Category Archives: gaming

Published: August 23, 2013

Books, Games, Art, and Awesome….

Hey there everybody,

So it looks like I’m going to survive convention season, if only just barely.

And you know what comes after convention season?

Well…Sleep mostly. But after I catch up on my sleep, we’re going to start prepping for our yearly Worldbuilders fundraiser.

It used to be that Worldbuilders only really existed for about one month out of the year. But over the years it’s grown bigger and bigger. What’s more, authors, artists, publishers, and game designers have all come forward, offering to help in different ways….

  • Anton Strout

Some of you might remember that last year, Anton made a very generous offer.

He had a book coming out, Alchemistic, and he said that for every copy that sold in the month leading up to the book, he was going to give Worldbuilders a dollar.

Anton Strout - Alchemistic

What’s more, Anton  convinced his publisher (Penguin) to donate another dollar to match his.

Needless to say, I thought this was amazingly generous, and agreed to take back half of the bad things I’d ever said about him.

Well, a new year is upon us, and Anton has a new book coming out:

strout-anton-stonecast

And, gentleman that he is, Anton has offered to help Worldbuilders out again….

That means that for every copy of Stonecast that people pre-order between now and the book’s release date, Worldbuilders will get two dollars. One from Anton and one from Penguin.

Now, all joking aside, let me take a moment to explain how generous Anton is actually being here….

You see, authors make their money by earning a royalty from each book they sell. For paperback books, that tends to be about 8% (at best).

That means that Anton makes about 60 cents for every book.

So you know that he’s really doing this out of the goodness of his heart. It’s not a clever moneymaking scheme.

Well… actually it is a clever moneymaking scheme. It’s just that it’s making money for charity, not for Anton.

And remember, Penguin has also agreed to match Anton up to the first $1500.  That means that $2 will come to Worldbuilders for every copy of Stonecast that gets pre-ordered between now and the publication date of 9/24.

And you can pre-order anywhere you like, your local indie bookstore, B&N, Amazon, wherever you like…

  • Boss Monster:

We’ve returned from GenCon with some copies of Boss Monster with the special promotional Quothe LadyKiller hero cards.

IMG_5964

We only had 200 copies of these to start with, and they sold extremely well at GenCon, and now we have less than two dozen remaining

But the ones we do have are up in the store….

  • Karen Hallion Prints

Another thing we brought to GenCon that sold like mad were prints from the ever-awesome Karen Hallion. Last year she donated some for us to auction off during last year’s fundraiser.  But now she’s letting us retail some, since all proceeds from the store go to Worldbuilders.

Hallion - Great Wide Everywhere 72

This print was our best seller at the convention and a personal favorite.

Oot just walked by and said: “Oh dad, is that a video of a princess walking to a bathroom?”

I appologise, he’s too young for Dr. Who.

A lot of folks don’t realize that Karen does a ton of mash-ups that are unrelated to police boxes, too.  She’s got a little bit for everyone, for example…

Hallion - Strawberry Girl 72

This one is Amanda’s favorite. And if you like it as much as she does, odds are the two of you can be best friends. It’s Kaylee and the Morton’s Salt Girl, all mashed up into one beautiful piece of art, great for Firefly fans and advertising enthusiasts alike.

Oot says: “A clown with an umbrella. Ha! She’s poopin’ ladybugs.”

Hallion - Cunning and Blue 72

Oot says: “That’s so silly! A mouse wearing a hat!”

We’ve got 8 different Hallion prints in the store, so make sure to check out the rest of them.

  • Carniepunk

Last, but not least, we have a cool donation from Kevin Hearne.  He sent us a few copies of the new anthology Carniepunk.

Carniepunk_out_July302013

Yeah. Carnival steampunk. I’ll admit that I’m all tingly at the thought of this.

I’m thinking this anthology is going to be like Ray Bradbury with a monocle and a lightning gun. I’m going to have to order a copy.

Not only did they donate some books, but fully half the authors in the anthology got together and signed these copies.

