It’s a safe assumption that most gamers have heard of Wil Wheaton – you know, Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation? And you might have heard that he’s been running a D&D game, yes? In the crush of end-of-semester grading, combined with the passing of Dave Arneson, I managed to miss this (see… Continue reading Missing Out – Grr!

Having just gotten back from Dave Arneson’s visitation and funeral, I hope you will forgive me if my mind wanders just a little. It was a decent funeral, and I was glad for having Michael and Jean Mornard there, as well as connecting with all sorts of old friends and making a few new ones.… Continue reading Remembering dead PCs

Castleby David Macaulay is supposedly for kids – but pretty much every gamer of any age I have ever known has a copy on their shelves. It’s a grand book full of marvelous illustrations, and what it does best is explain how and why castles were built the way they were. From the perspective of… Continue reading Castle by David Macaulay

I’m currently in Madison, Wisconsin for the weekend, and am getting ready to go to Minneapolis-St. Paul for Dave Arneson’s memorial on Monday. It’s pretty obvious to me now that Dave’s passing had a much bigger effect on me than I was initially willing to admit. That having been said, there have been a few… Continue reading Beginnings and Endings

There’s a side of world-building that comes up whenever you have clerics – so what sorts of holidays does their religion actually have? If you go about it fairly blithely, you end up with something that looks like a mix between the medieval Catholic list of Saints’ days and the solstice/equinox set-up from modern paganism.… Continue reading Easter, Ostara, and Holidays

I was asked on another forum to provide some thoughts about Dave Arneson and his participation in Prof. M.A.R. Barker’s world of Tekumel. I’ve decided to share those here, as well: Dave played irregularly with the Thursday Night Group, sometimes for a longer stretch when he lived in the Twin Cities, then for the occasional… Continue reading Dave Arneson and Tekumel

As has been reported by many sources, Dave Arneson has passed away. It’s been just over a month since the anniversary of Gary’s death, and now both of them are no longer with us. I hope people will take the time to appreciate these two men, who changed the world with their modest creation. Whether… Continue reading Dave Arneson

For those of you who do not know, Dave Arneson is in hospice, dealing with late-stage cancer. I’ve known Dave now for many years – not as close as some, but we’re friends. I also happen to know Michael Mornard (“Old Geezer” on many forums), and a couple of weeks ago, I had the chance… Continue reading Being thankful

Over the past week, I’ve been migrating from my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 700m, to a new desktop machine. I had been using my laptop as a substitute for my old desktop machine, which had a significant “blue screen of death” system failure two days after I turned in my dissertation. But the laptop was… Continue reading The Wyrm Biting Its Tail