Monte Cook's Blog, page 137

Escape Pod!!!

Escape Pod!!!

My story, "A Small Matter, Really," is now available as an audio download from Escape Pod. I couldn't be happier!

It's a time travel story without any travel. A story about how all significance is relative.

Thor!

Thor!

I went to see the new Thor movie last night. I loved it. I think I liked it particularly because I thought that of all the major Marvel titles, Thor would be nearly impossible to film. I mean, it stars a big blond guy with a red cape and a silver hat with wings on it, swinging around a huge hammer. It's one of those things that looks great drawn, but in real life? Pretty goofy. Further, Thor as a character (although he's a favorite of mine) is not very movie-friendly. Unlike Spider-Man, he's not a real guy with real life problems. He's an ancient god, virtually invulnerable and super powerful.

And yet they pulled it off. I think a lot of credit needs to go to the writers, but the director, Kenneth Branagh kept  a lot of disparate elements together. The movie showed a real love for the classic issues of the comic book in these ways:

1. When Thor's at it's best, you don't get the feeling that you're reading Norse Mythology, but rather some kind of bizarre hybrid of that mixed liberally with Van Daniken's whole space god concept. You never really know if the Asgardians are gods or just a super advanced race with super science rather than magic.

2. There was a nice mixture of action both on Earth and in Asgard. There were mortal and immortal issues at stake. Cosmic battles and normal interpersonal interaction.

3. Loki was given a surprising amount of depth. The movie could have easily portrayed him as the classic bwa-ha-ha kind of villain, and it would have been fine. But over the years we've come to learn that Loki's got reasons for why he does what he does, and his own brand of honor.

4. The Odinsleep! Heimdall! The Warriors Three! 8-legged Sleipnir (for about a second and a half), Bifrost! And of course, side references to other Marvel characters (the Hulk, Iron Man, and of course Hawkeye).

As both a comic book geek and a movie lover, I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

Hardship

Hardship

We all go through hardship. It almost seems ridiculous to think otherwise. Of course, some face far, far more than most. I am not one of those people. I've had my ups and downs, but I've been very fortunate, overall. (And I guess I should add, "so far," because you never know, right?)

If you can back away from the immediacy, pain, and sometimes downright despair of hardship, however--in other words, remove yourself emotionally--it's interesting to examine how people cope with it. Both their own and the hardship of others.

If the pain and bad fortune is your own, well, you have just a few choices, really. You can let it overwhelm you and just give up (one way or another). You can wallow in the misery. You can try to ignore it and soldier on. Or you can try to do something about it. The first two are just bad options. I've seen people choose them, though, and it's hard to watch. To be clear, I'm talking about those who choose those options long-term. When tragedy strikes or hardship rears its ugly head, sometimes you need a day of pure grief. Or a week. Or a month. Or however long. There's nothing wrong with that. It's appropriate in most cases. In fact, it's sort of commendable, I think, to just let it all out and be true to yourself and your own emotions.

The third option at least gets you moving, but ignoring things doesn't make them go away. That's just avoidance with a brave face and eventually you're going to have to stare the hardship in the eye and make one of the other choices. It's not being honest with yourself and your own emotions. Ignoring your problems is just a delaying tactic. (Sometimes, of course, delaying things until you're ready to face them is a fine strategy.) The fourth option is the only one, ultimately, that's going to let you get through whatever it is that you're facing. When you're right there in the middle of your sorrow, if you can just take a look at yourself, it helps, I think. I mean, step away from your situation and your feelings about it and look at yourself from someone else's point of view. Are you dealing with the problem, even a little bit, or are you just laying there on the bed, miserable? If the former, the realization that you're trying can give you strength and confidence that in turn will help you try even harder tomorrow. It's good to be proud of yourself in that way.

