Forbeck TV

A while back, Rehab Resources, the people who provide physical and speech therapy for some of our kids, came to us with a problem. The next state budget proposed to cut their funding by 30%, which meant they’d have to close, despite the fact that they are the only ones in our county who provide these federally mandated services. My wife Ann wrote a letter to our legislators on their behalf, and Rehab Resources asked us if we’d be willing to talk with a TV reporter about the issue too.

While we know that our quadruplets make for good news stories, we’ve mostly avoided such attention. We just want to raise our kids and give them a happy home. Putting them on TV doesn’t make it better for them, so we don’t bother just for the attention. We’ve talked to reporters before to thank the army of volunteers that have helped us out over the past three years, and to plug Rockford Memorial Hospital, which did a fantastic job of giving our kids a fighting shot at the life they now enjoy.

So, when our friends at Rehab Resources asked for our help, we said yes. A reporter and his camera man came into our home and filmed and interviewed us for a couple hours. The report (7.3 Mb) was broadcast later that night.

Within a couple weeks, we got some great news. The legislature removed that vital portion from the budget “for further consideration.” It could still get put back in, but we and the people at Rehab Resources are thrilled so far. That’s local politics at work!

Core Stories in RPGs

Over on his LiveJournal, Mike Mearls posted some provocative ideas about something any successful roleplaying game needs: a core story. This sums up the game’s central theme from a player’s point of view in a sentence or two. It sparked off a few thoughts in my own befogged brain, which I added to his comments there. So you don’t have to go hunting for them, I’m posting them here too.
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Blood Bowl Back Cover

I just got a pack of extra covers for my upcoming Blood Bowl novel from Games Workshop yesterday. When they print a book, they print the pages and covers separately and then bind them together. In the book industry, they regularly overprint the covers so they can send them out as advance advertisements for the book.

I’ve shown you the cover before. Here’s what the back cover text has to say about the book:
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Origins Awards Gamers Choice Voting Now Open

Just like the title says. Vote now, as the deadline is May 25!

The instructions are a bit obtuse, but you’re supposed to vote on your top five favorite games for 2005, no matter what category they’re in. Then rank those five from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best.

I worked on one of the games on the list, The Authority Roleplaying Game. If you liked it, consider including it in your votes.

Here’s the official press release, for those who care for such details:
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Good Days, Bad Days

Sometimes there are days you can’t ever seem to get going. Other times, you can do no wrong.

Today, for example, I got to sleep about 1 AM. Then two of the quads woke me up screaming (them, not me–although I was tempted) at 5:30 AM. I’m used to that kind of thing by now though. I’ll spare you the details of multiple toddlers ripping off their soiled diapers during their naps on other, worse days. I’d rather remember the less horrifying times.

For instance, the I left LA last month, I had a great meeting with a new game design client. We all really hit it off, and we came up with a great product we all have high hopes for. Everyone seemed to enjoy my work, and I walked out of there with a wonderful deal.

It used to be that when I went into negotiations over prices, rights, etc., I’d have butterflies in my stomach, but that day, I was just rock solid. I knew what I wanted, and I could explain exactly why I should get it. It was more than good. It was fun.

I left that meeting at 5 PM and headed straight into LA’s rush-hour traffic with just an hour to meet my friends from Conan Properties for dinner at LAX. Amazingly, it was smooth sailing, and even though I had to gas up a rental car, return it, hop a shuttle to the airport, and hoof it to the restaurant, I got there just after they did. We had a wonderful dinner at The Encounter, and I got to see an old friend and make some new ones. Better yet, I was asked if I’d be interested in consulting on a film script for a non-Conan property.

After dinner, I wandered into the airport hours before my 11:15 PM red-eye back to O’Hare. I discovered that the 6 PM flight–the last before the all-nighter–had been delayed. Apparently they’d had a mechanical problem and had to turn around in the air and come back to have it fix. Ignoring nagging questions about the safety of such a jet, I got a standby seat on that flight–a window seat–which got me home two and a half hours earlier.

To top it all off, the airline gave everyone on the flight a free voucher for another flight to make up for the delay.

Now that was a good day.

Sith’s Revenge

Ann and I took in Revenge of the Sith on Friday night. It seems like everyone’s posting their deepest thoughts about the film and what it means to them, so I’ll spare you running over such well-trodden ground as much as I can.

