Free Coulton!

It killed me that I had to miss the Jonathan Coulton show in Madison last Thursday, but a consolation prize arrived yesterday via Jonathan’s Twitter feed. You can now download a legal torrent of JoCo Looks Back, a compilation of 20 of his best songs, for free.

Creative Commons originally released this on a USB jump drive last year, but if you missed the chance to donate some money to the cause, you can still get the data now for free. Best of all, the torrent comes with the unmixed audio tracks for each song, all released under the Attribution-NonCommercial license, so if you’re of the remixing mind, here’s your chance to play around with Jonathan’s work.

Or, if you’re like me, you can just grin all the way through the originals.

New Mutant Chronicles Trailer

Here’s a new “red-band” (essentially R-rated) trailer for the upcoming Mutant Chronicles film, for which I wrote the novelization. It premieres on HDVOD on March 27 and then in theaters on April 24. It’s gory, action-packed stuff, not appropriate for kids, but then neither is the film or the book.

Peter Hentges Needs Help

Jeff Tidball pointed me to this post on Peter Hentges’s LiveJournal earlier today. Peter did some great work on the Ars Magica and On the Edge games back in the day, although he’s not been professionally involved in the games industry for a while. More recently, he’s worked in IT, helping out with web design and business analysis.

To sum it up, he’s in a spot. His partner Ericka suffers from debilitating, long-term illnesses, he’s out of work, and they’re about to be evicted from their house. He’s looking for work that will not take him from his Minneapolis home in which he spends much of his days caring for Ericka. If you have any leads for such gigs, be sure to email him and let him know.

Thanks!

Amy and Missy for School Board

While I decided not to run for school board here in Beloit this year, a couple excellent candidates asked for my support, and I was all too happy to give it to them: Amy Oselio and Missy Henderson. Both are wonderful women and dedicated parents who truly have the interests of Beloit’s kids at heart.

Amy lives two doors down from me and has two sons near in age to my son Marty, and the boys often play together. She and her husband Rick are great people, and we’re thrilled to have them as neighbors. Amy’s been involved with the school system since she moved here. She started out on the Todd Elementary PTO and the Superintendent’s Roundtable (which is where I first met her) and then joined the Ad Hoc Committee on the Gifted and Talented.

Last August, one of our school board members resigned, and Amy was appointed to fill out the rest of her term. That makes her an incumbent, even though this is her first campaign. She’s done a fantastic job in office, charging up a steep learning curve and becoming a strong and vital contributor to the board. She asked me to be her campaign’s treasurer, and I was proud to accept that responsibility.

Missy is one of the all-time greats. I’ve known her since I was two years old, when she and my mom used to swap babysitting with each other after we first moved to Beloit. She’s worked as a school social worker (just like my wife, Ann) for many years and knows the school system inside and out. She and her husband Bill (who’s our municipal judge here in Beloit) are also both Michigan alumni, which makes me doubly proud to know them.

Missy lives just down the street from me too. She retired just last year, and she spends a great deal of her time with her daughter Brooke’s children, who are some of my kids’ favorite friends. That increased last year when her son-in-law, Brooke’s husband Greg Joos, passed away, but she still found time to be on the Ad Hoc Committee on the Gifted and Talented with Amy.

I designed websites for both Amy and Missy and set up their online donations systems through PayPal. I’ve learned a lot more about how to run a campaign this year, which only increases my respect for all of my family members who have been at such things for so long. It’s no easy feat, but it’s such a vital element of our democracy that it’s important to get it right.

So, if you happen to live in the School District of Beloit, I encourage you to get out and vote on April 7. We have five people running for three slots this year, so you can vote for up to three candidates. Please put Amy and Missy right where they belong: on the top of your list and on our school board together.

Thanks!

Battle Dice Rules!

I’ve received a number of e-mails lately from people who have found Marvel Heroes Battle Dice booster boxes in bargain bins and snapped them up only to find they don’t have any rules for the game. I created this game for Playmates Toys a few years back, so people often wind up here to ask for help.

The game is long out of print, but I’ve been given permission to post PDFs of the rules, the attribute list, and the play mat. Now, if you can find enough booster boxes, you can just download these bits and play!

Upcoming Cons

The summer convention season is rolling at me like a steam train, and my plans for it are starting to fall into place. Here’s where you can expect to see me:

Gary Con (March 7): This is the first annual convention in memory of Gary Gygax, and I’ll be there in the afternoon with my son Marty. This will be his first convention since Ann used to bring him to Gen Con in a stroller, and I plan to spend the time playing games with him.

Odyssey Con (April 24—26): I plan to be here on the 25th at least, although my schedule isn’t quite nailed down yet. The show has posted a preliminary list of panels, but times and dates for them are still to be determined.

Comic-Con (July 23—26): For the first time in a few years, I plan to attend the whole show, and with luck I’ll be on a panel or three.

Gen Con (August 13—16): I’ll be a guest at this show once again. Expect to find me in panels, signing books, playing games, and having fun.

Top Game Writers

Gamasutra recently released its list of the Top 20 Game Writers. By this, they of course mean video game writers, as that’s the field they focus on. The list is shockingly incomplete and has blind spots the size of black holes–as do all such lists. They exist to generate conversation and awareness, and the article does a fine job at that, as well as at highlighting how many fine writers we have working in the field today.

I was especially happy to see my pal Rich Dansky make the list. He’s not only an excellent writer (in many fields) who cares about raising the level of writing in computer games, but he’s deeply involved in actually making that happen via his seminars at the various GDCs and his work with the IGDA Writer’s SIG.