Category Archives: Blog

TFOB

Hey everybody,

I’ll be at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend. It’s a free event full of authors from many genres, plus there are vendors selling sausages and other things that aren’t sausages but we won’t talk about those.

What’s cool about the festival is that they try to make it easy for you to meet the authors you’d like to see. After every panel there’s a signing in an autograph area nearby and you can snag a book there if you want or bring your own. I’ll also have a separate signing from 4-5 on Saturday at the Poisoned Pen booth, and they will have all my stuff there if you’d like to pick some up, or again, bring the books you already have. I’m happy to see you either way—just come see me! Here’s my schedule:

Saturday, 1-2 PM: Author Banter with Elizabeth Bear, Jonathan Maberry, Weston Ochse, Sam Sykes. Integrated Learning Center room 150. Autograph thingie right afterward.
Saturday, 4 PM: Signing and assorted shenanigans at The Poisoned Pen booth #270. Come say hi!
Sunday, 11:30-12:30 AM: Living a Double Life: Making Time to Write with some other spiffy authors.  Integrated Learning Center room 140. Autograph thingie right afterward.

If you’d like to catch me elsewhere this year, I have all the events listed on my Events and Appearances page. It’s always spiffy to meet my readers. Hope you can swing by one of them!

Tour dates for Shattered

Shattered-180wWoohoo! It’s all solid now so I’m sharing!

Before I list the dates, please understand that I have limited time and resources and cannot fly everywhere. I can just sorta-kinda get to your region and hope like heck you can maybe arrange to visit since I’m giving you plenty of notice. (Maybe draw a sausage or a poodle on your calendar?) Sorry that I can’t add any more stops—travel is turbo expensive and this is all the budget can handle.

If you can’t possibly make any of these dates or catch me at any of my other appearances this year (I’ll be in Chicago, New Orleans, San Diego, and Atlanta, for example) you can still get a signed copy of SHATTERED two different ways: You can order one from The Poisoned Pen or you can order a signed copy through Barnes & Noble while supplies last. Either place will happily ship it to you.

Of note (to me, anyway): This will be my first time visiting Minneapolis, Boston, and Toronto as an author! I’ve been meaning to visit the midwest for some time now and I am glad that I’ll be able to swing by Chicago and Minneapolis this year to say howdy. Haven’t been to Boston since the mid-nineties, and Toronto will be an entirely new thing. (I am so going to catch a Blue Jays game. Maybe Geddy Lee will be there and I can die from the reflected awesome.)

June 17-29: SHATTERED tour!
June 17, 6:30:
 The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ
June 18, 7:00: Murder By the Book in Houston, TX.
June 19, 7:00: Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY.
June 20, 7:00: Barnes & Noble at HarMar Mall, Roseville (near Minneapolis) MN.
June 21, 6:00: University Bookstore in Seattle, WA.
June 22, 4:00: Powell’s Books in Beaverton (near Portland), OR.
June 23, 7:00: Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge (near Boston), MA.
June 24, 6:30 or 7, will finalize soon: Bakka Phoenix in Toronto, Ontario, Canada!
I’m spending a few days in Toronto and then squeezing in one last stop…in Colorado!
June 29, 3:00: Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch (a bit south of Denver), CO.

Very much looking forward to seeing you all and taking silly selfies. Please bring plenty o’ friends!

The Chapel Perilous

I have something beautiful to show you that is seriously a geekout of the highest order.

Background first: I’ve been a fanboy of T.S. Eliot’s for many years—you may have caught some of my allusions to his works in the series—and I used to teach “The Wasteland” to juniors and break down all the hidden stuff in there for them. The kids were always blown away; they never realized that poetry could do that, that you could pack so much meaning into a single work, especially since they were accustomed to lyrics with such depth as “It’s getting hot in here/so take off all your clothes”. While preparing myself to teach that poem, I read a lot of the source material Eliot used, including From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston and other works that spoke of the quest for the Holy Grail. The old stories about the Grail quest are full of seriously crazy shit, ranging from a mild WTF to Dear Gods Below I’m Afraid To Go To Sleep Now. The bit that always made me shiver and scream a little inside was whenever the grail knight got to the Chapel Perilous.

