in remembrance of Dwayne McDuffie

Last night, I met my friend Amy Berg (who created Cha0s on Leverage, and brought me into Eureka as Dr. Parrish) down in Hollywood for dinner. Traffic was horrible (surprise) so she'd been waiting almost 20 minutes when I finally walked into the restaurant.

While I scanned the crowd to find her, a familiar voice broke through the cacaphony of diners and 90s rock that filled the room. "They'll let anyone in here, I guess."

I turned toward the voice, and saw my friend Yuri with his wife Tara and one of their friends. As it turned out, Amy had chosen a table that was right next to theirs, and though she knew Yuri via Twitter, didn't realize that she had been sitting next the The Amazing Yuri Lowenthal, Close Personal Friend of Me Wil Wheaton. We all talked for a few minutes, and then sort of retreated to our own tables and conversations, separated as they were by just a few feet.

Shortly after we finished eating, the restaurant kicked us all out to make way for a private karaoke party, so we walked next door to this cantina for a beer.

While we waited for our drinks to arrive, we talked about writers and writing. Just as our drinks were put down, Yuri said, "Speaking of great writers and great writing, I'd like to toast to Dwayne McDuffie."

We held our glasses up and were silent for a moment. "To Dwayne," I said. We clinked glasses, took a sip, and set them down.

"That was a good call, Yuri," I said, and took a couple of deep breaths so I wouldn't dilute my beer with tears.

For those who don't know, Dwayne McDuffie died suddenly this week, from what I understand were complications following emergency heart surgery. Many people who know of Dwayne's work knew him as a truly outstanding comic creator whose legacy is felt throughout the comic industry by creators and readers alike.

I knew Dwayne because I worked with him on Teen Titans around 2003. Recently, I'd worked for Dwayne and Titans creator Glenn Murakami on Ben Ten: Alien Force. I didn't know him as well as I wanted to, because the nature of animation puts a thick pane of soundproof glass between the actors and writers and producers, and the nature of television leaves little time for hanging out once the work is actually done.

What precious little time I did spend with him, though, was awesome. Dwayne was kind, he was supportive, he was incredibly creative, and he genuinely loved what he did. He loved to talk about comics with me, frequently asked me what I was reading, and if I could suggest anything for him to pick up. He always took a moment or two to thank me for coming in to play Aqualad or DarkStar, and whenever I left the studio he told me, "I'll see you next time," because he was always looking for ways to bring me back into his shows.

Dwayne was Good People, and everyone who worked with him loved him. When I found out — via Twitter, no less — that he had died, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and submerged in ice water. It's been three days, now, since I heard, and I still have a knot in my stomach that doesn't seem all that interested in going anywhere very soon.

I'm having a hard time fully accepting that I'm not going to see Dwayne next time, so maybe you'll join me in a moment of silence and rememberance for a truly great person, who gave the world many wonderful things.

Here's to you, Dwayne. Thank you for everything.

A weekend of gaming, from Cal & D to Power Grid

Saturday, I got together with Cal, Martin and Steve so we could finish our now-epic one-shot of Cal & D.

The plan was to start at 10, because Martin had a family commitment that we all decided (despite his disagreement, which was wrong) that wasn't nearly as important as crawling the dungeon and emerging victorious with copious amounts of treasure.

However, we all stayed up too late on Friday, so we started a little bit later, like … 1130. Well, that's not entirely correct, either. See, we got all our stuff together at 1130, but we had to bullshit and tease Martin about his family commitment for at least an hour, so we actually started at 1230.

We could have sat around my dining room table, but since Cal & D requires no maps or minis, we instead played in my living room, Cal standing on one side with his DM stuff, and the three of us sitting in different places on my two couches. It made me tremendously happy to sit around and play like this, because it's how we used to do it in the old days, when minis weren't nearly as integral to combat as they are today.

Cal recapped for us, and Martin rolled 2d12. He pointed at the result and asked, "So do we win now?"

"No," Cal said.

I rolled d20. "How about now?"

"Still no," Cal said.

It was the perfect way to start Cal & D, where the table talk — in this case, living room talk — is more important than the actual game.