Hearne-Anthology-Signatures

The lovely authors who autographed are Rachel Caine, Seanan McGuire, Jaye Wells, Nicole Peeler, Mark Henry, Delilah S. Dawson, and, of course, Kevin Hearne himself.

It’s a rare treat to get so many authors signing a book. But it’s rarer still that we get something like this donated that we can sell in the store…. 

We only have a handful of them though, so if you want one, you better jump onboard quickly.

As for me, I’m off to order some books.

Later Space Cowboys…

pat

Also posted in a billion links, The Tinker's Packs | By Pat17 Responses
Published: May 17, 2013

Various Flavors of Geekery

Heya everybody,

Not too long ago, I posted up a video of a group of authors playing D&D at Confusion in January of 2012.

Earlier this year, a bunch of us got together again under the direction of ringleaders Myke Cole and Peter Brett, and did it again. And recorded it.

And here it is…

Honestly, I’m still a little traumatized by Chauncey’s injuries.

Let this be a lesson to all of you, just because someone is Neutral Good, it doesn’t mean we won’t rain down some truly old-testament shit when our friends are fucked  with.

*     *     *

In other news, if you watch Shark Tank tonight, you’ll see something very, very cool.

Odds are, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys watching other people play D&D, what you see could very easily spill over into the realm of untrammeled awesomeness.

This is simple truth. You cannot trammel the degree of awesome involved. Mostly because you don’t know what the word “trammel” means.

Still, the point is that I’m going so far as to urge you to follow that link and have a lookie-loo.

And if you love what you see there, I encourage you to order it *now* to get your place in line. You see, Geek Chic’s has a waiting list for their furniture. This is a waiting list I am currently on, because daddy wants some bookshelves. I’m tired of buying shitty ones at target. So I’m buying something beautiful that I’ll be able to use forever and pass along to Oot after I’m gone.

Anyway, my point is that after their prime-time appearance tonight, Geek Chic‘s waiting list will be LONG. So you might want to sneak in under the wire….

Did I already mention that they’re also a Worldbuilders sponsor? They are. They’re every kind of cool.

You have been notified and warned.

pat

Also posted in videos | By Pat25 Responses
Published: November 8, 2012

Episode 4: The Play’s the Thing

Here’s this month’s episode of StoryBoard, for those of you who haven’t caught it yet. Episode 4: The Play’s the Thing.

This month we broke with tradition in several ways. We pre-recorded the show in order to avoid election night bandwidth issues, and we invited four guests instead of the regular three.

Both experiments were a qualified success. Shooting the show earlier in the day allowed us to bring in parents and east-coasters Peter V. Brett, Myke Cole,  Saladin Ahmed, and Naomi Novick. We also managed to avoid running into election coverage by scheduling a week before the election.

The downside is that there was a *tiny* little hurricane going on during our hangout. I don’t think that helped our connectivity very much. We lost a few of our guests for a couple minutes here and there, but since all the authors involved were experienced speakers and tabletop RPGers, none of them were thrown too far off their game.

Did I mention that this month our focus was storytelling in roleplaying?

Here it is….

Share and Enjoy…

Also posted in Geek and Sundry, geeking out, the craft of writing, The Story Board, video games, videos | By Pat14 Responses
Published: November 1, 2012

Epic D&D….

So for those of you with power out there on the East Coast, here’s something that might take your minds off things for half an hour or so.

For the rest of you, it will provide a welcome break from political ads.

Last year at Confusion, Peter V. Brett had the brilliant idea that since a bunch of fantasy authors were all getting together in one place, and since we all played D&D back in the day, we should get together, and, well, be huge *HUGE* geeks for an afternoon.

And when I say “we,” what I really mean is Peter V. Brett, Joe Abercrombie, Myke Cole, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, Saladin Ahmed, Jay Lake, and Jim C. Hines. And me.

So we rocked it old school. We busted out the AD&D rules, rolled up some second level characters, and played Keep on the Borderlands.

All I can say is that I’m glad that someone rolled a camera on the event. Myke Cole and Saladin Ahmed acted as Co-GM’s and did a brilliant job of herding the sackful of cats guiding me and my fellow authors through the game.

