What do I mean? I mean I’d like this to be a two-way form of communication. Sure, I’ll probably be posting more than anyone else, but I’d really like to open the floor up for other people to share things. The most obvious way to do this is, of course, by posting comments. However, you can all feel free to send submissions in, should you want to. News, reviews, game mechanics, links; if there’s anything you want to share with the rest of the class, email it to me. You can find my email address over on the right-hand side of the page, or here:

First off, I’ve recently discovered a program called VASSAL via Board Game Geek that allows me to play BattleLore online with other people. Sweet. After trying it out and playing an entire scenario (which I lost), I have a few thoughts.

• The overall design is pretty good. The graphics are clean and attractive, and they convey everything they need to fairly well.
• That said, playing BattleLore via VASSAL is a little bit clunky, when compared to the real thing. Sure, the setup time is significantly reduced, but space constraints apparently necessitate your command and lore cards being kept in a separate window from the actual board, making it very, very difficult to see both your options and the battlefield at the same time. When playing BattleLore, I like to be able to get the whole picture, and that’s very difficult to do in VASSAL.

So, all in all, while VASSAL does provide a good alternative to playing the actual game when you can’t find a physical opponent, it’s really no substitute for playing with the actual product. I should mention that, while VASSAL and the accompanying BattleLore module are free downloads, they do not come with the rules for the game. So, unless you already know all the rules, the program doesn’t actually allow you to have the game for free, as all rules adjudication is left up to the players, not the game engine.

In related news, I just received my Earth Elemental figure for BattleLore. The package comes with the actual Earth Elemental figure and creature flag (a blue one), a terrain tile depicting a Circle of Summoning (which you use to summon the Elemental), and three reference cards displaying rules for using both the Elemental and its accompanying Circle. The whole thing cost me $4.00 in shipping, and is free to anyone who already owns BattleLore (though there is a one per game limit). So, now I’ve got two creatures in my game. Cool!

Ok, in the last post I mentioned a plastic polar bear that craps candy. Well, we’ve uploaded a video to YouTube, and here it is for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully it’s finished being uploaded by the time you read this.

Also of note is the sheer volume of RPG products I got this year. Allow me to demonstrate.

I’ve included a can of coke (standard sized, full caffeine) on the left to give a sense off scale. On the right, you’ll see that my haul clocks in at just under five inches of role-playing games. All told, it’s just shy of 1600 pages of gaming goodness, and that’s not even including the bonus content that comes with Ptolus (another 400 or so), or even Deliria for that matter. It’s going to keep me busy for a long, long time.

[Edit: I bought Dragonmarked, another Eberron supplement, with some gift card money. I think that adds about another half-inch to that stack. Just in case you were curious.]

So, cheesy movie jokes aside, I had a pretty good Christmas. Tonight we went to my parents’ house, and I got a bunch more geeky goodness. I got 3 more (!) RPG books: the Player’s Guide to Eberron, Secrets of Xen’drik, and Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millenium. The first two are, of course, Eberron supplements, which I will put to good use in my upcoming campaign. The third is something I’ve been curious about for a while, partly because of my general fascination with fairy lore, but also because of what I’ve heard about the game on All Games Considered.

I also got a new stereo and an FM transmitter. These were both very well-intentioned gifts, but they were both just to the left of the mark. I did, in fact, want a new stereo, but one with slightly different functionality than the one I got. And I already have an FM transmitter, but I will be needing a special adapter for the stereo I want, so I can hook my iPod up to it. I’ll be exchanging this stuff for the other stuff when I go to get the stereo installed later this week, and I’m very happy with the intent and thought behind both gifts, even if they weren’t exactly what I was looking for. At any rate, they will enable me to get exactly what I’m looking for at a later date.

A couple of other things worth mentioning:

• a book entitled The 2548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said. It’s a great book to just open up randomly and read a few quotes from. Good conversation-starter.
• The Stolen Child, by Keith Donohue. It’s a novel about, as I understand it, a boy running away to live with the changelings, and it sounds right up my ally.
• A CD by a band (or artist, I’m not really sure) called Sigur Rós. I haven’t listened to it yet, and I really have no idea what to expect, other than it’s not in English (some sort of Scandinavian language, I think).
• A plastic polar bear that poops jelly beans. No, I’m not kidding.
• Various gift cards.

  Once again, Merry Christmas.

My wife and I exchanged gifts today. I got Firefly, which I’ve wanted for a while. I also got some other cool stuff: some nice clothes, A Dangerous Man by Charlie Huston, a hard case for my iPod, some Christmas coffee, new pajamas, and a heated car windshield scraper. All in all, I’ve had a good haul this year. I got my wife an iPod Nano and some skins, as well as the Scrubs soundtrack and the Sims 2: Pets expansion. Part 3 is going to come either sometime tonight or tomorrow morning, because we’re going over to my parents’ house later today for another gift exchange. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Last night we had a sort of pre-Christmas Eve party, complete with gift exchange. I got some really cool stuff, some of it very, very geeky.

1. I got a wine corkscrew set, which looks startlingly like a spaceship of some sort. A wine-opening spaceship. Very cool.
2. Apples to Apples. This is, quite possibly, the most fun you can have while you’re drinking. It’s pretty darn fun while you’re sober, too. Score.
3. Werewolf: The Forsaken. I liked the WoD rulebook, and I liked Vampire: The Requiem a lot. It stands to reason that I’ll like the new Werewolf game just as much. Expect a review of this at some point.
4. Russian Imperial Stout. I got a bottle of this, a full pint, and drank the whole thing last night. It’s dark, dark stuff, like drinking chocolate. I managed to get two full glasses out of this bottle, and after the first one I was pretty tipsy. I found out why a little while later, when I discovered that this stuff was 9.5% alcohol, almost as potent as wine (except that I was drinking a whole bottle by myself). Good stuff.
5. Ptolus. That’s right, Ptolus. Monte Cook’s ginormous, 700-page magnum opus of D&D goodness is now in my possession, and it’s mighty impressive. Expect a review, but not for a while; it’ll take me a long time to read this magnificent tome.

And that’s just pre-Christmas Eve. I’ve still got tonight and tomorrow to get through!

Happy Holidays, everyone.

My website just got moved onto a new server, so if you see some textual corruption in the posts below (particularly my NaNoWriMo posts, apparently), that’s why. In other news, I’ve been debating whether or not to put a forum on the site. I had one a long time ago, and hardly anyone posted. I think my readership is maybe a little bit bigger now, but I’d still like to know if there’s a demand for one. So, if anyone out there wants a forum on this website, post a comment stating just that to this post. Even if you don’t want one, post a comment and let me know that, too. Thanks in advance.

Bookworm Adventures Deluxe is a wonderfully addictive little bit of linguaphilia. Each stage is a series of monster battles with a boss battle at the end, somewhat reminiscent of an old-school CRPG. The thing is, instead of just attacking with a sword or something, you spell words: the more difficult the word, the more damage you deal. There are fun little modifiers, like Power-Up Potions and the Bow of Zyx (which increases your damage for any words containing Z, Y, or X), and your enemies have all kinds of special abilities to use against you. All in all, it’s a fun, relaxing, mentally stimulating little word game.

Well, my website’s URL is, at least. This is just too cool. Check it:

Not entirely within the purview of this site, but I thought I’d post on it none the less. This guy‘s pretty cranky, and that’s about all I got from his tirade. I’ll let him get back to sitting on his lawn and yelling at the hoodlums who pass by.