On Tuesday, September 19th, we will launch a Kickstarter for the printing of Random Access Memorabilia, Schlock Mercenary Book 13.
The book itself is complete, the bonus story is currently being illustrated, and our layout architect says the cover blueprint is almost ready for elements that have color in them.
Watch this space for links early next week!
You can find me at Booth #1549 with Sandra Tayler, Jim Zub, and Tracy Hickman.
We’ve got stacks of Planet Mercenary materials*, including the core book, the Game Chief’s screen, the Mayhem Deck, sets of RiPP tokens and dice, and Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries.
We’ll also have the Game Chief’s Handbrain game screen*, a high-quality ABS plastic product that you simply must come and see.
Sounds enticing, yes? Here’s my panel schedule:
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
(*Note: If you’re a Planet Mercenary backer and/or a Handbrain backer, your merchandise is shipping now, so we can’t do convention pickups for you.)
On Monday, June 12th of the year 2000 the very first Schlock Mercenary strip appeared on the web.
Yesterday, Monday, June 12th of the year 2017 marked the seventeenth anniversary of that start date—seventeen years of uninterrupted¹ daily² updates here at schlockmercenary.com.
That I am now in my eighteenth year of doing this stands as evidence of ongoing good fortune. I’ve enjoyed seventeen full years without any sort of debilitating injury or crisis preventing me from working for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I’ve gotten sick and been injured, of course, but I keep getting better with sufficient time to spare.
At some point this streak will end. That point lies in the mists of a hopefully-distant future, and is not today.
Today I am making comics.
(Just as soon as I finish this blog post.)
If you would like to celebrate the beginning of Schlock Mercenary’s eighteenth year, you might consider sharing the strip with a friend. But whatever you do, don’t send them back to the very beginning. That would be cruel. Start here, with Book 12. Which, by serendipitous convenience³, is the most recent of the Schlock Mercenary stories to appear in print.
How long will Schlock Mercenary continue to run? The over-arching story is in its final act, and will draw to a close soon, probably in Book 19. But on the day following that big finish there will be another update, and another one the day after that. Those will launch a new story, featuring some characters you know, and a universe you think you know, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is a satisfactory conclusion coming up, and you can enjoy it secure in the knowledge that it won’t end the delivery of daily strips here at schlockmercenary.com.
¹ There have been service interruptions, of course. Like that time the data center’s UPS failed, and a fire destroyed part of the facility. But Schlock Mercenary has updated every day, and with a bit of back-up hosting has never been unavailable for more than a few hours at a time.
² That’s 6,210 strips. Yes, the image files are backed up in more than one place.
³ A friend who also happens to be flush with the good fortune of a spot of discretionary income, might purchase that book as a gift. Shared links are lovely, but a thing made out of colorful paper is a thing that will be remembered.
Two years ago I had this idea for what I really wanted in an RPG screen. We spent a chunk of R&D budget determining whether it was a thing that we could actually make, and it turns out we can. So we are!
The project is 97% funded as of this writing. The molds have been tooled, and the manufacturer is waiting on us. When our Kickstarter closes we will tell them how many to make. This is going to fulfill very quickly¹.
We’ll be including PDF templates for the half-sheets, to help you align whatever information you want on the drop-ins you print, and we’ll be including some Planet Mercenary drop-ins as well. Oh, and we’ll include an adventure, “Size Might Matter,” which will debut at Gen-Con.
If this is a thing you want, you should act soon. The Kickstarter only runs for 17 more days, because our manufacturer really does need to get started.
¹ The Planet Mercenary Kickstarter is going to be fulfilled at around the same time as this one, because it’s off to the printer now. By the end of July we’ll have gotten everybody their physical products for all this stuff.