I've been busy with work and gaming, hence the delayed blog posting. Despite recent dental appointments (partly as a result of the partial bridge on my upper teeth, my lower molars have worn badly), I've enjoyed lots of local cuisine lately. Co-worker Ken G., Janice, and I have been to the new Chipotle in the Shopper's World plaza near where Ken and I work in Framingham, Massachusetts. I slightly prefer that burrito chain to Boloco, which also has an eatery in the area.

In addition, during the visit of St. Louis-based friend Byron V.O. this past weekend (19 to 22 September 2008), we ate at the reliable Bertucci's and went to the crowded but fun Phantom Gourmet Food Festival in Boston. The Phantom Gourmet is a local television show that reviews area restaurants, or as we call it, "food porn." On Sunday, we enjoyed the Minado sushi buffet in Framingham with Thomas K.Y.

We also ordered dinner from Oak Hill Pizza during the D20 Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Ed.: "Drake's 7" superhero game and had lunch at Nicholas' Pizzeria in Needham, Mass. Although we prefer Fuddrucker's or Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage (which suffered from a fire), we had good hamburgers at Wild Willy's in walking distance from my duplex. As I've noted previously, I've become a proponent of locally grown, organic foods, but patronizing local restaurants was our bit to help the economy during Byron's visit.

Next time: The new genre TV season!

Friends, I hope you've had a good week. After Labor Day, I took a few days off from work. In addition to doing yard and housework, I met former co-worker Brian F. for lunch at Conrad's in Norwood, Massachusetts. I also picked up my subscription at New England Comics and stopped by the new Newbury Comics in Norwood.

Janice and I drove down to my parents' home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. While flying might be quicker and a train would be more pleasant, it was a bit cheaper and more convenient for us to take Janice's car, since we had various places to go to in Virginia. We checked out my folks' newly renovated kitchen, talked about politics, and stayed the night before continuing toward Washington D.C.

On Friday, 5 September 2008, Janice and I treated my parents to a nice lunch at Tadpole Cafe in Warrenton (their birthdays were a month earlier). We then stopped by the Sugarloaf Craft Festival in Manassas. The fair was quieter then it would have been if we went during the weekend, but we wanted to beat the tropical storms.

In addition, I made a detour to an old haunt, the Game Parlor in Chantilly. I enjoyed perusing the shop's wide selection of role-playing supplements, comic books, and miniatures. Janice and I had time to check in at the Holiday Inn Express Fairfax, where we stayed because my younger brother Peter was hosting some of his friends, and we didn't want to impose on any of my friends this time around.

Janice and I met several friends for dinner at Cee Fine Thai Dining near our hotel. Former college roommate John Z.G. and his son Mark G. were the first to arrive. John's wife (and fellow City of Heroes player) Kim A.G. and daughter Vicki had other engagements. Corbin A.Y. & Andria K.Y. also joined us, recently returned from their Alaskan cruise.

Steve M.R. & Aleece M.R. and their young children Connor R. and Lauren R. met us both then and later at our niece Liliana R.D.'s baptism. Hans C.H. & Carolyn M.P. rounded out the party. Unfortunately, Ken P.S. & Karen, David A.H. & Katy A.L., and Cecil R.W. and family, among others, were unable to join us. The dinner conversation was wide-ranging, and it was good to catch up with friends whom I haven't seen too often, especially after seeing my circles of acquaintances in metropolitan New York just a few weeks earlier.

On Saturday, Sept. 6, Janice and I went to Peter & Kelly's home, where we played with nieces Ava and Lili. Although their flights were delayed, Peter's friends Chris D'A. and Todd O. eventually arrived from Florida before going out for a night on the town.

On Sunday, Sept. 7, we met at Peter & Kelly's before going to the Church of the Nativity in Burke, Virginia, for Lili's christening. Chris (who has triplets at home with wife Gail) served as godfather, and Father Richard B. Martin, the Roman Catholic priest, was patient with the children to be baptized. Lili was a little angel, as was big sister Ava. My parents and Kelly's mother Maureen also attended, as did the Rothandlers and other famly friends.

Later that afternoon, we returned to Chez Demaitre for a veritable feast, including shish kebabs prepared by Janice and Kelly and grilled expertly by Chris. After the reception, we tried to walk off some of the meal through the suburban neighborhood.

Back at our hotel, Janice and I watched the series premiere of HBO's vampire potboiler True Blood, which was OK. On Monday, Sept. 8, we drove back to Massachusetts, where we began catching up on recorded genre television. I also watched the second season premiere of the cyberpunk Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was decent, even if we shouldn't need to worry about robots when there are more than 6 billion people in the world and trainable animals such as dogs that can do work.

Friends, I hope you had a good Labor Day weekend. On Saturday, 30 August 2008, I met Thomas K.Y. and Ken G. at Thomas' condominium in Lexington, Massachusetts. Thomas and I "respecced" "Scarlet Saber 2," one of my characters in our City of Heroes online supergroup, and Ken tried out the video game Portal.

