I'd heard about Settlers of Catan a hundred billion times, at least, as it's widely called "The Fazzer Of Ze Euroz Gaming", and I've heard it panned by Ameritrash folks as a gaming atrocity. Although not as widely hated, at least publicly, as renaissance farming or weenie trading games, it has been the subject of scorn and ridicule. "It doesn't have a body count", they said. "It doesn't have much player interaction", the said. Well, don't mind the bollocks, because "they" are invariably full of shit. I had played...

"I want to blow some shit up!" was the statement made by Uba in a post put up on The Fort earlier this week. Now normally when a person says this or, more foolishly, posts this on line,  the fiery all seeing eye of our federal government swivels upon it's tower focusing on the the foolhardy perpetrator and emits a deep grunt of dismay.  I can only assume that our little web site, much like The Shire, is such a backwater of no significance that they couldn't be bothered to dispatch any  Black Hawk  Helicopter flying Nazgul...

Teaching a new game is a skill. I like to think I'm pretty good at it especially with games I know very well. Hell, I've taught games so often that I should hope I've developed some ability. I imagine most people that read my blog or visit the Fort are the same,  drivers of the hobby rather than riders. I  don't mind teaching, really. Oh, we all know the types of people that we hate to teach. Mr. Cellphone who is very intent on texting rather than listening. Mr "Thousand-questions", who is never satisfied with the "we'll...

Yes, tomorrow is a landmark in my life.  45 years ago from tomorrow, my mom was white knuckling some unfortunate nurse's or doctor's hand while she gave birth.  To me.  Do me a favor.  If you are on Facebook and happen to be my Facebook friend, you can wish me a happy birthday if you like, but you don't have to.  In fact I prefer that instead, the next time you see me at a game convention, we have a nice chat or play a game or have a beer together or whatever.  Wishing me a Happy Birthday just puts too much damn pressure...

I owned a comic studio with a friend in the 90s during the black-and-white/indy explosion. We called ourselves 5th Panel Comics and we had a stable of artists throughout the Midwest doing creator-owned material, much of which we collected under an anthology book called Razorwire - Twisted, Convoluted, Cutting Edge, but we also published a handful of standalone titles, as well. After reading comics since the mid-70s, I'd begun to tire of the constant superhero output of the major entities and was already a big fan of Dave Sim (Cerberus) and Vertigo's output, so that's the kind of material...