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CREDITS

Editor Jonathan Jacobs

Assistant Editors Kameron Franklin, Berin Kinsmen, Tony Law, Ben McFarland

Foreword Justin Achilli

Cover Design Jonathan Jacobs, Crystal Frasier, Rob Torno

Contributing Authors Justin Achilli, John Arcadian, Wax Banks, Enrique Bertran, Michael Brewer, Matthew Cicci, Trent Colwell, Tasha Dalcher, Joshua Dalcher, Stephan Dewey, David Dolph, Neil Ellis, Johnn Four, Kameron Franklin, Zachary Houghton, Jonathan Jacobs, Jeremy Jones, Paul King, Al Krombach, Rob Lang, Curtis Latimer, Nicolas Logue, James Maliszewski, Lorne Marshall, Scott Martin, Eric Maziade, Joe McDonald, Phil Ménard, Yacine Merzouk, James Murphy, Quinn “Gamefiend” Murphy, Brad Murray, Scott Murray, Derek Myers, Matthew Neagley, Willow Palecek, Martin Ralya, Ben Robbins, Wyatt Salazar, Michael Shorten, Benjamin Superfine, Phil Vecchione, Janna Weiss, Michael Wolf

Contributing Artists Crystal Frasier • CLOCKWORKAMAZON.COM Wesley Hall • WWW.INADEQUATESEATING.COM Heather Gilbraith • LIQUIDFLARE.NET Matt Lichtenwalner • WWW.DRAGONBONES.NET Jennifer Weigel • JENNIFERWEIGELART.COM Rob Torno • ROBTORNO.WORDPRESS.COM

Judging Panel Enrique Bertran, Page Bonifaci, Tommi Brander, Michael Brennan, Michael Brewer, Aaron Broder, Steve Collington, Brian Fitzpatrick, Will Hopkins, Jeffrey Horn, James Iben, Matt James, Mark Johnston, Tony Law, Fabiano Neme, Robert Sandlan, Cassey Toi

LEGENDARY SPONSORS Con on the Cob • WWW.CONONTHECOB.COM Engine Publishing • WWW.ENGINEPUBLISHING.COM Matt James • WWW.LOREMASTER.ORG Silvervine Games • WWW.SILVERVINEGAMES.COM Gnome Stew • WWW.GNOMESTEW.COM

EPIC SPONSOR Obsidian Portal • WWW.OBSIDIANPORTAL.COM

PARAGON SPONSORS Matthew Lichtenwalner • WWW.DRAGONBONES.NET Nevermet Press • WWW.NEVERMETPRESS.COM Chaotic Shiny Productions • CHAOTICSHINYPRODUCTIONS.COM Brian Fitzpatrick • BLOG2.MOEBIUSADVENTURES.COM The Welsh Piper • WWW.WELSHPIPER.COM

HEROIC SPONSORS Unconventional Dice • DICECREATOR.WORDPRESS.COM Sarah Darkmagic • WWW.SARAHDARKMAGIC.COM Sean Holland • SEAOFSTARSRPG.WORDPRESS.COM TableTop Armory • WWW.TABLETOPARMORY.COM Tyches Games • WWW.TYCHESGAMES.COM Michael Wolf • WWW.STARGAZERSWORLD.COM

COMMUNITY SPONSORS Tony Hoffart, Dan Swenson

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Table of contents

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FOREWORD ames are social endeavors. You know that because you play them. You and your crew get together every few days or

maybe every few weeks, bust out the dice and rulebooks, maybe pretend to be elves or space marines or something for a little while, and chew the fat a little before and after the game.

It’s fun. It’s fulfilling. It’s leisure time, and time well spent.

But you want more. Your friends are good people, but you all have responsibilities and you can hang out and play games only so many hours each week. Rationally, sure, that makes sense. That junkie itch inside, though — that itch doesn’t care. That itch wants more games. It wants to hang out with more people and toss some more dice and threaten a few more vampire lords and knock a few more of the archduke’s crooked henchmen cross-eyed. That junkie itch wants to know why the hell a wizard can take only so much damage or from how far away an Arcturan spy can scramble a Martian diplomat’s datashards.

