Vegas Knights (38 page)

  "Take care of him if you can," I said.

  "Done," said Hardeen.

  "Thank you."

  I turned to Powi then and gave her a squeeze. "Are you ready to get out of here?" I said.

  She smiled at me and gave me a kiss. "I thought you'd never ask."

  I held her close to me and rose into the air. An instant later, we zipped out through the balcony doors and spiraled high into the dazzling Las Vegas night.

 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

Matt Forbeck has worked full-time on fiction and games since 1989. Frankly, he is a creative machine, and thus utterly perfect for Angry Robot. His many publishers include Adams Media, AEG, Atari, Boom! Studios, Atlas Games, Del Rey, Games Workshop, Green Ronin, High Voltage Studios, Human Head Studios, IDW, Image Comics, Mattel, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Playmates Toys, Simon & Schuster, Ubisoft, Wizards of the Coast, and WizKids. He has written novels, comic books, short stories, non-fiction, magazine articles and computer game scripts. He has designed collectible card games, roleplaying games, miniatures and board games.

  Matt is a proud member of the Alliterates writers group, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the International Game Developers Association. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, USA, with his wife Ann and their children: Marty, and the quadruplets: Pat, Nick, Ken and Helen. (And there's a whole other story.)

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 

Many thanks to Christian Moore for sharing his endless expertise on all things Las Vegas. Also to my many partners in crime in my countless trips to Sin City over the years, including Peter Adkison, Ryan Dancey, Pete Fenlon, Doug Ferguson, Marcelo Figueroa, Shane Hensley, Ken Hite, John Kovalic, Sean Lashgari, Hal Mangold, Lou Rexing, Cindi Rice, Dave Seay, Owen Seyler, Martin Stever, Adrian Swartout, Bob Watts, Mike Webb, and John Zinser, plus countless other compatriots. But most especially to Will Niebling for bringing me on my first trip to Las Vegas and introducing me to that uniquely American city.

  Thanks to the members of my writers group, the Alliterates, for their feedback, especially to Tim Brown for his comments. Also thanks to Elena Johnston and Cindi Rice (again) for their generosity with both their time and expertise. My deep gratitude to Jordan Weisman for his inspiration in getting me to think about mixing poker and magic.

  Even more thanks to all of my family, friends, and fans who have believed in me for so long, especially my parents. You have my undying gratitude.

  Special thanks to the fine and faithful people at Angry Robot: Lee Harris and my old friend Marc Gascoigne. No one loves great stories more or treats them better.

  Last but not least, thanks to you who took a chance on this book and bet on it with your time and your money. I hope it pays off for you big.

 
 

 
Vegas Knights
started out as a game.

  Way back in 2004, Jordan Weisman of WizKids had an idea for a collectible card game based on Poker, which had reached the height of its popularity at that point. Someone had figured out how to televise Texas Hold 'Em by putting a camera under the hole cards, which gave the rest of us a way to understand the drama that unfolds at a table, and it took off at warp speed.

  Jordan is one of the sharpest guys I've ever known. In the '80s, he founded FASA and created games like
BattleTech
and
Shadowrun
. He got into networked computer games early on and sold that spin-off business – FASA Interactive – to Microsoft. While there, he helped launch the X-box and spurred alternate-reality games (ARGs) into the mainstream with
The Beast
, a massive game set up to promote Steven Spielberg's
A.I.

  He went on to found WizKids and create the collectible, prepainted miniatures game category with
Mage Knight
and its follow-up
Hero Clix
. He's since moved on from there to found Smith & Tinker, which created the handheld/online game system
Nanovor
, and another tabletop game company, Wells Expeditions. Meanwhile, he also co-wrote interactive novels like
Cathy's Book
and
Personal Effects: Dark Art
and led other ARGs that promoted things like
Halo
and
The Dark Knight.
 

  Most people only get one or two great ideas in their lives, and if they're lucky they get to ride them until they end. Hopefully they make enough to retire on, and you might never hear from them again. Jordan's a serial entrepreneur who not only gets lots of these ideas but manages to put them into action and make something both cool and profitable. 

  I've been friends with Jordan since his FASA days. I worked with him on a few things over the years, and I even helped him out with that
A.I
. ARG, writing text for a number of the websites and lending a hand with a Japanese cell phone game that became part of its monstrous network of clues. So, when Jordan asks me to help him with something, I dive right in.

  Jordan wanted to make a collectible card game out of Poker, and he asked me to tackle the challenge of designing the game. I hammered away at it in several different incarnations, each time getting closer to the goal.

  The first version of the game was called
Battle Poker
, in which warring factions from across all time and space fought it out for supremacy. It hit all the design requirements, and it played well enough. The problem was it just wasn't fun. The collectible bits threw off the Poker bits enough to make it not intriguing but annoying.   Ironically, I'd helped out with another collectible card game with Poker mechanics a few years before.
Doomtown
was based on
Deadlands
, a hit roleplaying game published by Pinnacle Entertainment, of which I was the president at the time. My business partner – company CEO Shane Hensley – had come with
Deadlands
, this brilliant game about the Weird West, featuring zombie cowboys and far stranger things. It used Poker mechanics, so when Dave Williams (then of AEG and now with Red 5 Studios, designing the massively multiplayer online game
Firefall
) sat down to design
Doomtown
, he plugged it full of Poker bits as well. Shane and I helped polish up Dave's excellent design a bit, and we played the hell out of that game.

  So, I knew Poker well, and even had some experience working it into other games.
Battle Poker
, though, just didn't work. Mechanically, it was great, but the fun never showed up.

