Tracy Hickman, of Dragonlance fame, is writing a book, and while that in and of itself may not seem to be gaming related news, the title of the book clearly says otherwise.  Drawing on his experience as a game designer at TSR (the original makers of D&D for those of you who are new to the game) this book has been a basement project of Tracy’s for a while now.

Indeed, I first heard about this book on Writing Excuses this past Monday, at which time it was simply a project Tracy was doing in his basement.  Since then I heard about it again on Comics Coast to Coast where it was announced that the book now has an illustrator and publisher: Howard Tayler and the Tayler Corporation.

For those of you who don’t know, Howard is the creative genius behind Schlock Mercenary.  A self publisher of his own work, Howard makes his living that way and as an avid fan of his work, and a recent purchaser of one of his books, I can attest to the quality.  With him at the illustration helm and his wife, Sandra, handling the layout, I expect a topnotch presentation of Tracy’s work.

So what is Tracy’s work?  Well, given that the publication contract is so fresh, and kind of unexpected (Tracy stated on Writing Excuses that he wasn’t sure the book would ever be published) there’s only limited information out there on the contents of the book.  There is an Amazon.com entry for the book which describes the book thus:

Take Your Game to the Extreme!
XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery offers tips on engaging gameplay, use of props, riddles, sleight-of-hand, fog machines, lasers, and even pyrotechnics. Authors Tracy and Curtis Hickman also reveal the secrets to running a “Killer Breakfast” event based on the hugely popular and long-running events at the Gen Con Game Fair.

However, some of the other information in the entry is out of date.

For more information on the book, allow me to quote from Tracy on Writing Excuses directly:

[Adventure game design] is actually a lost art.  People do not understand all the lessons we learned back in the ‘80s about adventure game design, particularly about putting story in game design.  And because the name plates have changed so often over the Dungeons and Dragons thing everything that we learned in terms of the craft has been lost, and those of us who learned it are now old people and doing different things.  There are fabulous lessons that have kind of been lost in the interim in terms of adventure game design.  Now oddly enough I’m writing a book right now, I don’t know where I’m ever going to get this thing published, but it’s called XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery, and it’s great.  [...] We actually include a role playing game in it.  There’s basic and advanced.  We call it XD20, and the basic system has one statistic.  You just get one stat.  Advanced gets three stats, cause its advanced.  There are no skills.  There’s no complexity whatsoever.  There is a leveling system, but only because everybody whines when there isn’t one, and so we have this leveling system in our game that you can have a level, and you get levels, but they have absolutely no effect on the game play, whatsoever.  They don’t modify your rolls, they don’t do anything to your statistics.  [...] The reason I mention this is because in this book I’m going to put everything that I have learned about adventure game design, because it doesn’t exist anywhere else.  It’s just not there.  [...] It is a really cool book.  It has a section in the beginning: Are you worthy to be an XDM?  [Howard: Who’s printing this?] Nobody.  I am in my basement, I guess, currently.  We’ve done seminars on it the last couple of GenCons and the last GenCon I went to and ran a seminar, there was a group in the back that said “You promised us the book this year, where is it?” and I just had to buy them off with t-shirts, it was pretty scary.

And a much shorter quote from Howard on Comics Coast to Coast:

… I’m going to be illustrating his Extreme Dungeon Mastery book which will come out in time for GenCon Indy and so I’m Tracy Hickman’s new publisher.  [...] I’m thrilled to be working on the project.  I’ve read a little bit of the Extreme Dungeon Mastery book and it’s, in Tracy’s own words, everything he’s ever learned about being a fantastic game master and which most of the game publishers out there have seem to forgotten.  If you’re a good GM, this will make you a great GM.  If you are a great GM, then this book will make you a god.  [...] we should have books back at the very end of July.  So, we’ll be haulin’ books with us to GenCon Indy, and I will be at GenCon Indy with Tracy signing books…

This year’s GenCon Indy is August 13-16, for those of you who want to go get the book in person.

I can guaruntee that I won’t be able to go get a book in person, but I will be ordering this book just as soon as I can and I promise a review on it as quickly as possible after I get it.