When we were starting our Star Wars campaign and were kicking around where we wanted it to fall within the Knights of the Old Republic timeline, we struck up on the idea of the Mandalorian Interlude.

We knew we want to start the campaign in the Restoration Period -- a relatively quiet, calm time after the Great Sith Wars -- but at some point we'd enter the Mandalorian Wars, followed by the Jedi Civil War.

What we didn't want to do was slog through every era. The idea was to skip the campaign forward every few levels, allowing us to hit the high points of each era, but not get bogged down in none of them. At the same time though, we thought simply skipping forward 3-4 levels and five years would feel disjointed without some sort of transition.

Enter the Mandalorian Interlude.

For 6-8 self-contained adventures we're going to trade in our regular characters for Mandalorians from Clan Olan. They're old school, individualist Mandalorians who aren't sure what to make of the neocrusaders who are trying to establish order and conformity throughout the clans. The interlude gets everyone -- casual and diehard Star Wars fans -- up to speed on the Mandalorians and their culture while simultaneously showing everyone exactly what it is the Mandos are fighting for.

Giants stalk the land, threatening one of the few flickering lights of civilization. Someone needs to deal with the threat ... and it turns out that's us.

My gaming group is returning to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition with a megashot of Revenge of the Giants, the new super module from Wizards of the Coast. I received a review copy of the book in October, and at the time I knew it was a perfect chance for my group to experiment with 4th Edition again.

We played 4th Edition back in Summer 2008, but decided we didn't want to convert our regular campaign to the new game. A few of us have continued to dabble in 4E however, and there's been interest in getting another game together.

Revenge of the Giants is that game and we're going to carve off a huge chunk of it with an eight-hour marathon post-Thanksgiving session.

When will people start listening to the Herald of Bob? I argue. I reason. I yell. I shout. But no one, not a single blessed soul, every fully understands that Bob is the real enemy. And that if he's doing something that looks like it's going to help you, that means he's about to win. Or setting up a win in three moves.

He is, by no means, actually helping you. And he is the real enemy.

Such was the case Friday night when -- in honor of of the 8th anniversary of Steve Jackson's Munckin -- we combined my Star Munckin, Star Munckin 2 and Munchkin Cthulhu sets to create a truly epic space/horror mashup that will forever be known as ... Star Spawn Munckin.

It was a surprisingly effective combination, leading to feline cultists, mutant investigators, and bounty hunter bugs battling against clown troopers, geek ones, and various forms of shoggoth. It also saw our single best Munckin moment ever.

In 12 years of adventuring in Greyhawk, our group built up a number of legends, told, but never experienced. The recovery of the soul-devouring sword Blackrazor is one of them.

Brant Bladescream, warrior, adventurer and conman, recovered Blackrazor from the volcanic dungeon known as White Plume Mountain and used its notoriety to found the Blackrazor Guild. The guild would go on to become one of the cornerstones of our Greyhawk campaign, and last year we decided to finally play out the events in which Brant secured the epic blade. We were aided in this quest by Wizards of the Coast, which updated the classic S2 White Plume Mountain to the 3.5 rule set in 2005.