The Leverage RPG

If you’ve been reading my Twitter feed, you probably know that I’m a huge fan of the TV show Leverage. The acting is sharp, the stories are great, and it looks fantastic. I’ve known the series’ co-creator, John Rogers, for a few years, and the love he has for Leverage shows through in every episode. My son Marty has started watching the show with me this year, and we’re having a ball with it.

When I spotted that Margaret Weis Productions has a Leverage RPG in the works, I shot them a note about how much I loved the idea. They kindly offered me the chance to lend a hand with it, and I graciously accepted.

(This is the first meta-con involved with the game. Call it “The Writing Job.” Imagine Nate Ford saying, “Let’s go steal us an RPG.” The game is due out this summer, which means scrambling to fit it in, but that fits perfectly with the nature of the show, so I’m game – so to speak.)

Vegas Knights Away!

Late last Thursday night/Friday morning, I finished the Vegas Knights death march and submitted the manuscript to my publisher, Angry Robot. The book is slated to appear in the UK this June, and in the US in July, so I cut it awfully short. I’m pretty happy with the book though. It combines many of my favorite topics: gambling, Las Vegas, magicians, and more. I’ll be sure to tell you much more about it soon.

Next up, I’m working on a new draft of the Brave New World screenplay for Reactor 88 Studios. While time is tight on that, I’m going to be ramping up the PR machine for Amortals and Vegas Knights soon, so expect to see me spending more time updating things around here and getting the place spiffed up.

Amortals Cover and First Review

The fine folks at Angry Robot are gearing up their diesel-powered PR machine for the impending debut of Amortals. Check out the snazzy action-movie-style cover on the left for a good gander at their graphic-design chops. I’m in total love with it and have been staring at it as my computer’s desktop background for months.

I have a lot more to say about the book and to help promote it myself, but I’m still blazing away at Vegas Knights, my next novel after that. Just brace yourself for loads of information about the book and why you’re going to want to grab copies for yourself and all your friends.

While I’m chained to my keyboard, though, the Robots are still hard at work. They recently released e-book ARCs (advanced reader copies) of Amortals to their Robot Army. If you’re a blogger or reviewer with a penchant for great genre fiction, you can volunteer for the Robot Army and get early access to Amortals and all sorts of other excellent books too.

They must have some fast readers in the Robot Army because one of them has already posted Amortal‘s first review, and it’s a good one. (Whew!) As Lisa Farrell writes, “I really enjoyed this novel. It’s gripping, exciting, imaginative.” My favorite part of the review, of course, is its complaint: “My only gripe is, this novel is really American. I mean really American.”

Guilty as charged. I can’t wait for the rest of you to read it.

Ghosts of Ascalon

More news about my upcoming Guild Wars 2 novel is finally official. The book is done and should be out sometime this summer. The title has been changed from Fall of Ascalon to the far better Ghosts of Ascalon, which rings truer on multiple levels.

The biggest change is the addition of a co-author to the marquee: Jeff Grubb. Jeff’s a fellow member of my Alliterates writers group – although he’s in the Seattle branch, while I’m part of the Wisconsin lineup. I’ve known him since way back when I used to run RPGA events for his Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game at Gen Con, in the mist-shrouded past of the mid-’80s.

According to the official FAQ about the book:

As one of the chief game designers and writers of Guild Wars 2, Jeff Grubb has been heavily involved in working with Matt Forbeck to integrate Guild Wars 2 lore into the narrative of the book. As the editorial direction of Ghosts of Ascalon progressed, it became apparent that Jeff’s contributions to the novel merited his inclusion as a coauthor.

As one of the two in-house lore masters for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows the game and its world better than Jeff. Couple that with the fact that he’s a fantastic writer with over a dozen previous novels under his belt, and you can guess at how much his contributions meant to this book. I can’t wait for you to read it.

P.S. Massively and Kotaku have both picked up on the story, and so far the reaction seems good.