We explored the Tomb a bit more, until Steve's Gnome wandered into a room and turned himself invisible before the door closed between him and us. Our characters didn't know that he'd activated some teleportation device while the door was closed, so we decided to role play it as honestly as we could: Steve's Gnome was fucking with us, so we just walked away to teach him a lesson (because that makes a lot of sense when you're in a Tomb filled with traps and who knows what else.)

"DMs just love it when you split the party," Cal said, using a tone which indicated that this probably wasn't true, or if it was, he was not one of the DMs who subscribed to this particular opinion.

We did the split party thing for close to 30 minutes, until Martin and I ran into a locked door that we couldn't get through. "Let's go back to that room at the bottom of the stairs and get L'Anklebiter," I said, "so he can pick the lock."

This eventually led us to a room filled with giant rotating knives ("Knives?" "Rotating knives, yes." "We just wanted a nice block of flats." "I see. I guess I didn't properly divine your attitude toward the tenants.") I was cut to fat ribbons by them, and Martin's little gnome guy tried to dodge them, but failed for some reason.

"Don't I have [some Gnome thing that Martin made up to get out of the way]?"

"No, that's in an older edition of Cal & D," Cal said, "it's not in this edition."

"Yeah, didn't you read the Rules CALpendium?" I said, particularly pleased with myself. "That whole system was pretty heavily revised."

"I guess I haven't picked up that particular book, yet," Martin said.

Eventually, we met up with L'Anklebiter, who was fighting some kind of nasty Hag. During the fight with the Hag, Martin's Gnome (who you may remember is the Travelocity Gnome) used his Gnomish Hookhammer (this is hilarious if you're a certain kind of gaming geek) to trip the Hag.

"You need to say some kind of trip-related pun," Cal said, "or the attack fails."

Steve and I laughed, and Martin completely froze. His face turned red, he stopped breathing, and I'm fairly sure he begain to sweat. "Uhh," Martin said.

"Come on, man! You TRIPPED her, and your whole thing is that you send people on TRIPS. You have to come up with a pun."

Martin looked as if he had forgotten how to speak, and quite possibly how to think.

"Five, four, three," Cal counted down, "two … one."

Martin blinked. "I got nothing."

"BOOOOO!!!" I hollered.

"THUMBS DOWN!" Steve said.

"The Hag gets up," Cal said, "And the Travelocity gods are so displeased with you, you are transformed into …"

An excited silence filled the room. Even Oingo Boingo, which had been playing on the stereo, seemed to fade into the background.

"You are transformed into … William Shatner. And now you work for Price Line."

I exploded into convulsions of laughter. When I got my breath back, I said, "Oh my god, Martin. You're The Shatner now!"

Martin looked about as sad as it's possible to look while playing Cal & D. "I just … I couldn't think of anything."

"Have a nice TRIP?" I said. "You should have booked TRIP insurance?"

"I know, I know," Martin said.

"I'm sorry, you didn't sound like The Shatner at all, just then. You're going to have to work on that."

Around this time, we took a break to compose ourselves. Then we realized that Martin had to leave for his totally-not-important thing, so we put the game on hold, to be completed at a future session.

Shortly after Martin left, Cal's wife and my wife came home, and we transitioned to board games.

First up, we played Pandemic, with the On The Brink expansion. I am of the opinion that Pandemic should always be played on the Hard setting, because we're probably going to lose anyway, and there is much more glory in beating the game on Hard or Legendary or Are You Fucking Serious than the easier settings.

We set up, and Anne said, "isn't this that game you say you never win?"

I told her that it was, and it would be a good bonding experience for us all, since she'd never played it with us before.

"Okay," she said.

"Seriously, I have had more fun losing this game than I have had winning other games."

"If you say so," she said.

"Trust me!" I said.

"Let's just play the game, okay?" Cal said.

"Good idea."

We won, with just two cards left to draw and the outbreak level at 7.

"I thought you said you never won this game!" Anne said, clearly disappointed to have been victorious.

"Well, you're just too good at it," Steve said to her, "so it's all your fault that we won."

We broke for dinner. I made Pappardelle with Vegetarian Bolognese. I was really stressed out about screwing it up, especially because Cal and his wife Raellen are incredible chefs and we usually play at their house and eat their food … but it was amazing. I was proud of myself, and everyone enjoyed it. Go me!

After dinner, we played Shadows Over Camelot. It was a ton of fun, as usual, even though we lost, because Cal was a filthy stinking traitor.