Of course, "dealing" with it might mean making mistakes. In fact, it's very likely that--when you're distraught--you're doing to make mistakes. Probably mistakes you wouldn't have made if you were thinking more clearly rather than having everything clouded with despair. Holding someone accountable in such a situation, at least as accountable as you would someone not in that situation, certainly seems unjustified. Trying to cope (or trying to make things better) and failing is better than not trying at all.

If the hardship is someone else's, you have three options, assuming it's someone you care about. You can ignore it. You can help commiserate. Or you can actually try to help solve the problem. Like before, the first option is a poor one. Ignoring your friend or loved one when they're in need shows a real lack of maturity, compassion, and depth. (Although sometimes, people ignore the hardship of others if they, themselves are in pain in their own situation. Every situation is different.) It also may be that you don't know your friend is encountering hardship. Some people don't like to share their pain--they don't want to burden their friends, or they don't want to be embarrassed. This, I have come to learn over time, is a mistake, generally speaking. Ask for help and you'll get it. Tell people you're in need, and they'll jump to the chance to give you a hand. In fact, I'll go so far as to say, most people like to help their friends. It makes them feel good. It strengthens the relationship, creating a powerful bond that works both ways. Some day, positions will be reversed and the helper will need help themselves. But even if that latter point is not true, it doesn't matter. People like to feel needed, they like to feel like they're helping and making a difference in the life of someone they care about.

The second option is perhaps the best one. Just offer to be there for the person in need. Listen. Offer a shoulder to cry on. Don't make judgments or even offer advice (unless asked). Just be a presence in their life that shows them that they're not alone. The value of that is almost immeasurable. You may not feel like you've done much, but the person you're helping will feel like you've done a lot.

The third option works only if there really is something you can do, and often you can't. If you can, great. Consider this, though: sometimes what you can offer isn't a solution to a person's problem, but instead different ways to help out. If your friend lost their job, you probably can't offer them one, but you can offer to babysit their kids one day while they look for a new one.  You can make them dinner. You can lend them your car, pick them up at the airport, or let them do laundry at your house. Sometimes, it's just these kinds of little things which can really make a difference. It's a small matter to you to let someone sleep on your couch one night. A tiny inconvenience. It's a huge matter to them because they might not have anywhere else to go, and sleeping in one's car is no fun. Or think of it this way: helping a friend move his or her couch into the back of a truck is a tiny hassle for you. It's heavy, and it takes a little while. But to the other person, your help makes moving the couch possible. Without you, it can't be done. A small inconvenience for you, the difference between success and failure to the other guy.

Hardship tests us as people and as friends. It's horrible, but maybe we can come out the other side of it stronger, or at least with a better understanding of life and of ourselves.

Writing For Dollars Part 2: RPG Design

Writing For Dollars Part 2: RPG Design

Last time I wrote about the top selling fiction writers and whether it's good to strive to join them. This time, I thought I'd talk about game writing. There is no such list of top-earning game designers. Of course, you'd have to define "game designer" before you could even start such a list. This is difficult because being a board game designer is wholly different from being a computer game designer which in turn is wholly different from being an rpg designer.

I've only ever dabbled in the first two. I've done the third, however, for more than 20 years. If you're just going to look at that category, I can tell you that the highest paid rpg designers are probably almost all sitting in the Wizards of the Coast offices (not the freelancers, but the full time guys). They're small in number, but WotC pays its designers a decent wage. Enough to buy a house (in the Seattle area, an expensive place) and live pretty comfortably. 

It gets a bit more complex than that, however. When I left Wizards to start Malhavoc Press, I figured I was going to take a pay cut. I didn't. By running the company as well as writing the vast majority of material, I made far more than I ever did at Wizards. That was likely the Golden Age of rpg design, however, and I was in a perfect position for Malhavoc to do really, really well, having helped to design the game I was supporting, a well-known Internet presence in a time when that was just becoming an important thing (Book of Eldritch Might arguably started the gaming pdf movement), and the generous and excellent OGL at my side. Hopefully putting out high quality products helped too.

But if you're not going to start your own company or get a job at Wizards, can you make a go of it in rpg design? It's tough. For a number of reasons.