Since then, we’ve had all the footage edited down and tidied up by my friend Erin. Here’s what we ended up with. The cinematography isn’t anything special, but the video itself really turned out amazingly funny. If you’ve ever role played, or if you have any interest in seeing authors descend to the pits of geekery, you should really take a look….

The fact that we finally got this video up and running gave me the inspiration for this month’s Storyboard, where we’re going to talk about Storytelling in RPG’s. (That’s foreshadowing, BTW.)

Some of the other authors have done their own write-ups of this event, and I don’t have much to add to this except to say that every single thing they say in there is absolutely true.

Brent Weeks

Myke Cole

Joe Abercrombie

More soon,

pat

Also posted in geeking out, the craft of writing, The Story Board, videos | By Pat26 Responses
Published: January 31, 2012

150K Blog: Rare Books and a Chance to Game with Pat

This is a Worldbuilders blog.

As I write this, we’ve raised over $202,000 which means we’ve beaten last year’s total by over ten thousand dollars.

This seems to indicate that we, as a group, are awesome.

I’m going to celebrate by moving our donation goal up to 225K. Part of me wants to shoot for 250K. It would be nice to say, “We raised a quarter million dollars this year.” But we only have a week left, and I don’t want my reach to exceed my grasp….

Unfortunately, this burst of generosity draws attention to the fact that I haven’t posted the 150K bonus blog yet.

I’ve been slow posting this blog because I wanted to do something a special for this milestone. Specifically, I wanted to post up a video of me reading a picture book to y’all.

The book is called Beatrice’s Goat, and it’s the story that made me fall in love with Heifer International.

I’m donating 10 copies to the fundraiser:

I’ve been planning this for months. I got permission from Heifer International to read the book in a video. I found a guy that does video editing here in Stevens Point. I looked into the proper pronunciations for the names….

I even (and this should really underline how seriously I was taking things) got a haircut so I wouldn’t look like a hobo on the video. Or at the very least, I’d look like a halfway respectable hobo.

Lastly, in a stroke of genius, I decided to bring my son into the project. He’s way more photogenic than I am, and he loves books. Why wouldn’t I shoot a video of me reading the book to him?

So yesterday I got the edited video back, sat down to to watch it…. and was appalled.

The problem is my voice, you see. I never realized that my voice goes up about three quarters of an octave when I read to little Oot.

You know how that uncomfortable feeling you get when you hear your own voice played back from a recording? That’s how I felt watching the video, except about a hundred times worse. I was in a constant state of cringe.

I know it’s a silly thing to be embarrassed about, but I don’t know if I want a video out there of me reading to my son in this goofy-ass voice.

Why am I telling y’all this? Well, over the last month, I’ve told a lot of people that I was planning on posting the video, so I figured I owed you an explanation as to why I’m not posting it up here with the books.

Sorry to sissy out on y’all…. Let me make it up to you by tossing some more cool stuff into the fundraiser.

*     *     *

As some of you on facebook might have already seen, when I was out at Confusion a week ago, a bunch of authors got together and played a game of D&D. Old school D&D. AD&D.

There was a lot of talent at the table: Peter V. Brett, Joe Abercrombie, Jim Hines, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, and Jay Lake. Myke Cole and Saladin Ahmed ran things.

Brent Weeks did a write up of the adventure over here, if you want to hear the epic details of how we were almost killed by goblins.

Simply said, it was a great time. I got to cast Magic Missile and everything.

In order to pass on some of the geeky love, I’ve decided to run a game at the next convention I’m attending: Stellarcon 36.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to have an adventure in the Four Corners, this is your chance to find out.

The winners of this auction will get to play in a one-shot role-playing geekfest set in the Four Corners world. You will join Pat Rothfuss and Steve Long of HERO Games for a collaborative storytelling experience of such intensity that it will doubtless leave you a shattered wreck of a human being.

Pat will pre-generate characters and provide a brief explanation of the HERO gaming system. (You don’t need to know the system in order to play and enjoy the game.) The game will be run on Saturday, March 3, 2012 in the afternoon or evening.

