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MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS MEETS WILD CARDSAugust 16, 2007
Once upon a time, along about twenty years ago, the Wild Cards series grew out of a role-playing game… and now, many books and many stories later, we’re thrilled and excited to announce that we’re going home to that world once again. I have closed a deal with our good friends at Green Ronin Publishing to license the Wild Cards concepts, setting, and characters for a new line of RPGs.
Green Ronin will begin publishing the new Wild Cards titles next year as part of its popular and critically acclaimed Mutants & Masterminds RPG. The first of these books, the Wild Cards Campaign Setting, an overview of the universe and its history, will be written by John Jos. Miller and is scheduled to debut next August at Gen Con Indy 2008.
“The world of Wild Cards is a perfect match for our Mutants & Masterminds game,” said Green Ronin President Chris Pramas. “With Inside Straight starting a new chapter in the Wild Cards saga, it seemed the perfect time to bring the property back to its roots in roleplaying games.”
Green Ronin has already done successful RPG adaptations of literary properties like Thieves’ World and the Black Company. Earlier this year they also announced plans to adapt A Song of Ice and Fire. They do beautiful books, extensively illustrated and often in full color, and their Mutants & Masterminds system should be a great fit for Wild Cards.
With John Jos. Miller — creator of Carnifex, Yeoman, Wraith, Father Squid, Chrysalis, and many other popular WC characters — writing the new campaign setting book, it’s sure to be complete, accurate, and faithful to the mosaics, a must-have for every fan of the series, even those who do not game.
“I said then that 2008 would be a great year for fans of George R.R. Martin’s work and I meant it,” added Pramas.
The Wild Cards series made its debit in 1987, during thje heydey of the shared world anthology series. The original series featured characters and stories from Roger Zelazny, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams, Lewis Shiner, Howard Waldrop, John Jos. Miller, Chris Claremont, Stephen Leigh, Edward Bryant, Pat Cadigan, Victor Milan, William F. Wu, and a host of other terrific writers. Twelve volumes were published by Bantam from 1987 through 1993, and three by Baen Books from 1993 to 1995. After a seven-year hiatus, iBooks revived the series in 2002, reprinting six of the original Bantam titles and adding two new volumes before going into bankruptcy. But Wild Cards refuses to die, and come January, Tor Books will be releasing Inside Straight, the first volume in a new triad featuring the next generation of aces and jokers, and the eighteenth installment in the overall series. Wild Cards has outlasted all the other shared world anthologies of the 80s to become the longest-running such series in the history of SF and fantasy.
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