The first is that there just isn't a lot of money out there to earn. The really successful non-D&D RPG products published today sell at a rate that, 20 years ago, would have been considered pretty good. I'm talking in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 copies. For example, when I started at ICE back in the late 80s, a Rolemaster Companion product would have sold in that range. So would most Champions sourcebooks. The Rolemaster core books would have sold far beyond that--probably 5,000 or more each year, for years. The MERP game, for example, sold more than 100,000 copies over its life. The 4th Edition Champions hardcover rulebook sold 50,000 copies in its first year.

ICE was a second tier company then, but those numbers are virtually unknown in that tier today, with the notable exception of Pathfinder, which arguably is not a non-D&D product. Worse, the price of printing and shipping is far higher than it was then. Art costs are higher because artists' rates have gone up but more because standards for good art--and the expectation of color art--has risen dramatically. The rise in the price of the books does not make up for these increases, believe me. The long and the short of it is that today, game publishers just don't have a lot of money to pay writers.

Just as telling, however, is the second reason it's tough out there for rpg writers, and that's that there are too many writers willing to work just for the fun of it, getting low or sometimes no pay. There's only a small number of rpg designers working today whose names on books are a selling point. The problem with that is that its hard for a publisher to justify using a competent professional designer and paying him or her a decent wage when they could get an inexperienced game fan who will do the same work for far less (or nothing). The problem gets worse when you have big companies not promoting their good writers so that they never reach that point where they can actually command a higher rate.

The facts are these. Many companies are going to try to offer the rpg designer 1 cent a word to write a product. Some would go as high as 3 cents a word. An experienced freelancer who's really made a name for themselves (despite mechanisms in place to make this difficult) working for a larger company might get 5 cents a word. If you want to dream big as a freelance game designer, you can shoot for the stars and get 7 to 10 cents a word after you've worked in the industry for a very long time doing nothing but high profile, high quality work. Even at that highest rate, however, if you write a 32-page adventure that's probably about $2,000. If you could line up two such projects a month (you can't), you're looking at earning about $48K a year. With that in mind, I think it becomes easier to understand why I stopped doing most freelance rpg design long ago, or at the very least, never counted on it for my living.

So what if you self-publish? The opportunities to produce rpg ebooks and now print on demand (actual paper) books have never been more plentiful for the rpg designer to-be. In fact, they're likely too good. It's so easy that the field is incredibly crowded. Take a look at the new products that come out each day from RPGNow or DriveThruRPG and you'll see that to be true. How do you stand out in that crowd? Making things worse, if you're an unknown quantity, why should I plunk down my hard-earned dollars when I can probably do a Google search and find some GM's website where he's posted something similar for free? (And don't get me started on piracy.) It's very, very difficult.

A bleak picture? Absolutely. But there are success stories out there still. I'm not trying to discourage anyone interested in giving it a try. I just think that people should have some facts at hand before they leap into things. You get an unrealistic picture sometimes hearing people talk about rpg design. Although the earnings scale isn't as broad as it is for fiction writing ($0 to $70 million per year), it's also inaccurate to lump in the whole field and make pronouncements about how much rpg designers earn.

Writing for Dollars, Part 1

Writing for Dollars, Part 1

So I read this list of 2010's top earning authors and as always, it stirred up a lot of feelings in me. I think when you're very young, you look at a list like that and say, "one day that will be me." And there's nothing really wrong with that, I suppose. It's good to dream and aspire to greatness. On some level, if you don't think you can achieve true greatness, why start? However, at some point I think it becomes counterproductive to think of a 70 million dollar paycheck.

For one thing, it's frustrating. Because you're not going to get it. If you want to be a writer, you're far more likely to struggle financially than get rich. If the only way you'll see yourself as successful is to earn million dollar advances, you're never going to be content.

The other reason that it's particularly counterproductive is that you might look at some of the authors on that list and say, "but I'm a better writer than some of them." And you might be right, at least from certain perspectives. But it's a complex issue.

