First off, the winner of the Fading Dream drawing is Misty Anderson. Misty, send me an email with your address at Onesmallkeith(at)Gmail.com and I’ll get your copy in the mail! Thanks to everyone else who entered. While I don’t have spare copies to sell myself, if anyone especially wants an autograph I’m always happy to sign and return any book sent my way with an SASE. What I’m seeing from the comments is that more people have read the Dreaming Dark series than the Thorn of Breland books. At the moment, the DD books are out of print. The Thorn books are in print, but bookstores...

My new novel, The Fading Dream, hits shelves in a few days. The Fading Dream is the third and final novel in the Thorn of Breland series, covering the adventures of a secret agent in the wake of the Last War. The Thorn books are designed to stand alone, but as the culmination of a number of character arcs, you’ll certainly get more out of it if you’ve read the previous books (The Queen of Stone and The Son of Khyber). At this point, I don’t know when or if I’ll be writing more Eberron novels – as always, it’s going to depend on sales and on the continuing support...

I’m working on a number of different projects that I can’t talk about right now, but things are going well. I just returned from Boston and Baltimore, where I ran Eberron games for people at Turbine, 38 Studios, and Big Huge Games. While I was at Turbine I had a chance to meet the developers of DDO: Eberron Unlimited, and I look forward to continuing the discussion in the future. I’ll post more about DDO in a future entry. Now I’m back in Portland with a lot of work on my plate. In addition to that, I’m going to be at Conquest Oregon this weekend; if you’re going...

I’ve mentioned that I use a variety of house rules, and some people have asked me what those are. Some (rituals, dragonmarks) really call for individual posts. But here’s a few things. Alternative Uses For Healing Surges. I like the concept of healing surges, but there’s consistently a lot of characters in my games who don’t come close to using all of their healing surges in an adventure. One option is to burn healing surges as penalties in skill challenges or find other ways to force characters to spend healing surges. But I also like to provide more uses for healing surges....

I’ve been traveling over the past week, and I have a great deal of work I need to do, so I haven’t had the time to address any of the longer subjects I want to get to. However, here’s my thoughts on a few questions sent my way. If you have questions, ping me at HellcowKeith on Twitter! Would it be possible for a character to manifest dragonmarks from two or more houses? If not, why not? It’s a basic principle of Eberron that anything is possible, if you want it to be possible. Perhaps the person in question is a living channel of the Prophecy and will in time develop all...

There’s a lot of message boards out there where people talk about Eberron, and try as I might to keep my web presence up, my time is limited and I can’t be everywhere. You’ll still see me on the boards, but if you want to get my thoughts on something, send your questions here (or reach me as Hellcowkeith on Twitter). Every week or so I’ll sift through the pile and answer a few questions. Bear in mind that this is entirely unofficial and in no way canon. Looking to my recent post on Dragonshards, there’s always the chance that it will work into a DDI article and become...

I was looking at the recent Escapist interview with Mike Mearls, and the following piece caught my eye. (speaking of 4E D&D, Jason) Alexander damned the powers mechanics and marking system in 4E because they were not simulating anything that happened in the game world. For example, why could a Rogue only pull off his fancy Daily power once per day? The only answer was because those were the rules of the game, not because that was how combat ought or should work in the fantasy setting. As I said in yesterday’s post, I don’t think there’s One True Game. Each system appeals...

On my last post, David S. asked: If we are all gamers and system does not matter, why do you feel the need to move your adventure to other systems? Why not just play 4E? If the table is a 4E hating OD&D Grognard group, I would think your ‘there is no right way to play’ argument would trump their old school position, no? It’s a good question. For the last year, I’ve mainly been running it in D&D 4E, and using Over The Edge when I run into people who really dislike 4E. When I went to LA this weekend, I converted it to 3E, and plan to polish it to Pathfinder. I mentioned...

One of my main goals with Have Dice Will Travel is play with as wide a spectrum of gamers as possible… both geographically and sociologically. We’re burdened with the image of the socially inept gamer living in his parents’ basement, and I want to show just how diverse gamers are. We’re students and soldiers, programmers and executives, cashiers and artists. And, for that matter, strippers and porn stars. Some of you may already be familiar with Zak Sabbath’s blog Playing D&D With Porn Stars or the Escapist series I Hit It With My Axe. This weekend I had a chance...

For DDI subscribers, there’s a new article on Q’barra here: Blood and Dragonshards There’s a second part in the wings that gets more into the “Blood” part, but this is a foundation for the unrest in the region. It also canonizes the “Dragonshard as residuum” thing I mentioned here a few weeks back, though I changed my formula for simplicity’s sake. If you like the article and have an account on the WotC forums, post something on this thread so WotC knows that you want more Eberron support! I’d also appreciate it if you said what you’d...