I don't demand courtesy, but I do demand rigor!

#1567; In which the Road is shared

  — May 15th, 2025

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This weekend: Gen Con! PLUS: Sketch Rescue UPDATE


Flickr photo by Carlos A. Smith

Tomorrow I’m hopping on a plane to Indianapolis for Gen Con! I’ll be at booth 743 along with many of my fine colleagues, including Sam Logan, Jeph Jacques, Chris Yates, and Blind Ferret Entertainment.

It’s my first time ever at Gen Con, which is primarily a gaming convention, and I’m excited to check it out! I admit to being more of a “casual gamer” than someone hard-core into tabletop games, but I’m really fascinated by that whole world and I’m eager to learn more.

I will not have copies of the Machine of Death card game at the show — it’s still at the printers, and I expect them to be delivered in November. But I WILL have a single demo copy to show off, and I’m really happy with how it’s looking:

If you missed out on our Kickstarter this spring, the game is still available for pre-order if you’d like to reserve a copy from the first print run.

One of our stretch goals in the campaign was that we’d release the entire game under a Creative Commons license, as well — so we’ll be posting everything for free download in a couple months too! If you’d rather check it out that way.

BONUS LINK: Here’s a video in which I show off the shiny demo copy of the game! (There’s some Kickstarter-backer-specific info in there too, just ignore that.)

ONE MORE THING: Thanks to everyone who’s sent in Sketch Rescue scans & photos so far! You’ve got till the end of August to submit them for the free Roll-a-Sketch collection PDF.

And sadly, after reviewing my files, I think that memory card I lost ALSO contained my photos from SPX in Bethesda, and APE in San Francisco. If you got a sketch from me last year at either of those two shows, I’d love it if you could send me a scan or photo of whatever I drew for you! Or if you got a book from me last fall with a sketch in it. See this post for more details. Thanks so much!

NOW THEN! GEN CON! BOOTH 743! ALL RIGHT

San Diego Roll-a-Sketches! PLUS: A REQUEST

I had a good time in San Diego the other week! And I also had a good time at the Toronto signing earlier this week! If I saw you in either place, I hope you came away as delighted from the encounter as I did. At both places I had my full-scale mockup Machine of Death, and it was a real eye-catcher — in San Diego specifically, where the aisles are full with people shuffling along waiting for anything at all to catch their eye, it was neat to see people stop, squint at my “Free Death Predictions” sign, look at me quizzically, and actively volunteer to have their death predicted.

Here’s one account from someone in San Diego who’d never heard of the MOD before:

While we were staring at the machine trying to figure out what the hell it was, a bearded man approached from behind the counter and asked us if we would like to give it a shot…

THAT’S ME. I’M “A BEARDED MAN”!

Anyway here are a few of the Roll-a-Sketches I did at the show!

RHINO + TURTLE + MERMAID + TANK:

PIRANHA + PENGUIN:

ELEPHANT + SAILOR:

TURTLE + VADER:

PIRANHA + JELLYFISH + PENGUIN:

That last one was drawn in a copy of my recent book Emperor of the Food Chain! Perhaps you recall SOME MONTHS AGO when that book was released, I made sketched copies available online.

Now that I’ve been doing these sketches in earnest for over a year (last year in San Diego was when I came up with the idea), I’d like to put together a little book collection of just Roll-a-Sketch drawings. I’ve tried to be diligent in photographing the sketches I do at conventions, and back when I drew in all those books last fall, I made sure to photograph every single one.

Unfortunately, I lost the memory card that I used to photograph the book drawings. Tragedy!! But luckily, those drawings are all in your hands now.

So I need your help:

If you have a Roll-a-Sketched book (or multiple books) that you ordered last fall, I would really like it if you could send me a scan or hi-res photograph of the drawing(s).

If you do so before the end of August, I will put your email address on a list and send you a free PDF copy of the complete Roll-a-Sketch book collection once it’s done!

To ensure book-print-level quality, the images you send should be:

• If a scan: at least 300dpi. Grayscale is fine. Crisp with no blurry areas.
• If a photo: evenly lit, in sharp focus, no lens distortion. Grainy or blurry photos will be unusable. The photos I post here on the blog are the sort of thing I’m looking for: straight-on shots with no shadows. Any camera these days should probably take a high enough resolution picture for my purposes — please don’t re-save it at a lower size.

Email your images to dave at wondermark dot com, subject: “Sketch Rescue”. I’ll write back to let you know if the images work OK.

Thanks for your help with this!! You can send them anytime, but again, if you can send in yours before the end of August, I’ll send you a free PDF of the finished book. To reiterate, I only need copies of the drawings I did in books last fall — I do already have pictures of all the convention sketches. UPDATE: Actually I would like any sketches from 2012’s SPX (in Bethesda) or APE (in San Francisco.) Thank you for your help!

NEXT CHANCE FOR SKETCHES (and other goodies): GEN CON, in Indianapolis! Booth 743!

CHOOSE YOUR OWN BOOK LAUNCH in Toronto on Monday!

I’m coming to Toronto this Monday night for the CHOOSE YOUR OWN BOOK LAUNCH: Two parties, side-by-side, for two different books! WHICH WILL WIN??

THE CONTENDERS:

To Be or Not To Be, a choose-your-path adaptation of Hamlet, written by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and you! It’s over seven hundred pages and QUITE AMUSING, I’ve read it (and I also have a couple illustrations in it, along with tons of other great folks!). In the book, you can play as either Hamlet, Ophelia, or Hamlet’s dad, but if you play as Hamlet Sr., then you die on the first page and play the rest of the book as a ghost. It’s pretty great.

VS.

This Is How You Die, the brand-new sequel to Machine of Death that is just as good as the first book, if not better! The A.V. Club reviewed it and gave it an A. I helped write it, and I helped edit it, and so did Ryan. WE ARE PALS. But on Monday night we will be BITTER RIVALS.

AT THE EVENT

There will be Shakespearean rap battles! Dramatic readings! Death predictions by the score! Games and laughter! It will be a fun time; this is a guarantee from me personally. I hope you can come! (And if you already have one or both of these books, bring ’em to be signed! If you don’t, come pick ’em up there!!)

IT WILL BE HELD AT

• The Beguiling (601 Markham Street in Toronto, in Mirvish Village, beside Honest Ed’s)
• on Monday, July 29th, 7pm-10pm

More info here! Facebook invite here!

After that: Gen Con Indy! PAX Prime in Seattle! But first: this thing. THIS THING INDEED.


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