Schlock Mercenary

I’m headed for the eastern Caribbean with the Writing Excuses team aboard Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas¹. The blog posts here may go a little stale, as updating the blog from the ship² is time consuming. We board on Saturday, and return a week later. If you want to play the “where is Howard” game, you can follow this link to track the Oasis of the Seas. I’ll probably be using the same link (connectivity permitting) to figure out where the heck we are. We are not going to be anywhere near icebergs. Also, there are plenty of lifeboats. Nobody makes claims like “unsinkable” anymore, but Oasis of the Seas can boast about being five times larger than Titanic. When her keel was laid she was the largest cruise ship in history. Today she’s within 18 inches or so of that spot, but has been bested by only two other ships (also owned and operated by Royal Caribbean.) Before boarding the giant ship I need to stock the buffer with comics for you to read, and I need to pack big stacks of work that I can do while I’m at sea. It’s not a proper vacation if I’m not getting some work done, after all. ¹Oasis of the Seas seems like an odd name, but since the ship has fresh water in the middle of a “desert” of non-potable salt water, I suppose the definition of “oasis” can be stretched to fit.

The moment I held these in my hand I knew I had to own them. These are metal dice from Die Hard Dice¹, and if you like the feeling of doing something significant when you’re rolling dice, you will like rolling these. Battleworn Copper RPG set from Die Hard DiceThe set pictured above is the “ancient” finish. I selected “Brilliant Gold,” “Battleworn Copper,” and Nickel for myself. When I ran the Planet Mercenary play test at ConFusion I used two nickel six-siders and one gold one, which is pretty much perfect for the permutation factoring built into the Mayhem system. I got the metal boxes for mine, along with a play mat which protects the surface of the table, and distributes enough of the throw² energy that the dice stay on the table, even when you roll them in a bit of a panic. I can’t properly describe my delight at the kinesthetic experience provided by these dice. I can describe the jealousy of the others seated at the game table, but I shan’t, because I hold those fine individuals blameless. I’d be jealous too. The RPG sets (d20, d12, 2xd10, d8, d6, and d4) plus a metal box are $26.50. The 5xd6 sets are $18. The play mat is $8. There are “Brilliant Gold” RPG sets available with the box at scratch-and-dent pricing for $18. I don’t know how they scratched or dented the dice themselves, but I assume a diamond press was involved. When I perused the Die Hard Dice website for links, I found that they have a new series of chrome dice with colored numbers. These will be mine as soon as Sandra gives me permission to spend money again. ¹Disclaimer: I accepted these as a gift³, with the understanding that if I loved them, and could in clean conscience recommend them, I would do so. I do, and I can, so I am, and now I have.

I’ve talked about Death by Cliché before. I really like the book, and I’m a beta-reader for the sequels. It’s a game-genre dark comedy in which an RPG designer gets shot in the head and wakes up in the terribly-designed role playing game that is being run by the young man who pulled the trigger. And unlike the players at the table, when he takes damage it actually hurts. He’s not helpless, however. He is a game designer, after all, and there are artifacts in this world that can only be fully understood by him. But first he must look past the flaming brassieres, and come to grips with the fact that he cannot see his character sheet. This Thursday and Friday, September 8th and 9th¹ Death by Cliché will be on sale at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for just 99 cents. Act now! Pounce! Buying this book is one of the 99 funniest things you can do with a dollar². ¹I’m not in charge of these things, but I think the sale begins at midnight Eastern time Thursday morning, and closes at midnight Eastern time Friday night. YMMV. ²If you had a dark, artisanal, bottled beer for every one of those pennies we would flee before you could start singing.

See Kubo and the Two Strings before it leaves theaters. Please? I don’t have any skin in the game here, but I feel like this film deserves more attention than it is getting. I loved it. The artistry involved is absolutely stunning. Aside from being a really good story, told well, it happens to be unflinchingly beautiful. Like all stop-motion films, it was built frame by frame, and in this case the filmmakers took the opportunity to make every frame gorgeous. I think any still from this movie could be ink-jetted onto canvas and hung on my wall. From a critical standpoint, I didn’t know what to expect, and I felt like our “inciting incident” came later than it should have. I suspect that’s just the weight of other films, and the indoctrination they’ve left on me. Kubo and the Two Strings easily clears my Threshold of Awesome.

