I’ve been mulling this idea over for a while. After wrestling with the particulars for too long, I’ve decided I’m just going to jump in. Here Goes.

I am looking for some Terrible Ambassadors.

As a Terrible Ambassador, you will take Shambles to your local convention or game store, and run a game. You’ll get an Terribly Official Ambassador’s Kit, which will include some cool things to help you in your duties, any promotional support I can provide, a profile here on the website, and some money.

Yes, money. It’s not a bucket of money, but enough to cover a convention meal or a couple drinks. And you’ll get it each time you run a game that fits some parameters that I haven’t fully hashed out yet (official convention games or open games in a game store, where I know about it in advance and can say ‘yes, I can afford this’, and where you get people at the table. something like that, anyway). This would be a great way to get a little extra money for that game you were going to run at the convention anyway.

This is a pretty experimental thing for me. I’ve got a rough idea for where I want this to go, but if I wait until I hash out all the details I’ll never get it off the ground. So I’m looking for just a few people for this initial program. You’ll need to be flexible and willing to hash this out with me, enthusiastic about Shambles, and able to run 2-3 games a year at least, with the strong preference being games outside the SF Bay Area (where I’m already covering most of the local cons).

If you’re interested, a hundred words or so about yourself and why you want to do this. If you have additional questions or comments, fire away below.

With less than 48 hours to go on the 60 72 Terrible Character Portraits Kickstarter project, I’ve added two new backer rewards.

The first one is for anyone who wants to support the project, but can’t go big.

Pledge $1 or more

Anyone (including any current backer) who has pledged at least $1.00 to this project will get to read all the stuff I write for the backer rewards. This means you’ll get to read the blank form letter said for the $5.00+ backers, the individual pieces of flash fiction I write for the $10.00+ backers, and the Terrible Character Backgrounds I write for the $80.00+ characters.

The second one is for that one adventurous person out there. I know you’re there somewhere. And there’s only of these.

Pledge $115 or more

The Mystery Of The Prize. We are $115 away from hitting $1050, which would add 12 more Terrible Character Portraits to this project, bringing the grand total to 84 Portraits! With less than two days to do, I’m adding in this special Mystery Backer Reward. Please read this carefully. If you back at this level, INSTEAD OF ANY OF THE PREVIOUSLY LISTED REWARDS, you will get a SPECIAL MYSTERY REWARD. This will be a reward package I create personally. It will be entirely unique. It may include some of the previous rewards, but there will be one thing in this reward package that no one else will get. Something I make just for you. Something Terrible. Something Awesome. There is only one of these.

Only two days left. Let’s push this over the $1k mark!

Are you just dying to play the 2010 ENnie Nominated Shambles? Want to see it in action? Feel like coming out and heckling me?

I’ve got a table scheduled for August 21st at Endgame in Oakland. I’m going to run a game of Shambles. If you’d like to play, comment below, email me, reply to me on Twitter, send me a carrier pigeon, or walk up to me on the street and sock me in the gut.

I’ll update this post as I get new totals. At this time I have six four three two seats available.

What’s the game going to be about? I haven’t decided yet. It will most likely be of the Fast Food Zombie Fun variety. Expect it to start at 11:00 and go for 5-6 hours.

Rather quietly, this site turned a year old a couple weeks ago.

Was it the year I’d anticipated when I started this whole thing? I’d be lying if I said yes. I’d intended to have Gremlin Persistent Malice or Enormous Intersected Automaton done by now (preferably both). But they’re in the closet. I’d intended to make GenCon and PAX and won’t make either. I’d wanted to have more product out, some Shambles supplements in the can, and I’m nowhere near as close to that as I want to be, even a year later.

Has it been a disappointing year?

Hell No.

A year ago, my trophy case was empty. Now it’s got 9 things in it. That’s nine different projects that I finished in the last year, some of which weren’t even on the table when the year started. I won a contest. I gave birth to an Obnoxious Howler Monkey. I contributed some text to a great game that you all know about, and finished work on a game I can’t even talk about yet. I wrote some stuff, made a board game. I wrapped up an RPG that got nominated for an ENnie! I awarded a Terrible Grant. I released an album. And somewhere along the line I took over an entire blogging network.

How can I look back on everything that DID get done this past year, and say that it was disappointing? Would I like to do more? Absolutely. I want to do everything. All of it. At once. And I hope that the next year brings even more projects to fruition.

What does this next year have in store?

Wrapping up another game I can’t talk about. Lunar Kitsch Missile. Saturday Matinee. Terrible Character Portraits. And that’s just the stuff that’s actively being built. If the past year was any indication, in a year I’ll have finished stuff I don’t even know about yet.

I’d like to thank everyone who helped me in any little way over the past year. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be surrounded by such helpful and supportive people. Here’s to looking forward to a trophy case that’s twice as full in a year’s time.

If you’ve been following the 60 Terrible Character Portraits project, you’ll notice that over the weekend we hit our funding goal, which is awesome!

But if you haven’t donated yet, you might wonder why you still should. Well, apart from the awesome rewards we’re offering, I spelled out how additional funds will be used on the the project in a project update this morning.

For every $75 we raise above the goal, we’ll add 6 more characters of a specific type to the project.

Let me break it down for you.

$825 – We add 6 Terrible Robots
$900 – We add 6 Terrible Zombies
$975 – We add 6 Terrible Steampunks
$1050 – We add 6 Terrible Cyberpunks

If we raise more than $1050, I’ll personally attempt a cartwheel, and then we’ll add more character types in another project update.

Furthermore, if you personally donate $75 or more to the project, you can choose what type of characters to add. Do you need half a dozen different wizards? Donate $75 to the project and you can say “I want to see 6 Wizards.”

