Historically, we've had a strange relationship with SOE's John Smedley - though I think it's more or less reached equilibrium now.  We received a press release for a new game he's catalyzed over there, namely Magic: The Gathering Tactics, but since we don't run press releases there's no place for that.  This being established, I think a lot of their work out of their Tucson and Denver studios is woefully underappreciated, and I want to show some support.  I gave him a call yesterday to see if I could find anything out, and while I don't know if I succeeded especially well, if you share my vague enthusiasm for this currently mysterious game, read on.  I have taken the liberty of adding smileys where I believe he was being ironical.

-My D&D campaign is featured over on the Obsidian Portal site this month. You can check out a little interview with me as well as take a look at a bunch of info from my campaign. If you are not familiar with it, Obsidian Portal is a site full of tools to let you build and manage campaign websites for tabletop games like D&D. The basic stuff is free but they also have a pay option that has a few more features. They call this their ascendant level service and they have been kind enough to give me a coupon code that you can use to get one free month of the ascendant service.

Gabriel brought to my attention a post in a dungeonmastering board he reads, which detailed the circumlocutions some people go through trying to square their plans for a vibrant scenario and the Received Wisdom of official campaign materials. It might be because we think of every event, action, sentence, or phrase as something to pervert for our use, but I was made genuinely distraught by the notion that those books - which are suggestions, at best - would conspire to dilute your joy. Those things are tools, and what's more they're your tools, which means that they serve you. Our version of the base setting is practically unrecognizable. Rule Zero is invoked constantly, of which Assertion Twelve is a corollary.

Tycho and I will be playing Tekken 6 this Sunday Nov. 1st as a part of the Xbox Live Game with Fame thing. You can get all the details over on the Microsoft community calendar site. You'll need to send a friend request to Tekken6Tycho or Tekken6Gabe and then be ready to kick our ass Sunday night at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern time. And yes the rumors are true, I can do a three hit combo with Paul. That's like three hits...in a row.

Tycho said he hasn't been playing Ratchet and Clank, but I sure as hell have. I've been putting a few hours into it every night this week and I love it.

Gabriel installed Windows 7 yesterday on his powerful new laptop, claiming that it "just works," which is a two-word phrase we typically associate with their competitors. He says it is "better," but saying that something is better than Vista is (as a statement) virtually content free.

is available here.

It seemed like it was about time for some Twisp and Catsby, which we hope is welcome. We wondered how the season might be interpreted in their strange realm, and now we have some measure of understanding.

We opened up preregistration for PAX East last week!  Occupying the chronospan March 26-28th, day tickets will run you $25, while the three-day pass goes for $45.  What an incredible value!

Dante's Inferno apparently sports an achievement called "Bad Nanny," so called because in order to secure this achievement one must murder ten million babies. Or some other number of babies. Honestly, I don't know how many babies you have to murder in order to get those points, but it seems to me that the number is not the focus here so much as the babies themselves. And the killing.

The last page of our Dragon Age comic is now online. The comic has sparked a bit of a debate in the official forums. Some people think we have miss-represented the Templars and they aren't happy. They don't like that we've made the Templars out to be "bad guys". All I can say is that the the word of Dragon Age is not as black and white as a lot of people in that thread seem to think.

Everywhere the discussion takes hold, the conversation surrounding Infinity Ward's decision to forego dedicated servers is an absolute fuckfest. I understand why it would enrage that contingent. It's an aggressive assertion that the universe is not as they claim.

Check it out, it's a list!

Gabriel suggested we do another Uncharted 2 comic, that is to say two comics, because it is Uncharted two. His argument was unassailable, and I relented. Uncharted's tweetful propensities may be customized to your liking, which was kind of them. It's an asynchronous form of Xbox Live's presence updates, and I'd expect to see much, much more of it.

I suspect that Gabriel has already completed the second Uncharted, and I am working toward that goal as fast as my plague-wracked body will allow. Nathan Drake continues to suffer from his unique sociopathy, the one which allows him to crack wise between genocides. As usual, we at Penny Arcade are swollen with concern for those on the periphery.

The new one went up today.  One more to go.