Nik and I were out and about downtown yesterday, at the Cheese Festival at Pike Place Market amongst other places. Nik was in a falafel mood, so we decided to try Falafel King on 1st Avenue. I’ve walked by this place hundreds of times, but never ate there. My falafel loyalty used to go to Zaina on 3rd Avenue, but they lost their lease and had to move elsewhere. We got our sandwiches to go and walked down to this little park next to the market with a nice view of the water.

I took one bite and said, “Damn, this is garlicky.” The sandwiches were all right but not as good as Zaina and not even in the same ballpark as NYC institutions like Mamoun’s. An hour after lunch we still had a strong garlic taste in our mouths. We stopped off to get some coffee and a pack of mints. That one-two punch helped but the garlic taste lingered. When we got home I immediately brushed my teeth. Then I brushed them again before bed, only to wake up this morning with the faint taste of garlic still in my mouth. Jesus H. I probably could have killed vampires just by breathing on them yesterday.

So Falafel King? No. Garlic King? Oh yes.

I had a chance to try out the new BattleLore expansion, Call to Arms, last night over at Rick’s place. I give it two thumbs up.

The original game, like all the various Commands & Colors games, wa scenario driven. If you got tired of playing and replaying the scenarios, you had to make up your own or wait for new ones to come out. What the Call to Arms expansion does is add a system that gives you more control over the battlefield while increasing the replayability of the game substantially. It does this with the addition of deployment cards. Each deployment card shows not only a group of units, but where on the board they’ll be placed. You draw four deployment cards and assign one each to the right wing, center, left wing, and reserve. This represents your vanguard, main force, rear guard, and reserve. This gives the game a bit of army building without delving into a whole points system and the sort of micro-managing those entail. It also gives you interesting choices to make when assigning cards to the zones. Where do you want to put a lot light troops? Where to you want to deploy a cavalry strike force? You can then reinforce these choices with two units from the reserve card, which can be placed anywhere on the baseline. There are also rules for specialist cards and each player gets two. These are flavorful upgrades that give a little uniqueness to your army. Last night I took a card that upgraded by light troops so they had long bows, for example. This turned out to be quite important, as the extra range and damage of the longbows helped me take out two units early on the game that paved the way for my victory. Call to Arms also comes with some new terrain tiles, as well as things like wooden stakes for archers and some additional counters and reference cards. The rulebook is once again beautiful and full color and includes a bunch of new battle maps you can use with this new system (maps from previous scenarios can also be used). This is a good deal for $20 and well worth the time of any BattleLore fan.

Angus Konstam, who has written many a book about pirates, just posted on the Miniatures Page that the artist Angus McBride has passed on. This is sad news. I first noticed McBride for the terrific covers he did for ICE’s old Middle Earth Roleplaying line and I still envision the Riders of Rohan as he painted them. He also illustrated dozens of Osprey books, amongst other achievements. Rest in peace, Angus.

On seeing the news about Jerry Falwell dying today, I was immediately seized with the urge to hear the Dead Kennedys song “Moral Majority”. I have the vinyl, of course, but that wasn’t going to do me any good at work. I went to I-tunes and discovered the EP on which that song appears, In God We Trust, Inc, was appended to another DK’s album, Plastic Surgery Disasters. I figured what the hell and bought it all. The chorus of “Moral Majority” (“God must be dead if you’re alive!”) is now sweetly ironic, but the song still rocks.

I was happy to get some new music on my I-tunes, but that wasn’t enough. I’m fairly sick of the music I’ve got at work and I’ve been meaning to pick up some new CDs for a couple of weeks. Today I lunch I took a short bus ride to Easy Street, one of the better record stores in Seattle and located right down the hill from Flying Lab. I picked up four CDs, two used and two new.

Christ on Parade, “Sounds of Nature”: This is another record I have on vinyl but I was tempted by the CD repackage. It includes a whole other EP and two other songs from a long forgotten comp. This is classic political hardcore from California. My old band used to cover the “Landlord Song”.

Bikini Kill, “Reject All American”: This is one of Bikini Kill’s later records and I just never got around to picking it up. Angry riot grrrls, oh yes.

The Tossers, “Agony”: I didn’t realize the Tossers put out a new record in March. Woohoo. More celto-punk? Yes, please.

The Birthday Party, “Prayers on Fire”: This is the first album by Nick Cave’s old band. Cave took awhile to grow on me but it did finally happen. Figured it was time to go back to his roots. Nicole will no doubt be sad to find out that “Release the Bats” is not on this record.

I got home from work last night to find a UPS package waiting for me. I had just gotten the package with the final two volumes of Preacher in it the day before and wasn’t expecting anything else. I opened it to discover two copies of Paizo’s new Monster Ecologies. I was pleased to get them but confused. I’ve never written an “Ecology of” article for Dragon Magazine (the source for the content of this book). I flicked to the credits and saw I was in the “special thanks” category. The mystery deepens. I then started paging through the book and on page 33 found something called “Monstrous Evolution” that showed how the look and feel of Githyanki had changed from their first appearance in the Fiend Folio to today. The top third of the page featured a quote of mine about why I like the Githyanki.

At last it all became clear. Months ago Wes Schneider at Paizo asked if I could write a little something on my favorite D&D; monster. I had thought it was for article in Dragon. When the recent news about Dragon and Dungeon hit, I had wondered if that article was going to appear before Dragon’s final issue. Question answered and mystery solved.

