After the fantastic success of last year's Big Bad Con Morgan and I once more made the road trip from Los Angeles to Oakland to sup from the chalice of Bay Area gaming. This time Andrew was already in situ (although got screwed a bit by work) and Colin was in baby-caring mode, but Jesse was able to join us in the car and David met us up there, so a ( Read more... )

The inaccurately named LA Beer Week ends tomorrow with a four hour beer festival at Union Station. I've been to two events so far, but I'm actually going to invalidate the geographic part of this celebration of craft beer by talking about our visit to The Trappist in Oakland a couple of weeks ago ( Read more... )

I have a few of things to post about over the next few days, namely Big Bad Con, a new XP system for Dungeon World that a few of us have been trying out, and the Apocalypse/Dungeon World hack that I've started working on. But first, some food porn.

Earlier in the evening at Figaro, I had a plate of escargot and a glass of Trefethen's excellent ( Read more... )

The weekend just past was this year's Fall edition of Nerdly Beach Party, a regular gathering of story gamers from both ends of California held at San Simeon State Park on the central Californian coast. I have been trying to attend this small (20 person) con for the past several years, but have been thwarted by clashes with exams and weddings. Now ( Read more... )

As I just mentioned, Gateway is this weekend. I just updated my game blurbs. I preregistered for a few things as well, so my schedule is mostly full and will be fuller when I get there on Friday and grab a couple of the non-pre-reg slots for a couple of the other games that reached max pre-reg in the first 5-10 minutes of going live.

• Friday ( Read more... )

After a round of golf last friday, I bought a couple of beers. A 22oz. bottle of Six Rivers Brewery Chili Pepper Spicy Ale and a six pack of Great Divide Brewing Company Claymore Scotch Ale.

Based on the reviews of the Six Rivers on Beer Advocate*, I decided not to open this one on my own while watching the Super Rugby final, but to take it to the ( Read more... )

At the recommendation of mcellis, I had a Strawberry Rhubbarb pie from Du-Par's at the Farmer's Market yesterday*. It was delicious. I also picked up some meat at one of the butchers and cooked a pork steak with apple sauce for dinner ( Read more... )

Continued from HyphenCon I.

After a few hours sleep, we loaded up and drove down to San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter for breakfast at Richard Walker's Pancake House, a magical place with delicious food and excellent service. We queued for 20-30 minutes to get in, drooling over the menu, especially their specialty Dutch apple pancakes, which most of us ( Read more... )

Every year a band of San Deigo-area gamers hosts a small two-day convention at an office in a northern suburb of the city. This year the bulk of my Thursday night group went down to enjoy the fruits of the Hyph, as we dubbed it, and experience a bit of a road trip en routeThe southern road trip started with Strawberry donuts and fresh Tiger tails ( Read more... )

I'm up bright and early on a Saturday morning preparing for a weekend of food and gaming at Hyphencon in San Diego. It's a two day con held at the workplace of one of the San Diego crew: Saturday is RPGs, Sunday boardgames ( Read more... )