Monty Python made fun of it a bit in their movie—remember Lancelot saving Galahad from the Castle Anthrax?

Lancelot: We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril.
Galahad: I don’t think I was.
Lancelot: Yes you were. You were in terrible peril.
Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and face the peril.
Lancelot: No. It’s too perilous.

There are many versions of the old Grail legends, but the oldest we have—the closest to the “original” tales,  though even they were written down hundreds of years after the actual events—feature Gawain. Lancelot, Galahad, and all those other dudes showed up in later iterations of the tale, and those later tales got steadily more Christianized. The earliest Grail knights were Gawain and Percival.

When Shawn Speakman invited me to contribute to the Unfettered anthology, I saw my chance to tell a story of Atticus’s past rooted in Grail legend and marry it to my series mythology. The story is basically one big geekout for me and, as it happens, something of an origin story for Atticus. We learned in Hounded how he came to possess Fragarach, and we learned in Two Ravens and One Crow how he learned the recipe for Immortali-Tea, but what makes him the Iron Druid is his cold iron amulet and the silver charms on his necklace. The ideas for those come to him in “The Chapel Perilous,” as well as his inspiration to teach language to animals (such as Oberon). Now that Shawn has returned US rights to the story to me, I can let y’all snag it separately for cheap.

“The Chapel Perilous” is now available semi-worldwide through Amazon and B&N, and will be available through iBooks and Kobo as I can manage. I say semi-worldwide because it is not available separately in the UK & Commonwealth countries, nor Australia & New Zealand. That is because Unfettered, which contains “The Chapel Perilous” among many other spiffy stories, will be published by Orbit UK in those countries in February, and Orbit understandably would rather not have the competition. I only have the rights to publish on my own in the US and markets where English is not the primary language. Fret not, UK and Australian peeps: Unfettered is one hell of an anthology and well worth it.

To sell it online I needed a “cover” for it, so I approached Galen Dara, Hugo-award winning artist, to see if she’d like to take a shot at bringing the story alive. And oh my, did she come through! I described Atticus and Apple Jack coming upon the Chapel Perilous in the rain and she painted something haunting and beautiful and perfect. I love it so much. Here it is:

The Chapel_cover art FINAL ART
The Chapel Perilous © 2014 by Galen Dara

Galen will sell you a print of that if you like—just contact her online. I have a print and it is My Precious. And I stress that it’s not just because that’s Atticus in sixth-century armor; this painting represents anybody’s quest, because a quest can often be a lonely thing in the rain, you know, and I love that we have both death and salvation waiting for the questing knight, a gloomy and forbidding forest but with paths through it that lead to the light. I see doom and hope and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.

Anyway. My geekout is that I’ve contributed in a wee way to the Grail legends that I love so very much and that Galen has so perfectly given a visual representation to a vital part of those legends. Hope you enjoy the words and Galen’s painting. Here’s the final cover, and again, the story’s available for ninety-nine cents or its equivalent in those places that aren’t being served by Orbit UK:

The Chapel_cover art FINAL COVER DESIGN

 

HANDY LINKY-POOS:
The Chapel Perilous for Kindle
The Chapel Perilous for Nook 

Mugshot Contest Winners

Holy cow. 268 entries and arguably the best mugshots ever taken! I want to thank you all for your creativity and time. I hope you had fun, which was honestly the point! The full gallery is quite a hoot, and here’s a link if you haven’t seen it. It was so difficult to pick only five winners—so difficult that I couldn’t actually do it; I picked six, and we’ll still have five random winners on top of that!

IF YOU ARE A WINNER BELOW, PLEASE EMAIL ME ONCE MORE WITH YOUR NAME AND MAILING ADDRESS SO I CAN SEND YOU YOUR GOODIES.

My picked winners, in no particular order:

Mugshot50Jennifer

This one’s by Jennifer. Love the Tullamore Dew and drinking horn and a lovely axe and what looks like TREASURE PILLAGED FROM THE ROMANS and a nice furry hat.

