XDM Pre-orders Are Now Open!
Posted July 1st, 2009 by Howard Tayler
You may now pre-order your autograph edition of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, by Tracy and Curtis Hickman, illustrated by Howard Tayler. Tracy Hickman is the co-creator of Castle Ravenloft and the popular Dragonlance series. His son Curtis is a practicing magician. And me? Me you probably already know.
If you play table-top role-playing games like D&D*, Rifts*, Shadowrun*, or GURPS* then XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery is the best game supplement you can buy. Its principles will make anybody a better game-master, and will turn good game-masters into small gods. Its principles will also make for better players, so whether you’re running a game or playing in one you will benefit from this book.
And if you just want to read it for the sheer entertainment value I promise you that it’ll hold up just fine. This is not a dusty reference tome. This was written to be read, learned from, and above all enjoyed.
But that’s not the only new thing in the Schlock Mercenary Store this morning. You may have heard that Under New Management has gone into a second printing. We’ve fixed the typos, tweaked the cover and spine, and are now opening pre-orders for numbered sketch editions. We only did 300 of those the first time around, so some of you may have missed out.
And that’s STILL not where it ends. We also have Tagon’s Toughs t-shirts coming back to the store, and a new shirt that I’m not going to spoil for you here. Why not? Because it uses a punchline that won’t appear on in the comic until August. If you want to read it now, go window-shopping.
(*Note: D&D, Rifts, Shadowrun, and GURPS are all other people’s trademarks, and they want you to know that.)
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July 1st, 2009 at 7:55 am
XDM preorder placed.
I can tell you the Franchise kit and the t-shirt both looked tempting too, but my wallet made it’s saving throw against additional expenditures. It got a situational bonus from the bills I have to pay today. Grrr….
July 1st, 2009 at 8:26 am
Order #9578. I’ve been waiting for this one. :-)
July 1st, 2009 at 11:38 am
Yay, order placed. The new t-shirt is awesome, too bad my ranking officer at work is a capt and not a lt. The Under New Management sketch edition will be great too as it’s the only book of yours I have that isn’t sketched in. Though my last order with The Scrapyard in it still hasn’t arrived yet :( I hope it gets here soon otherwise I fear it may have gotten lost somewhere in the mail.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I don’t play any of the named games, but do play Castles & Crusades. Just placed my order!
July 1st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Is there any chance of getting a Tough’s tshirt in a color other than white? I’d be happy with a khaki/beige color, but I’m way too pale already to add a white tshirt to. :P
July 1st, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Hey, I want to let you know that the ‘new t-shirt” is spelled wrong.
sergeant = sargent
July 1st, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Oh, and the Tagon’s Toughs shirt should TOTALLY be a polo…
July 1st, 2009 at 9:52 pm
ummm… my bad, it’s not misspelled. it just looks weird to me, because I must be used to “sarge”.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Book #3 Order placed.
Oddity with the online-ordering software: If I have an account
extant, it won’t let me use the non-account ordering. Why is that?
July 1st, 2009 at 11:16 pm
@csadn: Regarding the oddity — I have no idea. The store is a turnkey solution from Volusion, and they handle all the codey-grody. I know of no setting we selected that makes it do what you describe.
Re: order placed — thank you!
@me262: “Sargent” is a not-uncommon surname, but “sergeant” is the rank… as you have discovered to your public chagrin. ;-)
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:21 am
I think the spelling is ok, but the grammer feels odd when said out loud. “That does not know what is going on” sounds better to me than “Who does not know what is going on.” For the record however, I am not an english major, so YMMV.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:55 pm
XDM has been StumbleUpon Thumbs Up’d. I hope that helps. I’ll be buying one as soon as I’m not broke. (Curse my home state’s 14+% unemployment.)
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Thank you, PhoenixOasis!
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:40 pm
@me262, I’m a professional copy editor, and I’m reading through the entire Schlock archive for the second time right now (first time was a year and a half ago, so it’s long enough that the material is fresh again). One thing that strikes me about Schlock Mercenary is the incredible cleanness of the copy. Howard is a master of getting maximum effect from the fewest words, and his grammar is impeccable. I’ve found a few typos, but far fewer than I find in newspapers and magazines where there are multiple layers of review.
In fact, when I do find what I initially think is a typo, I frequently find that re-reading for context reveals that it is Howard’s subtlety, and extreme CORRECTNESS, that accounts for unexpected spellings and terms, while it is my careless reading that caused me to expect to see something where it wasn’t. I have learned to double-check myself before concluding Howard appears to have made a mistake. And those cases are rare.
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Well, I had this birthday check laying around since April (yes, I turned 39, no I don’t know why my mother still sends me birthday money, but), so it has been cashed, and now spent on a pair made up of XDM and a “scribbled-in” copy of “Under New Management”. Oh well, who needs another hard drive for the computer anyway…