Epic Snowball Fight For Freedom Begins

 Comic Creators Participate in National Human Trafficking Awareness Day

(December 1, 2011, Columbus OH) Comic Creators For Freedom announced today that the prep work for their third annual fundraiser against Human Trafficking Awareness has begun. Each year comic creators (web and print) collaborate to create an image that is available in both digital and print formats. This year’s theme is the “Epic Snowball Fight”. Poster prints will be available from all three fundraising campaigns. As always, the image will be available digitally in exchange for donations.  The donation drive starts on January 9th to coincide with National Human Trafficking Awareness Day which is January 11, 2012. The drive ends Friday January 20, 2012. The official website for the drive is www.comiccreatorsforfreedom.com. Artists who wish to participate must submit artwork by the end of the year and can contact organizer Lora Innes at comics4freedom@gmail.com.This years returning artists already include  Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots), Crystal Yates (Earthsong), Scott Christian Sava (The Dreamland Chronicles), and Thom Zahler (Love and Capes).  

This annual drive has raised over $15,000 to the cause with over 100+ creators helping in the event. Organizer and award winning creator, Lora Innes states, “ Human Trafficking has reached seriously dangerous proportions and it is one of the top 3 crimes globally falling right under drugs and guns. 80% of victims are women and 50% are kids.  This is movie level evil and it’s happening right now. Comics are often about heroes of all shapes and sizes and the ordinary person doing the extraordinary.  Be the hero in this and participate in the drive.”

A special podcast for the event is available at http://tgtmedia.com/podcast/ep193-comiccreatorsforfreedom/. 100% of donations are being split between Love 146 (www.love146.org) and Grace Haven House (www.gracehavenhouse.org).
Friend us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Comic-Creators-For-Freedom/318481431502342
Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/Comics4FreedomFor more information visit www.comiccreatorsforfreedom.com

I Love Living In The Future!

Just a quick test post to show that I can blog from my new tablet. Once I get used to the keyboard, I may use this for blogging all the time.

OneBookShelf Announces Launch of DriveThruFiction, New Digital and Print Retailer

OneBookShelf, Inc., the parent company of DriveThruRPG.com and DriveThruComics.com, announced today that they recently launched DriveThruFiction.com.

DriveThruFiction.com is a genre-focused website that will offer e-books, audio, visual, and print editions of short stories, novellas, novels, and more. Readers can subscribe to their favorite authors and publishers in science fiction, horror, fantasy, and several popular sub-genres including steampunk and paranormal romance.

Independent and traditional publishers can take advantage of on-site marketing tools when they sign up for an account. These tools are unique to the DriveThru family of sites and are offered at no charge.

Currently, the website has dozens of new and established publishers already signed up including Apex Publications, Bards & Sages, Blackstone Audio, FW Media, Morrigan Books, Northern Frights Publishing, and White Wolf Publishing. There are also a number of authors publishing their own titles on DriveThruFiction such as Greg Stolze, Joseph Nassise, Paul S. Kemp, and R.A. Salvatore.

The publisher relations manager for DriveThruFiction.com is Matt M McElroy.

About DriveThruFiction: DriveThruFiction.com is part of the OneBookShelf family of sites that includes DriveThruRPG, DriveThruComics, RPGNow and WarGameVault. OneBookShelf has been operating e-book marketplaces for over ten years, sending millions in royalties each year to thousands of publishers and authors.

On the Web

Website: DriveThruFiction.com
Twitter: @DriveThruFic
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/DriveThruFiction/220171504716619

Early Adopters, RPG Publishers and POD Technology

This, my readers, is opinion writing.

In this current economy, in this current market for the tabletop gaming industry, it is sometimes a fight for each and every sale that a publisher makes. More and more, there is a reliance on the early adopter, or the so-called "alpha gamer," to help create buzz and talk up your games online, in gaming groups, and other places to lead to sales. The right words from enough of the right people can lead to good sales for an RPG publisher. Early adopters can be very important, they are what drive things like Kickstarter projects to be so successful.

The problem comes when you kick the early adopters to the curb. Yeah, I know this is strong language and that is intentional.

I'm not going to crouch this post in vague language about "some publisher" out there. This is in response to the specific action of a specific publisher: Arc Dream Publishing.

Part of the reason for my making this post is because this isn't the first time this has happened. I know, there are many out there in gaming fandom who do not think we should talk poorly of publishers. "It's just a one man operation." "He's not in it for money, it's for the hobby." The same things we hear each time a publisher slips at something. Yes, we all do it, but for those trying to be a business, they should be treated like a business. Arc Dream Publishing is a business.