  At Jordan's request, I gave the game another shot, and it morphed into
Battle Champs
. In this version, you managed a team of heroes and monsters battling against each other in gladiatorial combat for the amusement of the evil bastards who'd crushed the planet under their collective heel. You not only set up the battles but bet on their outcome. 

  Again, the game played well enough. It beat
Battle Poker
hollow. But it still wasn't the kind of fantastic fun such a game demands.

  Late in 2004, I gave the game another shot. This time, I came up with the title
Vegas Knights
. This version of the game worked a lot like
Battle Champs
, but with some key differences. 

  In working through the earlier versions of the game, we'd been trying to replicate the tensest dramatic moment in Poker: the reveal at the end of a hand. In a collectible card game, though, you can customize your deck, and that threw all that off horribly. The reveal became too difficult to predict.

  In
Vegas Knights
, I concentrated on the other dramatic part of Poker: the betting. The quick movement of cash, the bluffing, the attempts to read your opponent and figure out what he's really up to, that all got turned up to eleven. 

  And the game worked. It sang. Best of all, it was fun.

  As "The Object of the Game" from that draft read:

  In
Vegas Knights
, you are a manager of a team of wizardly
gamblers in a modern world filled with monsters and magic. You
coordinate the efforts of your team to win the big prizes and come
home from Las Vegas with the ultimate jackpot.

  At that point, Jordan accepted the game and brought it in-house for his team of developers to tinker with and polish. By the time they were done with it, they'd ditched the
Vegas Knights
background in favor of an Old West theme, which was something I'd suggested early in the game's development too. I just love that era. Besides developing
Deadlands
, I'd also written two other Western roleplaying games – We
stern Hero
and
Outlaw
– essentially the same book reworked for two different rules systems: the Hero System (
Champions
) and
Rolemaster
, respectively. 

  With the game now titled
High Stakes Drifter
– which it came out as in 2005 – I looked at the concept work I'd done on
Vegas Knights
and thought it would be a damn shame if it all got thrown away. I had an idea for a novel that mixed elements of
Harry Potter
and
Ocean's 11
, and while it wasn't exactly like the
Vegas Knights
game background, it shared enough themes that I didn't want to have any qualms about stepping on that old material's toes. 

  Plus, I just loved the title.

  I asked Jordan if he'd be willing to release that unused material back to me, and he did so with one condition: I couldn't make a game out of it first. Since I'd been thinking a novel anyhow, we had an instant deal.

  That fall, I pitched
Vegas Knights
to Solaris. At the time, it was a new imprint for original novels being published by the Black Library, set up under the guidance of an old contact of mine, Marc Gascoigne. I'd written a number of humorous novels for them already, based on
Blood Bowl
, the game of fantasy football – the kind in which elves, dwarves, vampires, zombies, and so on battle for possession of a spiked ball on an Astrogranite field. I figured
Vegas Knights
might be a good fit for Solaris, but it was declined. 

  In 2006, I set about developing a treatment for
Vegas Knights
as a possible screenplay. I didn't get too far with it, but the experience helped the story gel a bit in my mind. 

  Then in 2009, I pitched a number of books to Marc again, who'd since moved on from Solaris to set up Angry Robot. This time he didn't hesitate – he liked
Vegas Knights
, and he signed me up to write it, along with
Amortals
, which came out just a few months ago.

  I think he made the right decision, and by the time you've gotten to this part of the book, I hope you agree.

 
 

 

When I pitch books around to publishers, I like to start with something short and punchy. There are so many reasons for a publisher to reject a book, a lot of which they can tell you after reading just a few lines about it. Many of these things are beyond any author's control: there may be another book like it in the publisher's line-up, the publisher may be tired of such books, it may just be a rotten premise.

  Rather than write a whole book to figure that part out, I prefer to test the waters with a short piece of only one to three paragraphs. I then send in a half dozen or so at a time, and if the publisher shows interest in any of them, I write up a longer synopsis to show them where I hope to take the premise.

  Here is my first pitch for
Vegas Knights
, the one Solaris rejected in 2005. You'll notice I eventually ditched the idea of mathemagics entirely, but some of the basic themes are still there.

 

Vegas Knights

  Dabblers in the arcane arts stumble upon a field of study known as mathemagic. This allows knowledgeable souls to alter the nature of reality at a quantum level making the unlikely all too possible. One group of mathemagicians realizes that the best place to use their new powers is in the one city where even subtle changes in the odds can pay off big: Las Vegas.

  The casinos discover this plan soon enough and then recruit mathemagicians of their own. At first, they just stop others from stealing from then, but then they send these men and women out to ruin their competition as well. Bitter and secret battles break out among the casinos and their most mysterious employees.

  This all comes to a head when a young college student in town on Spring Break learns that he has a latent, wild talent for mathemagic that's sure to disturb the tenuous balance of power in the City of Sin. Which side will he choose – or will he make his own deal instead? 

  Think:
Harry Potter/Ocean's Eleven.

 

THE FILM TREATMENT

Here's the film treatment I came up with for
Vegas Knights
back in 2006. You'll recognize the name Bill Chancey, whose surname I borrowed from my childhood doctor. Erik Weiss, of course, is called that in honor of Harry Houdini's birth name, but in the final book he became Jackson Wisdom, only partly because Houdini himself assumed a huge role in that story.

  This version includes all sorts of Arthurian references, none of which made it into the final book. However, it sets up the basic structure of the story and introduces the idea of wizards playing poker against each other and messing with the cards.