In addition to a seat at the gaming table, the winners of these auctions will receive free memberships to StellarCon 36 where the game will be held.

StellarCon 36 runs from March 2nd – 4th, 2012. The convention will be held at the Best Western High Point Hotel in High Point, North Carolina.

Please note: this auction does not include food, lodging, or transportation to the convention.

Two more seats will be in auctioned or raffled off at the convention itself on March 3rd. Folks who are through registration by 11:00 AM will definitely still be able to throw their name in the hat and/or bid on those at the convention.

You can bid on the first game seat here.

The second seat here.

And the third seat here.

Or you can stalk all the auctions at once by following this link.

  • 10 first edition hardcover copies of The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. The first WMF books ever signed by Pat.

I wasn’t going to include any copies of my book in the fundraiser, then Penguin sent a couple boxes of books along to help out with the fundraiser.

They were the last remaining books that I signed in New York back in January of 2011, months before the book was even out. I wrote about the surreal experience in the blog.

I’ve taken the liberty of dating these books January 26, 2011. Which makes them something of a rarity, as they’re dated two months before the publication date.

  • One hardcover copy of Subterranean Press’s Tales of Dark Fantasy.

A long out-of-print collection featuring an early version of my short story, “The Road to Levinshir,” as well as stories by other notable authors like Mike Carey and Poppy Z Bright.

  • Three first edition copies of The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle. Signed by the authors and doodled by Nate Taylor.

These are first edition copies that Nate was kind enough to doodle in:

I wish I could doodle….

  • Three hardcover copies of Gollancz 50th anniversary edition of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Gollancz printed retro-style copies of 5 classic fantasy books in celebration of their 50th year in publishing. The fact that Name of the Wind made it into the mix still makes me blushy with pride.

The introduction in this book by Steaphen Deas makes me kinda blushy, too.

  • One copy of Your College Survival Guide. Signed by Patrick Rothfuss and doodled by B.J. Hiorns.

This book was my first publication from back in 2005. A shameful piece of my sordid past.

It’s a collection of of humor columns I wrote for the college paper between 1999 and 2003. Columns dealt with pressing philosophical issues such as the fast zombie/slow zombie debate as well as everyday problems like how to bribe your professor or start a career as a prostitute.

The book is full of illustrations by BJ Hiorns, the same guy that occasionally illustrates my blog. It also contains annotations where I explain how some columns got written, the lies I told, and what sort of trouble various jokes got me into.

Only 500 of these were printed, and I have less than a dozen left.

The last time I looked online, the only ones I could find were being sold for over 800 bucks on Amazon:

Here’s the doodle Brett did in this one.

You can see why I love him….

  • AUCTION: One-of-a-kind Leather-bound Hardcover of  The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

(Click to Embiggen. It’s worth it.)

Last but not least, we have a real gem.

This is a one-of-a-kind copy of The Name of the Wind, hand-bound in leather by bookbinder Hunter Ford.

This hardcover book is bound in blue Northamptonshire goat leather and decorated with gold acrylic paint. Printed on acid-free paper with marbled end pages, it is 636 pages with size 12 font and narrow margins.

It’s not just a rare book, it’s a unique book. And I’ll gladly sign it to the winner, if the winner so desires.

Our thanks to Hunter Ford for this treasure.

To see more pictures or bid on this book, click here.

*     *     *

Remember, for every 10 dollars you donate on our Team Page, you get a chance to win these books and many more.

Even better, if you chip in before February 7th of 2012, Worldbuilders will match 50% of your donation.

If you’d like to see all the auctions Worldbuilders is currently running, you can find them over here.

Or, if you want to see the other items that have been donated to Worldbuilders, or learn more about the fundraiser itself, you can head over to the main page here.

Also posted in a billion links, BJ Hiorns Art, geeking out, Tales from the Con, Worldbuilders 2011 | By Pat40 Responses
Published: June 6, 2011

Science!

Is anyone else out there interesting in doing some science?

Specifically, I’m referring to aperture science.

I’m considering trying the co-op, and I could use a partner who isn’t a complete asshat.

