Kickstarters for Your Consideration

I don’t just run Kickstarters like my Monster Academy drive, which just cracked $11k last night. I also back them too. In fact, I’ve backed more than a hundred Kickstarters in my time, not all of which funded, for which my bank account is grateful, even if I’m not. Here are a few (all right: several) amazing projects that I’m backing (or at least loving from afar) at the moment, arranged by the time they have left.

  • Deadlands: Raven: A graphic novel based on the Deadlands RPG, which I helped publish during my Pinnacle days. Greg LaRocque’s art looks sharp, and Chuck Sellner and Matt Cutter will bring a great story to it. Time left: 34 hours!
  • An E-Module That’s More Than a PDF: My friend Mike Bohlmann pushes the boundaries of what you can do with an iPad or ePub-formatted Pathfinder adventure. Can’t wait to see how well this works. Time left: 35 hours!
  • Megalopolis: An all-new graphic novel by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore. When the city’s superheroes go on a killing spree, it’s time to put the town in your rear-view mirror – if you can. Time left: 49 hours!
  • Camden: A great tile-laying game designed by James Ernest, illustrated by John Kovalic, and published by Boyan Radakovich, all of whom I’m proud to count as friends. In it, you and the other players are shopkeepers in London’s market district, competing for the tourists’ cash. Time left: 50 hours!
  • Unexploded Cow: A classic Cheapass Game from my pal James Ernest. You heard mad cows into fields filled with unexploded ordnance from WWII. Even funnier than it sounds. Time left: 60 hours!
  • Perils of the Surface World: A set of adventures for Hollow Earth Expedition produced by my friend Jeff Combos. Great, pulpy tabletop RPG fun. Time left: 3 days!
  • Heroes of Metro City: I don’t know a lot about this game, but it’s a deckbuilder featuring superheroes, which is a double-bonus for me. Hopefully it could hold me over until Devin Low’s Marvel deckbuilding game comes out this winter. Time left: 3 days!
  • Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary: A film about creation of D&D and the profound effect it’s had on our world. It had me at D&D. Time left: 4 days!
  • Tenra Bansho Zero: Jun’ichi Inoue’s tabletop fantasy RPG was a big hit in Japan. My friend Andy Kitowski’s bringing it over here, and it looks great. It’s smashing through its stretch goals too. Time left: 4 days!
  • Numenera: My pal (and fellow Alliterate) Monte Cook’s first brand-new RPG since D&D Third Edition features a science-fantasy setting placed a billion years in the future. Illustrated by the fantastic Kieran Yanner (also a friend), this already shattered the record for best-funded tabletop RPG ever. Time left: 5 days!
  • A Blossoming Honey Business: The cutest story of a girl here in Wisconsin who’s trying to raise money to expand her honey business. Sweet in many ways. Time left: 8 days.
  • 13 True Ways: An expansion book for 13 Ways, the upcoming fantasy RPG by my fiends Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, both longtime D&D designers. I don’t even have the core book yet, and I want this. Time left: 10 days.
  • Gaming Paper Colors: My pal Erik Bauer makes the wonderful stuff he calls Gaming Paper, large sheets of gridded paper on which you can draw maps for your tabletop games. Now he wants to bring them to you in different colors. Time left: 11 days.
  • Are You a Werewolf? From my pals at Looney Labs comes an innovative version of the fantastic party game in which you use little plastic viewers to find out who you’re playing the game. Simple and brilliant. Time left: 11 days.
  • Invasion of the Saucer People: My pal (and fellow Alliterate) Lester Smith returns to game design with one he made for his grandson. It’s a light, fun card game with some cool stretch goals, including more games! Time left: 14 days.
  • Electric Velocipede: The award-winning speculative fiction magazine from my friend John Klima. Good reading on a regular basis. Time left: 14 days.
  • Burnt: An SF novel from fellow Geek Dan contributor Curtis Silver. It’s got a premise as sharp as Curtis’s tongue. Time left: 14 days.
  • Stay Alive – Not Undead: A zombie coloring and activity book from the talented and funny Dan Taylor. I’m looking forward to handing this to my kids. Time left: 16 days.
  • Tilt-Shift: A graphic novel written by Jose Torres-Cooban, reflecting his time serving as a combat photographer with a special operations team in Afghanistan. Time left: 16 days.
  • Transforming Collections: A book about all the unofficial Transformers toys and accessories out there, by my pal Phil Reed (of Steve Jackson Games fame). No one knows his toys better than Phil, and his passion shines through here. Time left: 18 days.
  • Dreadball: A minis game that comes off as sci-fi Blood Bowl. That’s enough to sell me right there. Time left: 18 days.
  • tremulus: A tabletop RPG of Lovecraftian horror from my friend Sean Preston with a brilliant design. I liked it so much, I gave Sean a blurb for it. Time left: 19 days.
  • Cthulhu Claus Greeting Cards: A set of Cthulhu-themed holiday cards illustrated by Jody Lindke and inscribed with words from my buddy Ken Hite. Fun for all ages. Time left: 23 days.
  • Art of Brom: Brom’s one of the greatest fantasy artists to emerge in the last 20 years, and his cover for Deadlands helped us sell a lot of copies of that tabletop RPG back in my days with Pinnacle. Here’s a gorgeous book filled with his best stuff. Time left: 23 days.
  • The Coriolis Defect: A fantastic time-travel tabletop RPG from Jay Little that, with some very cool mechanics, allows you to rewind time in your games. Right up my alley. Time left: 29 days.
My own Monster Academy Kickstarter is still going on too, of course. It ends this Sunday, so you have four clock-ticking days left to join in the fun. Take a look at these others while you’re at it. There’s a whole lot of cool going on there.
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Oh, plus a couple more I missed in that initial onslaught:
  • Geek Love: An anthology of geek-themed erotica in prose and pictures, edited by Shanna Germain. Features work by James Sutter, Jaym Gates, Lee Moyer, and many other talented folks. Time left: 15 days.
  • Skew: A SF anthology of weird stories on the Philip K. Dick scale, conceived by Ben Lehman and edited by Isabel Cooper Kunkle. Features stories by my pal Greg Stolze, among other entertainingly twisted souls. Time left: 21 days

