Summer of Ferocious Gaming & Drawing

It’s been awhile since I posted, but I wanted to put in an update before my life gets even crazier for the next three weeks. King of RPGs volume 2 is just about 25 pages from completion, with Victor bravely drawing the remaining pages in the wee hours between midnight, when he stops working his day job, and 6 am when he has to get up to go work at Crunchyroll. Our target date is to have everything drawn by the end of September, and then hopefully we will meet our ship date of June 2011 for the new book!

I’m working on some new King of RPGs-related stuff, about which I should have more to say in the Fall. Sadly, I haven’t had enough time for a steady TRPG campaign lately, but I’ve at least gotten to play some 4e one-shots and a few decent board games, such as Robo Rally, Shadows over Camelot, House on Haunted Hill, and Cosmic Encounter. If someone just writes deep board game/RPGs involving cooking, manga-editing and gardening, my life will be complete. I also owe thanks to Jake Forbes, Ed Chavez, Lanny Liu, Evan Miller, Dan Bongard, Deb Aoki, Jay, Victor and a bunch of other people for helping everything come together during the summer convention season.

See you in a few weeks, when Victor and I will unleash still stranger King of RPGs revelations upon the world! If you’re not using a point-based character generation system, may all your statistics rolls be sixes!

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Fan Art!

It’s been awhile since I posted, and in that time, I’ve received some excellent King of RPGs fan art. Here it is!

This drawing of Shesh was sent by Giovanni Medina of Black Encephalon Studios. Thanks Giovanni! You capture the nerd rage thing really well — those EEYYYYYEESSS~! He also looks a little Eminem-like…

This drawing of Theo was sent by Enna the half-elf paladin (aka Diana), who stopped by the King of RPGs booth at Comic-Con! It was awesome meeting you, and I wish I could have heard more stories about your RPG campaign! Keep struggling to become the best DM ever in the spirit of… well, you know who! Thanks for the art, and let’s play D&D together at the next Comic-Con!

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Return from Comic-Con


Better late than never: I’m back from San Diego Comic-Con, the one comic convention I try to make it to every year! This year, however, was my first year doing the con with King of RPGs, and especially sharing a booth with my manga-editing friend Jake Forbes, the creator of Return to Labyrinth. I’m generally skeptical of licensed graphic novels, but Jake accomplished something really incredible with Return to Labyrinth, fleshing out the world of the movie and providing a satisfying evolution of its characters. He had pre-release copies of volume 4 at the booth, and they got a lot of deserved attention. He was also a great boothmate, fun to talk to and consistently getting to the booth at 9:00 am while I was still getting my stuff together in Mira Mesa. Sadly, Victor couldn’t make it to the con this year, but hopefully we’ll all be tabling together sometime soon.

I went to school at the University of California at San Diego, which is one reason why I like Comic-Con; I get to see all my old gaming buddies. My friend Dan let me crash at his place and drove me past all the desolate mesas, grassy canyons, palm trees, Navy bases and burrito places with “-berto’s” in the name. While working the booth, I was honored to meet lots of awesome fans of King of RPGs and my other comics, and see old friends such as Kevin (my old Residence Advisor from college), Joel (sorry we couldn’t play in a game together!), Shaenon Garrity, Dirk Tiede, Ed Chavez, Gia Manry, Lanny Liu, Deb Aoki and others. There was so much going on, I was late to the late-night D&D game I was running at the Marriott, much to my embarrassment. But there were diehard fans still waiting to play, as well as some anywhere, anytime D&D players, so we slugged it out until 2:30 am fighting demons underneath the depths of the city of Gharazak. It was great playing with you all!

I also had the good fortune to interview Moto Hagio (details TBA on my twitter feed), and to participate in a couple of manga-related panels. The “Best & Worst of Manga 2010″ panel went well, although we didn’t really have time to argue over whether “Twilight” and “Maximum Ride” were the best or the worst manga of last year. (Also, I was the only person to vote for Kishi Torajiro’s “Devil” for the worst manga of the year, so it didn’t make it into the slideshow, but trusts me, it sucks.) The “Lost in Translation” panel drifted away from the same ol’ questions about manga translation and into more interesting territory about digital publishing and scanlations. The only regret I have about the convention is my panel on “The Future of Manga” on Friday. Due to a missing VGA adapter, the panel had to start late, and the slideshow was too long for the remaining time; it would have been better if I’d cut a lot of the background information about the present state of the manga market. Some manga newbies did come up to me after the panel and say they appreciated the general information, but I think more experienced manga fans were disappointed. Well, it’s good experience for next time — really, the “future of manga” is changing so fast that if I gave the same panel in three months it’d have to be mostly new material.