If anyone wants to friend up, leave your e-mail address in the comments below. (Though I would recommend somehow breaking up your full e-mail so the spam spiders don’t gobble it up.)

pat

Edit: As of 6:00 AM, with the help of North00, I have successfully saved science.

Thanks Northoo. You are a gentleman and a scholar. That was the first multiplayer I’ve done in a long while, and it was lovely. I had a great time.

Also Northoo, I’d like you to know that I really wanted to pull the light bridge out from under you a couple times just to watch you fall to your death. But I didn’t. Because that would be wrong.

For those of you in the comments that have mentioned that you’ve gone through the single player and would like to team up with someone for the co-op, maybe you could team up with each other. I have to say, the co-op was completely worth it. Not quite as cool as the single player, but approximately 80% as cool. And 80% of a near infinite amount of awesome is… well… it’s still a lot.

Play nice everyone.

It’s light outside. I should get to sleep….

pat

Also posted in dicking around | By Pat127 Responses
Published: January 31, 2011

Ars Ludi (The Art of the Game)

Things have been good lately.

For four weeks now, I haven’t had to meet any deadlines, manage any fundraisers, plan for any holidays, or orchestrate the mailing of thousands of t-shirts.

I have to say, not doing these things has been lovely.

You see, I’m a slacker at heart. A dabbler. A dallier. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. You also don’t spend 14 years working on your unpublished fantasy novel if you’re a highly motivated go-getter. You don’t spend 9 years getting your undergrad degree if you’re the sort of person who thrives on a 14 hour workday.

Now don’t get me wrong. I can do the 14 hour workday if I really need to. The last half of 2010 proved that I can do it for months in a row.

But still, it’s not my happy place. I don’t thrive in that environment.

So I’ve spent this last month recharging my mental and emotional batteries. I’ve been catching up on my sleep. Catching up on my e-mail. And hanging out with Sarah and Oot, who didn’t see very much of me in November and December. Or much of October, either.

Also, I’ve been playing some computer games.

That’s one of the first things I cut out of my schedule when time started getting tight back in August. And it sucked. Computer games have been part of my life since…. well… kinda since forever. I played computer games before the internet. Before graphics. I played computer games before a lot of you were even born.

This has given me an interesting perspective on computer games. I played Zork and Bureaucracy and Leather Goddesses of Phobos: text adventure games that have never been equaled in terms of their ability to fuck with and frustrate their players. I played King’s Quest. I played Doom. I MUDed. I played the original Fallouts, both one and two….

So. Nutshell. Me big PC gamer.  Much playing. Much knowing of the games. Follow?

Here’s the problem. The last few times I’ve managed to sit down to treat myself to a game, I’ve found myself increasingly disappointed.

Games have come a long way since I first typed, “Take lamp” back in the early 80’s. These days games have cool things like, say, sound. I like sound. Increasingly, they have fury, too. And that’s not a bad thing either. The problem is when they’re full of sound AND fury. That’s where things seem to start going wrong.

Given the advances in technology, it seems like I should enjoy games more these days. They have all sorts of massive multiplayerness and vast polygonious landscapes to explore. This should be cool, but instead I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with my computer gaming experiences.

I could say more on the subject, but I worry it would grow tiresome. So instead, I’ve decided tell a little story with the help of my good friend and sometime illustrator Nathan Taylor.

The comics are kinda large, so you’re going to click on them so they can embiggen into their full glory.

Oh, and please don’t just take these comics and post them on your own blog. If you want to share them with someone, just link back here.

Why? Because otherwise you’re killing the internet.

Here you go….

Page One:

Page Two:

Page Three

Take that, Tycho. I warned you that writing elaborately interwoven narrative thingers was my bailiwick. Despite this, you continued to interweave them. Moreover, you employed cunning phraseology. Secondarily, you made alluring word usements. Sixth and lastly, you finished your story in a timely fashion. Thirdly, you used the word ‘ineluctable.’ And, to conclude, you are an irritatingly good writer.

This has left me no choice but to do a comic about computer games. I’m sorry that it has come to this, but you really left me no choice.

Later all,

pat

Also posted in holding forth, video games | By Pat151 Responses

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