For example, you might be one of the many people that deride Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight books. You might dismiss them as teen angst books that taint the whole vampire mythos with sparkles and silly romantic love triangles. You might look down on her prose stylings. But consider another perspective for just a moment. An author's job (at least from one point of view) is to create fiction that appeals and entertains. The Twilight books appeal to and entertain countless readers. By doing so, isn't she--at least from that perspective--a great author? 

The issue is this: is success an indicator of quality? Most would say no, but it's a more difficult question than most might think. To step away from literature for a moment, consider the latest, hottest, appeal-to-the-lowest-common-denominator reality tv program. It's probably puerile and crude, hastily and likely artlessly produced. But it's appealing to a wide audience. It's getting people to come back and watch week after week. Which is precisely what it set out to do. So how is that not, on some level, an indicator of quality. Is quality an objective measure in which all things can be compared or is it a subjective matter, with each individual item being judged on its own terms? (The argument, however, teeters on the brink of circularity, because if truly subjective, can one use earnings or ratings to judge success? Are earnings only an objective measure?)

To look at it another way, are Meyer's books, or--to use my own personal bugaboo--Patterson's books successful precisely because neither writes particularly good prose. If you hand a Patterson fan a book written by someone widely recognized as being a far better wordsmith, say, Michael Chabon, will that person immediately see that they should have been reading Chabon all along, or will they stick with Patterson? If they do prefer Patterson, are they wrong? How can someone be wrong about what they like? (Or rather, how snobbish is it to say that someone is wrong about what they like?)

And to take it one step further (and tie it back to the beginning), should a writer like me try to aspire to be more like the phenomenally successful Patterson or the moderately successful Chabon? Is it useful to look at Patterson's work to learn something from it? I honestly don't know the answer to that, because I've read one Patterson novel, Along Came a Spider, and it was the worst book I've ever finished. I'm afraid of looking at it too closely or trying to take anything away from it. (I've heard from many that he has written books that are far better--most, I think, with co-writers.)

Here's what it comes down to for me. Patterson's a (subjectively) terrible writer who either got very lucky or has found precisely the right kind of terrible that is actually wildly appealing. There are thousands of terrible writers who never get anywhere. Chabon is a fabulous writer who succeeded because he's very talented and very skilled. If you're a fabulous writer, you're likely to at least achieve moderate success. So it's better to strive for Chabon than Patterson just like it's better to work hard at your job than it is to play the lottery.

And all this is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this topic. It's dangerous to spend too much time on it, however, because I really ought to be writing, hopefully something of quality.

Whatever that means.

Working Toward Failure

Working Toward Failure

So I just read that Arnold Schwarzenegger's first post-gubernatorial project is an animated series/comic book called The Governator. Created by Stan Lee, no less. I read about it with fascination because I know enough about such projects to know that:

A. It's going to be a huge flop. It's a pre-made laughing-stock of an idea.

B. Everyone involved who has any idea what they're talking about knows it's going to be a flop.

The best they can hope for with this thing is to be as successful as the Mr. T cartoon back in the 80s. But really, it has no chance even of that. Back then, kids had some idea of who Mr. T was, and they might have cared about him a little bit. But kids don't know and don't care who some old guy from 30 year old movies is, and the fact that he was a governor doesn't exactly put him in the same league as Spider-Man, Harry Potter, or Spongebob.  It's got about as much chance as launching the Mr. T cartoon today would have.

Stan Lee is a genius. A giant. But he hasn't done anything that appeals to kids--or really anyone--in decades. Other than winking cameos in Marvel movies, anyway. He's a writer with a 50-year out of date style doing a comic and cartoon based on an actor with a 30-year out of date style. Stan's got to know that it will never work. But hey, he could probably use a new wing on the guest house of his mansion--couldn't we all--so why not let whomever is funding this send a guy over to his house and hook up a new faucet for hot and cold running money?

