TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF
My name is Matt Forbeck, and I've been a game designer and writer for over 20 years. I started out writing for tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, but these days I write mostly novels and comics and work on computer games here and there. My latest novel isBrave New World: Revolution, which is based on the RPG I wrote for Pinnacle/AEG back in 1999. I also write the Magic: The Gathering comic for IDW.
The third one, Dangerous Games, is a trio of thrillers set at Gen Con, the largest tabletop games convention in the western hemisphere. The Kickstarter for that just launched and runs through the middle of June.
Beyond that, I live in Beloit, Wisconsin, with my wife, who's a school social worker who helps homeless students. We have five kids, including a set of quadruplets, who will turn 10 next month.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO GAMING?
I started playing blue-book D&D with the kids who lived across the street from me, back when I was twelve years old. I never looked back.
WHAT IS IT YOU FIND SO APPEALING ABOUT GAMING?
I like having a good reason to hang out with friends and family and actually interact with them. My kids are old enough now to start playing all sorts of cool games with me, and it's wonderful to watch their minds work as they absorb how a game functions and then start to develop strategies for playing it.
SHARE A FAVOURITE GAMING MOMENT WITH US
I brought my eldest son, Marty, to Gary Con I, at which he got to play in his first D&D game ever. Frank Mentzer, the former VP at TSR, ran an original white-box D&D session using the first published RPG module, The Palace of the Vampire Queen. We had a wonderful, old-school time.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY PLAYING?
I'll play anything once, but I don't play a whole lot of games more than that. As a designer, I like to pick games apart and see what makes them tick, but I'm not a hardcore fan of any single game because of that. I lose games all the time because I'm more interested in seeing what happens if I try something rather than working up a winning strategy.
Despite that, my kids love playing Munchkin with me, as well as Zombie Dice and Apples to Apples. I'll play whatever they ask me to. I also played a lot of Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers to prepare me for writing the Magic comic.
CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES ARE?
My all-time favorite is Space Hulk, which is a brilliant gem of fun gameplay and elegant mechanics. Sadly, Games Workshop doesn't like to keep it in print.
For RPGs, I always wind up going back to D&D in any of its several incarnations. So much of what we consider standards in games these days came from it, and it's great to revisit it and see how and why those elements resonated with so many people.
WHAT WAS THE LAST GAME YOU PLAYED?
Either Super Munchkin or Starcraft II.
WHICH PRODUCTS HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN?
My most recent game is the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game. I was part of the initial development team, but I handed that part off to the rest of the crew early on. Cam Banks did most of the heavy lifting not that one.
ARE YOU WORKING ON ANY GAMING-RELATED PROJECTS AT THE MOMENT?
I have a few things in stages too early to talk about at the moment. The latest computer game I worked on — Ghost Recon Online — is in beta at the moment. Also, I just released Brave New World: Revolution, the first novel in that trilogy, to the public.
DO YOU HAVE ANY WEBPAGES OR SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNTS WHERE FANS CAN FIND YOU?
Sure. You can find me at www.Forbeck.com, on Twitter at @mforbeck, and on Facebook as Matt Forbeck. I'm always happy to hear from people who enjoy my work.
No comments:
Post a Comment