So, The Bones. It’s a fitting follow-up to Things We Think About Games from the Gameplaywright gents, in the sense that it’s about gamers looking at the games they play. Honestly there aren’t enough books of that sort in the world (though Green Ronin’s 100 Best series offers fine entries to the form). This time around, The Bones gives us more heft: six in-depth articles including “A Random History of Dice” by Kenneth Hite, and 19 essays, one of which is mine, in which I talk about how playing diceless for years made me love them bones. (Added bonus: the table of contents is a set of random-roll tables. Surprise yourself! Let the dice tell you which essay to read!)
I bring this up because the special-edition hardcover is available for pre-ordering right now. It’ll stay available to order until June 6th or until they hit about 100 copies ordered, whichever comes first (which for all I know could come fast). The special-edition is being printed to order, come June. It’s available only direct through the Gameplaywright folks, and costs $27 + shipping. As an added benefit, folks who preorder the hardcover will get the PDF within 24 hours of placing the order. Details and purchase widgetry to be found hyunh: http://gameplaywright.net/?page_id=958
If you’d rather wait (why? why?!) then no worries — hang around a while and wait for the softcover edition to go on sale. I’ll holler atcha when it does.
Fred Hicks is a dad, a gamer, and a game publisher. He runs 
