Category: Feature

It’s autumn here in the northern midwest [it’s autumn everywhere north of the equator, you idiot -ed.] and we’re getting our last batch of sun-filled days cool enough to comfortably wear a sweatshirt, yet warm enough that you can sit outside and not converse through chattering teeth. As such, I’ve decided to take this afternoon off and go hang out with my kids when they get home from school. What will we do? No idea, but I assume it will involve jumping and leaf piles. Why am I telling you all this? Because it appears the Stately Staff is doing the same. We’re awfully light on glimpses into the future this week, but we’ll give you what we got. Just a warning, I’m dying to get out there and enjoy the weather, so we might be light on links, too. Yep, it’s a full-blown disaster of a post. Huzzah! Have a good weekend, everyone!

As you may have heard, I’m on west coast time this week and I can’t quite get my head around it. I’m waking up way too early in the morning and going to bed right after the sun goes down behind the San Rafael Hills. At least I think those are the mountains I’m looking at. To be honest, after driving around this county for the last 4 days, I don’t know east from west anymore and am wondering how everyone who lives here doesn’t have constant headaches. I’m a simpleton. Nevertheless, time never rests and neither will our attempts to look into the future and see what we’ll be playing on our devices this weekend. See what’s planned after the jump.

Next week I’ll be heading on vacation with the family to sunny California. I’m dreading it for a couple reasons. First of all, this involves flying and I probably wrote some of the code that’s keeping the plane in the air. As the editor will surely tell you, self-confidence isn’t my strong suit [no shit -ed.]. Secondly, I’m heading out there with three kids, one of whom is 16 years old and angry at all times. Earlier this week I got my first “fuck you” from him and I’m just super excited to sit next to him in confined quarters for 4.5 hours and then a hotel room for a week. Kill me. Before I leave, however, we have a weekend to kill and that means playing games. What, you ask, will we be playing? Come see after the break.

Something I started doing while I was trying to be a real writer [which, let’s not let Dave forget, he failed horribly at -ed.] I stumbled upon comedy. My best friend is a successful (in comedy, or writing, that means she gets paid, which only the most talented tend to do) actor in a local improv troupe and convinced me to give it a go. I quickly found that being onstage and being quick on my feet were squarely not in my wheelhouse. I sucked, hard. I did meet a lot of awesome people, however (for some reason, I’ve found people in improv and theater to be the nicest and most supportive folk out there) and a few of us decided to turn to the written word instead. We took sketch writing classes, wrote sketches, actually put on some shows and it was all a lot of fun. My writing time has dwindled since starting back at my “real” job, but this weekend I’m getting back on the sketch horse. Kind of. I’m taking another sketch writing class run by none other than Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall fame. I’ve loved KITH since college and am looking forward to spending an entire weekend learning and, maybe, getting the writing bug back to its old levels of creepy-crawliness. Anyway, I’m sharing all this because I know I won’t be playing much of anything this weekend. No board games and, hopefully, brainstorming and writing when I’d usually be turning on my Switch. All is not lost, however, as everyone else in the hallowed halls of Stately Play manor is set to regale you with their gaming plans for the next couple days. Head past the jump and then tell us what your weekend game plans are in the comments.

I didn’t get around to posting our glimpse into the future last week due to a migraine that was delivered directly to my brain from the 6th level of hell. I didn’t do much of anything last Friday but sit in a dark room and pray for death. Come to think of it, replace the dark room with ‘cubicle’ and it kind of describes every Friday. This week we’re back to regale you with prognostications of what we’ll be playing this weekend. If you’re short on time and can’t read through the whole thing, yes, I will be playing more 18xx this weekend. I’m such a wild man.