GTS Seminars

I’m going to the GAMA Trade Show next week primarily to push games for Human Head Studios. However, the fine people at GAMA shanghaied me into helping out with a few seminars too. If you’d like to see me wing my way through a conversation or two, stop in and say hi.

Mike Stackpole and I hope to handle the “Negotiating Contracts for Writers” seminar. Although I’m going to miss the Monday session, I’ll be there Tuesday and Wednesday.

Steve Kenson, Aaron Rosenberg, and I run the “Freelance to Salary and Back” seminar. I should be there for all three sessions, although the Monday one might be missed if my flight is delayed.

Today Anthony Gallela called me to ask if I could step in for a missing host for the “Seven Habits of Effective Freelancers” seminar, and doped up on cold medicine I said yes. I’ll be shaking my head at both sessions.

If you have any interest at all in these, stop by. If no one else shows, we’ll go grab a beer and talk shop instead.

Weekless Update

I’ll be in Las Vegas next week for the GAMA Trade Show. If you’ll be there too, stop by the Human Head Studios booth and say hi!

Since I’m not sure about my internet access from the show, I’m not planning an update for next week. When I get back, though, you can expect to hear all about it.

Alphas to Omegas

If you’ve been following along with my Brave New World exposé, you may already have your own guesses as to what the rest of the secrets are. Despite that, I’m going to continue on with my effort to fill in all those missing parts of the puzzle.
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Going to Vegas

This week is the mad rush of preparations for the GAMA Trade Show held next week at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas. I’ll be in the Human Head booth most of the time, when I’m not helping out with a seminar or three. If you’ll be there, stop by the booth, and I’ll tell you all about Human Head’s plans for Dracula’s Revenge, Age of Conquest, and our upcoming roleplaying game too.

Authority Delayed

Jesse Scoble of Guardians of Order tells me that the April release date of The Authority Role-Playing Game didn’t account for delays in licensing approvals. The game should hit shelves by June at the latest. We can hope for earlier, but June seems like the safest bet at the moment.

Still, Guardians should have some sample pages from the game to show off at the GAMA Trade Show. Plus, there’s a preview of the book in the March issue of Game Trade Magazine.

To Be As Gods

This is “Part Two” of my ongoing exploration of all the things that never got said in while my Brave New World roleplaying game was in print.
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Neverland Reformatted

Some of you seem to be enjoying my Neverland game for children, which you can find in the Downloads section. Jo Ann Montgomery tells me she likes it, but she wanted it in a smaller format than the PDF. She kindly took it upon herself to convert the file into text and reformat it. I’ve posted the RTF (Rich Text Format) file in the Downloads section, under the original PDF link. Thanks, Jo Ann!

Back to School

This Friday, February 27, I’ll be at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, appearing on a panel at the annual summit meeting for the Wisconsin Alliance for Arts Education. It’s at 1:30 PM in the Student Union. The topic is “What Do They Know About Learning, Kids, and Games?” Tim Gerritsen, my boss at Human Head Studios, will be there with me, along with Henry Jenkins (the Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT), James Paul Gee (a professor at the UW who wrote What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy), and Kurt Squire (an assistant professors at the UW who co-directs The Education Arcade. Apparently I’ll just be there as the pretty face.

Brave New World After All

I got an e-mail last week that asked if I could start writing a bit about Brave New World (the roleplaying game I designed back in 1999) instead of making people wait indefinitely for the long-promised PDF that would reveal all of the setting’s secrets. It was a great idea, and I’m only sad I didn’t think of it first.

The problem with working on a BNW PDF is that my schedule is packed. The chances of me getting to work on a free product of any length in the near future rapidly approach nil. I have set aside some time for these weekly updates, though, time I can tilt in that direction. And so I will.

I can’t promise I won’t get distracted by other shiny things along the way, but I’m going to make a start at this and keep chipping away at it until it’s done. The brilliant part of doing this here on the website is that I can get direct feedback, including questions, to help me correct mistakes and direct my ramblings. This way, if I ever do manage to collect all this stuff into a PDF, it should be rock solid, tested by all of you as you read along.

So, without further ado, let’s get to it.
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