We seem to have gotten lost in the Crusades. Last night’s battles were peppered with tears, anger, taunts and sharp words.

I will admit I have been playing behind the scenes in the developing political chaos- I’ve learned that from earlier scenarios. My two older sons are first and foremost, and are furious with each other. I seem to be the policeman, trying to keep the peace, reminding them that it’s just a game and how lucky we are to be such good friends that we can play this way.

Here’s how it unfolded.
The Crusaders had landed, established a fortified bridgehead and then advanced to the 50 point/turn Fortress of Tyre, which they took. Tyre is distant from the other defender’s main fortresses- Jerusalem and Cairo, and so reinforcements took a long time arriving.

The reinforcements eventually did arrive, and took the fortified bridgehead and then retook Tyre. The Crusaders were threatening along the coast and making...

I have done some investigative reporting on behalf of Heroscapers everywhere and here’s what I’ve found:

A rumour attributed to an unnamed credible source (the girl with freckles that I flirt with at the late night drive thru) states that the McDonald’s Corporation is the main contender in the running to purchase Hasbro’s Heroscape brand.

“The Happy Meal thing has been going really good for a long time. We get all kinds of runny-nosed kids just squealing for the things when they have to wait in line. They love the toys.”
The freckled girl at the drive thru told me.

You may have heard that on November 2, 2010, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a law requiring that children's meals sold in restaurants must meet certain nutritional standards before they could be sold with toys. The law, urged in part by increase of childhood obesity in the United States, would allow toys to be included with children's meals that...

I’m not sure how it happened, but my younger son and I were grocery shopping and we suddenly became very interested in the crusades.
Well, grocery shopping is kind of a crusade, don’t you think? A crusade is an enterprise undertaken with zeal and enthusiasm and my growing family certainly pursues food with zeal and enthusiasm. They are always hungry.
But that’s not the real reason the topic came up, of course.

My younger son, ten now, is very into this custom hero he created, Suri of Arc, who was a legendary leader of that mythical kingdom. (not to be confused with the area in France once know as Arc, where Joan hailed from) My son has written this book with about forty chapters about Suri’s rise to power. There’s more to the story too, my son has played all the way to the end- Suri’s death.

We’ve been reading his book and I’m impressed. Suri is no stereotypical hero. He’s kind of a fool. Arc was ruled by a wise ruler (of...

I’ve wanted to write this for such a long time.

This is the creepiest thing ever.

It is such a hard story to tell.
I don’t think that I’m prejudiced and I certainly don’t want to give that impression. I know we all judge people by their appearance- we are trained from birth to do it- so how can we avoid all that baggage that suddenly pops up when you meet someone unusual?

I’m in the final weeks of my job and I had to go the main office to fill out papers about closing out my pension savings. I ended up being there at lunch time and so I decided I might as well treat myself to a meal in their big cafeteria. It’s huge- it actually has three tiers to it, and it was really packed. I had to wait in line while other people were waiting for their steaks to cook. Holy dead cow! Steaks for lunch! My usual peanut butter in a bag suddenly seemed really pathetic. So I ordered a steak!

When it was done I paid...

Oh last night we tried to get a Scape game in after supper and before bed on a school night. That’s always a challenge. It’s been a while since my daughter played with us- school is very busy for her- and so we were all excited to play together.

We usually play simple combat scenarios, usually my daughter and I against my two older sons, but tonight I thought maybe we could do something a little different, something like Kaiyu’s Heroes of Scape.

While my daughter finished up her homework and I was doing the dishes my eldest son made a map and a complex scenario for a few heroes to blunder through. There was to be objectives, riddles, quests, and strange creatures that might help you, hinder you, or devour you. All in all it was to be an excellent after dinner exercise! Real dessert!

I chose Arkmer because I like his personality. I’m not much of an elf-lover, but he’s not over-powered and at our house he gets used a lot because...