From there, we had a tasty dinner at Punjab, an Indian restaurant in Arlington, Mass., and Lanes & Games, a bowling alley/arcade in Cambridge. We then screened Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The cliffhanging adventure flick was entertaining, if not quite as good as its predecessors or similar movies such as the "Indiana Jones" series. I'd give it a 7 out of 10, or a solid B.

Janice and I also caught up on housecleaning, reading, and recorded episodes of Psych and The Middleman. Speaking of genre television, I found out that my earlier listing for Sanctuary was incorrect: The new SciFi Channel show actually starts on Wednesday, October 3, at 9:00 p.m., after ABC's Pushing Daisies. Also, the computer-animated Star Wars: Clone Wars will be on the Cartoon Network on Fridays at 9:00 p.m. We walked up to Bertucci's in Needham, Mass., on Monday.

In addition to the usual City of Heroes virtual session on Sunday morning, I hosted a ribald D&D4e "Vanished Lands: the Faith-Based Initiative" fantasy game on Monday night. The D&D3.5 "Vanished Lands: Holy Steel" teleconferencing team may be moving from Tuesdays back to Thursdays because of Dexter V.H./"Faelonia's" academic schedule.

Speaking of role-playing, how do I like Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition (D&D4e) now that I've been using it for a few months? Although I have fond memories of each edition since the boxed sets I first used in high school in the early 1980s, the world's best-known role-playing game (RPG) has changed significantly in its latest iteration.

Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has attempted to streamline some of the rules from D&D4e's immediate predecessor, the popular D&D3.5, and it incorporates some of the terms and style of massively multiplayer online games (MMO), which themselves in turn were once inspired by D&D. But like each new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, D&D4e adds some features at the expense of other things, in this case backward-compatibility and portabity to genres other than high fantasy.

I do find monsters easier to run and battles easier to scale, and Player Character (P.C.) creation is a bit simpler. Most of my current Boston-area pen-and-paper (or dice-and-pizza) group has embraced D&D4e. Although the so-called powers add maneuvers for combat, they may restrict gamers' imaginations. Like in MMOs, players can select from a menu of moves in each encounter, but they have relatively few to choose from at first, and I find that some of the mythological/literary flavor of traditional fantasy role-playing is underrepresented.

Noncombat and background skills were overly streamlined, in my opinion, but I got used to skill-based games such as Steve Jackson Games' Generic Universal Role-Playing System (GURPS, now also in its fourth edition) back in the 1990s when I lived in Virginia. EnWorld.org is an excellent source of information for D&D, and it may take months to sort out the best publisher and edition of D&D.

D&D3.5 had arguably become too complex and imbalanced between spellcasting and weapon-wielding occupational classes at different levels, but the D20 Open Game License allowed third-party publishers to create a wide variety of easy-to-learn variations on D&D3.5 in genres such as steampunk, historical fiction, horror, and space opera. The Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG is a good example of both the possibilities of D20 and of how it could be streamlined. The Boston-area groups also enjoyed my Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Ed.: "Drake's Port" superhero scenarios.

WotC has announced that it will modify its Game System License System Reference Document in response to criticism from third-party publishers, and I hope that D&D4e will be well-supported by the industry, which has crashed after the D20 boom of the past decade and faced increasing competition from other types of games, such as collectible card games, miniatures/wargames, and of course, video games. Interestingly, some of the D&D4e marketing strategy of WotC owner Hasbro is no doubt tied to its popular board games.

On the other hand, grognards who prefer D&D3.5/D20 can try the Pathfinder RPG from Paizo, once the publisher of Dragon magazine. Unofficially referred to as "D&D3.75," it remains to be seen whether Pathfinder can sufficiently simplify enough rules, remain backward-compatible, and be a strong alternative to WotC's ubiquitous D&D4e. It is now available both in print and online. Several friends in Virginia and elsewhere are trying out Pathfinder. Brian W. and I have also been evaluating other systems, such as Savage Worlds, True20, and Fantasy Craft.

Interestingly, while most of my local gamers like D&D4e, many of my friends in metropolitan New York, Washington D.C., and elsewhere are interested in Pathfinder. Although I doubt I'll go back to D&D3.5, I'm interested in finding the game that best suits my long-running "Vanished Lands" campaign setting, is easy to get players for and to learn, and enables us to collaboratively tell the sorts of stories we want to tell. Speaking of Virginia, I'll be visiting family and friends down there this coming weekend.

For the past two months, I've been hosting face-to-face sessions of Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition on Monday nights. Although I didn't even have the core rulebooks initially because of Amazon.com shipping delays, I've been reading various postings to Wizards of the Coast's Web site and on EnWorld.org, and I've caught up to most of the current Boston-area gamers while running the D&D4e "Vanished Lands: Gusorin Confederation" campaign. As I've mentioned before, I've been running my homebrewed fantasy world for 25 years now!

