns & Sorcery novels. That funded all three books, and I wrote and published Hard Times in Dragon City, Bad Times in Dragon City, and End Times in Dragon City, each featuring the continuing story of ex-adventurer Max Gibson and his hardboiled friends.

In 2013, Noble Beast–which produced the excellent Steampunk Holmes enhanced ebook–licensed the rights to create enhanced ebook editions of all three novels. I had the pleasure of working with producer Ellie Ann, and she matched me up with artist Jeremy Mohler, who really grokked the books.

Sadly, Noble Beast went belly up, and the project died, but Jeremy wouldn’t give up. He approached me about publishing the enhanced ebooks through his company, Outland Entertainment, and while we were at it, he wanted to produce a roleplaying game as well.

I have to admit, I hesitated. Back when I was the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group, my cofounder Shane Hensley and I published a lot of great, award-winning games, including Deadlands, Brave New World, and The Great Rail Wars. I had all the skills and knowledge to publish the game myself–hopefully even with Jeremy’s excellent artwork–and I harbored dreams of tackling that myself someday.

“Someday” is the key word there. I realized that with as many projects as I’m working on at the moment, someday would be years away, if it ever came. And life’s too short to wait for someday.

So Jeremy and I hammered out a deal, and IT IS ON! 

Someday is now. Well, the work starts now. The game will be out next summer, and Outland is going to run a Kickstarter for it this October, to get things rolling.

I’ll be writing a good chunk of the game–concentrating on developing the setting to the point we can hand it off to you to play in–with help from Jeremy and his cadre of outstanding Outland talent. Stay tuned for more updates and details as we’re ready to share them.

Shotguns & Sorcery: The Roleplaying Game. It’s rolling your way. Soon.

S&S Logo

See the full press release below:

Read More

The Dangerous Games Gen Con Sale

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To celebrate Gen Con this week, I’m putting all three of my Dangerous Games novels on sale for only $2.99! That’s $2 off each. If you grab all three installments in the trilogy, that comes to $8.97, for a total savings of $6.

They’re on sale right now through the Buy Direct and DriveThruFiction buttons on my site. It’ll take a while longer for the sale to filter down to the other sites, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBooks, but it should reach them soonish.

The Dangerous Games books are each set at Gen Con (the largest tabletop gaming convention in the world) and tell the story of Liam Parker, an aspiring game designer who stumbles into a murder investigation on his first night at the show. How to Play is a murder mystery centered around that killing. The sequel, How to Cheat, is a crime novel that centers around the fallout from the previous year’s murder. The finale, How to Win, blasts all the doors off for a full-on action story. I call it Die Hard meets Gen Con.

The books are littered with scores of tabletop industry personalities, both as characters and victims. I’ve been involved in the industry for thirty years now–this will be my 33rd Gen Con in a row–and I wanted to peel back the curtain to show you just what it’s like to be involved in such a vibrant and fun community based on entertaining your friends around a table. Well, with a bit more drama than the show has ever had in real life, of course!

Allen Varney, who is also the first murder victim in How to Play called it “a blood-soaked love letter to Gen Con.” That’s as good as anyone’s ever put it.

Take advantage of this deal and join me at Gen Con, at least in the pages of my books. If you can make it there in real life too, be sure to say hi. At Gen Con, we’re all gamers–and not murder victims!

Dangerous Games: How to Play

Dangerous Games: How to Play

$4.99
Series: Dangerous Games, Book 1
Genre: Thriller
Publication Year: 2013
ASIN: B00CRQJ1NM
ISBN: 9781301239702

Murder comes to Gen Con, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the world, and this time it's no game. After stumbling over the body of a famous game designer, it's up to Liam Parker to figure out who killed the man and–more importantly–why.

View Book Sample
Buy now!
About the Book

Welcome to the Big Show!

