What would Christmas be without a fine tome filled with horrors buried in the deepest darkest depths of the known worlds? Pretty lame, if you ask me. Lucky for me, I was the proud receiver of Draconomicon, the Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition book on dragons. I wasn't particularly excited by this one, clear by my actions to put it on a wish list rather than buy it outright. What I found on reading it, however, was something both entertaining and useful.

What struck me right away is the high amount of useful information. Though Draconomicon has a fair bit of descriptions of dragons, society, physiology, and other such fluffy aspects, the crunch here is quite crunchy. The book contains nine short adventures, three per tier, that show off nine unique dragons. Full encounters are laid out in the traditional 4th edition style with complete stat blocks for about three encounters per adventure. Each of the settings are unique including some extra-planar areas like a green warlock dragon's lair in the Faywild.

The next most impressive area of the book are the statistics for many unique monsters of all levels. Wyrmlings will help challenge lower heroic tier players while some new big brutes including a pair of new dracolichs (who doesn't love dracolichs?). The three new chromatic dragons; the brown, gray, and purple dragons; are all interesting variants and give us an opportunity to use those silver and copper dragon minis that have sat on our mini shelf for so many months. A purple worm mini might even work for the purple dragon if your group has enough imagination to put wings on his back.

The vampiric dragon Bloodwind is worth the cost of the book alone. Imagine a huge 23rd level vampiric dragon with an exanguanation breath weapon able to suck the blood out of three victims at once. Bloody brilliant!

As reported, the full statistics for Tiamat are included as well, although I can't see many parties ever facing her and fewer still walking away from it. Overall there are over 80 pages of statistics for new dragons and related monsters.

There's a fair bit of space used up for draconic treasures which probably isn't necessary. I don't need detailed breakdowns of art pieces but perhaps I am the only one with players who can't convert everything to gold fast enough already. The draconic artifacts are interesting and the draconic traps are a nice bit of nastiness I hope to one day inflict upon unsuspecting PCs. The first half of the book, however, doesn't include nearly the useful content of the second half. I suppose an adventurer's vault style book packed with nothing but two hundred dragon stat blocks would turn a lot of folks off who expect more general descriptions so the mix of the two in the published book can likely win both sides over.

Between the draconic stat blocks and the nine mini-adventures, there is a lot of usable table-ready material for all three tiers of play. This alone justifies the cost of the Draconomicon.

After my happiness with the Draconomicon, I looked forward quite a bit to the Manual of the Planes. Who doesn't want to read about the powerful and dangerous outer worlds? Who doesn't want to find out what it is really like in the Shadowfell or the Elemental Chaos? Who wouldn't want to throw their players into the deepest depths of the Abyss to face beings of terrifying evil in their home world?

Unfortunately, where Draconomicon made itself clearly usable at the game table, the Manual of the Planes was little more than an extension of the chapter on the outer planes found in the Dungeon Master's guide. There are no encounters, no introductory adventures, no notable NPC stats, and a very sparse monster section that doesn't seem to know what sort of monsters it should have. There aren't even maps of the Shadowfell or Feywild.

Maybe it was a matter of having too much possible material that kept this book so vague. There are a lot of major places we would come to expect including details of the Astral Sea, the Elemental Chaos, the Shadowfell, the Faywild, the Abyss, and the Nine Hells. Unfortunately the book never gets into enough detail in any of these areas. Perhaps Wizards would have been better picking two at a time and focusing on them as they did with the Fiendish Codex series. A single book on the Shadowfell, for example, could be a lot more focused and a lot more usable.

Chapter one covers the basics of the planes including their structure, organization, travel, and other such things. This section also includes an all-too-brief section on Planar Hazards that includes only five hazards from level 11 to 26. I could have used about five hazards in each of the major areas - Astral, Elemental, Shadowfell, and Feywild.

Sigil is detailed quite a bit, the strange hold-out city that sits between worlds. Here we have some NPC personalities though without stats, without DM tips for running these NPCs, and without any artwork. There are also brief descriptions of the Far Realm and the Plane of Dreams.

