Update Part 1

After my last post at the beginning of the month I took off for the Origins gaming convention in beautiful downtown Columbus, Ohio. I went for Red Juggernaut; we shared a booth with Studio 2 Publishing and generally had a good time promoting our first game, Battue.

We'd hoped to have the game for sale at the show, but that didn't work out. Instead we'll have the game for sale at GenCon. We received very, very good feedback from people at the show and a large number offered to buy one of the two production samples we had with us. We're really looking forward to having enough copies to actually sell them!

While I was at the show and flying there and back, I finished Gardens of the Moon, which Phil had recommended to me. I can see why Phil likes this series of books, they're very reminiscent of his D&D games. Oh, how I miss Phil's games.

Now that I've finished that book, I can spend my time reading and re-reading the George R.R. Martin books for the writing I have to do for Green Ronin.

My flight back on Monday was supposed to get me in at 1:15am on Tuesday morning, but I managed to fly standby on two flights, so I got back around 6:30 or so and was able to do some laundry and otherwise prepare for my first day or work at Microsoft. I'll talk more about that in my next post.

The biggest thing going on around the house has been that a couple of guys showed up on Tuesday to cut down the trees in "our" yard. It's actually in the yard next door, but it used to be the yard for this house, so I sort of think of it as part of our yard. Anyway, I left in the morning and everything was fine, but when I came home a few hours later the HUGE walnut tree in the front yard was cut back severely. Its absence from the skyline was palpable and made the landscape feel a bit alien to me. I was pretty disoriented as I drove up. The cutting continued for the rest of that day and the one following -- which also happened to be the days with heat around 100 degrees -- so the house lost its shade and was pretty darn hot.

The trees being cut down was pretty unpopular with our neighbors, but we explained that we weren't responsible for their removal and that construction would start soon on the new house.

Rob was in town again this past weekend. He, Seth, and I played Battue, then played a bit of D&D before I had to go. Time ran short much too quickly. Thankfully, Rob and his girlfriend will be around this weekend. I'm looking forward to meeting her.

Sunday was the regular D&D game. The players have learned that a cult is based out of the caves their investigating (near the town they're based out of) and they were a little creeped out when they found a mother and her new "children" in the caves. They rescued the trio, then went back to recruit some of the town guard to help. Unfortunately, when the player characters went back in they were ambushed by a Hook Horror and the town guard were nearly all slain by a fireball. Whoops.

My next post will be all about my experience at Microsoft in the last week. See you then. Which will be soon, I hope.