After some introductory "preludes" (a concept borrowed from White Wolf's Storyteller: World of Darkness horror games) and heated rules debates, the new Player Character party, dubbed the "Faith-Based Initiative," began its misadventures on the Plains of Sathendo. Longtime members Paul J., Alex J., Beruk A., and Greg D.C. have been joined by gamers from the past few years, including Brian W., John C.M., and Sara F., as well as newcomers Josh C. and Greg's girlfriend Anna G.

Sara's boyfriend Josh ended up deciding to sit out the tabletop game until Paul and Anna return to school for the fall. In addition, Paul's girlfriend Brie and Alex's girlfriend Serena C. have sat in on a few sessions, so my basement has been fairly crowded! In September, John will be moving to Maryland, and Dexter V.H. and Byron V.O. of the Tuesday night D&D3.5 "Vanished Lands: Holy Steel" teleconferencing team hope to visit from Brooklyn and St. Louis, respectively. Their heroes have been journeying to the ancient empire of Khemet (New Kingdom Egypt).

So far, the "F.B.I." has rescued some refugees from the besieged city of Tekugi, fought monsters in the barbaric Gusorin Confederation, uncovered a priest of Loki and slayed a vampire near the village of Hasnold, and explored the dangerous home of a serial killer in the hamlet of Harsuth. The team recently arrived at Tekugi, which was suspiciously quiet. With the player turnover mentioned above, we'll see if we can master the new rules and gel as a party to reach a truly heroic destiny…

I thought that Sen. Barack Obama's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention in Denver wasn't as inspiring as the one I attended in Boston four years ago, but he did aggressively respond to claims by Republican rival Sen. John McCain and detail both his background and proposed policies. We'll see how the presidential debates go in the coming months. Have a good Labor Day weekend!

Next time: Role-playing rules impressions!

Friends, I hope you had a good weekend. On Saturday, 23 August 2008, Janice and I had a hearty brunch at Cafe Fresco, then drove up to Walden Pond for a long stroll in the nice weather. From there, we went to the bookshops of Harvard Square, Cambridge, as well as Pandemonium Books & Games in Central Square. Janice and I had dinner at the Border Cafe, our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant.

On Sunday, we caught up on housework and the end of the summer Olympics in Beijing. Thanks in part to our new recumbent exercise bike, I've continued to catch up on recent comic books. However, I've got some videos still to watch, and genre television shows are coming with the new fall season. I blogged last week about cable counterprogramming, and as other reviewers have done, here's a preview of my autumn plans:

Sundays:

-2:35 to 3:40 a.m.: Star Trek: Remastered (WCVB space opera; DVR?)
-10:00 a.m. to noon: City of Heroes multiplayer online supergroup

Mondays:

-6:00 to 11:00 p.m.: D&D4e "Vanished Lands: the 'Faith-Based Initiative'" fantasy campaign
-8:00 to 9:00 p.m.: Chuck (NBC espionage comedy; DVR?) **
-8:00 to 9:00 p.m.: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox science fiction/action; DVR?) **
-9:00 to 10:00 p.m.: Heroes (NBC metahuman ensemble drama; DVR) ***

Tuesdays:

-7:30 to 10:30 p.m.: D&D3.5 "Vanished Lands: Holy Steel" teleconferencing team
-9:00 to 10:00 p.m.: Fringe (Fox supernatural conspiracy; DVR?)
-9:00 to 10:00 p.m.: Reaper (CW midseason, supernatural comedy) ***

Wednesdays:

-8:00 to 9:00 p.m.: Pushing Daisies (ABC modern fantasy) ****

Thursdays:

-8:00 to 9:00 p.m.: Smallville (CW metahuman drama; DVR?) **
-9:30 to 10:00 p.m.: Samurai 7 (IFC cyberpunk/samurai anime; DVR) ***

Fridays:

-7:00 to 7:30 p.m.?: Batman and the Brave and Bold (Cartoon Network, animated superheroes; DVR)
-7:30 to 8:00 p.m.?: Star Wars: Clone Wars (Cartoon computer-animated space opera; DVR) **
-8:00 to 9:00 p.m.: Crusoe (NBC literary period action)?
-9:00 to 10:00 p.m.: Stargate: Atlantis (SciFi space opera; canceled and to be succeeded by Stargate: Universe) ** Note: Stargate: Continuum is out on video now.
-10:00 to 11:00 p.m.: Sanctuary (SciFi time-travel drama)?

Saturdays:

-9:00 to 9:30 a.m.?: The Spectacular Spider-Man (WB, animated superhero; DVR) ***
-9:30 to 10:00 a.m.?: Wolverine and the X-Men (WB, animated superheroes; to be announced)

Possible midseason replacements: Dollhouse (Fox speculative fiction), Virtuality (Fox cyberpunk/space opera)

Next time: Gaming updates!