More power to him, really.

I remember when I was working at Wizards of the Coast. A directive came down from some brainiac at Hasbro that the next hot property was going to be Centipede. Yeah, you know--if you're at least 40 years old, anyway--the old Atari arcade game. I kid you not. Centipede. Those of you with kids now how much 8-year olds are craving this. But remember, I didn't say this was a prediction from Hasbro. It was a directive. Not the kind of thing you argue with. So a bunch of people on staff got put on making some Centipede games. There were even Centipede novels written. No, seriously. Stop laughing. This is all true.

Obviously, it never came about. The people who worked on it, bless their hearts, will tell you that they had some good ideas for making it cool. And I don't doubt them, because they're smart. But you know that deep down in their creative little hearts, they knew that Centipede was never going to be the next big thing. Even when it was a game people had heard of, it was always a second rate video game. The game you played when the kids who got to the arcade earlier than you stacked up a bunch of quarters on the Donkey  Kong and Asteroids machines. (All kids in the 80s knew that a stack of quarters--or sometimes a line of them, depending on what part of the country you were in--meant "back off, man, I'm going to be using this machine for a while." It was understood, and it was kid law.)

Or going back even further, I remember when TSR was stuck with 8 quintillion extra Dragon Dice. Remember Dragon Dice? It was one of those games that would have been hugely successful if it hadn't been laughably overproduced. If you print 100,000 units and sell 100,000 units, the game is wildly successful and everyone that worked on it is a genius. If you print a MILLION units and sell 100,000, the game is a flop and everyone that worked on it is an idiot. (That of course isn't true. It's the foolish perception I'm pointing out. Dragon Dice was actually a really cool game.) Anyway, with a warehouse full of funny shaped fantasy dice, TSR management had the entire creative staff take a day and come up with concepts for new games that could use them in different ways. I don't think any of us ever thought those ideas would be used. I know I didn't. But still we had to do it because it was our job.

Sometimes as a creative person, you're commissioned to produce work that you know is terrible. Or will never be used. It's a part of modern creative work, sadly. I mean, when all those Lucasfilm CGI artists were making Episode I creatures fart, some of them had to know that they were churning out crap (no pun intended). I mean, I hope so. Because as strange as it sounds, it's better to know that you're working on garbage with your eyes wide open, collecting a paycheck so that you can later work on something good, than to actually think you're producing high art only to discover later that it's garbage. Well, I say that without actually having experienced the latter, and thankfully experiencing very little of the former. Both are things I've observed more than lived through myself. I still suspect it's true, however.

I mean, in a perfect world, we'd all be working on our own personal creations of pure genius and it would all be wildly successful. But barring that, I'd rather work on my own (hopefully) good material and have moderate success than on someone else's wildly successful garbage. And while working on someone else's garbage that fails is awful, working on someone else's garbage while thinking it's brilliant has got to be the worst of all possible scenarios.

But back to Arnold. I know there's a bunch of people in the offices of some animation studio or at Archie Comics (they're putting out the comic through Archie for Pete's sake--NO ONE THINKS THIS WILL WORK) working on this whole Governator thing who know it's going to flop. Even the guy writing the "exclusive" article for Entertainment Weekly has to know it will flop. I think everyone knows but Arnold. And a couple of suits involved in the production company that sold him this idea. And the financial backers they convinced to pony up the dough.

I actually kind of feel sorry for Arnold. You can see him in some wood-paneled office where one chair costs more than my house, a bunch of slick guys in business suits telling him how the kids were going to love this and they would get Spider-Man creator Stan Lee himself to do all the concept work, and they'd give him Iron Man-like suits to wear, solar powered because the show was going to have a green message because that's trending well right now, and he'd have a little dog and a robot butler, and they'd fight crime and... blah blah blah. And he bought it, because he didn't know any better and I imagine people have been telling him for years how much people love him whether they do or not. OK, I guess I don't feel that sorry for him.