Next up:

Mugshot73Terry

Congrats to Terry! Dude. I want action figures to perform this action for me every morning. Robot minions who make me my coffee. YEAH.

Mugshot114Cori

From Cori, who lives somewhere cold: This is beautiful AND random. WIN.

Mugshot165Kathleen

Kathleen knows how to vacation. She went to Mexico on a tequila tour in search of small craft-brewed tequilas. Kathleen also knows how to set up a photo. Holy crap. Hot chocolate with marshmallows and a shot of tequila? NOM NOM NOM

Mugshot229Diana

Diana gave us this beautiful Irish Wolfhound shot. This is Liam, a rescue hound like Oberon and Orlaith. What a sweetie!

Mugshot260Julie

Another doggie pic that I couldn’t resist from Julie. Look at that expression! I’m told the patient pup got some bacon. :)

Okay, random winners! What I did was type in 268 to Random.org and let it randomize the numbers. When you send me your photos I organize them according to number in order received, and then I just use the first five numbers that Random.org gives me. If it gives me the number of a photo that already won, I move down to the next one. First five numbers were 121, 189, 45, 230, and 207, which correspond to the pics below. So if you see your pic here, you’re a random winner and please email me your shipping info!

SAMSUNG
By Quintin, photo 121

 

By Janine, photo 189
By Janine, photo 189
By Jen, photo 45
By Sylvia, photo 230
By Sylvia, photo 230

 

By Jessica, photo 207
By Jessica, photo 207

 

Phoenix Comicon will be huuuuuge

If you’re a sci-fi & fantasy reader, Phoenix Comicon is rapidly becoming THE event to attend. I mean, LOOKIT THE AUTHORS.

Patrick Rothfuss!
Charlaine Harris!
James S.A. Corey! (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)
Delilah S. Dawson!
Sam Sykes!
Chuck Wendig!
Myke Cole!
Brian McClellan!
Stephen Blackmoore!
Jaye Fucking Wells, holy shit!
Jason Hough!
That Kevin Hearne guy!

These are just the ones I already know about based on Twitter conversations and such. There will be even moaaar, never fear! I wanted to give you all a heads-up now because 1) YOU SHOULD COME; 2) Full four-day memberships are only $60 until April; 3) It’s seriously a good con, with great TV/Film and comics presence in addition to the author conclave; it’s not too big like SDCC but it’s juuust right to get maximum talent without maximum crowding; and 4) Tacos and tequila!

Mugshot Contest!

Whilst going through my closet and garage as a sort of New Year’s ritual—out with the old, you know—I ran into some pretty cool stuff. You know, this n’ that. And all of that stuff added up to the point I figured I should give it away in neato little grab bags o’ swag. I actually have real bags you can grab! Should you win, you’ll get a random sampling of the goodies listed below:

*Four Third Eye Books & Herbs T-shirts, 2 large and 2 small. These are extremely rare—I only made 20 for my friends and my editors.
*Signed copies of HUNTED.
*A few bonus signed copies of THE DARWIN ELEVATOR by Jason Hough.
*Audiobooks on CD of HEXED. Couldn’t believe I still had any of those.
*Extra author copies of various volumes of IDC from England and Australia, which are slightly different from the US versions, almost impossible to get hold of in the US, and pretty cool. I’d sign ’em for you.
*Some neato books that I enjoyed reading and am ready to share with others. I might send you one and write a brief review on the title page. So it wouldn’t be signed by the author but it would be signed by this author.
*Signed Oberon bookmarks.
*Atticus n’ Oberon pint glasses!
*You will definitely score Cheetos or something. I want my grab bags to be all that AND A BAG OF CHIPS.

