Happy New Year and Such

So, I've been pretty busy lately. That might be clear from the lack of an update last week. It sort of feels like I haven't written one of these columns in a long time. There's lots of miscellaneous stuff to tell you about.

Peter Gabriel Concert
As you already know, I'm a fan of Peter Gabriel's. Sue and I and our friend Marlo went to see him in concert in December. It was amazing -- the second best concert I've ever seen. The first was a Peter Gabriel concert in Denver a lot of years ago, and the fact that #1 and #2 on the list are both Peter Gabriel shows does not mean I haven't been to a lot of good concerts. He's just amazing live. At one point, he was walking around singing upside down, hanging from the second level of the stage (which could move up and down to various heights). At another, he sang a song while running around in what could only be described as a hamster ball big enough for a human, rolling around the stage.

The Two Towers
The day after the concert, we went to see The Two Towers. You don't need me to tell you how great this film is, although I'm sure there's a few Tolkien purists out there reading this who didn't like it. Whatever. I enjoyed the movie a great deal and, in fact, just saw it again today. (I would have seen it again sooner if it wasn't for Christmas and a little thing called Arcana Unearthed.) Still, this was shaping up to be a really great week, which would culminate with...

Christmas
Christmas was a lot of fun. Not only was it a relaxing holiday spent with friends and family, but I raked in plenty of good loot. Sue worked with our friend Ron at Reaper Miniatures to get me a complete set of Reaper Pro Paints. If you're into painting miniatures like I am, I highly recommend these. They're the best quality paints I've used.

Among other nice presents, we got the E.T. DVD (that's a lot of capital letters, isn't it?), which was a movie I hadn't seen in years and years. I was surprised to find how well it held up. In fact, my memories of it were not that great. Now, I think it's an excellent movie. And of course an early scene shows the kids all playing "D&D but not D&D." You probably all already know the story, but Spielberg actually went to TSR back in the early eighties and asked if he could use D&D in the movie. The brain trust there reportedly demanded a bunch of money. So, poof, no free advertising in one of the highest-grossing movies of all time directed straight at the game's target market. So they changed enough words to make it not really D&D, and they never show the books. M&Ms made the same mistake, which is why E.T. eats Reese's Pieces (that pretty much catapulted the new candy into the public consciousness). Oh well. In an interview on the DVD, one of the (formerly) child actors says that the kids really did all play D&D together on the set all the time. So that's kinda cool.

I also got The Thing PC game for Christmas. It's a lot of fun, and if you like the movie, I really recommend it. It has interesting mechanics for the NPCs that you have to work with to determine if they trust you (or if they think you might be a Thing) and if they go nuts (experiencing the horror). Very creepy.

I'd be remiss, however, in not mentioning probably my best Christmas present in a long time: Sue (with the help of the aforementioned Marlo) made a Monte Cook action figure. It's great. They took a Riker (Star Trek: The Next Generation) figure and repainted the beard and hair my exact hair color. Then they painted his shirt to look like one of mine. Sue bent a tiny bit of wire to give him little glasses, and then they put him back in the packaging and used Photoshop to make the packaging all appropriate. Except for the fact that I don't exactly have an action figure physique, it really does look like me. And, as my friend Bill pointed out, Riker doesn't have an action figure physique either, so there you go.

Dungeoncraft
I haven't really mentioned it much so far, so I'll do it now. I don't write the Class Acts column in Dragon anymore. Instead, I've been writing Dungeoncraft articles. I've changed the focus slightly, so that now it's a general DM's advice kind of column. The first two installments dealt with staging and handling really large encounters (both in terms of large groups of NPCs and large groups of PCs). The next few deal with city adventures -- designing city encounters, and whole city-based scenarios. After that, we'll get into dungeons and eventually, outdoor and wilderness scenarios. I hope you'll check them out in the magazine each month.

New Links on the Links Page
I've put new links to two very different websites on the Links page. One goes to The Miniatures Page, which is a great resource if you're into miniatures. I mostly go there to see pictures of new releases. The other link goes to a site that I've been visiting lately. It's wilwheaton.net. Yes, that Wil Wheaton. As in Wesley Crusher on Star Trek. I know, the character annoyed me too. But Wil's grown up now. He's about my age and, after reading through his site, he seems like a cool guy. And he's into gaming.

Book of Eldritch Might III
I can't go the whole column without a plug, can I? (You mean I already mentioned Arcana Unearthed? Oh well, here's another plug, then....) We just saw an advance print copy of Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus. It looks great. If you haven't checked out the PDF version, you'll find this to be a meaty book full of lots and lots of new stuff. If you want, you can check out an art preview, the table of contents, and a preview of some of the material. Look for the book in stores the week of January 20. This is, without a doubt, my favorite of the three Books of Eldritch Might. If you liked either or both of the other two even a little bit, I think you'll like this one.

So that's what's been up with me. I hope your holiday season was safe and happy. I'm looking forward to another great year.