Dragon*Con, the pop-culture Marti Gras, was this weekend, and a lot of us were there in one way or another. Brian (a Guest of Honor, which means he spent a bunch of time hanging out in the green room with Cylons and Stargates) did portfolio reviews. the matt ran some game demos, and he and I had some business meetings with some… people. Oscar, Chad, Zack and a bunch of volunteers kept the booth hopping, despite the heat.

Gil Gerard lost a bunch of weight. We're not sure how.

Naturally, a lot of the costumes this year centered around Fetts (Boba and Jango), Imperial Stormtroopers, and Slave Leias, but the best thing I saw, I think, was a bunch of dudes dressed up as Tetris. Browncoats were common, John Crichtons were still around, a (veiny) Power Girl almost walked right into me, and a couple of characters from the old D&D cartoon were recreated in the flesh. "Really good," says Brian. "They look like they came right out of the cartoon."

Then he says, "There was a guy there that I thought was Ray Fawkes, but it turned out to just be somebody dressed as Doctor Who."

Overall, though, the show was so crowded, so spread out over a gazillion hotels, so scattered and tangled, that I hardly saw any of it and feel like I didn't really see any of the stand-out costumes this year.

You know what show was rad? Gen Con Indy. You know why? Our party had a fire dancer:



Before we get into the thick of it, we're talking about some material that I can't share with you directly, except to say that it involves future plans for print-on-demand projects, as first demonstrated with our POD release of Mind's Eye Theatre: Awakening.

Ken hates Aquaman. Hates. Him.

We have this Aquaman figure floating (heh) around the office, homeless since the move, who gets quietly transferred from office to office, without warning. For a while, he lurked on Brian's bookshelf (and watched him sleep). After that, he sat at Oscar's desk while that guy was in Seattle, at PAX. You know, like a temp.

This morning, after the big in-the-office cookout-party we had Friday night, Ken found Aquaman waiting for him at his desk. Then he sent out this email:

"In the wake of the party, I seem to have your Aquaman DOLL in my office. Black Manta doesn’t have shit on me. Aquaman might be able to talk to the fishes, but I can make him sleep with the fishes. You better come get him before it’s too late."

Whoops. John's started already. He's got Dreams of the First Age still cooking. The Man We Call Shomshaq is still on The Scroll of Kings Yu-Shan: Compass of Celestial Directions, Vol. III is suffering drag at the hands of late (and apparently suddenly, seriously sickly) writers, but we think we can still get it back on schedule.

Bax is trying to get Scion and Exalted SAS adventures on track.

Scion: God will be out of editing next week.

Brian is scrambling artists (like eggs or fighter pilots, I don't know) to get comic pages ready for upcoming Exalted books. He's got a big world map coming for Exalted's big boxed set, Dreams of the First Age. Ed Bourelle is doing that.

Ethan is doing serious development on a book. I'm not sure I can tell you which. He's also moving ahead on Lords of Summer for Changeling: The Lost and the earliest stages of Silver Ladder for Mage: The Awakening.

People are talking about our ongoing email woes. I'm staring the pastrami sandwich on a spinach bagel that I'll be eating the hell out of after this meeting, when my hands aren't married to this keyboard.

Changeling: The Lost is getting reprinted already, by the way. We're looking at what errata to include in the second printing, so if you've got questions, put them up on our forums as soon as possible. The errata is being compiled even as I type this.

Aileen is trying to get the Adamantine Arrow text files from the matt, who just got them back from editing, but some of that will depend on whether or not our email problems get solved. If it comes back, she'll lay it out.

Chaney really wants a taco machine, and he's willing to do terrible things to people's mothers to get one. Or he may sell a baby. It's unclear.

That guy's crazy.

the matt is getting the Requiem for Rome cover ready for its final upload, complete with all the details for embossing, gloss, varnish, etc. It is one hell of a complex cover to print (and design!). Scion: God art is coming in. ISBNs for future books are being arranged.

Chaney has the final text of World of Darkness: Changing Breeds in from editing, and is soon to lay that book out. He's also got art coming in for that book and MwaHaHa!, the board game of mad-scientists and minions.

Craig has the final (?) proof of Requiem for Rome going up today. He and I just did a new character sheet on that, etc. You can see a couple of the portraits from that book floating around on this page somewhere. I love them, but they're just a small part of the book — the aperitif before the orgy, as it were. But while I was going through, straightening out all the "p. XX" stuff (never before have I had so many XXs come up in a search, thanks to those fucking Roman numerals), these portraits caught my eye. So there they are.

Jess is doing graphical research and sketches for Exalted, and is getting the Quarterly ready for proofing. She's also got some business-side layout stuff (like a press kit) in the works.

Will is me. I'm also lining up future books and new authors, trying to build up a nice long release schedule for Storytelling Adventure System products. Plus I've been doing some final proofing on Requiem for Rome.

I'm also stress-testing the upcoming Hero Lab character-creation and management software for the World of Darkness and Vampire this week. (So far, I like it a lot.)

Merry (not technically a part of IPDD anymore, now that she actually works with actual business parts of the company) is helping us manage the office-wide stress-test.

Petur's friends broke one of our cafeteria tables this weekend while trying out sweet jumps. Which, by default, renders that jump not so sweet. Petur also reports that hits to the EVE CCG site have doubled in the last month, which we think is a result of the popularity surge the game is experiencing following the release of the new expansion, The Exiled.

He and Ken are also early in the design stages of a secret, future project… a new Exalted board game.

Ken is also preparing a preliminary schedule for the board games to follow these, but it's too soon for me to reveal that stuff to you.

Aaron is getting our in-house warehouse for merchandise up and organized, with the help of Chad. He's also continuing to work with printers on our future print schedule, and merchandisers on our future manufacturing needs.

We're continuing our tradition of summoning pitches for 2009 products from everyone in the whole company. As much as we in IPDD are the day-to-day operations center for the creative end of the game studio, we're a company full of creative folks, from Atlanta, to Reykjavik, to Shanghai. So, this year, instead of soliciting ideas for new products, merchandise, and other projects from 22 in-house employees, we're calling for proposals from more than 200 creative bastards.

A good idea is a good idea, and everyone here gets their shot. Some people submit one or two ideas, other submit a dozen. And a lot of our new cohorts from Iceland have been cradling these ideas for years, waiting for this opportunity. The competition's going to be stiff this year.

Poor Rich, though, has to go through all those proposals, which means breaking a few hearts. Be gentle, Rich.

Rich is also coordinating covers for upcoming books, so that we can have them in time to get them into catalogs, advertisements, that sort of things. This is a tricky thing, and some years we can't get all the covers in time (we'd need them like 6 months early), so every year Rich has to fight this battle.

Some years you get the bear. Some years the bear gets you.

That's all.

Current Location: White Wolf Slaughterhouse
Current Music: Bloc Party, "The Prayer"