I've been reading the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition rules (not to mention anything associated that I can find online) with great interest since I came back from vacation, and I really want to play. In fact, I'd even be willing to try my hand at Dungeonmastering if I can find a group of like-minded players.

So, here's the initial call: I'd like to run a game on weekday evenings (6-9 or so) on a weekly or biweekly basis, preferably somewhere around west St. Louis County. The most suitable location that comes to mind is Newcastle Comics & Games in Maryland Heights (MySpace page here unless you value your eyesight), but I'm open to other suggestions.

If every RPG geek in the country hasn't already read it, I'd be more than willing to run The Keep on the Shadowfell, and possibly subsequent modules as well. Otherwise, I have a few excuses to carve through large numbers of goblins adventure seeds in mind that I should be able to build on.

Anyway, if anyone's interested, please post here, e-mail me at bmokeefe(at)gmail(dot)com, or just keep an eye out here. I'm going to try and put together my own wiki or game homepage of some sort, but in the meantime, my "dungeon" tag will be a central link. I'll start posting the link around other places (both physical and virtual) as well.

I've just reserved a room in Fayetteville, Arkansas for the weekend of July 11-13 for the 2008 Ravenwood Festival -- Arsenic and Gears: A Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk Fantasy. This may be my best chance in the foreseeable future to see steampunk bands like Abney Park and Vernian Process. Unfortunately, the airship Prince with a Thousand Enemies came out of a minor altercation with customs officials somewhat the worse for wear, so I may have to drive down Friday evening (or as early as I can get away), and back up to St. Louis on Sunday. Anyone interested in ride and/or rooming, please leave word.

You know all those things I was going to get done this month? I can't say I've made much progress this week since the Spore Creature Creator came out. This thing is a blast, one of the best software toys I've seen in quite some time. I'd highly recommend at least checking out the free demo, and I've already bought the full edition. Mind you, this is not the full edition of a game; this is a full edition of part of a game. This program just lets you make up goofy-looking critters; when the real game comes out this fall, said creatures will actually do things. So, yeah, they're charging ten bucks a pop for one component of an incomplete game, but it's worth it. Makes me wonder what NCSoft could have done releasing the superhero costume designer from City of Heroes as a stand-alone product.

I suspect that Tycho is quite correct about the shared entertainment value with a child. I'm tempted to pick another copy of the game for my cousin Jeanne's youngest, just to see how much he'd enjoy it. (I could be really nasty and get a copy for Cousin Bill's homeschooled kids, if I thought they had a PC with the graphics specs to run it. Then again, the creator tool doesn't have all the evolutionary aspects of the actual game, so it probably wouldn't shake the baraminologists up too much.)

Also, there's a community site up where you can post your creations and look at others'; I've posted a few of mine as (naturally) harmfulguy. Upon final release, the game will use this repository of designs to populate the world where your own creatures are trying to survive and thrive. Not that there's a whole lot of "community" functionality at the moment, at least in terms of editable profiles or "friending" other users. Still, if anyone else is using the site, please feel free to post your profile name.

...are you? Even the newest instant internet tradition?

If you use Mozilla Firefox as your web browser, remember that the latest major update, version 3.0, is to be released today. From what I've heard, it should be available for download at 1PM Eastern time, and the community would like to set a world record.

That was quick. Apparently somebody added a Wikipedia entry for The Middle Man TV Series within the past couple of hours. When I went to look at it before work, the only entry was for the comic.

Anyway, the Middleman is an agent fighting evil for an Organization Too Secret To Know. After saving a young artist from a tentacled monster (unleashed at the lab where she's working as a temp), he recruits her as a sidekick and They Fight Crime Evil! "The Pilot Episode Sanction" of this new ABC Family series is currently available for free via the iTunes Store, in advance of the network premiere on June 16. While I haven't had a chance to watch the entire episode yet, it looks like it could be a pretty entertaining show, even if it appears likely to feature the usual unsympathetic media portrayal of Malign Hypercognition Disorder.

Now that I'm back from vacation, here are some of the things I'd like to at least start working on over the next month:

• Photoshop Hero: I took somewhere around 1800 photos over two weeks' vacation. Now I've got to do things with them: Tag 'em, rate 'em, label 'em, clean 'em up, pick out the good ones, and hopefully assemble them into some sort of final project.
• There and Back Again: Get back to my series of entries (maybe not day-by-day, but at least locale by locale) on the trip itself. Maybe even try to combine this with the photos into a passable narrative.
• Take Me Back to Paragon City: Time to stick my toe in the MMO pool again. I was going to dig back into World of Warcraft first, but bradhicks's recent posts on the latest City of Heroes release have convinced me to give that a shot instead. Any of my readers still playing? If somebody can hook me up with a reactivation referral code (to bmokeefeatgmaildotcom), that would give each of us a free 15-day bonus.
• GOTO Considered Harmful: Remember when I had my own website instead of just occasionally posting to EllJay? Yeah, neither do I. I'm seriously considering pulling down the whole thing (or at least archiving it somewhere) and starting over with a brand-new Drupal site. The core would still once again be a personal, link-heavy weblog, but I could easily spin off new projects as needed.
• Games Without Frontiers: I have the D&D 4th Edition rules in my grubby little hands, though I've not yet had much time to read them, much lest digest them. Still, I'd like to give them a shot, and might even be willing to *shudder* run a game. Just flipping through the new Monster Manual has inspired me with a passable conflict to build a campaign around. Anybody else interested in 4E? I should also get back into Magic: The Gathering, especially now that I'm aware of a new FLGS (NewCastle Comics & Games in Maryland Heights, really awful MySpace page here) close to home that runs FNM.

More immediately, this is the dreaded Scheduled Maintenance Weekend, and I have servers to update. On the upside, the Celestial House In Exile / Inn of the Silver Dragon crowd is having a party Saturday night.

Yeah, pretty much like that.

Still recovering from my return to St. Louis. I was supposed to get back Saturday evening, but assorted mechanical difficulties (and outright bullshit from the airline) kept us six hours past our scheduled departure from Fairbanks. We were nearly midnight getting into Minneapolis, and my parents and I spent the night at a hotel with just our carry-ons. We had a couple of more delays before our rescheduled connection made it back to STL, which didn't bother me as much as the random disinformation the airline fed us at intervals. Still, we made it here before our luggage did. My parents took a nap at my apartment while I went out to gather accumulated media (two weeks' pull-and-holds and my 4E preorder) and run back to the airport to retrieve our checked baggage. Mom & Dad left for Paducah soon after, and I can finally relax at home on my own. Until I go back to work tomorrow, of course. *groan*

The first week of vacation on the ship was fantastic; the second week was good too, but on the death-march pacing of a bus tour. It was worth it for all the things I got to see and do, and I'll try to catch up on entries and photos over the next week.

I am home. The last two weeks have been fun, though the second of those weeks was a bit too hectic. And the last day and a half have been as unpleasant in ways that only modern air travel can be. More later. Maybe I'll even have luggage by then.