Airport + Free Wifi = Post

I'm officially on my way to San Diego for the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. It's my first time flying in over a year, but everything is about the same around here. Well, except for that backscatter scanner thing. It's a bit insidious. They don't tell you what it does. They don't offer you a pat-down. They just tell you to stand between these walls, then they blast you with radiation, and voila. Someone in some unseen room sees your junk and you're free to fly the "friendly" skies. Do I feel any "safer"? Not really. Do I think my rights have been violated? Maybe a little. If I knew this was the only way to stop attacks on commercial flights, I wouldn't mind a bit, but I know that this procedure is likely only in place due to some savvy lobbying by the company that builds those scanners. There are certainly some less intrusive measures that would work just as well. Anyway, enough with that noise...on to gaming thoughts of the day.

Today, I'm just going to post about some projects I've seen around the web. I'm guessing most of my readers have seen these, because they are from some of the bigger blogs, but just in case, here you go.

Up first is the announcement about the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman Games. You can read more about it here, here, and here. It looks like the pre-order for the print edition is now available. The question is, do I really need this? The game is designed to run old school style D&D, using the OGL content and D20 rules. Sounds like a great meeting point for the Pathfinder/3.5 folks and the Old School folks. Then again, I'm already playing Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry to get my Old School fix. All that said, the game rules use all the crazy Lou Zocchi dice, which is pretty neat (since I already own a set -- still need a d7, though, I guess.) Over all, it looks like a pretty cool game, and the playtest report from the Mule Abides (linked above) sounds promising.

The second thing I wanted to mention was the Gygaxian Democracy Series Zak has been releasing on Playing D&D with Porn Stars. Any regular readers of this blog know that I'm absolutely in love with Zak's creativity and these posts don't disappoint. Essentially, he posits a situation in a game and gives some possible scenarios for what might happen, then he opens it up to the greater community. He has a great group posting on there, so there are some really creative ideas. Check it out and join in the fun.