I push The Three-Body Problem on every-fuckin'-body. People usually say it dips in the middle and finishes strong, but I can't really agree with that - I think the story in general becomes something we're not supposed to fully understand. To explain why would be telling. But the first volume is legitimately substantial and I went after it like a porterhouse.

It’s been about eight years since I ran a home campaign but I’ve decided to start another one. My players are going to be my wife Kara along with my friends Amy the Falcone and Levin Sadsad. I asked them if they wanted to play straight up D&D or if I could futz with it a little bit. They all agreed that they were up for some futzing and so I went to work building out a little custom campaign setting. So we will be playing D&D 5e but it will be set in the world of Brightgrave. Here’s what the players know so far.

Bungie has escaped entanglements twice now that I would have thought would have made especially tidy mausoleums.

Okay, so, I wasn't able to do it. Today's strip is also about this World of Loam evil vegetable horseshit. But now I'm done.

My policy is always to push things a very small amount past where it is reasonable or even, like… good. Have you ever eaten a burrito, like a Taco Truck type burrito wrapped in foil, and at the very end sometimes you take a bite with real enthusiasm and occasionally eat some of the foil. But there is a portion of the burrito which is inextricable from the foil by that point, it has suffused it such that only the truly bold may enter this rare and refined Mouth Palace.

The site isn't really designed to show it yet, but we typically stream all afternoon on Tuesdays with a bunch of novel, weird stuff. Want to give it a try? Here's what we've got, starting now:

What a fun trip to the dentist. The right side of my head is an infinite, furrowed perturbation, sown with thousands of abraded teeth. The left side of my head is the anchor that keeps me from leaving the Earth.

I like comics when I read them but I always forget they are there. I'm not trying to speak with insufficient reverence, I'm just a finite creature. However it came to be, I've always been around artists for some reason and they've kept me up to date with stuff but I can't pretend to any kind of true membership in the sanctum.

It was Ryan that first let me in on the Brawl Stars thing, then I got in there, and now Gabriel has invested himself in it and statistically lapped me several times.

I think that, rather than being arch about the whole thing, the right call is to laud Gabriel's Krynn Excursion. First of all, like Hamburger Helper, it occupies a valuable midpoint between homemade and store-bought. You can partake in the camaraderie and industry of a working kitchen with greater frequency because portions of the toil have been commodified. I don't know every aspect of his life but I know that Gabriel is a grown-ass man who has to do a bunch of time consuming shit nobody appreciates, and nurturing some kind of Mind World other people can inhabit isn't always gonna happen.

The year is coming to an end and I wanted to take a look back at the games I really enjoyed in 2018. This is not a top ten list and these are in no particular order. Here’s my favorite games of 2018 and where I played them.

I run home games for Elliot and Ronia both, very different ones: Elliot's is a D&D romp that is like a whimsical take on the Pied Piper, except the parents are pulled away and they have to figure out their shit. They have a powergamer who likes wants to interrogate, torture, and slit throats while the rest of them use their skills and powers to steal as much candy as possible. Ronia's game is a Tales from the Loop campaign set in Aberdeen at the precipice of grunge. They are... quite different.

Gift giving between Growlithe and myself typically does not involves gifts - let alone the giving of them. We are like an old married couple that has decided that their are rich enough in their union that any gift would be redundant because the greatest gift of all - love - is one they share daily.

I found a lot of great games at PAX Unplugged, and a surprising percentage of them have actually managed to enter proper rotation. My daughter Ronia and I have tested them all, and if we want to play them more than once, that's when other people get the nod.

I was eventually able to get Gabe into Bloodborne, and then he got farther than I ever did; I suspect the same may be true for Ashen as well.