Chapter's 2 and 3 cover the Feywild and Shadowfell. These chapters are packed with lengthy descriptions of travel, inhabitants, and locations. Again, there are no maps, no stat blocks, no sample encounters, no DM tips for describing these bizarre worlds to the players, and no hazards. The Shadowfell section, for example, has a five paragraph, 3/4 page description of a being known as the Dread Emperor without any stat block to be found. How useful is that if I have to write up my own stat block?

Chapter 4 covers the Elemental Chaos and actually does have two hazards of level 14 and 16. It describes Primordials for 2/3 of a page but again without a single stat block. Even the Forgotten Realms campaign book includes a Primordial. This chapter also describes the City of Brass, this time without even NPC descriptions.

The Abyss is crammed into this chapter as well with six pages of general descriptions of huge areas such as the Demonweb, Thanatos, and Azzagrat. Again no sample encounters, no abyssal hazards, no DM tips for building atmosphere for players, nothing I can actually use at the table.

Chapter 5 covers the Astral Sea with more piles of words describing various worlds. There are pages upon pages of descriptions of places my players will likely never go including Arvandor, Celestia, Chernoggar, Hestivar, and Kalandurren. The Nine Hells, an area that received an entire book in 3.5, is down to eight and a half pages. This is one of the few areas where I don't like the planar design. I can't get my head around the idea that all of the nine hells are really one big planet. Why not nine interlinked planets? I preferred the pancake hells, myself, given that it was more like Dante's Inferno. This is hell, after all,? Again, no stat blocks, sample encounters, or hazards.

Chapter 6 includes the Monsters of the Planes. There are a total of nineteen different types of monsters (a few more if you break them all out to their different tier versions). These monsters are spread from all over the planes. There's Astral Constructs, devils, demons, Shadowfell beasts, and fox thingies from the elemental chaos. With such a wide coverage of areas, there was clearly no focus for the few monsters included. We get two demon princes but what about the others? We get one devil lord but what about the other eight? There just aren't enough creatures for such a vast topic.

Chapter 7 is where the book really loses focus. Most of the other 4th edition books had clear designs for either the player or the DM. This is the only book I know if that includes ten pages of character material - mostly paragon paths. I would much have preferred WOTC to publish these paragon paths as part of D&D insider and use the extra pages for more hazards, maps, or sample encounters. How will this section be of any use to players if the book is held by the DM? I can't imagine a player would ever bother to buy this book just for those paragon paths. This is the first time a 4e book wasn't clearly focused for either the player or the DM.

Chapter 7 also includes a brief section on rituals and another on equipment. The equipment section isn't bad. WOTC has learned how to pack in a lot of items into a little bit of space and there are a lot of items here. For this part, I have few complaints. I only wish the rest of the book was as useful as this section.

In conclusion, the Manual of the Planes disappointed me. This is a book that could have been far longer, as long as the Forgotten Realms Campaign Sourcebook, and included a lot more table-usable material than it did. Instead of useful sample encounters, DM tips, NPC statistics, and overland maps, we get piles of general description text that offers little actual use. The book seemed scattered, too brief, and unsure of its intent.

I love the planes and I love most of the 4e design philosophy behind them, but I need a lot more as a DM in order to run it well at the table. I'm hoping this isn't the only book on the planes that we see. I, for one, would love an entire sourcebook on just the Shadowfell, for example. As it stands, now, the Manual of the Planes can be easily skipped. Unless you're looking for an encyclopedia-style book on the lore of the planes, not an actual gaming rulebook, save your money.

I thought it'd be nice on the last day of the year to recap the fun things in my life and maybe even post some resolutions.

Probably the biggest thing this year was finishing a life-long goal of mine and actually writing a book. Seven Swords was technically written in 2007 but it took most of 2008 to type it, edit it, and get it in print. Now I just have to get back to writing again.

My weekly D&D game really took off in 2008. We finished up a 3.5 campaign and switched fully over to Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. I love it, my players love it, and I hope I can keep that weekly game going forever. I got really big into Dwarven Forge in 2008 as well.

2008 was also the year I took full control over my own finances. Of course, this is a hell of a year to start learning about how the market works but at least I know where I'm losing my money. Want Mike's financial advice? Invest in three low-fee index funds: 60% Total Market, 30% foreign market, 10% bonds. Rebalance yearly. Yes, the market sucks now but stocks are cheap and if the whole market does come crumbling down, well you wouldn't be able to use that money anyway.