I liked the movie. The effects were stunning. Give me starship battles and lightsaber duels, and I’ll forgive a lot, and Sith had plenty to spare. I actually got a little dizzy during the opening sequence, as if I were riding a rollercoaster. It reminded me of the jetbike chase in Return of the Jedi, which was the first (and maybe only) time I was so immersed in a chase scene that I ducked.

Sure, there were lots of bits of the film that could have been better (some of the acting, some of the dialog, etc.), but I find that a lot of the movie stuck with me far longer than I thought it would. There were some truly memorable scenes and enough going on that, had I the time, I’m sure I’d find myself back in the theater again this week, waiting for those words to start scrolling up the screen.

That was the best scrolling start I remember since Star Wars too. It showed the pulpy spirit of science-fantasy adventure the movie tried to capture, and I don’t think it fell short.

I realized I’m going to miss having Star Wars films in development. Sure, they’re talking about two new TV shows, but it won’t be the same. This is one series that made the most of the silver screen.

Vote for Spiritkeeper with Authority

As I’ve mentioned here before, Secret of the Spiritkeeper and The Authority RPG both earned nominations for Origins Awards this year: for Best Fiction Publication and Best Roleplaying Game, respectively. The Academy of Gaming Arts and Design is now voting on the nominees, and the product with the most votes in each category wins the award.

If you’re a member of the Academy and you liked either of those books, please vote. If you’re not a member of the Academy, well, did you know that membership is free to anyone with three published credits in the gaming industry? You still have time to join the Academy and vote before the May 25 deadline.

So, whether you’re voting for my stuff or not, get to it! Then, on July 2, at the Origins Game Convention, we’ll find out who wins.

Reviews

I sometimes do a little ego-cruising on the web, wondering what people out there have to say about what I do. Not that I don’t love all of you who come by here, but those who are wiling to stop by and sit a while are most likely to say kinder things. After all, posting a comment here means I’ll read it for sure. It’s the internet’s equivalent of saying something to my face.

It’s in the more distant corners of the net you find other opinions, like on Amazon.com. The people who write comments there aren’t professional reviewers, but they paid their money and read the books, so they get to say what they like–or don’t, as the case may be.

In the case of Marked for Death, the Amazon reviewers have given the book some good marks, some fair, and some bad. If you liked the book, I’d appreciate it if you could stop by there and give your opinion too. Amazon is the largest seller of books on the web, and I could use all the kind words I can get there.

Now, I’m not asking you to be a shill or to write something you don’t believe in. However, one of the best things you can do for an author is to recommend his or her work to other people. Many people have written privately to thank me for my work. If you can share those thoughts with the rest of the world, then you have my thanks.

Rules Rule

Yesterday I wrote the rules for an upcoming game from Mattel. By that, I mean that the game was already developed and tested. They just wanted someone to sit down and write up the rules in a polished, publishable format.

It’s been a long time since I worked on a rules set for a game with which I had little else to do. My first paid gig in the adventure gaming industry was writing the rules for Myth Fortunes, the board game from Mayfair Games that was based on Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth Adventures series of funny fantasy books. Like the original novels, it featured artwork from the pen of Phil Foglio. Will Niebling and John Danovich created the game, but they knew that neither of them could write, so they convinced Mayfair to hire me to write the rules. And so my career in the adventure gaming industry began.

Working on this new game was fun too. Writing rules for a game you didn’t design is a form of technical writing. It’s like solving a puzzle, which is: Describe how to play this game in the briefest and clearest possible terms. It engages both sides of the brain, which is what I love about game design in general.

And, no, I can’t tell you anything else about the game, at least until it’s closer to being released.

Modern Browsers

I just got a note from a good friend who told me that he could barely read this website in his browser. He sent me a screenshot, and I could see why. It turns out he’s using Internet Explorer 5.x for the Mac. As I wrote back to him, this site, like many others, doesn’t resolve well in older browsers. If you’re using an older browser (like IE 5, which is the last version Microsoft made for the Mac before abandoning it), I recommend upgrading to the latest version.

At the least, check out the cool and free Firefox. It handles modern web standards like CSS, XHTML, and lots of other acronyms you don’t care much about but which make all the pages look much better. Plus it’s much more secure. And it has tabbed windows. In short, it rocks. I alternate between it and Safari (which is just as good) on my Mac.

I’m thinking about putting up an alternate style sheet that works better with older browsers too. Is there a demand for that out there? Would it help you? Sound off!