Your additional donations will only grow the number of portraits on the project. We might end up releasing 72, 90, 120 or more Terrible Character Portraits using this project. And you can have a direct hand in determining what some of them are.

So don’t let our hitting the goal stop you from donating. We’ll still put your donation to good use. You’ll help support a great artist and you’ll help us put out some great Creative Commons content.

Fundraising is SCREAMING along for the 60 Terrible Character Portraits For Creative Commons Release Kickstarter project. In less than a week we’ve raised $660 bucks – that’s 88% of our goal! I’m tremendously excited to see this project take shape, and Jeff Preston is chomping at the bit to get down to it.

One of our great backers has a project of his own going called to raise funds for a printing of an Aruneus main book. You should go check it out. It’s a neat project, and one I think some of you ZFB’s will enjoy.

Late last week, I got word through Twitter that artist Jeff Preston was looking for work. I didn’t have any work myself, but I did have an idea.

I recently ran into a situation where I really needed some stock head shots for a character generator I was developing. I got to thinking at the time that it would be great to have someone draw up some character portraits and release them using a Creative Commons license, so that others could use them for their own work.

I’m not exactly rolling in the dough, so patronizing a project like this myself is more or less out of the question. But, artist needing work + Kickstarter = a chance to see if this will work.

So, Jeff and I talked and worked out the particulars, and it’s with great pleasure that I can announce that we’ve put the experiment together and you can now back the project.

We’ve put together what we hope is a good breakdown of rewards for different sponsorship levels, but we’re hoping that this project is less about the direct rewards and more about helping to build up more Creative Commons material that can be used by other game developers.

Please help spread the word about this project. If it does well, I’m hoping to do more stuff like this in future.

ENnie voting has opened, and as previously mentioned, Shambles is up for Best Electronic Book. Please Go Vote even if you don’t vote for Shambles.

But please, vote for Shambles!

I spent far more time on Operation : TCB than anything else in the past few weeks. That meant not so many posts here.

But that’s not the only thing that’s been going on. So let’s make with an update.

On The Table:

1. RPBGN – Those pending applications? All done. Next part of Operation : TCB is to perform infrastructure upgrades, now that WordPress 3 has been released.
2. Codename: Simulated Jocular Anaconda – A nice pile of work got done on this, and it’s now on someone else’s table until we hear back.
3. Codename: Lunar Kitsch Missile – Writing distribution has yet to happen.
4. Machine Age Materials – My piece for the upcoming Machine Age Productions supplement has been pushed back, but I still need to get it done.
5. SteamCon Games – The games for SteamCon are taking shape.
6. Codename: Pandoran Apothecary Chest – Almost ready to mothball this one.

In The Closet

1. Codename: First Rural Delusions – Mothballed 6/11/10
2. Codename: Gremlin Persistent Malice – Mothballed 6/11/10
3. Shambles Source Material #1 – This is untouched from 3/10. I need to finish it, but more important things need to be worked on. Mothballed – 6/11/10
4. Mobile Audio Rig v2.0 details here- Mothballed 2/24/10
5. Unfinished – (NaNoWriMo 2009 Entry) – Mothballed – 01/28/09
6. Codename: Enormous Intersected Automaton – Mothballed 11/04/09
7. Codename: Big Audio Dynamite – Mothballed 11/04/09
8. Codename: Unwashed Repeat Pedestrian – Mothballed – 11/04/09
9. Codename: Cackle Smash Soup – Mothballed 10/28/09
10. Codename: Tactical Plastic Laser – Mothballed 10/28/09

In The Trophy Case

1. NEW – A Terrible Grant – In case you missed it, the grant was awarded.
2. Codename: Insignificant Diversionary Anaconda – My contributions to this project are complete. This project will be updated when it is formally announced.
3. Codename: One Hour Night – I was hired to put together a board game for some folks, set in their High Fantasy setting. You can see what the game board looked like. This was burned into a sheet of leather, and colored with black and white charcoal.
4. Apartment 27 – This is an album that I put up for sale. A collection of things I’ve put together over time. Buy it!
5. Maschine Zeit Material – I did some work for the upcoming game Maschine Zeit (mostly some fiction stuff to flesh out part of the setting). I knocked this out over the last week, and it’s in the can! I’ll share details when it’s made available.
6. A Single Moment Of Weakness – A piece of Flash Fiction I wrote for a little roundup. Read it here
7. Shambles – My RPG about life as a Zombie. First revision. (read about it here) – Completed on 2/17/10
8. Obnoxious Howler Monkey – An Arduino driven, VMUSIC2 bases soundboard designed for use as a mood-setter for tabletop games. (read about it here) First Revision. – Completed on 11/18/10
9. The Grognards Of Gygax – My entry into the “Best Quest” contest for Legends of Zork. It won Second Place – Completed on 11/11/10

Excuse Of The Week: Still not getting the things done I NEED to be getting done.

So last Friday I was doing some work in the back, not really online, putting my nose to the proverbial grindstone on a different phase of Operation : TCB.

Later that night I sit down and have a look at Twitter, and all these people are telling me “Congratulations!

I had no idea what they were talking about.

Then I found out THIS had happened:

No, Really!

Shambles got nominated for “Best Electronic Book!” No, really!

I’m thrilled to have been nominated. I don’t expect I’ll win, but I didn’t expect I’d be nominated either. You know that thing people say when they’re talking about Awards shows: “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” Most of the people who say that don’t mean it.

But I sure do.

ENnie voting will open on Friday. I sure hope you turn out and vote. I’m bummed that I can’t be at GenCon in person to attend the ceremony, but I’m looking for a stand-in.

To celebrate this glorious occasion, from now through the end of GenCon, Shambles is on sale for Five Bucks

Excited? Me?

Yes.