In the latest issue of The Escapist, legendary game designer and Manifesto Games CEO Greg Costikyan offers up a history of tabletop gaming and shows how such games have inspired and informed the computer games of today. He argues that tabletop games will continue to do so, and I hope he’s right.
This essay should be required reading for any student of adventure games. The historical notes alone are well worth the time–and it’s all free for the reading.
My pal Richard Dansky commented on my Blood Bowl novel on his blog today:
You can tell this book was written by a Packers fan in, say, ten to fifteen seconds. Lots of fun and a good ride, though I’m disappointed that there weren’t more exploding spiked footballs.
Rest assured, I’m taking notes.
My latest novel, Blood Bowl: Death Match, hits store shelves in the US today! This is the third in the Blood Bowl trilogy, and it wraps up most if not all of the loose plot threads I left dangling throughout the first two books. The climactic match takes place in the Realms of Chaos. Talk about one Hell of a game!
To celebrate, this Saturday, from 3—5 PM, I’ll be at the Barnes & Noble in Rockford, Illinois, to chat with folks and sign books, games, or anything else presentable. That includes fresh-off-the-truck copies of Death Match. If you’re anywhere in the area, please be sure to stop by and keep me company for a while!
SuperHeroTimes.com is running a Marvel Heroes Battle Dice contest. To sign up, you just have to register in their forums and post a note saying you’d like to win. Those who do win get a free starter pack and a dice chucker to go with it.
Board game super-fan Tom Vasel writes tons of great reviews and interviews game designers and publishers of all stripes. On the website for his podcast, The Dice Tower, Tom presents excerpts from several of those interviews, in which he asks for advice for aspiring designers. It’s well worth the read.
I get a phone call at 3 AM on Saturday, and the first thing I think is that it must be something horrible–or a wrong number. No one calls with good news or to say hi at 3 AM, so I’m really hoping for a wrong number when I pick up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Forbeck?” Ouch. No wrong number here.
“Yes?”
“This is the Beloit Police Department.” Oh, dear.
I’m home. My kids are home. Has someone I know died, or do I have to go bail someone out?
“Yes?”
“The dome light in your car is on. We wouldn’t want your battery to run down.”
I pull back the curtain and peer out the window. Sure enough, there’s a squad car sitting behind my car, in which the dome light is on. (I think one of the quads turned it on while messing around in the car on Friday morning, and I never saw it.)
“Um, thanks. I’ll be right down to turn it off.”
By the time I get outside, the cops are gone, disappeared into the night without sticking around for my personal thanks, just like the heroes they are. But my battery–and by extension, my upcoming morning–is saved.
People contact me from time to time and ask me what kind of advice I can give to aspiring or beginning freelance game designers. This morning, my succinct response was:
Do the best work you can, do exactly what your developer asks (within reason), and hit your deadline. If you manage that, you’ll go far.
It’s easier said than done, of course, but most things worth doing are.
As ICv2.com reports, Palladium Books (publisher of the Rifts roleplaying game, among others) is on the ropes. In an open letter to the company’s fans, president Kevin Siembieda announces that the company fell victim to treachery from within to the tune of $850,000 to $1,300,000.
I don’t know if it’s that Kevin can’t or won’t pin down an exact number. Either way, that’s a crippling blow to any small publisher, even one with such a long and illustrious history as Palladium’s. Many RPG companies don’t gross that much in sales in a year.
To help keep Palladium going, Kevin is asking fans to purchase a special, limited-run print entitled “A Megaverse United.” In addition to that, he’s had a 25th anniversary open house in the works for months.
On top of that, I’d add that if you’ve ever considered buying a Palladium game, now’s the time to do it. Check with your friendly local retailer or get it directly from Palladium, but do it soon.
I’ve never worked with Kevin or for Palladium, but I have tremendous respect for what he’s built there over the past 25 years. Help make Palladium’s open house a celebration instead of a wake.
GAMA just launched a new program called Games to Troops. Publishers who wish to donate 168 games can have them sent to US military Moral, Welfare, and Recreation locations around the world. I’m wondering if I can find 168 authors’ copies of things around here somewhere.
No matter what my opinion might be of my country’s leadership, I always support the men and women risking their lives out there, doing the job they pledged to do. If you’re a publisher, I urge you to do the same.
On Marvel Heroes Battle Dice, Squashua asks:
Hey Matt; I’ve seen these things on the shelves at Wal-Mart. If you stuff a figure into a die, doesn’t that unbalance (load) it?
Good question, and it’s one I gave a lot of thought to while designing the game. Because of that, the rules are such that it doesn’t benefit you much to roll one particular number, or low or high. High numbers are good because you get to add them to your stats, but the low numbers allow you to choose which stat to battle over. All numbers have their benefits. This makes it harder to justify loading a die.
The figures are light enough that I don’t think they’d put the dice too far off true, no matter how you loaded them. I set the rules this way they are to help allay any concerns about cheating. After all, it would be easy to glue a coin to the bottom of the inside of a pop-die–even if that would clearly be wrong–and that would load the die far more than any figure.