How We Learn

Lincoln Stollard, who I met at the GAMA Trade Show a few years back, just told me that he’s completed work on a book called The Learning Project. In it, Lincoln interviews dozens of people in different fields to discover different ways in which people learn. It’s aimed at teenagers, to show them that there are all sorts of different ways to become educated about anything, but anyone curious about such things should enjoy it. Lincoln’s looking for a publisher for a dead-tree version of the book, but you can enjoy his work online right now for free.

Lincoln interviewed me as one of the three writers profiled in the book. He caught me on the tail end of an exhausting, fun-filled show (aren’t they all?), and I was probably a bit more scattered and candid than normal. If you’d like to know about me and how I got here, his interview of me is an excellent place to start.

Twitter Goes to the Dogs

I get to work on all sorts of cool things, but I often have to sit on that news for months–sometimes forever. Last week, I mentioned the Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS Figure Reader that I designed for Playmates Toys. Today, in news from the New York Toy Fair, I see that Mattel has announced another project I worked on: Puppy Tweets.

This is a dog tag that fastens to your dog’s collar and then transmits data via WiFi to your home computer, which tweets updates about what your pet is up to. It’s hilarious. As the LA Times article says, this device isn’t a mind reader. It’s a high-tech toy used for pure fun. I didn’t come up with the idea–I just wrote a bunch of the tweets soon to be plastered all over the Twitterverse–but I can’t wait to see it in action.

Good-Bye, Tomorrow Is Yesterday

Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the first game and comic-book shop I regularly shopped at as a kid, went under late last year. I had heard that they and Black Hawk Hobby Distributors, which were both owned by the same people, were having troubles last year, but it had been a while since I’d been able to get down to Rockford, Illinois, to visit.

Today, I had to run down to Rockford to trade in my son Pat’s violin for a larger one from Asher’s Violin Shop. He’s grown, and needs the next size up. On my way back, I tried to stop by Tomorrow Is Yesterday and found that Top Cut Comics had replaced it.

The new owners have done a fine job with the place, although they place a lot more emphasis on their Pokémon league and tournaments. They cleared out nearly half the store for gaming tables, and they had a bunch of kids in there playing when I stopped by. I’ll miss the old place and the people who ran it, but hopefully Top Cut will be around to soldier on in their stead for years to come.

The Play’s the Thing

My latest column for The Escapist‘s High Adventure series is up. In “The Play’s the Thing,” I write about the wrap-up for the first adventure in the D&D campaign I started for Marty and his friends. Check it out, and comment there or here to let me know what you think.

Also, should I continue to write about the campaign, or should I take up other topics? Now would be a good break point if I’d like to switch, and I’m open to suggestions.

Yu-Gi-Oh in the UK

I work on lots of different things, but not all of them see the light of day. Some of them die at the idea stage. Others are killed during development. Some have the plug pulled when they’re already in production. Lots of times, I can’t even talk about these because I’ve signed NDAs that prevent me from mentioning them until they’re already public knowledge.

Sometimes, though, they come out in other parts of the world, and I don’t know about them until I stumble across them. Case in point: the Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS Figure Reader from Playmates Toys. I designed the gameplay and user interface for this electronic toy for use with a set of 2.5″ Yu-Gi-Oh 5DS figures sold separately. A general release for these were never made in the US, although you can find a selection of them on Amazon.co.uk.

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Sylvia Earle Speaks

Friday night, I handed off my duties as the quads’ soccer coach to take Marty to see Sylvia Earle accept the Roy Chapman Andrews Award. She is an amazing woman who’s done incredible things, and her presentation was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, Marty and I were both fighting colds, so we bailed out before the absolute end of the event.

The Beloit Daily News put the event on the front page, along with a photo of Bill Green (director of the Logan Museum) and my father giving Earle the award. For Marty and me, the oddest part was hearing my dad referred at as “the Honorable Ken Forbeck.” To us, proud of him as we are, he’s just Grandpa/Dad rather than Judge Forbeck.

Either way, Dad did a great job of discharging his duties as this year’s president of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society. I keep thinking I’d like to write a Roy Chapman Andrews novel one of these days. First, though, I have to finish Vegas Knights!