In part of my continuing war to organize the house, I moved our old TV and original X-Box into my office. Now if Kate or Nik is watching TV or using the 360 downstairs, I can fire up the old X-Box if I want a little console action.

In the process of setting all that up, I scoured drawers and boxes looking for a decent extension cord. At the bottom of one drawer I found an old notebook. Since it says “Ronin Publishing” on it, it must date back to 1996 or so. Looking through it was amusing and sometimes puzzling. Things I found include:

* Development notes for the Whispering Vault supplements Book of Hunts and Mortal Magic.
* A 16-point checklist for GenCon ’97.
* John Wick’s phone number at AEG and a note (“in-Clan rivalry instead of Scorpion”). This relates to a L5R adventure I wrote back then.
* Research notes on the Fifth Crusade for an Ars Magica book Nicole and I were going to write together. Later in the notebook a full outline of this book appears.
* Leads from apartment hunting from when I first moved to Seattle, including the place I eventually moved into.
* Details on a writing test I was asked to do after applying for a position at WotC to work on the D&D;/Magic: the Gathering crossover. This was the position I was hired into, though the project didn’t last more than a few months because of typical departmental in-fighting.
* Notes I took at the Confederate Museum in New Orleans on various firearms while I was on vacation. I was researching Blood of the Valiant at the time and so was digging for info on guns in use in 1850. Although I spent money I didn’t really have at the time, in retrospect I’m so glad I got to New Orleans before it was ruined.
* Several to-do lists, which include cryptic comments like “remember salmon”.
* A list of Saxon leaders from the age of King Arthur. I have no idea why these are in there. Maybe I meant to run a Pendragon campaign or something.
* Hotel details for a couple of memorable trips. And that’s all I’m saying about that.
* A list of (ironically enough) three Minutemen songs side by side with a list of three Buzzcocks song. Again, mysterious.

I’m taking a bit of a break from reading military history stuff. I think I overdid it after getting a bunch of back issues of Military History magazine for a $1 each at American Eagles and a new pile of Osprey books at the same time. I’m finding that graphic novels are a welcome change of pace. They make really good bus reading for one thing. When I’m too tired to engage in a book about the French and Indian War, for example, it’s easy to get into a graphic novel. Lately I’ve been working my way through Preacher. I had started reading it a long time ago, but never finished the series. It’s no news to anyone that is great stuff and I’m looking forward to the HBO show. I also started reading Fables, which is a hoot. Goldilocks are a violent revolutionary is genius. I had been picking these up one or two at a time. Since I can easily read one of these a day on my commute, I finally bit the bullet and just ordered a bunch online. When I get home from work I should have three more Preacher volumes, more Fables, and Top Ten: The Forty-Niners. I’ve loved the Top Ten stuff to do, so I’m particularly looking forward to that one. Alan Moore does post-WW2 supers? Sign me up.

My boss at Flying Lab is a big nerd, and I mean that in the best way. The last couple of days he’s been bringing in “spare” action figures and giving them away to the staff. The office is now Zerg-infested, as for whatever reason Rusty had an abundance of Starcraft figures. I generally prefer my toys to be smaller and made of metal, so I’ve been leaving this largess to my co-workers. Knowing that Rusty was a huge Starblazers fan though, I stopped in his office to tell him about these collectible spaceships from the series I had seen at American Eagles last week. I told him I had a couple at my desk if he wanted to take a look, noting that I of course hadn’t gotten a Yamato (because collectibility sucks). He said, “You know I’ve got a Yamato right there.” And indeed behind the Starcraft stuff there was a lovely painted Space Battleship Yamato. Oh, Starblazers, how many hours did I spend watching you after school as a teenager? Naturally, I could not pass this up, so now there’s a 16″ model of the Yamato in front of my monitors at work. “Wildstar, prepare the wave motion gun!”

GAMA Trade Show ended today. I did not attend for the first time in nearly a decade, which was a little weird. Nicole, Bill, Hal, and Rob represented for GR though and reports indicate it was a really good show for us. In addition to making the A Song of Ice and Fire announcement and the Faery’s Tale announcement, we got to show off the True20 Companion and advanced copies of Walk the Plank (a family-friendly card game), promote our new publishing strategy for Freeport, and give retailers our new slick catalog. In an era when print advertising is less and less effective, opportunities like GTS to do direct marketing to retailers are very much worthwhile.

The strange thing about this year’s GTS is the lack of big news. I had been a little worried going into the show that the A Song of Ice and Fire press release would have to compete with a lot of other big announcements. For whatever reason though this year was more subdued than any I can remember, the upside of which was that our news really got to shine. The most interesting thing I heard from the show is that some new company is bringing back Avalon Hill’s old Titan boardgame. And poor John Kovalic got food poisoning again (sorry John!).

I have to wonder if all this is just happenstance or whether it portends something about the year to come. After the last couple of years in the industry, I hope it’s the former.

Addendum: For you podcast fans, I made a return visit this week to 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction. You can hear the show at www.2d6feet.com.

I won’t post the full press release here, as this is my personal page, but I am happy to report that we announced a deal with George R.R. Martin today for Green Ronin to do A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. Everyone at GR is really excited, as we are huge fans of the books. We are going to design a new game that’s built from the ground up to reflect Martin’s world. You can check the press release at www.greenronin.com.

In short, hell yeah.