I played a lot of great games this year. Fallout 3 is my game of the year pic. Braid still sticks in my mind as another great game. The Xbox 360 is my console of choice (even after a red-ring of death) after a horrifying realization that the Wii sucks. Other than that, it's a hell of a lot of World of Warcraft and the Wrath of the Lich King.

I started taking classes to learn how to draw this year. Well, Michelle signed me up for our anniversary but I love the classes. I've gotten back into comic books in a big way. My top comic pics are Alias, The Ultimates, Supreme Power. Great stuff.

My top movies are probably everybody's top movies. Dark Knight was great. Iron Man was great. Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull couldn't have sucked more. I got big into The Wire and Six Feet Under this year as well. The Mist was really good, Cloverfield too. No Country for Old Men is my pick of 2008.

I read a few books I liked a lot. Fall of Hyperion is the one that stands out the most. Yiddish Policeman's Union pissed me off because a book about a Jewish cop in Alaska isn't what I'd call a Hugo winning science fiction novel. My favorite book of 2008 is Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Music hasn't changed much for me in this last year. I've been listening a lot to the Braid soundtrack which I love.

So what do I want for the next new year?

First, I want to lose a bunch of weight, like 80 pounds. I let myself go since the wedding and I'd feel a lot better and healthier at a better weight. Weight is something I've struggled with my whole life but I did have a nice three year period at a good weight so I know I can do it.

Second, I want to write six short stories or another novel. I haven't written anything of note since Seven Swords and it's time to get back to it.

Third, I'd like to read six novels. Twelve would be better but tackling Neal Stephenson's Anathem is like reading three novels all in one book.

Other than that I want more of the same! It's been a great year and I'm hoping that continues throughout 2009 and beyond.

Happy New Year!

Every time I open a new box of Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles I am always surprised how much I love them. All concerns about the price, all concerns about the "investment", all concerns that my money would have been better spent elsewhere disappear when I start to lay them out, build some rooms, and imagine the encounters I will run within them.

After using the cavern sets for a couple of months now I can say without doubt that the Dwarven Forge cavern set is the best set I've used. The size of the pieces, being mostly four by four blocks, make it easy and quick to build out a nice-sized cavern complete with stalagmites, platforms, and other interesting scenery. Adding in the Cavernous Passage set, the Chasm set, and the Cavernous River and Wall set all work together to build large and detailed caverns.

My primary intent for the cavern set was to run the module "King of the Trollhaunt Warrens" and I believe these four sets will do the job very well. Beyond that, however, I was able to use the set immediately in my Pyramid of Shadows game. All of the players remarked at the detail of the set.

With most of my collection consisted of the Fantasy Room and Passage sets along with the Fantasy Floors and Wicked Additions sets; I was nervous about getting into a set drastically different from the original. The nice thing about the sets I had is that they all worked well together, but the cavern sets look so different I worried that I wouldn't be able to use them together.

My fear was unfounded. The two sets work very well together. The cavern set includes seamless transitional pieces that take you from the room and passage set into the cavern set. It is very easy to use all of the Dwarven Forge pieces together to build out an infinite array of encounter areas.

Dwarven Forge enthusiasts refer to their hobby as "the addiction" and it's easy to see why. Starting with only two sets - the Medieval Building set and the Medieval Expansion set six months ago, I now have twelve sets. At about $120 each, that's a hell of an investment for a roleplaying game. When I use them, however, there is no doubt where that money went. Sure I could us an erasable battle mat or D&D dungeon tiles or even large sheets of graph paper, but when I use Dwarven Forge, it's a whole different game.

My only real worry, the only disadvantage I might apply, is that you better have a good consistent group of players to use this. I always worry that my gaming group will break up and I'll be sitting and staring at a large pile of dungeon accessories I can't really use. Getting a good roleplaying group together is the hardest part of the game and the one most likely to invalidate an investment of this magnitude.

