Friday, August 11, 2000
Friday. Another day, more stuff.
Got up kind of late today after staying up until almost 2 a.m. last night with the game (okay, so we're getting old--2 a.m. is late for us). Had a nice breakfast at this little place up the street called the Copper Penny which only seems to be open for breakfast, then it was back to the Hyatt for the Secrets of Shadowrun seminar.
Mike went into more detail about stuff here than he had at the FASA seminar. I took notes, so here are some of the highlights:
- Shadowrun is outselling Battletech
- Jill Lucas and Jim Nelson left last year; Fred Hooper is the new art director
- Mike would like opinions/ideas for SR jewelry and T-shirts
- The last T-shirt license was lost because about the
time Columbine happened the licensee decided they didn't
want to do shirts with guns on them (or cigarettes) which
pretty much shoots most of the SR designs; they have a
new licensee now who wants to do shirts with guns.
- New email for contacting Mike: shadowrun@fasa.com
- Nothing upcoming in the near future for any SR computer games
- Upcoming novels for late this year/early next year: Tails You Lose by Lisa Smedman; The Burning Time by Steve Kenson; Private Agenda by Mike Mulvihill. This is all for the next couple of years. After ROC contract runs out they'll consider more options including publishing novels themselves.
- Plan is to do a product a month starting soon.
- Upcoming books: Target: Matrix, Rigger 3, Year of the Comet, Target: Awakened Lands, Threats 2, North America book, Sixthworld.org (fringe/small groups, etc.), SOTA (new toy book for everybody--possibly yearly thing), The Boo Scary Shadowrun Book of the Night (God I hope they keep that title!), The Awakened World (Earth in 2062--countries, power players, etc., history, geography, plotlines)
- Sourcebooks will have shadowtalk but not rulebooks
- Possible market for short stories on the web (this is being considered but not soon, Mike told me)
From the seminar we went back to the dealer's room and
wandered around some more. Bought a Growf pin and some
artwork from Phil Foglio, then wandered by Ruth Thompson's
art booth and saw this gorgeous archangel picture. Was going
to just buy the one, matted, but then I saw the other two
(Gabriel, Michael, and Azrael) and ended up buying all three,
framed. Ruth promised to wrap them up for us and keep them
so we could pick 'em up on Sunday.
Headed back to the room for awhile to rest and ended up taking a 2-hour nap. Today's writer's workshop was Story Structure and Plot for the first hour and Character for the second hour. Again, an interesting and informative workshop.
Okay, remember when I said a day or two ago that I'd say
more about things not being open? Well, take it from this
Silicon Valley kid, this town is weird. Here it is
seven o'clock--not a late hour, right? You'd think so, but
apparently you'd be wrong. We headed out for dinner. Figured
we'd go to the mall and grab some fast food at the food
court 'cause we had the tournament at 9 (oh, yeah--forgot
to mention that by some wonder we managed to advance to the
next round. Go figure.) So we trucked over there--and it
was closed. At seven o'clock. So was Walgreen's,
where we had planned to buy food for the tournament. We
happened to look across the street and saw that the Pill and
Puff (a local drugstore) was open, so we headed over there.
Turns out they were supposed to close at 6, but they
were staying open for the Gen Con crowd. Sigh. Bought
some junk food. Noticed that folks were going into the
mall. Headed back over there and discovered that some
of the food court vendors were staying open for Gen Con.
So here we are in a nearly-dead mall, most stuff closed
including about 80% of the food court, eating rather blah
Mexican food. Love that ambiance. Really. I'm lying.
Back to the con. This time there were only four teams at the tournament. We started out slow but I think we were doing pretty well by the end. I felt good about our chances to advance. And at least this time we had something to eat. Things were good. More tomorrow.