I’m going to be a dad.

Wow.

Other declaratives of a more expletive nature come to mind, but I try and keep Nuketown somewhat PG-13.

And besides, I need to watch my language. I’m going to be a dad.

Wow.

I still can’t get over it. I’m writing this two days after it was official. My wife and I had our suspicions – there are certain signs and portents (such as a late period, breast soreness, visiting our friends who have a baby and finding the name “Jacob” carved into a bench when we stopped to change her) – but we didn’t know until Sunday (7/21).

ShoreCon 2002, one of New Jersey's largest role-playing conventions, will be held Columbus Day Weekend (October 10-13) in the Hilton Hotel, Cherry Hill, N.J.

Every year at GenCon I go on a massive RPG buying spree, easily laying out a few hundred dollars for games, T-shirts, miniatures, and dice ((drool)). Now, as the Mecca of American gamers (and some international gamers as well) draws nigh, I have undertaken my annual quest to assemble my GenCon shopping list.

SimCity returns with SimCity 4, but have the designers scrubbed the noxious Big Government stains left by its predecessor, SimCity 3000?

The Manual of the Planes is a cosmological toolbox that details the heavens, hells and strange places in between for Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition role-playing game.

Wizards of the Coast has updated the FAQ for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. The August 25, 2002 update adds Deities and Demigods to the FAQ, as well as answers questions about the "Divine Might" feat, the 7th level druid spell slime wave, and a couple of other misc. updates.

You can download it here:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/er/er20020825a

Wizards of the Coast has posted a PDF to their web site containing epic-level progression rules for two dozen prestige classes from the DMG, Manual of the Planes, and the various class books (Tome & Blood, Sword & Fist, etc.)

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in the Lord of the Ring's movie trilogy, provided gamers with what they've always wanted: a great, glorious movie capturing fantastic adventures on the big screen. It's offers a cinematic backdrop for all future dungeon crawls, helping to focus the mind's eye on exactly what a horde of orcs might look like ... or how rings of invisibility might work.

The soundtrack does the same for gamers' ears.

We interview the creator of Cystal Ball, an RPG tool for Apple's Macintosh computers

An e-mail circulating the net claims that McDonald's has announced they are going to start importing most of their beef from South America. It's a claim that's not true, although it is true that Mickey D's is testing the importation of small amounts of beef from Australia and New Zealand.