Hello dear readers, I would like to tell you a story.

We launched Child's Play 2009 last week and as of today we've managed to raise $455,863.80. I'm going to give you all a little bit of time to let that number sink in.

Emotiv's Epoc mind controller device thing doesn't allow you to control other people's minds, which I think is a disappointment to everyone. You can watch a video of Indigo Montoya using it, but since the gameplay is occurring within the confines of his skull, it's difficult to assess. Controlling things with your mind isn't an especially demonstrative activity, almost by definition, which makes the product a difficult sell in a visual culture.  In today's strip, we postulate an encounter between our own Gabriel and the contraption.  I don't want to spoil it, but we use the device as a prop in order to generate a hilarious effect.

I get a lot of mail from new DM's asking for tips. Some of the stuff I post here will probably be old news to veteran DM's but I think it might be useful to others.

I've been jumping back and forth between a few different games recently. There's just so much good stuff to play right now.

I understand that Modern Warfare 2 is a big release - playing last night, the game informed me that my rank was over two million, and that's just on the Xbox. But the granularity of the coverage it's been receiving projects somewhat beyond the threshold of utility.

I once made it a point to attend midnight launches, if for no other reason than it offered an excuse to hit Dick's on the way back - around one o'clock or so - when that unassuming burger window becomes the capital of a spontaneous nation.

It's back! The ultimate in friction-free, ultra-lightweight charity engines is here, ready to transform the slightest movements of your finger into much-needed respite for young people. Here's what's up:

We spent quite a bit of time trying to determine how we felt about the Dragon Age situation described in today's comic - a character appears in your camp who offers a questline that is only available in downloadable content. The character is literally a salesman. Is this an act of abominable evil? Or is the mass of this evil sufficient to unfold itself - like a Popple - into a creature capable of love?

My D&D group is so hungry for content that we actually play via email between games. Sometimes it's just the characters talking amongst themselves, other times it's more of a structured skill challenge. I tweeted an example yesterday of one of our exchanges and I got a lot of feedback as well as questions. I thought I'd respond to some of it here rather than trying to tweet back to everyone individually.

PAX East is coming up quick and we're going to need some new enforcers to help us out. We will be bringing over about 150 of our west coast enforcers but we'd like to supplement that with another 150 new enforcers from the east coast. Enforcers get into the show for free but in return we work you like a dog. If this sounds like a fair arrangement to you then fill out this enforcer application and mail it to klindsay@penny-arcade.com. We'll be accepting applications until November 25th.

I un... truncated it(?).  In the future, I will assess all posts for truncability.

Runic Games is doing the Lord's work, in an robust and unambiguous fashion.

Historically, we've had a strange relationship with SOE's John Smedley - though I think it's more or less reached equilibrium now.  We received a press release for a new game he's catalyzed over there, namely Magic: The Gathering Tactics, but since we don't run press releases there's no place for that.  This being established, I think a lot of their work out of their Tucson and Denver studios is woefully underappreciated, and I want to show some support.  I gave him a call yesterday to see if I could find anything out, and while I don't know if I succeeded especially well, if you share my vague enthusiasm for this currently mysterious game, read on.  I have taken the liberty of adding smileys where I believe he was being ironical.

-My D&D campaign is featured over on the Obsidian Portal site this month. You can check out a little interview with me as well as take a look at a bunch of info from my campaign. If you are not familiar with it, Obsidian Portal is a site full of tools to let you build and manage campaign websites for tabletop games like D&D. The basic stuff is free but they also have a pay option that has a few more features. They call this their ascendant level service and they have been kind enough to give me a coupon code that you can use to get one free month of the ascendant service.

Gabriel brought to my attention a post in a dungeonmastering board he reads, which detailed the circumlocutions some people go through trying to square their plans for a vibrant scenario and the Received Wisdom of official campaign materials. It might be because we think of every event, action, sentence, or phrase as something to pervert for our use, but I was made genuinely distraught by the notion that those books - which are suggestions, at best - would conspire to dilute your joy. Those things are tools, and what's more they're your tools, which means that they serve you. Our version of the base setting is practically unrecognizable. Rule Zero is invoked constantly, of which Assertion Twelve is a corollary.