And an IndieGoGo drive too:

  • Dry Spell: A romantic comedy film by Rockford, IL, native Travis Legge, about a woman trying to set up her soon-to-be-ex husband on dates. Looks like fun all around. Time left: 4 days.

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And another book suggested to me today:

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Plus more! I could probably do this all day:

  • Cheap Shot: A card game that combines rummy with taking cheap shots at your friends, by Lisa Bowman Steenson. Looks hilarious. Time left: 3 days.
  • Fallen City of Karez: A semi-coopertive fantasy board game by Elad Goldsteen. Time left: 24 days.
  • Low Life Miniatures: A line of metal figures based on my friend Andy Hopp’s gorgeously odd designs for his Low Life RPG. Time left: 10 days.
  • Wreck-Age: A stylish post-apocalyptic tabletop RPG and minis game. Time left: 3 days.

Geekerati Tonight! Google Hangout Thursday!

I’ll be on the Geekerati radio show tonight with hosts Christian Lindke and Shawna Benson. Listen live starting at 8:30 PM Pacific. If you can’t make that, don’t fret, the podcast version will get posted soon after that.

I’m also planning to self-host a Google Hangout on Thursday. Come watch me make a fool of myself and try to answer questions being shot at me through Google chat. Hopefully I’ll have figured the thing out ahead of then. Come ask me anything you like, and I’ll fake the answers as best I can.

12 for ’12 Add-Ons for Monster Academy Backers

The Monster Academy Kickstarter broke its funding goal late Friday night! That means every 12 for ’12 Kickstarter succeeded – four in a row. Thanks to all my backers on each one of my drives, including this one, for all your support!

One problem I’ve seen throughout the drives is that people who found out about the 12 for ’12 plan after the earlier drives ended wish they could have gotten in on the ground floor. I think I figured out a way to turn back the clock for them that still respects the support that so many fantastic people have given already.

During the remainder of the Monster Academy drive, backers can order printed books from the previous drives as add-ons to their pledges for this drive. These are the Kickstarter editions of the books, but they won’t be signed, and they won’t have the newcomers’ names in them as backers. That’s reserved for the people who backed the drives when they were live.

If you missed any of the drives, this is a great way to fill in the holes in your collection. See my latest Monster Academy update for details about our current add-on options and stretch goals. We only have six more days to go on this final drive, so get in on it while you still can. Thanks!

Monster Academy Is a GO!

Earlier tonight, the Monster Academy Kickstarter smashed through its funding goal and kept going strong! As I write this, we’re 101% funded, which means I’m going to start writing Monster Academy books this winter!

Thanks so much to each and every one of you for your support. It’s been one humbling year, for sure. When I started out with this idea, I had no idea it would go so well, and all of that success comes down to you.

I have some ideas for stretch goals beyond the Respect the Streak goals. I’m on the road at the moment, though, and I want to take the time to make sure I get everything write and explain it so it’s clear. I plan on having that up on Monday.