Matt Wallace shares my philosophy of humor: it is difficult to write, it is delightful to read, and it says important things that can’t be said any other way. My first exposure to Matt’s work was this post about humorous SFF, and I was impressed. I liked the cut of his jib. On my flight to WorldCon I began reading his Sin du Jour series from the beginning, picking up Envy of Angels first. Here’s how that turned out:

Have a look at Windyty.com. Spin the globe, zoom in and out, click the overlays. PLAY with it. As you play you will learn some things about our world. Nifty things, trivial things, and critically important things. Like, for instance, why humans finally decided that they’d rather dig a ditch through a continent than attempt to sail around it. I’ve bookmarked the site, and will make it part of my trawl anytime something interesting is happening with the weather. And anytime I want to see why there aren’t more pleasure cruises running between Argentina and Antarctica.

You may recall the gushing manner in which I plugged Promise of Blood, by Brian McClellan. That book launched his Powder Mage trilogy, and his career, and I enjoyed following both¹. Another trilogy is coming, and after the amazing way he stuck the landing on the first one, I’m simply taking it as a given that Sins of Empire will be a must-read. That cover art? Click on it to for a closer look. Also, this is kind of the first time it’s been seen. I feel special. I also feel special to have Sins_of_Empire_1.2.docx sitting right here taunting me. I opened it thinking I’d been sent a sample chapter, but no, I have the whole thing. I cannot afford to be sucked into an entire book right now. I must be strong. You can pre-order it today², and you can even pre-order a signed copy directly from the author. It is slated for release on Tuesday, March 7th, of 2017. If you like the Powder Mage books, and want to support Brian, his editor, and the cover artists in their ongoing creation of them, pre-ordering is totally a thing you should do. Books literally live or die on the first week of sales, which is where pre-orders show up. Here’s the back-cover copy: A world on the cusp of a new age…

[View the story “Moderating Convention Panels” on Storify]

I’ll be in Kansas for the rest of the week. The World Science Fiction Convention is in Kansas City this year under the MidAmeriCon banner for the second time. Is this a weird way to name a thing? Maybe. Is it cool that the convention travels? Absolutely. And Kansas City is awesome. I’ve been there before, and it’s definitely not a “flyover” location, though I’ll literally be flying over most of the state of Kansas in order to get there on Wednesday. Potentially disappointing news for Schlock Mercenary shoppers: I am not exhibiting. No booth, no merch. Just me enjoying the show. We just finished our big show of the year, GenCon Indy, which is always a massive undertaking, and for which we have a team of six people. I’m way too tired to try to run a table with a team of just me. I will, however, have a coupon code available. Catch up with me at one of my panels, or when I’m drawing comics in the hotel lobby (probably the Crowne Plaza) and I’ll teach you the magic word¹. My Schedule THURSDAY:

I picked up Ogre: Objective 218 at GenCon Indy without having played it, or having seen it played. All I got was the sales pitch from a friend of mine who worked at their booth, and his pitch amounted to “fast-playing card game for two players. Build a supply line to the enemy base and capture it.” Today I sat down with my 13yo son and played it. He had already consumed the instruction manual, and he taught me to play it in a single round, which lasted about ten minutes. Over the next half hour we played two more rounds, and at the end of the game session he’d beaten me two to one. It would have been two to zero, but I insisted upon a final game, which I think he may have thrown, because he got both his Ogres out early (read: “as close to simultaneously as the rules allow”) but didn’t press his advantage with cruise missiles. If you want a tutorial, Steve Jackson and friends have provided one! I didn’t think Steve Jackson Games could deliver something satisfying that played faster than Zombie Dice¹, but with the help of It’s Your Move Games² they totally did. Ogre: Objective 218 is fun for casual players, and is also good for folks who count cards and adapt their tactics in accordance with shifting statistical models. It lists at $14.95, and is probably available at any store that carries Munchkin. It’s also available at Amazon, for folks like me who will probably stop leaving their homes once drone delivery of everything is a reality³. ¹My Zombie Dice review is up at Steve Jackson’s site. It glows like the eyes of an irradiated feral ghoul. ²Ogre: Objective 218‘s game mechanics are based on the game Battle for Hill 218, copyright © 2007 by It’s Your Move Games, Inc. Used under license. ³It’s already begun. I move around so little that my FitBit stopped telling me about goals, and simply withered and died, like an unwatered philodendron.