In role-playing news, the Monday night D&D4e "Vanished Lands: the Faith-Based Initiative" fantasy gamers were joined by alumni Thomas K.Y. and John C.M. a few weeks ago. That adventuring party has fought at the edge of a battle between humans and evil humanoids, continuing its quest for three barbarian relics.
The "Holy Steel" teleconferencing team is still trying to get back to a regular schedule after moving from Thursdays to Sundays. We're also in the midst of converting characters from D&D3.5 to Pathfinder/"D&D3.75." When we left that group of heroes, it was traveling across the Arabian Desert on its way to the empire of Khemet (New Kingdom Egypt).
I visited Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Compleat Strategist's new location in Boston a few weeks ago. I was impressed by the amount of support for competitors to Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition such as Pathfinder and Savage Worlds (which Brian W. is using for his "Fierce Frontier" game). Janice and I also went to our favorite book shops in Harvard Square.
The City of Heroes supergroup all logged in during "double-XP" weekend, as our metahumans tried to complete numerous missions. While the Sunday morning sessions have been moved to Friday nights (conflicting with several genre television shows), David I.S., Dexter V.H., and I are going to try the Lord of the Rings Online multiplayer online game.
Stuart C.G. plans to visit the Boston area in a few weeks, and he may make a cameo appearance with the current face-to-face group (the "F.B.I."). Speaking of college chums, I've also met Cliff Y. a few times around work in Framingham, Massachusetts.
I hope that Dex will also be able to visit later this year to run his D20 Star Wars: Saga Edition space opera RPG, and there is still a fair amount of interest in returning to D20 Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Ed. superhero scenarios. It's too bad I no longer live in Virginia, because Tim M.B.'s GURPS 4e: "Knights of the Astral Sea" steampunk/dimensional travel game sounds interesting.
In addition, Janice and I have continued using our new Nintendo Wii, especially the video games for the Wii Fit balance board. I like Wii Sports more than Wii Play, and Championship Foosball and Boom Blox may take some time to master.
Coming soon: "SciFriday" and upstarts…
Gene's Worlds 
