Matt Forbeck, award-winning game designer, novelist, and GeekDad contributor, has had a busy year. Back in December, he announced he was writing one novel every month in 2012, and he’s successfully Kickstarted two trilogies. Now he’s back with his third series: a murder mystery set at a gaming convention.
Dangerous Games tells the story of a gaming group visiting Indianapolis for Gen Con. When their favorite game designer turns up dead, the gamers work to unravel the mystery of his murder. In no time, they’re surrounded by conspiracy and playing a game that punishes its losers with death.
I was a huge fan of the concept for Matt’s second series, Shotguns & Sorcery, but I love that his third series swerves away from fantasy and science fiction into the mystery genre. It’s always fun when fandom is explored in mainstream mystery television (Castle and Criminal Minds come to mind), but it always seems either insulting or pandering. Matt has been going to Gen Con since he was a kid — this year will be his 31st trip to Indianapolis for the convention — and he’s been designing games for over 20 years. It’ll be nice to see an industry vet tackle the setting.
$25 will get you the entire trilogy in ebook format, but I think it’d be fun to go in with my gaming group for the Alpha Gamers reward tier. You get a personalized and autographed limited edition hardcover of all three Dangerous Games novels, but your gaming group will also be featured in the books, playing their favorite game. It’s a bit pricey at $1,000, but it also nets you up to ten ebook copies of the book for your buddies. That’s a fun way to memorialize your group, though some might be tempted by the Industry Legend tier: work with Matt to create a major character and, if you’d like, kill them off. We’ve all had that guy in our group, right?
The Dangerous Games Kickstarter runs until midnight on Monday, June 18th. View the details and pledge here.