THE MUGSHOT CONTEST RULES

*Anyone can enter but I can only ship grab bags to US residents. If you’re overseas and you win, I’ll send you a signed bookmark and a personal note, but no big parcels, sorry.
*Deadline for entries is Sunday, January 19. I’ll post entries as they come in on my Facebook author page for everyone to admire.
*You are required to have fun making your entry. No point to it otherwise.
*Basically you’re taking a picture and sending it to me as a jpeg using kevin (at thingie) kevinhearne.com. If it’s not a jpeg or not sent to that address, it won’t be entered. That picture must be a mugshot…of a mug. The coolest freakin’ mug you can find. And then you need to have something completely weird next to your mug. A beaver. An action figure. A Wankel rotary engine. I don’t care—it just needs to be visually arresting. Artistic. But I should probably stress there shouldn’t be any naked bits. Let’s make this a fun still life. Mugs should have coffee or tea or maybe Irish Coffee in them…something tasty.
*Photoshop filters and such are okay. I’ve done a couple example shots for you. I’m sure you’ll do much better, but this is the kind of thing we’re talking about…

IMG_1427

In this one I have Jake, Finn, and Marcelline from Adventure Time ready to go on an adventure with me, next to a mug designed by Chuck Wendig, which exhorts me to ART HARDER. You can kinda see the steam coming up from the coffee, which I think is rad. And the grain of the table gives it some action lines even though they’re just chillin’ there. HOLY HAMSTER CHEESE, THAT WAS FUN! LET’S DO ANOTHER ONE!

IMG_1428

Here we have Ganesha, a bottle of Tabasco Reserve, and a lovely floral arrangement next to my coffee. This is my favorite SAXON CODPIECE mug, by the way. I applied a grungy filter to it and now it’s like WHOA THIS IS EDGY SOMEHOW.

Who wins?
I’ll probably pick 3-5 winners because I think they’re gorgeous. Gorgeousness most likely derives from excellent composition, depth of focus, a sense of doge-like “very wow, much awesome,” and spiffy mugs. Then I’ll choose 5-7 more (adding up to 10 total winners) at random, so that everybody who enters has a chance to win regardless of their photography skills. US winners will get a grab bag o’ swag full of random bookish goodies, and international winners will get the aforementioned signed bookmark and note.

Have fun! Get your favorite mug and make some art!

Lookin’ ahead

 

Behold! ‘Tis a brave new turning of the calendar, when we all realize we ate too much and allow gyms to sucker us into membership! And we indulge in other goal-setting activities, of course. So here we go:

In ye olde New Year, I shall read: 

CORMORANT by Chuck Wendig and probably something by James S.A. Corey. I also have a giant TBR pile and feel guilty looking ahead at new releases when the ones I have are already giving me lonely puppy dog eyes. I keep telling myself that maybe I should focus on the TBR pile and avoid the shiny, but I have found this particular flow chart thanks to following author Myke Cole on Twitter, which describes my thought process astoundingly well:

book-flow-chart

On my laptop with faded keys I shall write:

A Star Wars novel (in progress), an epic fantasy (outlined), and hopefully get a start on book 8 of IDC and a short story too that might stretch into a novella.

Into the wilds of untamed bookstores and electronic commerce I shall release: 

shatteredAn IDC short story called “The Chapel Perilous” sometime before the first buds of spring. It’s already appeared in the anthology UNFETTERED, but it’ll be available to snag separately on your e-reading device thingie for cheap. I’ll release it worldwide too. More details on that when I have it, so stay tuned.

Book 7 of IDC, SHATTERED, in hardcover, ebook, and audio, on June 17! Paper and ebooks are available for pre-order now wherever you buy your books, and the audio should be up for pre-order sometime in May. Many thanks for pre-ordering if you can spare the time for a mouse click or two; it helps a lot and you don’t get charged for the book until the date rolls around. As always, if you’d like a signed copy (and personalized if you want), you can order one from The Poisoned Pen, an indie store near me that ships anywhere on the globe. Barnes and Noble will also have 500 signed editions, so you might be able to snag one of those if you want to put in an order with them. SHATTERED will be available in the UK/Commonwealth on June 19—audio too.

