All posts by Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

I’m saying this for the last time: HIS. NAME. IS. AEOFEL!

I've been pointing out new episodes of the D&D/Penny Arcade/PvP/Me podcast on Twitter, but since the third series draws to a close today, I thought I'd catch up, and then share some thoughts on the final episode.

My last post took us up to episode three, so…

Episode Four:

In this episode, the battle continues in full against Thazin Stormbellow, guardian of the Ambershard mausoleum. That sleeping boar? No longer sleeping…

Episode Five:

In this episode, the members of Acquisitions Incorporated learn about the death and dying rules… but does it concern them, the boar, or the dwarf? They also learn that intimidating a bloodied enemy may force that enemy to surrender… may. And finally, they learn the might of a solo monster—essentially, four monsters wrapped in one.

Episode Six:

Acquisitions Incorporated prepares for their ultimate fight against Leer of the Ambershard Dwarves. As they approach the upper chambers, will they simply bust in and take the guards out? Or quietly bar the other doors, and take a sneakier approach?

Episode Seven:

What's left, but for Aeofel to throw his dagger at the fleeing Leer… and he's thankful he did, despite missing. For the dagger hangs in midair, as if suspended in something… unseen.

Episode Eight:

"At least you're not in the acid pit…."

All caught up? If you're ready, follow me past the jump, where it's SPOILER-TASTIC!

Continue reading… →

a spiffy rules variant for munchkin

I'm making myself a little crazy trying to write a column about gaming, gamers, gaming conventions, and why they all add up to mean so much to me. It's not that I can't find the words but – well, maybe it is that I can't find the words. Or, more accurately, I can't find enough words, because I can sum it all up like this: "When I'm gaming, I feel like I am with my tribe."

Hurm. Maybe that's a good launching point, and I can get a little more in-depth from there. (Related: Damn you, Twitter, for making me able to say just about everything I want to say in just 140 characters.)

So speaking of gaming, when I was at RinCon last weekend, I played a couple of memorable games of Munchkin. One of them was an official event called Czar Munchkin that, as the name implies, featured a table of us gamers versus the official Munchkin Czar, who happens to be my friend (and editor of all my books) Andrew. Through some exceptionally munchkin-y behavior, I ended up winning the game, making my Munchkin Convention Play record a perfect 2-0. w00t. Go me.

That game was a lot of fun, and Andrew ran it as a Child's Play fundraiser (what a great idea, Andrew! Great minds think alike!) so we raised even more shiny gold rocks while we played.

The other game I played happened in the lobby of our hotel, where we tried out some variant rules that Andrew wanted to playtest with me and some of our other friends. I can't disclose all the different rules we tried, but one of the ones I really liked was announced in today's Daily Illuminator at SJ Games:

Rules Variant – Listening at the Door

We've been trying out this variant Munchkin rule and figured we'd throw it out for y'all to play around with.

At the start of your turn, draw a face-down Door card ("Listening at the Door"). You may now rearrange your items, do trades, or whatever. Then you Kick Down a Door (starting combat if there's a monster) and your turn proceeds normally . . . except that if you Loot The Room, you draw a face-down Treasure instead of a Door.

I had a great time playing with this variant, because it meant we burned through a lot of cards in a short amount of time (using the original classic set only, we shuffled each deck at least once, and I think we did treasures twice.) I have several expansions, and while it's fun to add new cards to the game, it's also a drag to end up with so many cards, you don't get to see them all. Playing with this rule means you get to see more cards, and it increases the chances of serious mayhem by some number you'd get if you rolled percentile dice.

If you're still reading, you probably play the game, so I think you'll appreciate this: Andrew was at level 9, and seemed poised to win the game, so the rest of us teamed up to defeat him. As it turned out, though, we were just delaying the inevitable.

Andrew was a Cleric, and went after me. On my turn, I looked for trouble, and fought (and defeated) the Floating Nose to get myself to level 9. Andrew resurrected the Floating Nose on his turn, and announced that he was fighting it for the win. We did the usual things with whatever cards we had left, and when it appeared that we were going to hold him off for at least another round, he played the Potion of Halitosis to beat the Floating Nose and win the game. It was delightfully silly and Munchkiny, too, because he could have just played the cards together, but he made us all go through our hands and gave us just a little bit of hope, before he dashed it all to hell.

Munchkin seems to be one of those games that really divides gamers into seriously polarized camps. I know it's not for everyone, but I just love it, because it's just so silly.

Hey look! It’s the promo for my episode of The Big Bang Theory!

