Diana Jones Award Winner Announced

As you may have already heard, Ticket to Ride won this year’s Diana Jones Award. I had a great time at the DJA party on August 17, the evening before Gen Con officially began. As one of the few known members of the DJA committee, I had the honor of presenting the award to Mark Kaufman, co-founder of Days of Wonder, the publishers of Alan Moon’s masterpiece.

Of those of us who’ve outed themselves, only Peter Adkison was at the show. As the man who owns Gen Con, he was a wee bit busy.

The DJA committee handed out the first award to Peter at a birthday party I threw for myself at Gen Con four years ago. It was my 20th Gen Con in a row (I’ve been going since I was a kid), and my 33rd birthday fell on Gen Con Saturday. I just couldn’t ignore that many great things coming together at once. I bought beer and pretzels for everyone who showed up, and we had such a great time that the DJA committee decided to make it a tradition. We’ve run it five years in a row now. Let’s hope it continues for fifty more.

Marvel Zombies Wanted

I need a couple brave souls who love Marvel Comics to take a look at the stats for the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice figures and check to see if they make sense from a fan’s point of view. (They do to me, and I’m a fan, but I’m too close to them now.) If you’re interested, e-mail me directly by using the link on the right side of this page. Thanks!

How I Spent My Gen Con Friday

I know, the web is full of people reporting back on their experiences at Gen Con last week, and I’m going to get to that too. I’ve been up against a hard deadline since I got back, though, so most of what I posted yesterday was stuff that had been waiting in the queue. To hold you over, I point you to an article at GamingReport.com which gives some details on the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice game I’m working on for Playmates Toys. I spend most of my Friday at the convention helping show the game to various distributors and reporters, and they all claimed to love it. (Hey, at least they’re kind to my face.) 🙂

Some have wondered if MHBD is anything like Dragon Dice, Diceland, Star Trek: Red Alert, or Chaos Progenitus or any other collectible dice game we’ve seen to date. Really, no. Those games featured dice with different symbols on their faces. The pop-dice in a Battle Dice game are hollow and pop open like a treasure chest, and you stick your figures inside them before you roll. The faces of the dice feature the numbers 1 through 6, just like normal. There’s something cool on the inside of the pop-die’s lid, though: a label that acts as an instant effect you get to use after a figure you put in the pop-die is defeated.

You really have to see one of the pop-dice to understand all this, and GamingReport.com says they’ll post a video soon. The pop-die they have is only a prototype, but it should show you how the final design will work.

Games Day Photos

The fine people at the Black Library recently put up some photos from Games Day Chicago 2005. The first shot is of the announcement of my signing, nicely framed between a MasterCard and an American Express logo (as if there was any doubt what such signings are for). The picture on the sign came from my old website, about two generations before this one.

The second shot is me at the show, holding a copy of my Blood Bowl novel. Since we sold out of the book at both that show and Gen Con, I still don’t have a copy to call my own. That’s a good problem to have, though, as I’d much rather that people willing to lay down their hard-earned cash for the book have a shot at a copy first. After all, I’ve already read it.

Pen & Paper :: Fan Awards – 2004 Winners

I got a pleasant surprise after getting back from Gen Con. Pen & Paper announced its annual awards. While I didn’t win anything outright, The Authority Role-Playing Game was a runner-up for Best Licensed Product. Better yet, I stunningly came in as a runner-up for the Hall of Fame. This year’s inductees were Dave Arneson and Steve Jackson, and my fellow also-rans were Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weis, and John Tynes.

It’s an honor to be named in the same breath with such folks, all of whom I’d put in there before me. Looks like I’ll have a long (but happy) wait.
Fanawardrunnerup

High Stakes Drifter Site Live

WizKids went live with the High Stakes Drifter portion of its website during the Gen Con weekend. It doesn’t have too much up there yet, but there’s a shot of a few cards, a kicker chip, and a booster pack, along with a PDF of the first public version of the rules.

Matt Robinson, who’s in charge of development at WizKids, kindly walked me through the game while at Gen Con. It strongly resembles the game I turned over to them in all but theme*, which is flattering. It’s great when the development team comes to mostly the same conclusions about the game as you do. It’s a better game for the love they’ve shown it, but it’s still something of which I can claim a solid part.

WizKids ran demos of the game at three or four tables in their booth for the entire Gen Con weekend. The few times I poked my nose in, people seemed to be enjoying the game, which gives me good hopes for it’s success.

* When Jordan Weisman and I first started working on the game, we churned through many themes, including westerns, but we discarded them in favor of an original idea. The development team decided that westerns really are where it’s at, and (given my long history of working on western-themed games) I couldn’t be happier about it.

Buy a Date with a Famous Game Designer

I just found out about Otherworld Excursions the other day. These are events in which famous game industry folk run their best roleplaying games for you in their hometown areas. The three GMs lined up so far are Ken Hite, Stefan Pokorny, and John Tynes, all of whom are reputed to be at the top of the craft. Since they’re all friends of mine, I’d recommend this strongly for those with the means to participate. I’d give it a shot myself, but I’d guess that if I took part with these souls the game would stall out in the nearest tavern.

Gen Con Imminent

I’m leaving for Gen Con on Wednesday and will be there through Sunday. If you’ll be there too, be sure to track me down if you can. Bring whatever you like to any of my signings or other scheduled appearances. I’ll be thrilled to deface it with any nearby writing implement. Or just say hi. One of the best things about shows like Gen Con is meeting everyone and getting jazzed about games and writing again. It’s what keeps me going through the year.

If you’ll be there, drop me a note in the comments section, and I’ll keep an eye out for you.

Enter: Sudden Death

Amazon.com has posted the details on the third book in my Blood Bowl trilogy of novels, so now I can spill some small number of beans. The title is Blood Bowl: Sudden Death, and it should hit shelves in April of 2006.

From the site:

Book 3 (of 3) in the riotous Blood Bowl series. In a fantasy kingdom where violence is a way of life, the number one sport is Blood Bowl–gridiron football where anything goes. Dirk ‘Dunk’ Hoffnung and the rest of the Bad Bay Hackers thought they’d taken everything the game of Blood Bowl could throw at them, but now they literally have to play the game of their lives to prevent the destruction of their kingdom.

One other cool Blood Bowl tidbit. At the Black Library seminar at Games Day Chicago, sales manager Vince Rospond let slip that the Black Library is considering creating Bad Bay Hackers football jerseys for sale this winter! Let’s hope that’s true. Things like that stroke my inner geek.