My only other complaint would be with the Cavernous Chasms set which is harder to use than the others and doesn't clearly integrate as well as the others. It's still a good set and has a lot of nice pieces for building multi-level rooms, which I think is a clear advantage of Dwarven Forge overall, but doesn't fit quite as nicely together as the other sets.

Last year I had a chance to chat with the owner and creator of Dwarven Forge. He made a bold statement but one which is easy to defend once someone puts their hands on the pieces or sees them in use in a game. His statement was that Dwarven Forge are the best 3d dungeon models in the world. I couldn't agree more.

After thirteen months of work, I have finished my first novel, Seven Swords. You can buy Seven Swords from Lulu or read it for free on the web. Thirteen months ago I sat down with an empty notebook and a fountain pen and started dumping out a story that had been spinning around in my head for about four years.

The end result isn't great work. It might not even be considered a good novel. But it is the novel I wanted to write and the novel I wanted to read. I've gone over this book about five times in the past year, revising, tweaking, editing, and discussing every little nuance. Every time I've read it, I've enjoyed it. I like what I wrote and that is more important to me than whether it is a great book or a good book. I like the characters, I like the story, I like the action. I like that it says the phrase "gushing blood" eight times.

I wanted to write a book that was one part Seven Samurai and Magnificant Seven, one part Game of Thrones, and one part Kill Bill. I'm not sure its any of those things, but I like it just the same.

Sure, it'd be nice to get a big publisher to stick this piece of shit up next to Twilight. I'd love to tell Michael Bay to fuck off when he asks to make it a movie, I already have Ridley Scott knocking at the door. None of that is going to happen and frankly I'm just glad it didn't cost me much to publish it myself. The web version is available for free under a creative commons license, and the dead trees version can be bought from Lulu for $10.

Anyway, I'm glad to close the cover and get ready for the next thing. Gods below help me, I already have a sequel spinning around in my head.

Things don't look good for Susan.

Fallout 3 is the best roleplaying game I've played in years. It's better than Fable 2 in many ways, though the two have such divergent settings and stories that it is hard to compare them. However, unlike the on-the-rails feeling of Fable 2, Fallout 3 really opens up a world for you to explore. Granted that world is filled with radioactive water and giant mole-rats, but its the first game in a long time where I said "I think I'll go west" and let the adventures find me.

The atmosphere of Fallout 3 envelopes you. It feels just like you're in the Road Warrior, scrounging for every shotgun shell, wondering whether you should shoot this non-hostile guy just to take his six .32 calibur bullets and his water. I found myself thinking like I was in the wastelands where laws haven't existed for 200 years and every living thing is a potential threat or a potential walking bag of resources.

Another key to Fallout 3's success is the VATS system, a pseudo-turn-based system for selecting which part of the body you want to shoot and your odds of hitting it. Rather than taking the easy first person shooter route, the VATS system falls back to using the tactics of older roleplaying games that most new ones have tossed aside. My only complaint with the VATS system is that you're limited in how often you can use it so you end up scooting and shooting like you do in most first person shooters. This is one major reason why Fallout 3 is far superior to Oblivion, a fantasy RPG by the same developer.

There are plenty of bugs in this game, but for some reason I am less annoyed by them than I was in Fable 2. I've seen graphical geometry glitches such as getting stuck halfway into the ground. I've seen some pretty lousy framerate drops. I've seen some bad screen tearing. Your character also looks bland compared to the high-poly character models in current generation FPS games. Playing in third person is embarrassing. Your character looks like he's constantly slipping around on ice. Clearly the game was meant for a first person point of view.

I'm already 10 hours into Fallout 3, reached level 7, picked up about ten different types of weapons, and I'm just now getting back on the primary story line. I've heard complaints from others who reached level 20, the maximum level, before even starting the main storyline. That's because Fallout 3's game world is fun all on its own. Exploring the basement of a bombed out school or an abandoned Nuka-Cola factory is an adventure unto itself. Who needs little golden trails pointing you towards where you should go next. Let the radioactive wind be your guide.

Fallout 3 and Fable 2 are both excellent RPGs. It is wonderful to have them both but if I had to choose one, it would be Fallout 3.

