Posts from July 2007

Last year at GenCon Joseph Goodman premiered the Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign setting (written by Harley Stroh, Mike Ferguson, and myself), which was a monster-sized boxed set that was about $80. We did some signings at the Goodman booth and it was all very exciting.

This GenCon he's premiering a boxed set, Castle Whiterock, which can eat the previous boxed set for breakfast. A $100 monster dungeon. My only part in this was detailing the region in which this castle is situated. Still, it's pretty exciting. This thing is going to be a friggin' weapon; it could probably stop a bullet.

Rumor is, Jeremy Simmons had to call upon both the Greek and the Nordic pantheons in order to channel his map-making skills into this thing.

Yesterday I handed my editor(s) the first draft of my book, The Darkwood Mask. There is an enormous sense of relief, and just a dash of nervousness, in doing so. The wordcount exceeded the limit by quite a bit, so I realize that a sizeable chunk from this monstrosity will need to be cut. All in all I'm really happy with the end story, though.

Thanks be to my brother John, Josh Wentz, and Marcy Rockwell for beta-reading the book and giving me a lot of great feedback. Very, very, very helpful.

For the better part of a year, the master file of my manuscript existed on this USB port, which I carried with me at all times:

<--- The Darkwood Mask

Maybe someday something small like that will replace books: you buy the latest book in the Harry Potter saga (because we know that 7 books will no doubt give way to more), plug it into the side of your neck (we should all have USB ports), and BAM, the book is read. Most of my friends are slow readers; such a novelty would be perfect for them. You know who you are.

Fun facts:

• I did a search: I used the word the about 7,100 times. Jeez! That eats up a lot of wordcount! What a waste!
• There are two protagonists, a handful of supporting characters, and at least one villain. Let's see...I believe the following D&D races get some "face time" throughout the book: human, half-elf, elf, warforged, changeling, gnome, dwarf, half-orc, and one other unsung race I won't yet mention.
• I use a lot of magic items from the Dungeon Master's Guide, some of them classics.
• There's one oldschool D&D monster and a couple of later creations.
• Unless some of them are cut for space, I have direct references to characters or events of each of the other three Inquisitives books. In some cases, multiple references.
• Inspiration for the setting of the book came from jobs my dad has had (most, but not all, regarding his time in the Army).

@1081

As previously mentioned, Goodman Games and a few of its products have been nominated for some ENnies. What are ENnies? The closest thing the role-playing game industry has to the Oscars! There's only two more days of voting (today and tomorrow). If you're willing, please vote for Goodman Games in the following category:

• Best Adventure: DCC #34: Cage of Delirium
• Best Adventure: Xcrawl: Coney Island Crawl
• Best Supplement: Etherscope: Upload: Etherpunk
• Best d20/OGL Product: Etherscope: Upload: Etherpunk
• Best Setting: DCC #35: Gazetteer of the Known Realms
• Best Cartography: DCC #35: Gazetteer of the Known Realms
• Best Publisher: Goodman Games

You don't have to be familiar with all the categories and products. Just vote for those categories you want.

The winners will be announced at GenCon next month.

I really need to come up with some fun content, at least occassionally, for this page...

I've wanted to post about this for a long time, but I wanted to wait until the final cover art was publicized. This is Neversfall, Ed Gentry's first book. Set in the Forgotten Realms, it kicks off the series of stand-along novels simply called The Citadels.

I couldn't tell you much more about the book. But Ed's a no-nonsense writer, so I'm looking forward to a gritty, intense read!

I'll probably say more when it's about to come out, in November. But you can pre-order it today!

Dead tired (or possibly dog tired), I'm on the final 100 yard dash of my novel now, with the total wordcount exceeding my limit. It's sort of like that familiar feeling of staying up extremely late working on a paper that's due the next day, only the paper is tens of thousands of words in length and has a great deal more personal value to me. In a day or two, I'll be handing off the first draft to a few beta-readers and cross my fingers that it's a worthy read for them. I've lost whatever tiny shred of objectivity I never really had. As I read it now, it might be great or might be total crap. Heh. I'm too close to it to tell.

Two other interesting things of note:

• The Goodman Games boxed set I worked on last year (DCC #35: Gazetteer of the Known Realms) has been nominated for an ENnie, which is essentially the closest thing the RPG industry has to a major awards ceremony. Only the voting takes place online (starting July 16th) and the awards are handed out at GenCon next month.

• Author Don Bassingthwaite (of recent Eberron fame) has decided to take that forbidding plunge that most writers dream of taking but are afraid to: quitting the day job and working full time on writing. More power to you, Don! You're my new hero.

This is John's Annex. It's a disaster. He really needs to come in here and clean things up. There's junk all over the place. And discarded clothing. And you know? Some of these things he's never even worn.

The Rush concert was excellent. Possibly the best I've been to...and that's at least 5 shows over the years. Aside from the newer songs (and some spectactular imagery to go with it), they played some older, seldom-performed-live songs. Notably: "Between the Wheels," "Circumstances," and "A Passage to Bangkok." Oh, and "Mission" sounded amazing.

Holy crap, what an awesome band. Not just the coolest, low-key, humorous, and professional rock band, but three guys who have, over the course of 30+ years, never even vaguely went down the path of crap that so many famous musicians have. They set an example. Rush is rarely a fast sell for anyone, but if you can give them a chance, and really listen (music and lyrics),there's really nothing else like them.

Here are some photos I took. There was a cool breeze coming off the Atlantic (a stone's throw away), plus there's literally water, a yellow moon low in the sky, fewer stupid drunk audience members than usual, and a higher concentration of Rush fans than just about anywhere at that point in time. A heck of a lot of cool t-shirts I wish I had.