Holy. Carp. Wil's Mind = BLOWN.

This is the coolest thing I've seen all day. I can't believe that CBS chose to make the promo for next week's episode all about me! It's a huge honor, because it means someone at CBS thinks I'm worth audience. 

I've also heard from two friends who have seen screeners of the show, and – even though I like to always keep expectations nice and low – they both said that the whole episode is hilarious.

(via htbhomas on Twitter)

everything you ever wanted to know about w00tstock (but were afraid to ask)

I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: I'm pretty damn excited for w00tstock next week. It's one of those things where it simultaneously feels like years and seconds ago that Paul (of Paul and Storm) called me and said something like, "do you want to do a show together?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

"Wouldn't it be awesome if we got Adam Savage to be in the show with us?"

"Yes. Yes it would."

"Well guess what?"

"What?"

"He is."

"Nailed it."

And just like that, w00tstock was born.

The idea was to put on an evening of unique geek-friendly performances from some of your favorite geek-friendly performers, wrap it all up in a nice musical and joke-filled package, and then vanish into the night like leaves on an autumn wind. Because that wasn't cool enough, we went through our oh-so-impressive address books, and invited some truly phenomenal friends to join us as special guests, unique to each performance. I don't want to give everything (and by everything, I mean anything) away, but I've seen the setlist, and HOLY CARP.

Hey, want to see the poster for w00tstock v1.0-v1.1? 

The first w00tstock poster

I know, right? Wouldn't it be great to get those robots on a T-shirt, or get a poster for your very own? Don't worry your pretty little head about it, baby, we're way ahead of you.

Now, onto the part of the post where I go crazy with the bolding, including information about our announced special guests:

w00tstock 1.0 – Monday, October 19. Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. (SOLD OUT!)

Special Guests: sketch comedy group Kasper Hauser; singer/songwriter Molly Lewis; singer/beatboxer/game inventor/all-around creative person Kid Beyond.

wootstock v1.0.1 – Tuesday, October 20. Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. (NOT SOLD OUT!)

Special Guests: singer/songwriter Molly Lewis; singer/beatboxer/game inventor/all-around creative person Kid Beyond.

wootstock 1.1 – Wednesday, October 21. Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles. (ALSO NOT SOLD OUT!)

Special Guests: screenwriter Josh A. Cagan (Bandslam); singer/songwriter Molly Lewis; actor Jeff Lewis (”Vork” form webseries “The Guild“); several extra-special guests that we are not allowed to name, but we swear are awesome!

Night one in SF is sold out, but there are still seats available for night two. Also, there are seats still open for our show in Los Angeles, which is going to blow your frakking mind. Though I don't want to give anything away, fans of The Guild will not want to miss it. Oh, how I wish I could tell you who else will be dropping in for the Los Angeles show, but we are expressly forbidden from saying or even hinting at who they are for various reasons. However, if you close your eyes and ask yourselves, "Hey, who does Wil know who lives in Los Angeles and would fit right into a geek-friendly show?" you may be able to get some ideas.

I've been asked by fives of people if I'll have books for sale at these shows. Sadly, I wasn't able to get them in time, but if you have your own, and you bring it, I'll be happy to scrawl my name across it.

If you have any further questions that you were afraid to ask, head to the comments and do your thing. I'll answer them as they come up.

Oh, last thing: If you want w00tstock to come to your town (or at least a town that's closer to you than SF or LA) tell your friends who are in LA or SF to come see us, because if these shows do well, it will pretty much guarantee that we take this on the road next year.

PDF version of Memories of the Future Volume One available now

Before I get to the "Hey, I released Memories as a PDF because you asked for it" portion of this post, I wanted to share some early feedback on Memories of the Future Volume One:

"@wilw's MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE is my TNG DVD commentary of choice. Fun and funny and a blast to read all around. nice work, man." – Matt Fraction

"If you remember ST:TNG with equal amounts of nostalgia and facepalm, you need @wilw's new book, MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE." – Antony Johnston.

"Wil is a funny writer, and funny writers can make anything entertaining, including reviews of Star Trek episodes, especially when he was acting in them as a kid and forced to wear the worst clothes anyone outside of a max-security prisoner or someone from the 1970s forced to wear. I therefore commend your attention to this book as a Funny and also Interesting book that is otherwise about a tv series I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch. Put another way: I wouldn’t keep the tv episodes in the house, but I would keep the book. Yes? Yes." – Warren Ellis. (Who, incidentally, is responsible for the title of the book. Thanks, Uncle Warren.)