If I can get another short story finished, that will appear after SHATTERED. Kind of counting on it, actually; it’ll be a necessary story that picks up right after the events of book 7 and lead us into the goodies of book 8. So maybe Octoberish or Novemberish for that. And if I don’t take this opportunity to say that I’ll also release the kraken sometime this year, my daughter will be very disappointed.

I shall travel to and say howdy in the following places:

Tucson, AZ in March for the Tucson Festival of Books; Chicago for C2E2 in April; New Orleans for RT Booklovers Convention in May; Phoenix Comicon in June; then a brief tour for SHATTERED that is still being worked out, but confirmed dates are Scottsdale on June 17 and Houston on June 18; my first visit to Canada (Toronto) is likely but not confirmed for June 24; San Diego Comic Con in July; and Dragon*Con in Atlanta in late August. Cannot even begin to work on IDC 8 until after that visit to Toronto; I have vital research to conduct there. :)

Also: I shall drink coffee in the mornings, play Firefly (both the board game and online when it’s out), pet my doggies, and move out of Arizona to a state with more trees for me to hug and a college where my brilliant wife can get her Ph.D. Maybe I’ll take some graduate lit courses for giggles and brain food.

Hope the year ahead for you is full of awesome books and many blessings!

Signed foreign editions for Worldbuilders

I’m stupidly fortunate to live as I do, with any food I want a block or two away and the means to pay for it in my pocket. That kind of thing gets taken for granted sometimes.

There’s a charity called Heifer International that provides families in impoverished places with things like chickens or goats or other livestock that will give them a sustainable source of food and perhaps provide some income as well. And Worldbuilders, the charity begun by fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss, raises money to send to Heifer International by providing donors the chance to win fabulous rare and signed editions of spiffy books. I’ve donated some books and sent them some money in the past, and this year is no different. This year I sent them a signed set of the UK edition of the Iron Druid Chronicles. The UK edition is trade paperback, so it’s bigger and on fancier paper and you can pet it if you like. It’s my belief that the signed set I sent them is the only one in existence. (If anybody else has managed to collect a signed set of UK copies, let me know!) Anyway, every $10 you donate to Worldbuilders gets you a chance to win that signed set, as well as a buttload of other donations sent in by authors and publishers. It’s pretty rad; I hope you’ll donate and I hope you win something awesome.

Purrr. You can win a full signed set of these UK editions—and this is not a full set. I sent Worldbuilders my last copies of HEXED and TRAPPED.
Purrr. You can win a full signed set of these UK editions—and this is not a full set. I sent Worldbuilders my last copies of HEXED and TRAPPED.

I was trying to think of what else I could do (besides send ’em money, which I did) because I don’t have any more full sets of my US or UK books to send as prizes. What I do have, however, is several foreign editions that maybe someone would like. If I sold those, then I could send more money to Worldbuilders and help more families eat.

So I’ve created an eBay account under the super-original seller name of kevinhearne, which I will use to sell some signed foreign editions of my books, all proceeds going to Worldbuilders.

Usually when you get your book translated the contract states that you’ll be sent 3-10 author copies. Sometimes the foreign publishers are really good about sending them, sometimes they’re not. Anyway, I always keep one of them because it’s fun—the Japanese covers just make me giddy—but it’s not like I can read them. And they’d just be collecting dust if I didn’t get rid of them somehow. So here we go: The editions below all start at $20. I hope they’ll sell for more than that because YAY MORE FOOD FOR HUNGRY PEOPLE but I also want to make sure they sell. If you would like ’em, please bid, or if you know someone who might like ’em, please let them know they’re out there, will you? I will continue to add more editions/copies once I see if these first eight go anywhere or as I get them in. (I am waiting for copies from Turkey, for example, and others.)

Signed copy of HOUNDED, German translation

Signed copy of HOUNDED, Japanese translation

Signed copy of HOUNDED, Spanish translation

Signed copy of HEXED, Japanese translation

Signed copy of HEXED, Spanish translation

Signed copy of HEXED, Polish translation

Signed copy of TRICKED, Polish translation

Signed copy of TRAPPED, Polish translation

Thanks very much.