So, anyway. The Governator. Coming to comic book quarter boxes and DVD discount bins near you. Maybe late night comedians will get some fodder out of it for an evening. And yes, even all those things--comics quarter boxes, DVD bins, late night comedy shows--are ten to twenty years past their prime. That's the point.

He said he'd back. I'm just pretty sure that after all these years, no one's going to care.

Heavy Lifting

Heavy Lifting

Yesterday I was having an exchange on Twitter with Monica Valentinelli about combining working out and gaming. I mentioned that I once gamed with a guy who worked out with weights the whole session. This led to a few jokes about rules that would reward exercise while playing an rpg. I figured that if you did 50 reps, you got a floating +1 bonus to your d20 rolls. Then Monica got all rules-lawyer-y (note to self, be wary of Monica abusing the rules if you ever game with her) and pointed out that 50 reps with something that weighed an ounce isn't so bad. So then I had to release some errata. I said that whatever you were lifting had to weight at least as much as a 10-foot pole or a bag of rats. You know, something iconically D&D. To which, Monica said, "and you can't get help with the lifting from a ghoul."

And that terrible pun reminded me of a story. Which is why I'm writing this now.

A few years back, Malhavoc Press released a big new book at GenCon called Ptolus. Now, if you haven't heard of Ptolus, it's big. The book itself weighs about 5 pounds. That's like all three core D&D books combined. So we decided to have a contest. At a specified time, at our booth, we lent all takers a copy of the book. Their task? Hold the book with both hands gripping a corner of the book, arms fully extended in front of you, at chin level for as long as you can. Last one holding the book in this manner gets the book (a $120 book!).

So about 18 people tried. A few only lasted a minute or two. It's hard, believe me! Most were men, but a few women also gave it a try. The most entertaining portion of the event, for me, was watching the group when there was just one woman left in the competition. Faces grew red. Teeth gritted. Eyes bulged a bit. Finally, although she did admirably, the remaining woman in the competition couldn't do it anymore, and lowered her book.

...immediately followed by eight of the remaining guys dropping their books. Those guys clearly realized early on that they weren't going to win. But their manly bravado wouldn't allow them to be "beaten by a girl." So they hung in there, clearly longer than they wanted to, just so they could say that they weren't outdone by one of the women. The looks of relief on their faces were priceless.

The last few competitors battled it out for many more minutes, until eventually we had a winner. We held the contest a second time, and the last two guys went on for so long--like 20 minutes--that eventually we gave both of them a copy of the book.

MidSouthCon 2011Last weekend, I attended MidSouthCon 2011...

MidSouthCon 2011

Last weekend, I attended MidSouthCon 2011 as the gaming guest of honor. It was a great time. I've never been to a convention that was so focused on food--good food. Everywhere I turned, I was being offered some new treat, often consisting of Memphis barbecue, which is wonderful stuff.

Besides eating, and still more eating, I sat on a few panels (GMing FAQ, State of the Gaming Industry, a retrospective of my work) and did some signings and other "meet the guests" style events.  I kind of commandeered the Game Industry panel and basically interviewed the two game store owners in the room, because as I see it, they're really on the front lines. This is a challenging time to run a game store (SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GAME STORE, PEOPLE) and I think the models for success are changing. I don't think the event was what anyone anticipated, but I think those in attendance got some real insights into the true nature of the game industry that most gamers likely know nothing about.

Of course, I played in a few games, which was great. Thanks to the various GMs and players that let me crash their various parties. Saturday night was lots of games: a wild--and very well run--game of D&D was followed immediately by a live action zombie-related game which was quite clever. It was called Debate of the Dead and the players were all members of the Presidential Cabinet when the zombie apocalypse begins. Needless to say, I was a bit tired on Sunday morning.