At the moment, we still have eight days to go on the project. That means there’s still plenty of time to get the word out so that more people can join in on the fun. For right now, though, I just want you to bask in the glow of getting this done. Four Kickstarters funding a full dozen novels. It just boggles the mind.

Thanks.

Monster Academy Gets an A – So Far

Well, the Monster Academy Kickstarter drive now stands at [checks again] 92%, so that’s at least in the A bracket, if I remember the grading criteria correctly from back when I was in school. Seeing as how we have 10 more days to go, I’ll call that a great grade – so far. It puts us less than [counts on fingers] $800 from getting funded.

I’m confident we can crush that target, although I’d really like to hit our stretch goals on top of that. If you have any ideas for new and exciting stretch goals, don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m noodling around a couple myself.

I spent last weekend at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago and had a wonderful time chatting with people, often about 12 for ’12. As you might imagine, lots of writers shake their heads at me when they hear about it. Or pat me on the shoulder with the kind of understanding nod you save for your crazy, old uncle.

Despite that – or maybe because of it – Monster Academy has gotten some good coverage over the past week. The folks at Zombie Orpheus, who are behind the Kickstarter for The Gamers: Hands of Fate, listed Monster Academy among their favorite projects. Over on Facebook, the team at Lone Shark Games did the same when they announced with projects they picked this month to back out of their Kickstarter fund.

(If you’re looking for fun Kickstarters, be sure to check out those posts, by the way. I’ve backed almost all of those projects myself.)

Meanwhile, the great guys at the Founding Fields interviewed me in depth about my process and my projects, including Monster Academy. I also took part in a couple other interviews, which should be posted soon, and next Tuesday, at 10:30 PM Central time, I’ll be a guest on Geekerati Radio with Christian Lindke. (It was supposed to be last night, but the Blog Talk Radio platform fell out from underneath us.)

Speaking of which, Christian just launched a Kickstarter of his own for Cthulhu Claus Greeting Cards by Jody Lindke and my pal Ken Hite. As he intimates in the write-up, I’ve agreed to help him out with one of his stretch goals, which would include some original artwork related to Monster Academy. That’s a ways off from happening right now, but go on over and give the cards a look.

As I write this, we only have 10 days to go on this final 12 for ’12 drive, which means the clock’s ticking louder every minute. I’d love to end it strong. Please spread the word as best you can, and let me thank you for all your fantastic support!

Back from World Con

I had a great time at World Con (the World Science Fiction Convention) this weekend. I only had a couple panels, and they went well, putting me at the same table with guys like Joe Haldeman (a legend) and Hugh Howey (who’s sold a stunning number of books on Amazon). I spent the vast majority of my time in bars and restaurants, catching up with friends, making new ones, and talking about books, books, books.

I stayed with my pal Ken Hite down at his place in Hyde Park and commuted back and forth. Fortunately, as Ken has mentioned before, our drinkadian rhythms match well, which meant I never had to ditch out on a party or a conversation early. The commute sadly also meant I left my phone in the cab on Friday night – entirely my fault – which proved to be the only damper on an otherwise excellent weekend.

I’d never been to a World Con before, but it felt like home right away. It seemed like I couldn’t move twenty feet sometimes without bumping into someone I knew, either in person or on Twitter. As I said then, it sometimes felt like the purpose of the con was to strip the “Twitter” qualifier off the phrase “Twitter friend” for so many of the people I met. I’d name them all, but it would seem like I was name dropping, and I’d be sure to leave someone dear to me off the list.

It started off strong with the Angry Robot bowling party, which had the highest density of fantastic people I wanted to meet that I’d ever seen. I had the highest bowling score at the end of the night, which really only tells you that writers and editors need to get out more. The surprise of the week, though, was running into Tobias Buckell at the Tor party the next evening, following the Random House party that had taken us on a three-hour boat ride up and down the Chicago River and out onto Lake Michigan too for a spectacular view of the city by night.

I don’t know when I’ll get back to a World Con again. I only finally went to this one because it was practically in my backyard. But I’m looking forward to the day it happens.

Meanwhile, hustle over to the blogs of superstars Chuck Wendig and Tobias Buckell, both of whom do a fantastic job of summing it all up. Tobias has a fantastic photo of the three of us at the Tor party that captures the weekend perfectly: three writers having a blast together and ready to take on the world.

 

More Monster Academy Press

The promotions for Monster Academy (my latest Kickstarter, for a trilogy of YA fantasy novels) roll on.

