An excessively longwinded update

Oh, man, busy days.

Been helping Charlie out with the prepress stuff for the second volume of Templar, Arizona, and some related t-shirt design. Also, she's doing Wizard World Chicago this weekend, and I've been playing comics roadie for her.

We met colorist Corey Greene at Wizard World's preview night (Thursday), and he seems like a cool guy. On the train ride home, we got to horrify him with the contents of my iPod. Those who know me will not be surprised: Among all the Professor Brothers shorts and episodes of Cooking Master Boy, I also have some unspeakably horrible stuff. Interestingly, this attracted the enthusiastic attention of two total strangers, a young couple named Becky and Dallas. We watched a deeply terrifying video from BME together, and that was all they needed to guess that Charlie and I are Something Awful goons like them.

The Internet. Still with us wherever we go.

Charlie and I have both totally been neglecting Age of Conan, which is kind of tragic. Both of us basically just got off of newb island (Are we the only people who use this term for the starting region of any MMORPG?), and then immediately stopped playing. And that is dumb. We'll get back into it soon, I think. Especially if we finally her her a copy, so that we can actually play together. (Honestly, I'm not really into the "massively multiplayer" featured of MMORPGs, so unless I can play 'em with my wife or some other people I know, I get bored fast.)

Anyway, as all good humans should know, the Spore Creature Creator is finally out, and that has been taking up most of my gaming time (if you'd really call it gaming). Spore is basically going to own Charlie and me when it finally comes out for real, and even the little Creature Creator is well worth my time and money. It's just a construction kit for creatures you can't really do much with, but it is hugely, hugely fun. I've really got to make a big post sharing my creatures, soon.

We're also getting back into Team Fortress 2, lately. That is such an incredibly well-made game. Charlie and I tend to play as a Medic-Heavy team (respectively), although last time we found ourselves really loving the Scout and Pyro (separately, of course). Valve is one of those companies that can just have all my damn money right now. They're just insanely reliable. (Getting real interested in their upcoming co-op zombie game, Left4Dead, by the way.)

On the RPG front, I'm still running my Spirit of the Century campaign--Lost Worlds and Secret Histories--every week (well, theoretically every week) and loving the hell out of it. I'm also playing in a monthly Amber game with almost the same bunch of people as my LWaSH players.

I think after I finish up with arc of LWaSH, we might give In a Wicked Age a go. I told my crew about it, and they were immediately interested. (I really love this group. They are basically up for anything. We've really been playing a good variety of stuff.) I also kinda want to do something with 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, if only to try it out.

Also! Brian from my RPG group has been thinking about running a Stargate game for a while, now. I'm not generally a big supporter of licensed properties as RPG settings, but I'd totally be up for this. Stargate really strikes me as a hugely, awesomely gameable setting, and I'd just love to see what Brian does with it.

Oh, and I'm still doing photography, even if I haven't been showing it anywhere. ... Ah, what the hell. I'll post one with this update.