Anyway, it was a great convention, and it was awesome meeting everyone who came up to the booth! If you were there, I hope you had as good a time as I did, and if not, see you next year, when King of RPGS volume 2 is out!

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San Diego Comic-Con Schedule

There’s just over a week till San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest comic convention in America, and we’ll be there! King of RPGs will be sharing a booth with Jake Forbes, creator of the acclaimed manga Return to Labyrinth. We’ll be at booth O8 (that’s “O” as in “otyugh”) in the small press section, and we’ll have King of RPGs pendants, copies of Return to Labyrinth volume 2, minicomics and, if you ask us, the first four chapters of King of RPGs volume 2 to covertly sneak a look at. Come on by, and don’t forget to check out our adrenaline-soaked panels on Thursday and Friday!

THURSDAY
4:30-5:30: THE BEST AND WORST OF MANGA 2010— It’s been a wild year for manga, with new publishers springing up while old ones fade away, and sometimes it seems like the one constant in life is that One Piece will go on forever. Join our five panelists — Deb Aoki (manga.about.com), Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide), Christopher Butcher (comics.212.net), Tom Spurgeon (comicsreporter.com), Shaenon Garrity (Skin Horse, Narbonic, etc.) and Carlo Santos (animenewsnetwork.com) — as they talk about the best and worst manga of the last year, the manga they want to see translated, and the most anticipated upcoming releases. Room 3. (Note that the final panelists are a little different from those printed in the Comic-Con schedule; sadly, Kai-Ming Cha couldn’t make it.)

5:30-6:30: MANGA: LOST IN TRANSLATION— The manga market has taken a big slump, and when money is tight, the freelancers are the first to feel the pinch. Long-time professional freelance translators, editors, and specialists in manga, anime, and related fields gather to answer questions about the work, life as a pro, and how they’re managing in the translated-entertainment industry. Panelists William Flanagan (Kobato), Jonathan Tarbox (Fist of the North Star), Jason Thompson (King of RPGs), Shaenon Garrity (Skin Horse), Stephen Paul (Moyasimon), Mark Simmons (Mobile Suit Gundam Series) and Jake Forbes (Return to Labyrinth) will offer industry stories and Q&A. Room 3. (Note: I may or may not be able to make this panel, depending on how busy it is on the show floor that day.)

FRIDAY
6:30-7:30: THE FUTURE OF MANGA— When many people today think of “comics,” they think of webcomics and indy releases, but Japanese comics still seem like a distant world of print-based megapublishing and tattered copies of Shonen Jump. Think again. The manga world in Japan is changing due to competition from ebooks, cell phones and online comics, and the old manga magazines may not be the same for much longer. How are Japanese artists today publishing their works, and what will the manga of the future look like? A visual presentation by Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide). Room 3

9 pm-2:30 am: KING OF RPGS: THE SIEGE OF GHARAZAK—The main event– It’s another King of RPGs D&D 4th edition tournament! An army of monstrous lizard men has besieged the city of Gharazak and its hapless population. Can the city’s greatest heroes, both good and evil, save the city… or will they be torn apart by the lizard crusaders’ diabolical war machines? The game will start at 9 pm in the Game Room in the Marriott Hotel.

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My Favorite D&D Monsters

Lately, while redrawing the thumbnails for the last 30 or so pages of King of RPGs volume 2, I’ve been thinking about my favorite creatures in the fantasy genre — or more specifically, the Dungeons & Dragons/Monster Manual bestiary. Like it or not, the depictions of mythological creatures in D&D has effected how I’ve thought about them, from the idea of demons and devils and gods having hit points (so you can kill ‘em), to the idea of goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds and bugbears all being different types of distinct creatures, rather than fairly vague terms for vague fairytale/sprite/”bad thing” presences as they probably were originally intended. (With regional variations to assert that here, goblins wear red caps dyed in blood, or here, they have one big foot and hop around, and so on.)

