Well, that was a long post that my computer just ate. So, here’s the slightly shorter version.

WordXWord was an awesome week-long literary festival every August. It still is that, but it has now expanded to include exciting literary times in Pittsfield every Tuesday night. A poet friend of mine made it her new year’s resolution to attend these, and I have tagged along, and so far it has been awesome. We read poetry at some open mics, performed in a storytelling competition, and tonight she’s MCing an Invitational Slam for three of NYC’s top slam poets, and three Berkshire poets, of which I am one.

Work on Legend of the Cipher continues apace. I think after the latest round of playtests and revisions, the game is now something I’m very pleased with; it’s fun to play, offers some interesting choices, and moves along at a good clip. While I’d love to still squeeze in one more round of playtests and numbers tweaks before we go to print, I realize at some point you have to call a game done, and can’t be rebalancing forever. I’ll be running a demo booth at PAX East in March; more about that in a future post.

Aside from Legend of the Cipher, it’s been less board games and more video games for me of late. Path of Exile just released an open beta, a Diablo clone with FFVII-materia-inspired active skills, and an FFX-inspired passive skill grid of literally over 1,000 nodes (of which you can only have 100 or so), making all sorts of expansive choices.

You have choices too. You can read my column about How to Argue, or my column explaining why so many are Living in Denial.

I know, I know, it’s 2013 now. And a happy new year to all both of my readers. I really do try to post here once a month, but December was fairly busy for me. I got a bit of freelance work for an educational company that took a lot of time, and have been working on refining Legend of the Cipher*, which is the exciting card game that we hope to be showing off in a few months at PAX East. I’ve been playing, reading about, and even working on designing this game, but haven’t done much reviewing of late. More in 2013, I promise.

Meanwhile, I’m still busy even now! It’s the season for parties with friends, from last week’s Heathen Hullabaloo (because it wouldn’t be Christmas without Chinese Food) to the New Years Extravaganza which I am still amidst and should go to sleep so I can wake up and rejoin it.

But here’s a holiday column in the meantime; I re-wrote a song just for you. Well, not just for you, but for anyone who feels sesquipedalianisms would improve a song like “Winter Wonderland”. I call it:

“Seasonally Low Temperature Imaginary Dreamscape”**

*I think marketing will be the big hurdle for this game, as few people seem enthused about the game when I tell them about it, but most people so far have really enjoyed the game after trying it.

**Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Or as my partner said about a portmanteau I recently invented, “It trips, stumbles, and falls off the tongue.”