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 Dice
The 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. ²Do not throw-throw these. They will do real⁴ damage. Roll them, like a gamer. ³If you were to take these away from me and tell me I needed to pay $75 to replace them I would do so the moment Sandra looked away from where my wallet currently sits.
⁴If you are actually being attacked by something, these dice will fit in a conventional slingshot and inflict sufficient injury that you might be able to escape while your adversary admires your choice of projectile.
Pre-orders for Force Multiplication, Schlock Mercenary Book 12, will open on Monday, May 23rd at 8am Mountain time.
We’re quite pleased with how this book turned out. The stone circuit cover design defines the style we’ll be using for books 12 through 17, and the stuff inside the cover is at least as cool as all that. I love the bonus story that Sandra wrote, and Natalie Barahona’s art is perfect for it. I’m also pleased with the way the Force Multiplication story reads when reading it in one sitting. It’s pretty tight, if I do say so myself.
Force Multiplication is $20.00 + shipping.
Numbered sketch editions are $10 more, and only about 600 of those will be available. If you want one, you need to place your order quickly.
Monday, May 23rd, 8am Mountain time. Maybe mark your calendar?
Other Announcements
As long as you’ve got your calendar open, there are a couple more things to maybe pencil into it.
If you backed Planet Mercenary, on June 3rd you will no longer be able to change your order. Credit card processing will begin then, so now might be a good time to make sure the card (especially the expiration date) is still valid.
In a nutshell, this event is a Caribbean cruise for writers and students of writing. It’s hosted by the Writing Excuses team, and it will the second time we’ve held the event in the Caribbean.
If you’re interested, don’t delay registering because you might not have until July 1st. We’re limited to 150 attendees, and when we reach the attendance cap, registration closes.
I just posted an update to the Planet Mercenary Kickstarter page. Here’s most of it:
We plan to ship in September 2016, rather than in May as originally planned. May is now impossible, and even July would mean rushing the editing and final layout phases. We don’t want to “rush” anything. We want this book to amaze and delight you. And now we plan for that delighted amazement to land in Autumn rather than Spring.
Backers can change their shipping addresses using their Backerkit links (email schlockmercenary@gmail.com, if you’ve lost your link. We’ll re-send it to you.)
This schedule should let us have PDFs out to all backers in July.
If you will be at GenCon in August, we will have a few advance copies for people to handle, but not to take home.
(Details on the schedule slip are below. Please don’t be distracted by this picture of an Ursumari and a Human)
Art by Rodolpho Langhi
Back in December we began working with Patrick Kapera, who is serving as our editor, and as an RPG expert who does not know the Schlock Mercenary universe. When Patrick joined us he was pleased to see that we were much closer to a finished product than he expected us to be. We were not, however, as close to a finished product as we thought we were.
At that point we expected that we would be sending things to our printer in April rather than February. Shipping to the printer in April would have meant that we could ship books to backers in July, and then have books to sell at GenCon Indy in August. During the last week of February, however, we carefully evaluated the progress we’d made, and realized that April wasn’t realistic.
Sandra and I decided immediately that we would not try to have the books at GenCon¹. That would have been terribly unfair to you, our backers, who wouldn’t receive your Planet Mercenary goodies until after people who bought them at the convention.
With this decision made, we knew that the earliest we could ship books to our backers would be September of 2016. We are now driving toward sending books to the printer by mid-June, and shipping things to backers 90 days later (it takes 90 days for our printer to turn around an order of this size.)
So where are we, really, in terms of the book?
Editing is 100% done on the Mayhem Cards and Mayhem rules. This means the cards can go to print now.
Editing is 75% done on the rules text. These sections on character creation, basic rules, ship combat, charter rules, and equipment are by far the most time-consuming part of the editing, because there are words that must be used very precisely to avoid confusion.
Layout is running in parallel. As pages clear Patrick’s queue, they get final layout. Overall, the layout is only about 10% done, but every day more pages get finished.
Art is about half done. We took a long break when we realized that we needed much more layout finished before we could know what art to go get. During March, April, and May we’ll be grinding hard on the art.
The “fluff” text is about 75% done. Once Patrick reaches that stage, he and Howard will be blasting through it very quickly. Patrick’s job is to make sure that Howard tells players what they need to know while finishing the various worlds, cities, warrens, and Big-Dumb-Objects that will go into this book. In word-count terms, Howard probably has another 15,000 words to write. That’s about a week of work, once Howard knows which 15,000 words Patrick wants players to have.
It’s worth noting that one of the most popular elements of this project, the in-universe copy ofThe Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, is coming along nicely. Howard has about 3,000 words to write here, but we already have book-blanks in hand that are telling us we’ve picked the right paper, and the right aspect ratio for the pages.
There is a remote possibility that the 70MoMEM books will go to the printer early—far enough ahead of the core RPG book that we will be able to ship Maxim books separately. We’ll post an update if the print schedule and the shipping budget can be aligned to make that happen.
We’re sorry to slip the schedule, but we believe that the extra three months are necessary for us to deliver an RPG that meets the high standards you’ve come to expect from us. Thank you for your patience, and again, thank you for your generous, enthusiastic support for this project.
—The Planet Mercenary Team
Howard, Sandra, Alan, and Patrick
1: Yes, this decision costs us about $10,000 in lost sales at GenCon Indy. We budgeted this project independently of selling things at GenCon, so we’re not actually losing any money by doing this. We’ll find other things to sell in Indianapolis this August.
Confession time: the Planet Mercenary session at ConFusion was the first time I have run a Planet Mercenary game. I’m familiar with the system, and (obviously) the universe, and I’ve played the game several times as a player, but I’d never before been the Game Chief.
To the game’s credit, it worked just fine in spite of me. We identified a lot of small problems with things like layout and wording, but the mechanics of the game did exactly what they were supposed to do, and encouraged some brilliant role-play.
Granted, 90% of that came from the brilliant players: Saladin Ahmed (Ob’enn quartermaster), Delilah Dawson(Ursumari medic), Mur Lafferty(Esspererin engineer), Brian McClellan(Unioc legal counsel), Cherie Priest (Human pilot), and Brent Weeks(Fobott’r captain).
Brent managed to role-play “four-armed and in charge” with some hilarious pantomime, and Delilah got so into character as “Doctor Murderbear” that on a couple of occasions I thought she was mad at me. Brian put that big eye to use and spotted a spy, who he then bent to the party’s aid.
Cherie got down with the tactics; her roguish pilot did some mad stealth work, cutting off the enemy’s escape route. Mur’s engineer then performed some spectactular disassembly on the enemy getaway vehicle, reducing it not just to pieces, but to pieces of jewelry.
And Saladin’s bookish, persecuted, expat Ob’enn bet large, and managed to turn a nasty piece of enemy gear into a nasty piece of bookish, persecuted, expat Ob’enn gear.
I can’t thank these folks enough. They sawed a huge chunk of time out of their convention schedule to play this game we made, and they provided lots of suggestions about how to fine tune it.
