There's a few conventions I've been meaning to get to; I think I've said I was going to MAGFest a few times. I will someday. People seem to bloom when they talk about it, and I'd like to get some of that. But for years and years, Gen Con essentially defined what a convention was even though I'd never been to it and had no real way of learning about it, because it was just a picture I'd seen in a magazine. It wasn't simply an exemplar of the form, it was the entirety of the concept, moated between two deep parentheses.

August 6th, we're going back to a classic this year: a Table Tennis Tournament just like we used to do, only now instead of playing Ping Pong you're playing Ping Pong and changing lives. Not bad for an afternoon's work, eh?

I will be attending my very first Gen Con next week! I will be heading over there with the crew from Lone Shark games to talk about Thornwatch. We are coming up on the end of the design phase of this thing and it feels pretty great. We just recently had a meeting to discuss the size,shape and contents of the box. It felt like a huge milestone for me considering how many years I’ve been working on this game. I recently discovered the original notebook I used to design what I was calling Card Warriorz back then. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the earliest stuff I put down on paper.

I don't remember if there's a podcast for it exactly, it might have been after the fact, but somewhere in his rodent mind eleven o'clock in the morning constitutes an afternoonian span. It's devilry and/or witch-work; no doubt a data point in our species' tawdry decline.

I’ve spent the last couple of weekends wandering around my neighborhood with my phone out, collecting Pokemon. It’s seemed a popular past-time and a pleasant one. My usually quiet, keep-to-yourself suburban community has become a swarm of teens, adults and families buzzing around downtown Redmond, sharing smiles and hunting tips. And while I’ve spent the whole of this past week or so wearing some kind of yellow shirt (I’m a Hufflepuff, I have a lot of yellow), I found wearing the sample of our Yellow Team tee to be a neon call for pleasant conversation and fun banter.

Grand Admiral Thrawn is back, welcomed into loving embrace of canon, and I could not be more pleased. The younger iteration of myself liked him much more than the current revision, but the main thing is what it proves: that they aren't above boring into the years upon years of calcified work to haul worthies to the surface. They have an eye on it. Hopefully not all of it. Hopefully we can erect some tasteful shōji or something to obscure certain parts. You can tell from Panel Two where my own fantasies lie, in the voice Karen Traviss brought to the setting, a little more military and a little less mystic. Time will tell.

It seemed like a good time to take it all the way back, back in the day, with a podcast of the new Acquisitions Incorporated season we have promoted so vociferously. It was too fun not to do, and it's something I get asked about a lot at the PAX shows - essentially, "can I listen to the new stuff while i'm driving to work." Absolutely you can. The feed is here, so go for it! "Watch" the new season however you like, even if that includes not "watching" it per se. Big thanks to Erik Bronnum, Kiko Villasenor, Josh Price, and Jeff Kalles for making it happen. Super proud to work with these guys - official sub-interns, all.

James Patterson, as has been established, is a necromancer. And he has only begun his dark work.

I am really excited to announce our latest pin set. This is one that I’ve been working on for a while now and I can finally show off the end result.

I don't like having my teeth scraped with metal hooks, but I can endure it. I don't seek it out, or anything. But I love having teeth, so if there is the occasional tooth maintenance procedure sign me up. I'm trying to imagine eating a Fruit Roll-Up with no teeth and friends it is a fucking mess.

Lone Shark Games & Friends put together a Humble Puzzle Bundle, a truly bonkersville collection of puzzle collections. Child's Play is among the potential benefactors, along with Worldbuilders and It Gets Better!

There's a podcast for this strip that'll hit in a little while, and the reason I call it out specifically is that you will hear within this podcast that the strip is essentially a documentary - you'll be able to hear the moment my heart breaks. I was getting on at 10 because I thought everybody was getting on at ten. Not true! They're actually getting on much, much earlier.

I was late to all this Monster Huntery in general, but since 3 I've been trying to get caught up; the bizarre life you have enabled occasionally gets me stuck in the air from time to time, sometimes for upwards of fifteen hours, and I know of no medicine for this ailment so potent as Monster Hunter. The high fives this game generates on cooperative hunts are seismic. And probably bad for the plane.

We were part of an ADSL Pilot Program in Spokane, back in 98 or so, and I would say that ever since then I have had to contend with Gabriel's fragmentary understanding of the network that literally makes our lives possible.

Like a delicious seasonal fruit, the new PAX 10 are hanging heavy on the bough. Our multidisciplinary team of writers, artists, designers, producers, and assorted thinkers have brought in the harvest:

Lot's of people here at PA had a hand in this new Acquisitions Inc. series and we're all very proud of it. I think it's a great show and easily our best YouTube offering. My son doesn't watch TV like normal people. He just watches YouTube and I have to be honest I don't entirely understand it. He tells me all the time about the amazing things "Lachlan" is doing. I have no grand plans of becoming a YouTube star. I have no cool accent (unless lisps are rad) and while I think Jerry and I are both ruggedly handsome in our own ways, I don't expect we will ignite the tween demographic. We do not expect to be nor do we have any desire to be the next YouTube sensation. I do think this Acquisitions Inc. series is really good though and I'd love more people to see it. It would be great if you could help us out and spread the word about the new series. We do what we can on the site but I honestly think there are lots of folks outside the PA world who would really enjoy the show. So if you've seen the new AI show and you dig it, please do us a solid and share it with your friends.