One of my favorite parts of the convention, though, was getting to meet and pal around with the other guests of honor. In particular, I spent a lot of time with Kurt Busiek, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jackie Bamber, and Jackie's husband Dan. In particular, Kurt and I shared some meals and toured around Memphis a bit, and Mary and I had some long talks about fantasy publishing. Cooler still, Mary--a professional puppeteer--gave me some lessons in puppeteering, which I loved. She even said that I took to it quickly. Maybe she was just being nice, or maybe it's the fact that I've never really stopped playing with toys and things, so it comes somewhat naturally.

If you live at all in the area, MidSouthCon is a convention I highly recommend. Well-run and very fun.

D&D and Life

D&D and Life

Salon posted an article last week called How Dungeons and Dragons Changed My Life. It's a decent article by Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a book offering a relatively pleasant and gentle look at gamers, geeks, and fandom in general. My only real objections to the article are the same objections I have to the book. There's a supposition there that gaming stopped in the 80s and is only coming back now. First of all, many of us never stopped gaming. And second, even if you disregard that, if it's going to focus on a nostalgic gaming resurgence, I think it's a bit late to the party.

Allow me to elaborate a bit on the second point. You can make a good argument that at the end of the 1990s, tabletop role playing gaming was about dead. D&D, the market leader, was selling like, well, whatever the opposite of hotcakes are. When we were commissioned with the development of a new edition of the game in 1997, it was do or die time. If 3E failed, D&D would be done, and it would very likely drag rpgs in general down with it. Without D&D to stock on game store shelves, stores focused on rpgs go away and other stores just forget about rpgs entirely. We know this to be true (or at least having been true at that time) because at the end of its life, TSR stopped publishing D&D product for around half a year and the lack of new stuff didn't help the sales of other big rpgs at the time (like Vampire), it hurt them. At the time, the truism of "as goes the market leader, so goes the rest of the market" was very true.

The story of 3E's sales success is well-known in the hobby. I think it's pretty clear, however, that much of that success had to do with a "right place, right time" kind of situation. Gamers from the 80s were now older guys with cash and a fondness for their childhoods (or were dads with kids just getting to be old enough to share a hobby). It was right around that time (early 2000s) that we saw D&D references begin to show up in television sitcoms. GE used it to help sell washing machines. Sure, the game was shown to be geeky and silly, but at least there was none of that Satanic nonsense that people feared in the 1980s. D&D was suddenly recognized by a nostalgia-hungry public as one of those "kinda cool" things from their youth, along with New Wave music, Star Wars action figures, and Joust.

Today, of course, we still see D&D depicted in pop culture, but it's no longer shown to be a purely nostalgic thing. Nor is it purely nerdy, or rather, the fact that it's nerdy isn't seen as a bad thing. Look at the recent entire episode of the sitcom Community that devoted itself to the game. Look at geek culture icons mentioning the game casually rather than ironically or humorously. Take, for example, Iron Man director John Favreau openly crediting D&D in helping teach him how to tell a story. D&D isn't experiencing some kind of nostalgic renaissance, it's settled in nicely to a comfortable and well-accepted niche. 

Priceline

Priceline

I know it's going to sound like William Shatner himself slid a few large bills under the table to bribe me to write what I'm about to write, so you'll just have to trust me when I say that I'm not getting any kickbacks or payment for this.

Priceline.com is amazing.

In case you haven't seen the commercials, when you need a hotel, a flight, rental car, etc. you go to the website and you select some parameters. For example, if you're looking for a hotel, you select a general area and a star rating. Then, you name the price you want to pay. If a hotel of that quality in that area is willing to have you stay for that price, you're in. This works mainly for last-minute deals, because hotels would rather accept a low rate than have an empty room. Not long ago, as I was checking into my hotel, where my Priceline rate was for $40, another guest was checking in. When I heard the desk clerk quote the standard rate of $130, I was floored. If you don't need a specific hotel, Priceline can save you a lot of money.

The site will even guide you, giving you an idea if your bid is likely too high or too low, but if you're feeling lucky, you can even ignore that (I have, and it worked). I've yet to have a bad experience with the process.