For the second time in two years, I have a dead Xbox 360. The machine gave me the Red Ring of Death on Sunday after crashing while running DeadSpace. The machine simply froze, and when I powered it down and powered it back again, I was greated with the ominous glowing red rings.

Normally, this would be inconvenient by manageable: Microsoft extended the manufacturer's warranty on the 360 to three years, and my Xbox is still covered. Unfortunately, this month isn't anything resembling normal. I've got three game reviews looming between late October and late November, and don't have time to wait for Microsoft to fix my box.

The first thing I tried was stopping by Best Buy; I got the extended warranty for my first Xbox 360, and when it died I was able to walk into their store and get a replacement. Unfortunately, the warranty was from the original date of purchase and wasn't extended when I got the replacement.

One of the problems I’ve found with action points, bennies, plot points, and other similar mechanics is that unless they’re crucial to the game, players tend to forget about them. And even when they are important, keeping track of them can be a challenge as the light-weight chips or tokens get covered up, buried, or pushed out of the way.

Our solution has been to use plastic poker chips, which have the advantage of being large enough to seen and thus, remembered. They’re easy to toss around the table (important for games like Serenity or Spycraft where the points tend to fly fast and furious) and while they can make an annoying sound that grates on the nerves when ground together, mostly they get the job done. Except, of course, when the light plastic chips go rolling off the table, or bounce where you weren't expecting.

My gaming group's used minis in our Dungeons & Dragons campaign for years, and when we playtested Star Wars we continued that tradition. I’m blessed with two players who have large collections of Star Wars minis that I can borrow and I’ve spent the last few days organizing them.

Quest Fios faces off against the Scarbrother Gang.

Our Dawn on Zebulon prelude campaign for Star Wars: Saga Edition hit Episode II last night, and I think to say we've hit our stride. Even with two new players joining the session with no Saga experience, our second game went as well as the first.

Unlike our initial game, which focused on three Jedi padawans and their training droid, JPD-14, hunting for the wreck of a starship on the jungle world of Zebulon Prime, this time around our heroes were divided between two padawans and the hired crew of a the star freighter Aeon Harrier.

These new characters – a pilot callsigned Highlife (human noble 1, played by Cory),  his wookie friend Shim'kworr (Wookie scoundrel 1, played by Brendan) and ship mechanic Zulen Tek (Arkanian offshoot scoundrel 1, played by me).

This is brilliant. And yes, I have occasionally felt this way. I have no idea who came up with this poster (and unfortunately can't remember the blog where I first saw it) but I think it's a sentiment that just about every GM has felt at one point or another, especially when a particularly bad intra-party fight breaks out.

For me, the best antidote is to switch gears for a session or two. Rather than forcing people to play rabbits (while I loved Watership Down, I'm not sure my friends feel the same way about it) what we've done is broken out the board and card games. Too much inparty squabbling? Play Illuminati and let them get it out of their systems. Need to build group cohesiveness? Break out Arkham Horror and let everyone work as a team to defeat an ancient cosmic evil. Looking for something more non-confrontational? Go with Settlers of Catan or Carcassone. Just need to vent and blow up the world? Sounds like it's time for some Risk 2210.

Of course, board games aren't for everyone. When we have board game weeks, not everyone shows up, but even then the downtime ends up doing everyone some good.

My review of EA's space horror game DeadSpace is up on SCIFI.com. I gave it a B+; it's a good game, particularly if you like survival horror in the vein of Aliens or the Flood levels of any of the Halo games (though I think the original Halo is the best analog in that regard).

It wasn't as drop-dead awesome as BioShock, but I had a good time playing it, and I'm still playing it even after turning in the review (which isn't something I can say about all of the games I review).

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been getting some more reviewer love the last few weeks as another wave of third-party products hits the shelves. The two notable books are Advanced Player's Guide (Expeditious Retreat Press) and Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist and Song (Goodman Games), and both are looking to fill the void left in D&D 4E by the omission of barbarians, druids and bards.

Meanwhile, Wizards is whetting people's appetites with a free playtest version of its upcoming barbarian class for Player's Handbook II.

Our Star Wars: Saga Edition campaign kicked off on Friday with our first full-fledged Knights of the Old Republic session. Since my Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Annotated Playtest went over so well  I decided to do the same for this Saga Edition.

This one will work a little differently; instead of annotating a single combat ecounter, I’m going to offer my thoughts on the game session as a whole, discussing both combat and role-playing aspects of the game. If there's enough interest, I'll also do a round-by-round combat playtest for melee and starship comba. 

No, I'm not talking about those Space Balls. 

NASA will be landing the truck-sized Mars Research Laboratory on Mars in Fall 2009. If the Swedes have their way, the gigantic rover will be accompanied by a number of ball-shaped probes that will roll around the larger probe. The idea is that the balls can go places the rover can't, and that their round shape will prevent them from getting stuck.

It all reminds me of the probes that used to orbit seaQuest DSV (yes, I used to watch seaQuest). Sure, we're talking sand instead of water, but it's the same basic idea, and very cool either way.

If I ever get back to writing my Libertarian Gamer columns, I'll be sure to do one on the Living Dead. Zombie flicks have had political overtones almost since the beginning reaching their pinnacle with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Reason.com writer Tim Cavanaugh surveys  three books on the subject -- including my favorite Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture by Annalee Newitz -- and offers his own thoughts on the subject matter: 

No zombie discussion would be complete without orotund socio-political theory, so here’s mine: By foregrounding the question of how much dignity there can be in death and dying, the era of physician-assisted suicide and Terri Schiavo has spurred the recent revival of the zombie film. The British director Danny Boyle revived his career with the zombie-type plague picture 28 Days Later (2002).