At GenCon Arc Dream was selling the new Fate edition of their Kerberos Club setting. It's a great book, and Mike Olson did a bang up job of creating his Strange Fate variant for the setting. I love the game, have spoken highly of it both online and off, and I have recommended it to a good number of gamers. GenCon was in August.

Thanks now to POD (Print On Demand for those who do not know) technology, Arc Dream is offering a revised edition of the Fate edition of Kerberos Club. Errors were found by those early adopters, and those who bought copies of the game because of the praises of those early adopters (myself among them, obviously). Yes, this means that a up-to-date ruleset is available for those currently purchasing the game...mostly due to the praise of the early adopters. Let me say that again: a new revised edition in just a couple of months. Yes, the technology makes doing this possible but does that mean that a publisher should do it? Could a simple booklet of errata have been done and distributed to old and new purchasers?

People get upset when a new edition of a game comes out in a few years after the game they purchased, but now we have that cycle shortened by technology to a few months. I know that some people will say that this is not a new edition. I say that if you are going to say something is revised, it is a new edition.

Part of the problem is that this is not the first time this has happened. A few years ago, also at GenCon, Arc Dream also released a new book...the Wild Talents Essential Edition (which I also purchased from them at the time it was first released). Quickly, it became apparent that there were a number of mistakes and errata threads started appearing on the Wild Talents mailing list, and places like RPGNet. Arc Dream compiled all the errata, along with some of their own, fixed the stuff in the new book and offered up a revised printing. What did they do differently back then? They made an offer that any one who bought the first printing could mail it back to them and get a copy of the fixed new printing.

What are they doing this time? Offering the new version at an additional charge. Yeah, it's only ten dollars. I realize that. It's the point of rushing something to press, to get the book out at GenCon (not once but twice) only to have it need to be corrected. Why? Because of that important buzz from early adopters and bloggers out of GenCon. How many times, however, are people going to be willing to be the early adopters when they realize that the books they are buying are just going to be replaced in a few months? How much good buzz is it when someone has to write a blog post like this about a publisher?

Yes, I am one man and one blog. I don't speak for the masses of geeks, dorks, or gamers out there in the world. I only speak for myself, and I think that this stinks.

D&D limited edition Dragon Collector’s Set released

About the Dragon Collector’s Set

Each dragon is a deadly match for an experienced band of adventurers.

 

Of all the monsters in the world, dragons are the most feared. A fledgling group of adventurers might have what it takes to best a weak dragon, but the most powerful dragons are awesome, devastating creatures that rival even the gods.

 

 

Key Features:

• This set includes the five most iconic evil dragons in the Dungeons & Dragons game, with origins tracing back to the game’s earliest editions.
• Two of the dragons are new sculpts that have never appeared in any previous D&D miniatures product.
• The pre-painted plastic dragons in this set appeal to both D&D players as well as dragon aficionados.

Each box contains five non-random, pre-painted, durable plastic miniatures for use in the Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game, and has a suggested retail price of $44.99.

National Game Design Month: What Is Urban Fantasy?

For National Game Design Month I am working on a role-playing game, an urban fantasy game to be named later. One of the questions I get a lot, as a fan of urban fantasy, is "What is urban fantasy?" Well, while I'm not sure that I want to really tie down that definition completely, I know that I can tell what it looks like to me. I confuse this further by using urban fantasy to also describe what is also sometimes called Paranormal Romance fiction. Why? I think it's silly to have two labels describing the same thing and I really don't need "romance" as a descriptor in my genre titles. I'm not against romance, as a matter of fact I think that romantic subplots are an important part of any story's overall plot...I just don't have to have it right there on the tin. This essay will be cleaned up to be a part of the game, obviously. There is enough disagreement

I will admit up front that I do prefer urban fantasy written by women, although I don't have to have female protagonists in them. I think this is the only genre where I have a gender-bias for writers, but I have it. I think the Night Watch books by Sergei Lukyanenko are the only exception to this preference, although Simon R. Green's Nightside books aren't too bad either. I will say that I'm not a fan of the Dresden books as much, something about the genre mashup just hasn't sat as well with me.

Basically the reason for this essay/post is to outline what urban fantasy is to me and show the influences that will work their way into my NaGaDeMon work.