Cal and Raellen went home after that, because Cal, Steve, and I were planning to go to OrcCon by LAX on Sunday, and we didn't want to get down there too late.

I've written about OrcCon before, but a quick recap: it's a mid-sized gaming con that I just love. I've been going to it since I was in high school (not every year, sadly), and it is what comes to mind when I think of "going to a con." It has a great community feel, tons of open gaming, a great library of games to check out, and tremendous volunteers.

So Steve and I drove down to LAX around 10, met Cal, and found our friend Shane, who was volunteering to run tournaments, teach games, and generally help make the con awesome for its attendees.

We had hoped to get into the Dragon Age RPG, but we missed the start time by nearly 2 hours, and we'd missed the BSG start time by over an hour, so we grabbed a copy of Forbidden Island from the game library, and played it in Open Gaming, while we waited for Shane to finish running a tournament.

It was a seriously fun game, and we beat it on Hard (I wanted to play Legendary, but they were chicken.) My friend Paul Tevis, creator of the fantastic indie rpg A Penny For My Thoughts joined us, and we played Tales of the Arabian Nights with him. This is a great game that is truly about the journey instead of the destination. The goal is to have an interesting life that's filled with stories and adventure, even if terrible, terrible, terrible things happen to your character. It's a polarizing game, but I love it.

Paul had to leave for a game, so we wandered the dealer's room for a bit. I bought a copy of Lunch Money (finally) and considered buying coasters with dragons on them.

"I don't think I can sell these to Anne," I said.

"Hey, if the wives want us to use coasters, we should get to pick them out," Steve said.

"You know what? That makes a whole lot of sense to me," I said, and I bought four of them.

Our shopping completed, Steve headed down to the airport to fly home. Cal and I found Shane and played Power Grid Japan with him and a young couple (Crystal and Kevin) who I think Shane knows from the con. I was in the lead for the entire game, until Crystal connected and 15 cities when I had 13 and needed one more turn. Oh well, second place was fine.

I could have stayed at the con and played more games, but I wanted to have dinner with Anne, so I thanked my friends for playing with me, and left around 6:30.

When I got home, I proudly showed Anne our new coasters.

She was Not Amused™. "How about you use those on game day, and we pick out some different ones … together," She said.

I silently cursed Steve, even though I still thought that his idea was intriguing, and I wished to subscribe to his newsletter.

in a sea black with ink

The greatest reward I can receive as a writer is the knowledge that something I wrote affected someone who read it. Earlier today, a HUNTER reader e-mailed the following:

I'd like to make a request: Please don't make it so dark next time.

I know just how foolish it is to "make a request" about your writing — I'm not your muse, your boss, your editor or your conscience. I understand that the darkness is actually the reason for the actions of the characters in Hunter (i.e. it isn't gratuitous), and that without it, it would have been a completely different story. I understand that the degree of darkness in Hunter is nothing compared to some of the other mainstream fantasy/sci-fi fiction that's out there in bookstores.

I just don't like it. It makes me feel very sad when I read dark stories like that, and it makes me want to curl up and recover from it.

There's enough real evil in the real world; please don't add more fictional evil to it.

HUNTER is just 2700 words, but it affected this reader so much, he/she/it wrote me this e-mail, and I've been walking on air all day because of it. HUNTER is set in a dark and desperate world, where good and evil is really a matter of perspective, and if readers left that world feeling really good, I either didn't hit the target I was aiming for, or I'm going to keep my distance from that reader if it's at all possible.

Every day, I struggle with the Voice of Self Doubt. When I get a note like this — that isn't condescending, demanding or unkind, but is sincere and thoughtful — I hold onto it, because it's worth +5 to my attacks (and grants 5d20 damage) against The Voice.

Mystery Reader who sent this: Thank you for reading, and thank you for writing. When I visit a world that isn't as dark as Goa, I hope you'll come along for the ride.

various items including: hunter, marketplace, batman, and a show with paul and storm

Various items that may be relevant to your interests begin … NOW!

* I talked to the Marketplace Tech Report recently, and our two interviews are now online.

I'm sure it will surprise you to learn that I'm a huge NPR geek, so getting to talk to John Moe for Marketplace (I did my side of the converstaion from KPCC) was pretty cool.

