Wow, okay, it's been a month and a half since I last updated. Gah. Well, let's see. Saturday I went with several members of my family to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg. The weather was great and the rides were fun, and the lines reminded me why I try never to go on a weekend. Still, happy birthday, Amy!

I've been working on adapting a particular game/setting to Cinematic Unisystem, the system used by the Buffy, Angel, and Army of Darkness RPGs. Normally this would be a fairly straight-forward endeavor. However, I'm adopting some aspects of the original game into the system, requiring a revamp of the standard Unisystem "qualities" and other minor changes. Also I'll have to translate gear and weapon stats so they line up with Cin Unisystem damages and ranges. I think the adaptation is nearly done and I'm kind of excited to see how it will play out. In parallel, I've been developing some GM tools to go along with it, for dynamic random generation of NPCs, locations, and circumstances on the fly. Some people are good at coming up with random stuff like this on a moment's notice. Me, not so much. Maybe in a month or so this will all be finished and I can start running it.

In the meantime, my Wednesday RPG group (hosted by Andy) is set to start our Shadows of Yesterday game this week. Of course, this group is also notorious for canceling at the last minute, so we shall see! It's been a while since I've been just a player as opposed to the GM. I think the last game my Tuesday group ran that I played in was D&D, and for the Wednesday group it was a short Dust Devils one-shot.

I just finished Fallout Tactics today and while I enjoyed it and I think it's a good game, it's still not a great game. It wouldn't surprise me if this started as a Jagged Alliance style game that was later shoehorned into the Fallout license after development on the engine had already begun.

Here's hoping that Fallout 3 returns to the series' roots.

I've been playing again through the Fallout series and these games really stand the test of time. There's been some debate on which is the better game: Fallout 1 or Fallout 2. It's a really tough call. Fallout 1 is tight. It does what it does and it does it well. You get the sense that there's little fluff to water it down. On the other hand, Fallout 2 is wide and varied. There's so much more area to explore, items to collect, and weapons to wield. In Fallout 1 the combat skill is Energy Weapons, because the ultimate gun is the Turbo Plasma Rifle. Once you get to the endgame, anything you put into small arms or big guns is essentially wasted. One great thing about Fallout 2 is that all three gun skills are perfectly valid and useful in the endgame, thanks to the improved flamer, vindicator minigun, and gauss weapons. I always approve of choice, and Fallout 2 has it in spades. So which is better? Tough call. I'm going to say Fallout 2, because you get a great car.

Next up is Fallout Tactics. It's not the favorite game of most Fallout fans, which is perfectly understandable because it broke with the RPG tradition and instead plays as a more simple squad-based tactical game, like Jagged Alliance 2 or Silent Storm. Played with that in mind I still consider it a good game.

Things I've learned from The Sandwich Experiments:

• Lettuce does not freeze well.
• Tomatoes do not freeze well.
• Pickles, on the other hand, do.
• You can cook a pound and a half of bacon quickly, or you can do it neatly. Not both.

So there you have it. More as these exciting experiments continue!