Oberon’s Holiday Special

OberonOberon wanted to share some holiday greetings with you all, so Atticus, Luke Daniels and I made it happen—because how can you say no to that face?

If you click RIGHT HERE you’ll be taken to my Soundcloud page where you can stream Oberon’s message for free—it’s seven minutes and fourteen seconds of good times with a glorious singalong activity! Fun for the whole family!

You’ll also see a button there that says “Share” that will allow you to spread the joy around to your friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google + and Pinterest.

Luke and I hope you enjoy it and we want to thank you all for reading or listening to the Iron Druid Chronicles, which is really about this hound and his human. The next book, if you haven’t heard yet, is due out June 17. It’ll be available on audio too the same day.

May your sausage always be fat and juicy.

Firefly: The Game is SHINY!

IMG_1281So there I was, browsing through a Barnes & Noble, and the most gorram shiny thing I’ve ever seen in the ‘Verse slapped me and said hello: The Firefly board game/roleplaying hootenanny! I bought it and said to myself I WILL CALL MY FRIENDS AND LURE THEM TO MY LAIR WITH PIZZA AND BEER AND THEN FORCE THEM TO HAVE TOO MUCH DAMN FUN. I am diabolical that way.

Okay, first thing you should know up front: The box says playtime is two hours. HA! No. Maybe on a second or third try once you get used to it, but not with four people all trying to grasp the rules as they go. There’s a learning curve here, but it’s a pleasant one. Also, we were constantly distracted by the Arizona Cardinals kicking the shit out of the Indianapolis Colts. (The Cardinals haven’t been that dominant since the days of Kurt Warner, so it was a different kind of shiny for long-suffering fans like us.) My advice is to allow plenty of time for the first play-through. You should probably stock up on provisions like Guinness and cider for Snakebites and practice your Mandarin swearing, and then have fun!

Players get to captain one of four Firefly-class ships (including Serenity) and then you build your crew by burning through the ‘Verse and hiring them on at one of five different locations: Persephone, Regina, Silverhold, Osiris, and the Space Bazaar at Red Sun. As you build your crew you can also take on jobs from five different contacts: Patience, Badger, Amnon Duul, Harken (the Alliance douche) and Niska. Some jobs are legal transports and are great to begin with, but they pay less, and as you take on more crew and have to give them a cut of every job, you’ll want to move on to the jobs that are a bit more dodgy but pay much better. Pretty much anything by Niska is going to pay well, but it’s almost always illegal and often immoral and quite dangerous. FUN, in other words, for people who like to take risks.

Tip: You’ll need a pretty decent-sized playing area because the board is big and you have lots of cards and goodies to scoot around. Here’s what the initial setup looks like:

IMG_1282

Yeah, it’s a lot. But it’s a fun lot. You get to worry about fuel and parts and gear and stashes for your contraband and fugitives and YAY IT HAS EVERYTHING FROM THE SHOW. See the player spot on the lower left? That’s me. I got the Yun Qi and I have the dinosaur on my dashboard, indicating I’m the active player.  Travis the Barbarian got to play Serenity to my right, and across from us are the ships of Pilot John and Mathemancer Alan. On the left of the board you see cards representing the ports where you can buy crew, supplies and gear, and on the right you have contacts and the bank, as well as these things called MISBEHAVE cards. More on those soon.

To build a crew, you need to find a range of skills if you want to complete the game goals and win. The broad skills you need are fightin’, mechanics, and negotiation. If you have all fighters, you’ll have a tough time dealing with mechanical troubles like ship breakdowns. Without negotiation skills, some jobs pay half as well—but with them, they could potentially pay twice as well. My crew was strong on mechanics and negotiation—I got Kaylee and Inara! Mechanics are the blue wrench icon, Negotiation is represented by the Chinese kanji in the green bubble, and Fighting is the yellow pistol on a red square:

IMG_1287

Your leader, of course, will have skills of his/her own. You get to choose your leader (yes, Malcolm is available) and each one comes with certain benefits. I picked Monty, Smuggler Extraordinaire. Every time I completed a smuggling job I got an extra $500. This next picture shows Monty and my Firefly ship board, including my cargo hold, stash, and upgrades. You also see my drive core and ship upgrade slots, and to the left you see my current active job, a DUNG RUN! I was amused by that. Nothing like traveling across the ‘Verse for a giant pile of shit and getting paid $1500 for it.

