God Plays Dice

Done! Here's the new print-n-play game I created. You can find it here: God Plays Dice.  First 100 downloads are free. The second 100 cost double.

Of course the game titles paraphrases Einstein's famous quote. And indeed, there is a method to my madness. The game is about the Big Bang (and quantum things) and happens to require lots of dice. Here's the full write-up:

It is a millisecond second after the Big Bang. Now is your chance to guide the creation of particles, fundamental forces, and the physical laws of the rapidly expanding universe and use them to your advantage. Through judicious planning and aggressive maneuvering, you will be able to guide the creation of stars, solar systems, and even galaxies.

God Plays Dice is a micro-style game of managing and manipulating probabilities. By collecting and rolling dice you can gain control of cards that have special powers that allow you to better collect and roll dice, and to score victory points. Sometimes you will be at the mercy of the dice, but sometimes the other players will be at the mercy of you.

The game has been mentions in Chris Hansens excellent pnp blog. Check it out here.

Dark Energy

Been busy moving across the country. But I hope to start adding more to my blog now that I'm nearly settled. As an easy re-introduction, here's a card I designed for my upcoming God Plays Dice game -- a game where you get to manipulate the Big Bang.

Banana Spider

I've been working on multiple projects -- a sci-fi crime book, a fantasy novella, and then there's a third draft of a book waiting for me to get back to, and on and on and on. But at moment I'd like to tell you about a side, side project. I've designed another game, but before I put it out, this time I want to add more of personal artistic touch to the thing. I can't tell you much about the game yet, but there are a lot of spiders are involved, and so, when I'm able, I sit down and draw another spider.

I have three down and about 15 to go. Here's my latest:

Other spiders (and artwork) can be found here.
My self-published games are here.

deviantart contest

The very cool deviant.art site is having an art contest at the moment, and here's my submission. Though I'm in the digital realm, I'm liking keeping my brush strokes obvious. One, I like the way it looks. Two, when I think to myself, "If I spend another painstaking 15 hours on this painting I can remove all trace of brush strokes," I inevitably tell myself, "Naaaaaah."

My gallery of deviantart can be found here.

Fantastiqa arrived

All my 'professional' board game credits are accidental so far, meaning I didn't seek out to get noticed in a professional way, but somehow it happened anyway. A while back I made an expansion for Fantastiqa, just for fun (found here), and the designer of the original game saw it, liked it, and asked it he could modify it into a real product.

The final version is the "Castle in the Air" found in Fantastiqa Landscapes. It arrived at my door a few days ago, and I'm eager to try it out.

Just finished a beetle. Getting more proficient with my drawing tablet. My ultimate goal will be to make some promo-illustrations for up-coming books and stories, and to create are for new games I design and to re-skin old games I've already made. Also, there's  a secret project I have in mind, details to come.

Above, my first attempt at a portrait on my new Wacom drawing tablet. This is of Amboise Bierce, the author of the The Devil's Dictionary, of which inspired my own Writer's Devil's Dictionary, which is found in my collection Book by Author. I drew freehand in a program called Krita, a great free and open-source Photoshop-style software. It felt a bit weird to draw on a tablet and see the results on a distant screen, but I'm liking going digital.

And below, a landscape with no particular relationship to any of my writing, except, I guess, it's possible there's a nice bit of woodland depicted somewhere in one of my books. Yeah, that's the ticket.