That itch finds relief on the Internet. Millions of other game junkies are out there, looking for the same fix you are.

Now, here’s the part where I’m supposed to talk about APAs, the DIY ethic, and the creative urge, but you know what? Wolfgang did all that better in volume one of Open Game Table (which contains my all-time favorite blog entry, by Mr. Ben Robbins, and you all know the one I’m talking about). But I’m going to take a different direction.

As a comparison Wolfgang didn’t make, in the hoary years of yore before all this rampant bloggery, the critical mass of game discussion happened at conventions. This still happens, of course, but I remember only a few years ago looking forward to the four to six big shows a year and innumerable smaller ones at which groups of game enthusiasts had a chance to meet

other players, make new connections, and share opinions on the hobby that united them. And while conventions are still a kick-ass place to meet and play games (and steal chef’s pants, but that’s a digression), they come around only every so often and you have to travel to get to them.

Now, though, the closest forum for game discussions for most of us every day is no further away than our desk or even our mobile device. Our blogs are our meeting points, our convenient conventions.

Which is awesome. We all have a convention in our pockets! At no point previous in time were gamers so constantly in contact with one another. Our availability to one another is at a historical high point.

Wolfgang pointed out that we’re a “tribe,” a social group with a common interest. The common interest is evident, but that social aspect is just as important. Communication is social. Games are social. Communication about games is social times social, then, if my distributive property hasn’t failed me. All of that constant contact means we can talk about games even when we’re asleep. I can have an (admittedly asynchronous) conversation with gamers in Australia, Germany, Mexico, or across the street while I’m in the shower, driving to work, or watching football (go Cowboys!).

What’s more, not only is our access to each other amazingly permissive, the amount of content that our tribe generates in the form of game-related conversation is at a similar all-time high.

My own entry in this compilation is an example. It’s not my best blog entry as far as the craft of writing is concerned, but it provoked a hell of a lot of insightful discussion in the comments section. In that context — in the sense of putting people together and sharing insights with them — it’s a damn sight better than a grammatically

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impeccable manifesto that yielded only a single “LOL u r auld” in response.

Additionally, blogging allows us to explore avenues and interpretations of gaming that would have been hopelessly niche or even entirely nonexistent before. James Maliszewski’s narrowly focused old-school celebration Grognardia, the gloriously weird Planet Algol, my own where-do-tabletop-and-video-games-intersect blog, the overlap of religion and RPGs at Blood of Prokopius — these are all blogs run by the equivalent of the weird hermit at the edge of the village who earns sidelong glances from all the right-thinking folk, but who nevertheless entertains midnight visitors who would commission a love potion or a curse-poppet.

(And I of course don’t mean any disrespect by that. But as people with very distinct interests, we often find ourselves with a small but loyal group of readers. Of course, all this digital propagation and instant delivery means it’s easier to grow the contingent of regular readers.)

So what does that mean? Well, if you ask a lot of the gamers of the old-school renaissance, they’ll talk about the golden age of gaming, back when Moldvay Basic was still on a schedule that no one

at TSR had yet compiled, and when a set of polyhedral dice first signified a critical hit.

Nuts to all that foggy nostalgia! I’m saying that today is the golden age of gaming. That even now, amid a contracting distribution network of games themselves, we’re in a golden age of playing games and talking about games. Mathematically, more people may or may not be playing than ever before, but gamers’ ability to talk about their hobby and to propagate it is happening and gaining mass and momentum, like a snowball tumbling down a hill toward a camp of six oblivious adventurers.

Every day is a convention. And that feels pretty damned good.

With all that said, enjoy this book or this PDF or whatever format in which you chose to make your purchase. It’s just a sampling of the high times in which we’re living, when the output of people talking about games exceeds the word count and print run of the actual games themselves. This book is a key, a map to our gilded age.

Let’s have fun!

– Just in Achi l l i

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