Once a year, the greatest tabletop gamers in the world descend upon Indianapolis for Gen Con – the Best Four Days in Gaming – to play games, see friends, and have fun. They play things like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40,000, Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, and everything else they can get their hands on. Mostly the competition is friendly.

Sometimes it is not.

When a world-famous game designer turns up murdered at the convention, Liam Parker – the young game designer who stumbles across the body – makes it his quest to figure out who killed the man, and why. In the end, Liam must figure out the rules of this most dangerous game fast – or risk losing his life.

Other Books in the "Dangerous Games"
Dangerous Games: How to Cheat
Dangerous Games: How to Win
Look Inside

My Gen Con 2014 Schedule

Scott Elliott of Gen Con gave me a hoody with this year's sweet design on it.

Scott Elliott of Gen Con gave me a hoody with this year’s sweet design on it.

Gen Con is coming up this week! This is my favorite time of year, and I hope you can come share it with me.

I’m once again part of the committee selecting the Industry Insider Guests of Honor, and this will mark my 33rd consecutive Gen Con and 12th in a row as a guest of honor. I’ll also take part in the Gen Con Writers Symposium.

If you love games, books, or both, do not miss this show. My schedule:

Wednesday, August 13

Thursday, August 14

Friday, August 15

Saturday, August 16

In my free time, I’ll be wandering about, playing games with my family, and catching up with friends. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see you at the show. If you spot me, go ahead and say hi. We’re all gamers at Gen Con!

We Have a Winner!

DG-HTP-3DThanks to everyone who downloaded Dangerous Games: How to Play for free early last week and entered the drawing to win three free passes to Gen Con. It took me three tries to find a winner who could make it to the show and put the passes to use. Fortunately, the earlier winners (Wayne Humfleet and Scott Fields) were happy to pass them on to someone who would get to enjoy them. They went to Dino Liapis of Skokie, Illinois! 

Stay tuned for more Gen Con news!

Win Gen Con Passes, Plus Get a Free Book!

DG-HTP-3DMy favorite time of year–Gen Con, the greatest tabletop games gathering in the world–is just around the corner, and better yet, it’s my birthday on Monday. To celebrate, I’m going to give away ebook copies of Dangerous Games: How to Play. Not only that, one lucky reader is going to get three free passes to Gen Con.

How to Play is the first in my trilogy of Dangerous Games thrillers, which follow the life of rookie game designer Liam Parker through three consecutive years at the show. As designer Allen Varney–the first fictional murder victim in the book and the man behind BundleOfHolding.com–says about Dangerous Games:

In How to Play, Matt Forbeck writes a blood-soaked love letter to Gen Con and the roleplaying hobby. If you enjoy seeing famous game designers brutally slaughtered (and who doesn’t?), Dangerous Games is your victory condition.

To enter the contest, all you have to do is grab a free copy of Dangerous Games: How to Play right here. It should set you right up, but if you wind up needing a coupon code, use: dangercon. You’ll get the book in ePub, Kindle, and PDF formats.

That automatically enters you into the contest for the three Gen Con passes via your email address, and I’ll randomly select the winner from that list of addresses. The contest (and the free ebook giveaway) ends at midnight CDT on August 4–or whenever I wake up the next morning. Anyone is eligible to grab the ebooks for free, but I can only mail the three passes to a US postal address. Otherwise, I couldn’t be sure they’d get to the winners in time.

So join the fun, and spread the word. I hope you enjoy the book, and I hope I get to see you at Gen Con!

Shotguns & Sorcery for the CORE RPG

corerpg4Among his many other talents, my pal Lester Smith is a crackerjack game designer. If you’re a longtime tabletop gamer, you probably played some of his creations, including Dark Conspiracy and Dragon Dice. He’s been working on a new tabletop roleplaying game for a while now, and I had the honor of playing it at the Nexus Game Fair a few weeks back with my son Marty and nephew Henry.

