My wife and I went to CAX (California Extreme) this year, a huge two-day gathering of classic and new pinball and video arcade cabinets and tables, all at the convention center at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, and we didn't need any quarters. I've written about it before, but I barely mentioned the video arcade cabinets. I do want to thank our hosts, Anthony Ruelas and Micaila Taylor, and especially Anthony for making our trips possible.

So I've been looking for a game system to play. There's Basic D&D (Basic/Expert; which I have been playing a little), D&D modern (aka 5th ed.), and AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, aka 1st ed., though I'm including 2nd edition under "AD&D").

I don't actually miss the 1980s or even the 1990s. Sure the computers were better back then, but its kind of hard to look back and be overly fond of the 1980s. There were high spots to be sure, but mostly because this is a gaming blog, I tend to fixate on the games.

So, unlike the Lone Wolf books, I cannot remember how I came by Dungeon of Dread. It was earlier than the Lone Wolf books, for sure, but the circumstances are simply lost to time and memory. I lived in Japan, the book came my way, I purchased it new, and that's all I can say on the matter.

Myst has turned 30. I've written about MYST before, so I don't have much to say here, except that I still love this game.

Man, has it been 30 years already? I guess it has.

Today seems to be a good candidate for celebrating the release of D&D, so I'm marking the 49th anniversary of its release.

Alas, I'm not playing much lately, due to a combination of several factors, chiefly being busy with work and too exhausted to have much of a social life on weekends. But I'm planning something for next year, the last Sunday of January, where I hope to have a game going.

It's perhaps about time I talked about this book, written by Ian Livingstone with illustrations by Russ Nicholson, which was published originally in 1982, but didn't cross my path until '86 or '87. It also might have been redundant, given that I was already familiar with role-playing games, but this was bought during a period of my life when information was a lot harder to find than it is now, and I was really intrigued by the fact that here was an entire book on the topic.