It's Me Again, Margaret...

I'm back from the far reaches of No-Net-At-Home, which is near Didn't-Think-To-Post-Via-Mobile.

Needless to say, I've "missed" a lot, but some things are still worth mentioning, and I might even come back to them at a later date and expound.

First of all, for good or ill, the local brick and mortar has a new owner, a guy named Jacob whom I've honestly only barely made the acquaintance of. I do believe he will be opening for business officially (after a brief renovation this past week) on Monday. I wish nothing but good luck to him and his crew, and I will continue to support local gaming, and plan to give them my business.

Also, tabletop gaming seems to have fallen off quite a bit of late. Taylor runs a Pathfinder game on Tuesdays at the shop, Paul and Angela have alternating D&D games on Wednesday, and I run Scion on Thursday. Of these games, I only can make Paul's and my own, leaving me with less gaming than I would like. I contribute quite a lot of the seeming decrease in rpgs to the fact that many gamers are only interested in Magic. Steve C moving hurts, too, as he was always ready to jump into games.

The last thing of note in the time I have been away is Wizards of the Coast's announcement of the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (known as D&D Next,) and that they are wanting to approach the community to help draft the rules by taking in feedback on what actual players of the game want out of their tabletop experience.

I find this round of "help us make the game" very similar to the work that was put into 3rd Edition, and that gives me a glimmer of hope. Personally, after an extended and rigorous play experience with 4th Edition, I was left wanting, and that was a difficult pill to swallow when I had a love of the brand.

At any rate, we'll only have to wait and see what we get.

You can read more on Wizard's open call here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=1

here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109

and regular updates here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Daily.aspx