* I am doing a show at Largo with Paul and Storm on Tuesday, March 29th! I'm going to perform stories with and without musical accompaniment, and Paul and Storm are going to play music. Then we'll sing about pirates for two hours. Los Angeles always asks me to do a show, and then nobody ever shows up when I do one here. Don't fucking let me down, Los Angeles; I'm getting tired of defending you to Chicago.

* I know I'm way late to the party on this, but I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum recently. It's sort of like being in control of an episode of the Batman animated series, but there are a couple of things that keep taking me out of the experience.

First, there is just way too much backtracking. I really hate it when games do this, because it feels like a cheap way to make a game appear longer than it is, and it's just boring. I already did the complicated zipline batclaw jumpglide across the poison gas room thing, guys. I don't need to do it again.

Second, It's incredibly fun to pretend that I'm Batman, but it's a little silly that I my progress is constantly thwarted by 5-foot high brick walls. And by a little, I mean goddamn fucking ridiculous. I AM THE GODDAMN BATMAN FOR FUCKS SAKE.

Still, those complaints aside, it's a lot (or alot, if you prefer) of fun. Beating up on bad guys requires timing and precision, so it doesn't turn into a button masher (you can try that, if you want, but you won't get very far). There are also two extra games that parallell the main storyline where you try to solve puzzles posed by The Riddler, and you try to find these tablets that reveal the history of Arkham Asylum.

Huh. I just sort of reviewed the game without meaning to. I guess I should grade it, then: B-

* I think it's really important that the story of HBGary, Bank of America, Wikileaks and The Chamber of Commerce doesn't die. This is serious ratfucking and is pretty much a perfect example of the war the ultra-rich and powerful are successfully waging against the middle class in America.

* Digital: A Love Story is a computer mystery romance that is set "five minutes into the future in 1988". You read it by using an emulator that looks an awful lot like the Amiga, and it recreates the old BBS experience when 2400 baud was all the baud we needed. The story unfolds via messages. It's just amazing.

* A friend of Anne's makes and sells organic, eco-friendly clothing with positive messages. I really love it, and from time to time I remind the Internet about it, so people will check it out and tell their friends. It's called Capable Arts. Tell them Wil sent you.

* Many people have asked how HUNTER is selling. Without getting into specifics, I'm delighted that so many people have chosen to give me donations for the story. Most are giving between 1 and 5 dollars, and close to one thousand readers have paid for the story. I stupidly set it up in a way that doesn't let me track individual downloads, so I have no idea what the ratio of downloads to customers is. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and I'm inclined to revisit the world at least once in the future. I'm calling this a success, and I'll do pay-what-you-want again in the future.

This goes on its own line because I want to make sure it gets seen: Thank you to everyone who read Hunter, left me feedback about it, paid something for it, and told friends and Internets about it. This wouldn't have been a success without you.

* Finally, Anne found a home for Velvet Wesley Crusher's Moustache:

In case you missed it, Felicia announced her secret project

Remember when I said

Felicia is working on a Secret Project™ that I'm lucky enough to know about … holy frakking shit balls on fire, you guys. When you know what it is, your mind will be blown right out of your skull so hard it will bounce off the wall and land on the ground next to your socks, which were also knocked right off your feet and through your shoes.

Well, Felicia announced her Secret Project today:

Star of The Guild, costar of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, general Joss Whedon go-to guest star and geek dream girl Felicia Day is set to write and star in a six-episode web series based on BioWare’s Dragon Age franchise. The web series, dubbed Dragon Age: Redemption, will follow Day’s character and elvish assassin (of my heart) Tallis, who is in search of a rogue mage in the land of Ferelden, which is the world in which Dragon Age: Origins took place, as well as the world in which the upcoming Dragon Age installment will take place.

I know, right? I've known about this for months and I couldn't say a thing about it. And you know what? [REDACTED SO FELICIA DOESN'T STAB ME IN THE NECK].

Oh, the terrible burden of secrecy, how will I ever shoulder it? Oh, I know! Guinness is +1 to Strength.

All kidding aside, I'm really proud of Felicia and as happy for her as a person can be. I know what she went through to make this project happen, and let's just say that it was a lot. She's one of the most remarkable people I know, and I consider myself lucky to be her friend and occasional co-worker.