here, have some bullet points

• Howdy, folks! I haven't been on the internets much for almost a week now and when I have it's been to access Google documents. Since misplacing a flash drive for a few days I've decided to switch to a non-localized set-up for my word processing. I've been trying to put the last finishing touches on the Mutant Future sandbox article for the next issue of Fight On! The deadline for submissions has come and gone, but the editor is kindly allowing me a little extra time to finish up. This baby will be my single longest contribution to Fight On! to date, but I'm trying real hard not to overdo it. Paul Crabaugh is my role model for what a good game article should look like: no longer than necessary and immediately useful.


• Local Item #1: Speaking of Mutant Future, I started a new MF campaign last week. We'll be playing at the Armored Gopher every other Wednesday; next session is next week. Anybody who wants to come sling post-apocalyptic dice for an evening is welcome. So far we have a badass ubermenschian Pure Human (Wheelz rolled his character in front of me and got a 12 as his lowest stat), an anthropomorphic deer that can see the future and a guy that looks like the Silver Surfer who can disintegrate you with the power of his mind. We played out a slight variation of the sample adventure in the book: rather than outsiders hired to find the lost water shipment, the PCs were locals trying to save their town from drying up. Next session I'm parachuting them onto my sandbox.


• Local Item #2: Some nut came into the Armored Gopher and traded in a bunch of RPG stuff for some Magic cards. If you dig on Palladium products, there was a bigass shelf of the stuff in the used section. I nabbed the always-fun Compendium of Weapons, Armor & Castles and the Rifts Conversion Book. I also got the BECMI D&D supplement Creature Catalog, which is basically the Fiend Folio of non-Advanced D&D though not quite as weird or British. And I talked newly minted DM Dane into getting the unknown nut's Fiend Folio for use in his brand new 2nd edition AD&D campaign. Huzzah!


• In case you haven't heard HackMaster Basic is out, though my copy hasn't quite made it through the distribution system to my local retailer. Reviews can be found here, here, here and here. That last one was written by Mark Hughes, who I'm pretty sure is both smarter and crazier than I am. His anti-AD&D screed is a classic.


• A bunch of new gaming goodness has popped up on the radar while I was away: Mike Davison's Ruins & Ronins in both PDF and print, David 'grubman' Bezio's lastest deal, a neo-retro sci-fi game called X-Plorers, is available in a free playtest edition, and James 'the Comissioner of Gaming' Mishler has a bunch of new PDF stuff from Adventure Games Publishing. I haven't had a chance to check all of this stuff out yet but it's all coming from great people chock full of awesome ideas.


• Lulu sales of the Miscellaneum of Cinder, counting both print and PDF versions, have now surpassed 100 copies. That's literally an order of magnitude greater than I assumed I would sell, so big thanks to everyone who bought a copy!