Fable 2 is the best true fantasy roleplaying game I've played. I could argue that games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Knights of the Old Republic have the same character depth, but Fable 2 spends nearly all of its time letting you decide what type of person you want to be. Most roleplaying games come down to finishing quest, getting gear, and leveling up. Many games built on these ideas are a joy to play and we hardly miss character development at all.

That's not roleplaying however. In World of Warcraft, you are never given quests where you decide how to finish it and what you decide defines who you are. In Fable 2 this happens nearly all the time.

Fable 2 is a remarkable game from this perspective. It really lets you decide exactly who you want to be. For me, that's 50% Omar from the Wire and 50% Conan the Barbarian.

There's just one problem with Fable 2. It's not finished.

I should have known what I was getting into when great controversy rose up before the game's release. The highly-advertised co-op mode wouldn't be included with the game itself. Instead this would require an update. Granted it came out on the same day and granted PC users are used to things like this, but console games should include all advertised features without patches.

I didn't care about the co-op mode very much. I just wanted to enjoy a rich single-player console fantasy RPG. This problem, however, manifests itself elsewhere. Not only is the co-op mode unfinished but so is the graphic engine. So is the quest system. So is the character movement. So is the menu system. So is zone loading.

Fable 2 looks beautiful until you start moving around. In your starting town you see immediate graphical glitches. The game doesn't seem to have V-Sync enabled so you see all sorts of screen tearing. If you quickly look from left to right, you will see half the screen paint before the other half. It's hard to see if you're not looking for it but everyone who plays the game will surely FEEL the problem. It just won't seem right. Something will be a-miss.

The frame rate also shoots and dives all throughout the game. Some overland areas run beautifully but other areas drop the frame rate a lot, making for a jumpy sluggish ride.

Character movement is also all over the place. Sometimes I can hack my axe into a fallen opponent. Other times I have to shimmy around for ten seconds until it works. Sometimes I get stuck behind rocks. Sometimes a door tosses me across the screen.

The menu system is also sluggish and clumsy. Every screen seems to take longer than it should, making for a tedious inventory and skill system.

Zone loading is also horribly slow. I can take a pee break in between every zone's loading sequence. Every load sequence breaks you away from the world and makes you wish you had something better to do with your time than sit there and watch gears turn.

Now we're hearing about game-breaking bugs as well. Imagine getting six hours into the main quest of Fable 2 only to have it irrecoverably broken for walking out too early in a conversation. How do these sorts of things get past a quality assurance group? How about a recall?

I should have known from the very beginning what sort of problem this would be. Even as the initial screen loads the music jitters and farts into existence as the game loads off of the disk. Once loaded it sounds great but getting there sounded like a record skipping.

I can imagine how this happened. I imagine a deadline was in place and every project manager knew their ass hung on that deadline. Get it out before Christmas, it said, and, with these bugs in one hand and the deadline in the other, they made a decision that it was "good enough". Maybe they said "we'll fix this in a patch" but that's not good enough for a console game. That's the way PC games are. A lot of 360 owners don't go online. They get what you put out and if you put out an unfinished game, you're selling a broken product for hard-earned cash.

Worse are the game reviewers who give this game a 100% review. Fable 2 has four 100% scores on Metacritic and an average score of 90% for a game that even these reviews clearly state as being unfinished. Don't give high scores to unfinished work! The more game reviewers give high scores to shoddy work, the more shoddy games we're going to have. This is not acceptable. I should get a refund and this game should go back to the company until it IS finished.

I wouldn't be so mad about this if Fable 2 wasn't such a great game otherwise. The vision of the game and the game engine itself really make me want to fall in love with it. But I can't fall in love with a game that is clearly incomplete. And I can't forgive those that decide it's good enough and the reviewers who let them get away with it.

This will all lead to even more unfinished game released and sold and that is a sad state for the industry and a sad future for us players.

Jonathan Blow, the game designer behind one of my favorite games this year, Braid, had a few interesting things to say about World of Warcraft. In an interview with Gamasutra, Blow called World of Warcraft "unethical". After reading the interview, I can get a feeling for what he's talking about.

There are a couple of ways to design a game. You can design a game to give the player the greatest overall gameplay experience you can or, in the case of WoW, you can find the cheapest methods to keep people playing. For WoW, it's a mixture of a few different things including level progression, reputation grinding, gear replacements, and the one I want to talk about today: the quest system.