First, Michael Harrison – who’s covered every one of my Kickstarters for Wired’s Geek Dad blog – completes the circuit with an excellent article about the Monster Academy drive. The funniest part of the whole article, though, is a note from one of our intrepid editors:

[Editor’s note: Matt Forbeck is a Contributor to GeekDad. But we’d write about this anyway, because he’s nuts.]

Second, I had a great chat with Richard Bliss of Funding the Dream, a podcast about running a Kickstarter. I was Richard’s guest way back on his second-ever show, and he’s already up to Episode 76. That’s one busy podcaster! Richard pointed out that if this drive goes well, my Kickstarter backers will have given me north of $60k this year, which is enough for many people to live on, even with five kids to feed. That made me grin. Thanks again, my backers!

Third, Dan Davenport invited me to join an IRC chat he hosts regularly on the #rpgnet channel. We had a good number of people show up, and several excellent questions thrown out for me to juggle. If you missed the fun, you can still read the transcript in full.

We’re down to just 18 days until the campaign ends, so please help spread the word. Thanks for all your support!

Join Me for an IRC Event Tonight

Tonight at 7 PM Central, Dan Davenport is going to host an IRC (internet relay chat) event with me as the guest. As Dan writes:

To join, go to http://www.magicstar.net/chat2/, select your nick, log in, and type “/join #rpgnet”.

I’ll be open to chatting about any of my projects – past, present, and future – so please join me for the fun!

Two New Interviews

Yesterday, a couple friends of mine posted interviews with me. First up, Don Schlising – fellow Cheesehead and partner with Jesse Theiler at the brand-new Notting Hill Games – asked me about who I am, what I do, and how I write. He also says several kind things about me in his introduction that you’re free to ignore.

Next, Jennifer Brozek asked me a more pointed question. What do I love about Monster Academy, the trilogy of books I’m running a Kickstarter for right now? That’s one of those obvious questions that makes you think about something a lot more than maybe you had up until that point. My answer for Jenn kind of surprised me, but as I wrote it I realized how true it was.

Check them both out.

A Gen Con Roundup

I’ve had a lot of things happen lately that I haven’t slapped up here on the blog for lack of time. I’ve Tweeted/Facebooked about them because I can do that fast, but I tagged them for later additions here and never got around to them. Rather than dribble them out here a bit at a time, I’m going to correct this now in one fell swoop. I’ll start with the one convention I’ve attended so far this year.

Gen Con was fantastic. I had my wife and kids with me the entire five days of the show, and they were wonderful. Marty (my eldest) spent most of his time with me, while Ann wrangled the quads. Gen Con’s a fantastic time, but it’s hyperstimulating even for adults, so we let the kids have it in small doses.

I, of course, gorged myself on it and saw all sorts of wonderful people, old friends, new fans, and fun folks. Highlights of the show include:

  • The Diana Jones Award party, which I host, at which I rode a mechanical bull for the first time in my life. I set the record for the night at 41 seconds. My secret? Tip the bull operator well.
  • Playtesting Legendary: The Marvel Deck-Building Game with Marty and the designer, Devin Low. A great game with lots going on and plenty of depth, it’s supposed to come with something over 500 cards, which means you can play it forever.
  • Sitting on panels with the Industry Insider Guests of Honor and the Writer’s Symposium. I have lots of smart, talented friends, and it’s great to see them in their element like that.
  • The Tsuro of the Seas launch party, to which Ray Wehrs invited Marty and me. Ray’s a wonderful guy, and he and Calliope Games know all about fun.
  • Meeting Justin Gary and interviewing him about his Kickstarter for SolForge, a game he designed with Richard Garfield.
  • Being a Dream Date for the ENnies cocktail reception. Thanks to Ben McFarland for winning that auction. He’s an excellent designer and a strong supporter of the industry.
  • The showing of a rough cut of the InSpectres movie I co-wrote, co-produced, and acted in as a zombie, from Reactor 88 Studios.
  • The Reactor 88 Studios afterparty, after the film. We had a blast listening to two of my great friends spin tunes.
  • Playing in the Apples to Apples tournament with my entire family. We lost badly but had a great time with the family who shared the table with us.
  • Playing Munchkin Apocalypse with Andrew Hackard in the convention hall with all my kids on Sunday. He’s a gracious host, a great teacher of games, and wonderful with kids, not to mention one hell of an editor/designer/manager.
  • Delivering copies of the Brave New World Omnibus to several of my Kickstarter backers at Gen Con and chatting with many others. It’s so great to meet the people who make it possible for me to write those book this year.

All right, I lied. That was already enough for a single blog post. I’ll try to add more soon. It’s been one wild summer.