Matt Forbeck's Amortals

Last week, after I finally started reading this book, I tweeted that it read like a cross between Robert Heinlein and Rudy Rucker. Now that I have finished the book, I think that I am going to stick to that analogy and broaden it a bit.

This book represents why I like to read Science Fiction. It had a wild energy that drew me into it's world of the future, and the way that Forbeck breathed life into the personalities of his characters kept me interested in the world and the actions of the plot. If Matt Forbeck's Amortals had come out in 1986, I would have been grouping it along side of some of the greats of the cyberpunk movement. I think this is a book that can stand beside Gibson's Neuromancer, Sterling's Islands in the Net, Rucker's Ware novels, or Williams' Hardwired. Anyone who knows me, and knows my tastes, knows that those are some of my favorite science fiction novels and not names that I toss around lightly.

Amortals takes place within a couple of hundred years from now. The central concept of the novel, and the world, is that the rich and powerful of the world have managed to take advantage of a form of serial immortality where, after death, they are brought back through a form of cloning technology called the Amortal Project. I don't think that the similarity of the name to amoral is unintentional. The ultra-rich, popular celebrities and powerful politicians have all become amortal, meaning that when they die (from some reason or another) they come back in a cloned body that is younger and stronger than they were when they died. Because of the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful having an end run around death and illness, healthcare has lagged behind...because even if an amortal catches a terminal illness they will get better when they come back. The earth of Amortals is classic cyberpunk...a great place if you are rich and powerful, but not so great for everyone else in the world.

Forbeck's eyes for the reader into the world of Amortals is a Secret Service agent named Ronan Dooley. Dooley has lived for nearly two-hundred years, and was the first amortal. Dooley is the only amortal who is not a part of rich and powerful, but he was given amortality for giving his life to save a president...and because the Amortal Project needed a heroic poster child to get the funding and governmental approval they wanted.

The action of the book starts with Dooley "waking up" from the dead and given a special murder case to solve...his own. This draws Dooley into a web of crime, political intrigue, and amortality that reveals shadowy goings on behind the scenes, and reveals dark secrets of the amortality process itself.

Now, I don't want to give much more than that because this novel is every much a thriller, and a big part of the driving force of the plot is the slow reveal of what is secretly going on behind the scenes of politics and the Amortal Project. This book was a page turner as I read it and more than a couple of night's worth of sleep were "ruined" because I needed to read "just one more chapter" of the book before bed. I can't, however, recommend this strongly enough. I do admit to knowing the author through professional circles, we have met a few times through role-playing game designer events over the years, but that did not impact my review of this book.

If you like noirish science fiction novels, or really even mystery fiction and you're willing to put up with some science, I suggest tracking down a copy of this novel  (there's a publisher's link at the top of this review as well) for yourself. I enjoyed it thoroughly and want others to do the same.

RCRD LBL Free Halloween Mixtape

As long as I am posting "mixtapes," here's one of Halloween-type music compiled by the fine folk over at RCRD LBL. Like music? Like free music? You should check them out.

For me, Halloween is strictly about screams and sweat, straight up thrills, nightmarish parties, and sweet sweet (ear) candy. The louder, the weirder, the filthier, the better. Between witchy Purity remixes, Hussle Club dubstep, blinded-by-blood Atari Teenage Riot cries and Koralleven’s rave horsewhip skinning Britney Spears, our Halloween Thrillers playlist will prepare you for the darkest day of the year. And when it comes, you best dance ‘til you die.

Akira The Don Puts Out Manga Entertainment Tribute Mixtape

Artist, musician and our buddy Akira the Don has released a new mixtape, titled Manga Music, featuring “a tribute to the monumental works of Manga Entertainment, who this year celebrate 20 years of serving us Westerners with the very finest anime.” Each song samples and is named after one of their releases, such as Evangelion, Full Metal Alchemist, Crying Freeman and, naturally, Akira.

 

Akira The Don - ATD26: Manga Music by Akira The Don

Or click over to Soundcloud directly here. 

Talking About D101 Games' OpenQuest

OpenQuest is a game that readily admits to standing on the shoulders of giants. Much of the foundation of it, as a game, were laid by the multitude of designers from Chaosium and Mongoose working on Basic Roleplaying and the games that it inspired. That does not, however, make this a knock off by any stretch of the imagination. Like many games being put out today, particularly those among the retro-gaming and Old School Renaissance movements, OpenQuest is first and foremost a labor of love by its creator Newt Newport.