Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Heading to the District of Calamity

Actually, Arlington, Virginia, for D&D Experience. I get to play a lot of D&D!

As at GenCon last year, I'll have a place on the D&D message boards where I post updates. I'll post that link when I put something there.

Here's the link! 

See you there! (Either at D&D XP or on the message boards...)

Monday, February 25, 2008

Lest My Ego Grow Too Large

Posted by Edward Knight at sfreader.com:
I'm about two thirds done with Storm Dragon by James Wyatt. This book gives me hope. It gives me hope that if a book written as poorly as this one can get into hardcover with a major publisher that I still have a chance as a writer.

You just gotta laugh.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Fearlessly dead

My paladin, Baredd, died tonight, at the poisonous fangs of a green dragon two levels higher than him. It seemed, somehow, as though someone were trying to prove a point. And what a point—at the end of the fight, of the six characters, two were dead and three were unconscious. Jarrett the halfling warlock saved the day!

I think the number of times my d20 came up above 9 might have been lower than 5, starting with my initiative roll and proceeding on to a whole bunch of saves against ongoing poison damage.

However, because we successfully rooted out the followers of Tiamat masquerading as a fanatical sect of the church of Bahamut, my companions managed to get Baredd raised. I need to give some thought to how death might change Baredd, though. Is he still confident of his ability to help build a better world, restoring the glory of the lost empire? Or is his undying optimism perhaps tempered somewhat after this experience? "Not even death can stop me!" might be his attitude now...

Good times. Still loving this game. It's even gotten better while I've been on vacation.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

I feel better now...

Within the span of four hours after posting my little Slashdot rant, I received three encouraging emails that helped me get past that particular knot of frustration. One from a person in my office, one from a person at Slashdot, and one from a fellow Eberron novelist—none of whom I would have guessed read my blog regularly (what's to read?). Anyway, thanks, folks. 

See, the great part is that I get to go to my game on Thursday night and enjoy the fruits of those years of work, throwing d20s around almost as fast as the terrible jokes, doing the paladin thing, kicking monster butt. It's the best D&D I've ever played, and I've played many different D&Ds since 1979.

I think it's my fault, by the way, that Steve Winter decided to play Biggie Smalls as the halfling Ron Jeremy. I'm still sorry. But my character (Baredd) insists on calling him Mr. Smallpenny.

Poo on Slashdot

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed here are my own, and not those of Wizards of the Coast, blah blah blah.

I'm just cranky because I read a Q&A with Andy Collins, Chris Perkins, Scott Rouse, and Sara Girard on Slashdot, which was fine, but then started wading into the comments and got overwhelmed by obnoxious. We try to explain why we think 4e is a better game than any previous edition, and people willfully misread that as "We want you to spend more money."

Damn it, I've been working insanely hard for almost three years now to make the best game I know how to make, the D&D I really want to play, and it pisses me off to watch people dismiss it as a half-assed marketing ploy.

There, I said it. Maybe I shouldn't be saying it publicly, but I'm on vacation and my boss can't yell at me until . . . well, until I go play D&D at his house on Thursday.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Dragon Forge Cover on Amazon

It's probably been there for a while, but I only just noticed that Amazon.com has the cover of Dragon ForgeIt's purty.

I have the bound galley of the book in front of me as I'm working on Dragon War, book 3 in the trilogy. I am on vacation this week and next, which means that my work on the 4e core rule books is pretty much finished and I can finally return the time and attention that I stole from this book for months as I was trying to get the DMG finished and then adventure H3, Pyramid of Shadows. Two weeks of full-time novel writing. Wild and wacky.

Oxymoron of the day:
"Top News: Jane Fonda uses vulgarity on Today show"

All right, back to it.