If I could grow a beard I'd make it look like Gandalf's, but I can't and it'd make me look homeless anyways so that's that

I'd intended to write a bit about how magic in tabletop games that derive most of their basic ideas from D&D are generally poor, but it didn't want to be written today so it'll percolate around in my brain.

Really, since my brother headed back home (he was here during his vacation, being a student and all), it's felt oddly quiet and the space he took up seems empty. It feels like he should still be behind me right now, at his makeshift battlestation we made from a small unused desk, some books, a bin, and a bit of wood.

While he was here, I'd managed to skip both weekly sessions of Dark Heresy I'm supposed to be running, and the biweekly 4th edition game that I've found myself in, somehow, and so roleplaying's been coming up consistently second, in behind strategy games. I've been lots of those: EU4 (really damn good but let's talk about that later), Dominions 4, Unity of Command, and some others that I've quite forgotten now. Probably at some point I'll sit down and write out a thing or two about how you can apply good game design decisions in the game to your own game design process, or maybe about ideas that you can steal in the meantime for the game you're already running- but for now, just look at that picture of the good Sir Ian McKellen in some seriously stylish shades.

They should have put that in the latest Hobbit movie. I think between giant poorly animated molten gold and some entirely extraneous Smaug screentime nobody would have batted an eye.