I’m generally not that attached to the most ‘iconic’ D&D creatures (mind flayers, beholders, etc.). I’m more interested in general types of creatures that can fit into any campaign world, rather than ones which shout “Greyhawk” or “Eberron” or “Forgotten Realms.” With that in mind, here’s a few of my favorite types of beasts in fantasy, with a nod to RPGs specifically.

* Slimes and Oozes: I think I’ve loved and been chilled by slime monsters ever since I saw “The Blob” (the ’80s version is so great and disgusting!) and even earlier, when I read the Dr. Seuss book Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Green, gray or ochre, they’re great monsters in D&D, and they represent a sort of primal fear of absorption, as well as of environmental degradation — the “gray goo” apocalypse. There are few if any blob monsters in actual mythology, perhaps because ancient peoples had more concrete, immediate scary things to imagine — lions, tigers, one another, etc. But in the 20th century, as people have had to face the existence of chain reactions and bioweapons (pollution, nuclear catastrophe, chemical weapons) that could destroy the world, they’ve come into their own as horrible, horrible, compelling monsters.
* Plant Monsters: They don’t get nearly enough play in D&D, but Clark Ashton Smith wrote some great plant-monster horror-fantasy stories (The Demon of the Flower, The Maze of Maal Dweb, The Seed from the Sepulchre, etc.). There’s a long tradition of myths about man-eating plants, certainly based on exaggeration of real-life pitcher plants and venus flytraps. And of course Little Shop of Horrors, the ultimate talking-conniving-carnivorous plant story!
* Oldschool Goblins: I like them, but I’m bored by the D&D stereotype of goblins as one of a million low-level goombah monsters. I far prefer goblins as depicted by Brian Froud in Labyrinth (and, in a sense, in the novel Mythago Wood), as inscrutable, quizzical mutant muppet-spirits of insanity.
* Lizardfolk, Troglodytes, Sahuagin, Kuo-Toa: I love reptilian monsters!
* Dragons: How could you not love them? However, I prefer the more snakey, amphibious, reptilian ones to the more majestic, ornate ones commonly depicted in D&D. Things like the “wyrms” which sometimes inhabited wells and other watery places in Medieval lore. Or gigantic, titanic forces of primal darkness.
* Demons and Devils: Of course these are awesome, particularly when you can stab ‘em instead of them just being invisible and formless. Daemonology is such a chaotic and complicated mess, it’s interesting to see it refined & codified down into hit points and statistics.
* Composite Beasts: By this I mean chimeras, sphinxes, griffons and all kinds of creatures made from fusing two or more beasts together. It’s a simple way to design a monster, true, but it’s super classic, as composite beasts figure into the mythology of every human culture I can think of (Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, etc.) To create a believably mythological ‘composite,’ just fuse a few creatures which are native to the area, and you’re good to go. These types of monsters also remind me of a Woody Allen humor piece which he wrote in the form of a Medieval bestiary. The best line: “The great roe is a mythological beast which has the head of a lion and the body of a lion, but not the same lion.”

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The Dark Crystal


Out of all the fantasy movies of the ’80s, my favorites were always The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Bryce Coleman at Tokyopop, and my friend Jake Forbes, gave me the awesome opportunity to submit a pinup drawing for volume 2 of Tokyopop’s OEL manga Legends of the Dark Crystal, available in stores this August. Please check out the book and support American manga-influenced graphic novels!

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King of RPGs/Return to Labyrinth at Comic-Con!


No, it’s not a crossover. But I’ll be sharing a booth with my good friend, the great Jake Forbes, at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con (July 22-25). He’ll have the final volume of Return to Labyrinth (v.4) before it hits stores; I’ll have a bunch of King of RPGs stuff. More information coming soon!

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King of RPGs Volume 2 Sketches, Part 10


Sketches from volume 2 of King of RPGs (coming June 2011).

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King of RPGs Volume 2 Sketches, Part 9


Sketches from volume 2 of King of RPGs (coming June 2011).

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King of RPGs Volume 2 Sketches, Part 8


Sketches from volume 2 of King of RPGs (coming June 2011).

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