IMG_1285

SO FUN. You’ll notice that Monty has two Fightin’ skill points, and Jesse, my pilot from the previous picture, had one. The good news is that you can upgrade your weak spots with gear. I bought a FRICKIN’ LASER at Silverhold and gave it to Jesse, who had the requisite mechanics skill to wield it, and that gave me three extra Fightin’ points:

IMG_1286

You need those skills to pass tests that require them. You roll a single dice and add the number of skill points to your roll to see if you passed. Also, in terms of occupations, you simply must have a pilot and a mechanic, or else when you run into the Reavers (and you WILL run into them at some point) some of your crew is gonna git et. Lots of high-paying jobs and often the game-winning goals require you to “Misbehave” and pass several skill tests. If you don’t pass them, the consequences vary. Sometimes you simply botch the attempt and you can try again next turn. Sometimes a Warrant is issued for your arrest by the Alliance. Sometimes you get crew members killed! The Misbehave deck is a whole lot of tension, basically. Here’s Pilot John and Mathemancer Alan checking to see if John passes one of FOUR Misbehavin’ tests he needs to complete a $6000 job for Niska:

IMG_1288

Here’s a hot tip: Pray you can recruit River Tam to your crew, because there are a couple of cards in the Misbehave deck you cannot get past without her. We learned this the hard way because no one in our game drew her, and since we were all misbehaving quite a bit we kept running into those cards, which in one case requires you to reshuffle the deck and maybe run into them again. Check out this one, a Reaver Raid:

IMG_1289

See that? If you have a TRANSPORT card, you can get away with one dead crew member and botch the attempt of the job/goal you’re trying to complete. If you have a high mechanics skill, you can roll and somehow score $1000 but the attempt is STILL botched, and you might wind up getting your entire crew killed. Only River gets you past it. Without River Tam, you botch your attempt no matter what and maybe lose crew. Some situations are just insurmountable without her—she’s the ace in the hole. That’s not to say you can’t win without her—far from it!

So anyway, I was kicking a bit of ass for awhile. There are six different story cards you can play through and you have to complete the goals on your story card to win the game. We were playing The King of All Londinium story. I’d completed the first two goals and was on my way to complete the third one when Travis the Barbarian got the opportunity to sic the Reavers on me and he took it. I got one shot at completing the third goal and ran into that Misbehave card that required me to have River Tam. Then I had to evade the Reavers and wait another two turns before I could get back there and try again. I did try again—and failed again due to a different insurmountable problem—I really didn’t have everything I needed to pass some of those tests. Had to evade the Reavers once more and wait. While I was evading and waiting, Mathemancer Alan caught up, snuck in past the Reavers, and won the game before I could.

There are mechanics in the game that allow you to sic both the Alliance and Reavers on people and I think that’s awesome. In the opening of the game everybody’s doing their own individual jobs and accumulating skills, gear and cash to complete jobs. Once you start on working the goals, however, it’s freakin’ cutthroat and hilarious.

Firefly: The Game is shiny indeed. All the character cards are from the show and you’ll recognize gear like Jayne’s favorite gun, Vera, and a particularly funny bit is that you can hire either Saffron, Bridget, or Yolanda on your crew, but only one can be in play at a time. If you hire Saffron, for example, and then someone else hires Yolanda afterward, you have to remove Saffron from the game.

I’m skipping plenty of details here, of course, but in general we all found this to be a very good time. You get to decide what kind of jobs you want to take on, how illegal and immoral you want to be (if at all), and enjoy geeking out in the ‘Verse with your fellow Browncoats. Like I said, I found this at a B&N, but I’m sure you can find it at your local game store too or certainly online. Happy gaming!