Excuse me while I squee, just a little bit…

…and now we're on to business:

In case you missed it on Twitter yesterday, I have made Memories of the Future Volume One available for DRM-free PDF download. It's just $10, and it's available from Lulu.

I had planned to wait a week, so the digital release could coincide with Monday's podcast, but so many people were asking for it – especially people who can afford $10 but not $19.87 and people who are in far off lands where packages are still delivered by steam-powered autogyro – I went ahead and released it last night.

When I did the PDF version of Sunken Treasure, I wrote a FAQ for it. The FAQs are pretty much the same, so…

Q: Can I read it on my iPhone?
A: Yeah, it's a regular old PDF file, so it will totally work on your iPhone's PDF reader.

Q:How will it look on my iPhone, though?
A: I don't own an iPhone, so I can't say from firsthand experience, but I've heard from a lot of people who have read it on their iPhones, and they were happy with the experience. Trying to read it in Stanza is wonky, though.

Q: What about other formats?
A: I'm looking into it. I know lots of people want it for [DEVICE THEY OWN] and when I have the time, I'll figure out a way to make those formats available. At the moment, though, it's not my top priority.

Q: Why not just sell it through Amazon for the Kindle?
A: I may eventually do that, but right now I don't know if I can sell enough copies to make up for the massive cut of revenue I'd have to give Amazon. I'm happy as hell to be selling in the hundreds, but if I went that way, I'd have to either increase the price significantly, or hope to sell in the thousands. I'm not sure that there are thousands of people who a) want to read this and b) also own Kindles.

Q: If I buy this, can I convert it to a different format?
A: Sure. You can use calibre to convert it to a ton of different formats. Calibre is free (speech and beer) by the way. Incidentally, if you're one of the Kindle owners, you can use calibre to convert the PDF to a Kindle format. People who bought Sunken Treasure on PDF used Calibre to convert it to Kindle format, and the images I saw from them looked fantastic.

Q: I already bought the print version. Can I get a copy of the digital version?
A: Sure you can. It's just ten bucks.

Q: I see what you did there.
A: That's not a question, but thanks.

Q: Can I give this to my friend/husband/wife/mom/girl or boy I'm trying to impress?
A: Once you have it, I can't stop you from doing whatever you want with it, and I certainly wouldn't expect you to treat it any differently than you would a paper book. However, I hope that we all understand the difference between sharing with our friends/spouses/famies and "sharing" with an entire forum, or hundreds of people simultaneously. I'm not trying to be a dick about this, and I'd rather people read it than not, but it's only $10, you know? 

Q: If I buy this, can I make my own print copy?
A: As long as you don't sell it, absolutely. However, the economics of it may work out to make it cheaper for you to just buy the print copy. Having said that, if a print shop doesn't want to print it for you, show them this: I give you permission to make one printed copy of Memories of the Future, Volume One, for personal, non-commercial use.

Q: If I make my own print copy and bring it to a con, will you sign it for me?
A: Hells yes I will. That'd be pretty cool, actually.

Given recent events, some of you reading this may be surprised to hear that I remain committed to releasing my books in non-DRM digital formats. For those who have chosen to make me some kind of proxy target for our totally justifiable outrage at the insanity of the RIAA and MPAA over the last decade, I guess that would be a surprise. But consider this, which I wrote when I released Sunken Treasure in a digital format:

[After I released the PDF,] I admit that I had a brief flash of doubt. "Did I just screw myself? Did I just sell one and end up giving away a hundred?"

"No," I reminded myself. "People who will steal from me were never going to support my work, anyway. You're doing the right thing. You're making it available to people at a really fair price, in a super portable format. And maybe people will like it and want a paper copy for themselves or to give as gifts."

I hoped that PDF sales would be solid … well, they were solid, for about ten minutes, and then they exploded. In less than an hour, the total PDFs sold exceed 1/5 of the total print copies sold. People were e-mailing positive feedback, people were Twittering positive feedback, and people were starting to talk about it on their blogs.

"Okay, this is awesome," I thought. "I definitely did the right thing."

I realize that the same people who claim I've lost all credibility due to my unhappiness at recent events may have a hard time reconciling this with my disappointment at seeing unauthorized copies of my work being distributed by douchebags who want to profit from it. I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to change their minds, which appear to be made up, and stuck in an infinite loop arguing the semantics of the word "steal."

To everyone else, though, I hope you'll enjoy the book in whatever format you choose, and once you've had a chance to read it, you'll let me know – honestly – what you think. Thank you, so very, very much for your support! I am doing everything I can to continue earning it.

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