We had a ball. It’s called the CORE RPG, and it uses a stripped-down system that puts the emphasis on entertainment rather than number crunching. If you like crunch, though, you’ll enjoy the innovative d6xd6 system, in which you roll two six-sided dice and multiply them to get your result.

Lester’s running a Kickstarter to get the CORE RPG into print. He set a number of stretch goals for it, and he’s already thundered through the first one for a fantasy four-pack of settings, which includes my Shotguns & Sorcery setting, plus ones from Doug Niles, Tim Brown, and Bruce Heard.

Because the mechanics are simple, the settings are short too, and Lester has lined up a slew of other authors and settings. Many more than he’s listed on his site so far. He’s already knocked down the first couple stretch goals, and he has lots more to come. The PDF of the rules including all the stretch goals will only set you back $9, and the print version’s only $21.

It’s a great deal from a fantastic designer, so be sure to check it out. It only runs until August 3, so go over and back it before the clock stops ticking.

Join Me for Fiction for a Cure

American_Cancer_Society_Relay_For_Life-2My pal Mike Stackpole helps run Fiction for a Cure, a Relay for Life event that takes place in Second Life. (To give that a linkbait headline: BESTSELLING AUTHORS FIGHT CANCER IN ONLINE VIRTUAL WORLD.) This year, he asked a number of other authors to donate books and other items for the cause. This includes other all-star authors Diana Gabaldon, Tracy & Laura Hickman, R. A. Salvatore, Claudia Christian, Kevin J. Anderson, Stephen R. Donaldson, Alan Dean Foster, John Kovalic, and Patrick Rothfuss. And I’m pitching in too!

Fiction for a Cure started on July 11 and runs through the 18th, and it takes place on the American Cancer Society island in Second Life. Events include classes and readings, and the whole thing culminates in a live auction of books and other cool fictiony bits on the final day. Items for the auction include signed books, games, graphic novels, and rare collectibles. Plus, you can even be Tuckerized (which means you can have yourself or a friend written into a future story by one of the authors).

Fiction for a Cure also includes five raffle packages featuring gift cards donated by the best content creators in Second Life. Every ticket, which costs L250, includes L250 credit to Clutter for Builders.

I’ve donated a couple of things to the cause. For the silent auction, you can pick up an autographed hardcover copy of my Dangerous Games omnibus. This collects all three of my Dangerous Games books under a single cover, and it’s so far only been available to the fine folks who backed the Kickstarter drive that funded that series. [Actually, this is up in the live auction!]

For the live auction on July 18, I’ve put up a Tuckerization that can get your name into my upcoming novel Loot Drop, which should be published by Tor sometimes in 2015. [This isn’t up yet, but it may be in either the silent or the live auction, depending on where Mike needs it.]

Mike explains it pretty well on his site too. It’s a great event for a worthy cause, so be sure to visit and check out all the goodies up for bids.

Join Me in Rockford

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This Saturday, I’ll be speaking at the InPrint Writers monthly meeting at the Mendelssohn Center in Rockford, Illinois. It starts at 1 PM, and I’m told that local writer Ted Iverson and I are slated to start chatting by 1:30. It’s open to the public, so come out and join us if you have the time.

The InSpectres Movie Kickstarter

A few years back, my pals at Reactor 88 Studios asked me to lend them a hand with their latest project, a horror-comedy film based upon InSpectres, a brilliant indie roleplaying game by my friend Jared Sorensen. I came in and wrote a new draft of Jeff Dohm’s original screenplay and served as one of the film’s producers, and I even played a lone zombie covered in melting makeup on a blistering Chicago summer’s day. Director Darren Orange did most of the heavy lifting with making the film actually happen, and I got to have a ball working with the actors and the rest of the crew.

The film debuted last fall and had a short run in a big theater in Chicago. Now Reactor 88 wants to release the film for people to enjoy at home, and they’ve launched a Kickstarter to make that happen. Head on over and check it out, and chip in if you like screwy fun. Like this:

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