So the move was not perfectly smooth for a number of reasons I won’t get into. I found myself a little cramped financially, not in the right place at the right time and once again relying on the generosity and good will of a good friend or two to keep me sane and moving forward. Throw in trying to do my best in a new job for which I am still finding my bearings and gaming on my own all of a sudden becomes a less important thing. I don’t even have a proper desk chair yet.

I haven’t even done a lot of reading about games. Last week was GDC week, which is kind of like Christmas to pointy head game nerds like me, but instead of ravenously consuming all the reporting on Gamasutra, I pretty much waited until Twitter told me what was interesting.

But here are a few things I have been doing game wise.

1) Dungeon Crawl. Of course. Still my comfort game, and still the best way to kill five or ten or, if you are lucky, sixty minutes. I seem to have been a good influence on at least one person.

2) Polynesia in Civilization 5. I have been arguing for a Polynesian civilization since Civilization 3. It’s a remarkable history and their Civ 5 iteration is actually a very interesting culture. The Maori warrior is a great early rush unit to accompany Bronze Age units and the wayfaring ability makes exploring the planet faster and more fun.

3) Game genealogy. I love tracking how features and developers and ideas travel across the game design world. I am trying to find a good way to map this sort of thing. Still working on it, and to do it right for strategy games I will need a few other people. But it’s a good way to think about the book.

4) RIFT. I played about ten hours of this MMO last year at Trion HQ and I loved it. Life got in the way of me writing up my impressions, and I haven’t even jumped into the real game but I am following other people’s adventures. Once the servers and queues work themselves out, I think I will be jumping in.

5) The French post. The very late French national character post is being written. I keep finding new things to say, many of which don’t exactly fit a single argument. The American post that started this series is a real mess, and I don’t want to do that again. Hopefully by mid-week I can publish something I am proud of.

6) Field of Glory. A new expansion came out last week and now I am playing that. I will have a full post on how the series has evolved later this week.

Thanks for all of your patience as my life takes another turn for the wtf.