I'm willing to bet that one of the strongest ways WoW keeps people playing is the constant desire to acquire new quests and check off the boxes. I used to joke with my friend Ben that our goal in WoW is to go back to where we started in the beginning: an empty quest log. Of course, that's impossible and now with daily quests, you're likely to have dozens of quests in your book at any time.

Being a two year veteran of Getting Things Done, I can attest to the addiction of checking things off of an action list. It really doesn't matter what the items are as long as you get them on the list, do them, and check them off. My stress level directly relates to how many items I have on my action list, regardless of their complexity. The GTD principle of "only focus on the next possible action" eliminates the stress of huge overwhelming jobs by breaking them up into 30 minute physically doable tasks. Instead, the number of next actions I have is what makes me feel either busy or bored. Having three to five next actions wherever I am is just about right. If I have less than three, I'm usually bored. If I have more than five, I'm usually stressed.

Every time I check off an item, whether its making a phone call, writing an introduction to a paper, or reading an article someone dropped off on my desk; I get a tiny little surge every time I check one off that gives me just enough wind in the sail to get to the next one.

In the real world, such lists are powerful ways to get a whole lot of things done. In a game, however, it's feeding a dangerous desire with meaningless stuff.

Do we really pay attention to the rest of the game when we play the game mostly with a large in-game check list on the side of the screen? Are we really building enriching social relationships when our goal is to kill 40 wild boars just to check off the list? Is Blizzard capitalizing off of a deeply rooted human desire to "check the box"?

In our modern world the simplest problems are usually taken care of for us and all that remains are giant balls of fuzzy shit we call "jobs" that have no clear steps, no clear dates, no clear chain of authority, and no end-state. It's no wonder that we seek out games that make it so clear how to progress, even if those steps are just barely interesting enough to keep us going. It isn't the graphics or the gameplay that keep us playing, its the addiction to checking off those little boxes.

Unethical? Maybe, but so is any big business. It's not about making the world a better place, its about making money.

For a lot of people, however, people who have very little social outlet, even a interface of text between human beings is better than nothing at all. It's not like those who sit hidden behind computer screens will suddenly go out and pick up people in a bar or attend church socials. Social misfits have hid behind computers as long as there have been computers. They might as well do it together.

For many, myself included, these games of mundane check-lists can have some very positive benefits.

I had lunch today with a friend who had recently gone through a formal Getting Things Done class. He's become my new "GTD Buddy", a concept I quite enjoy. He had some excellent questions I really enjoyed some of which I wanted to write down and share.

How Has Life Improved with GTD?

Not to get too David Allen Cult of the Traveler on anyone but if I had to narrow it down to as simple a statement as possible it would be thus:

There is more freeing than having all of the shit in your life in front of you at one time. It's a feeling of control; a feeling of clarity. You're able to store all of that shit behind you and KNOW that everything is there, that it's in the right place, and that nothing will get lost. Suddenly your mind can make sense of it all. Cut out the crap that doesn't matter. Bring forward those things most important to you. Clear out the mess and focus on the important parts. It's empowering and it's freeing.

There's a lot of little joys too. The joy of checking things off of your list, as stupid as it sounds, gives you just a little lift to let you sail to the next action. The larger joy of crossing off a project is even better. But it's that first time you cross off a huge project, one that you never thought you'd ever do or one that took you a huge amount of time to accomplish. That's when the feeling gets addictive.

This is the reason World of Warcraft makes so much money. It's not the social interaction or the graphics. The game is a series of thousands of small doable tasks. Every time you finish one you get that little surge and that surge brings you back again and again.

Before GTD, I worried about what I needed to do and what I was forgetting about. Now I always know what to do, where to do it, and what's next. Now I worry about why I'm doing it and where I should be going to make my life better. That's freedom.

Mike's Five Tips for GTD

1. Build a trusted system and simplify it.

In the book "Getting Things Done" itself, the GTD system is quite extensive. Tickler file, labeler, massive filing cabinet, 1970s style desktop inboxes; its a lot to try to handle all at once. There are numerous functions of GTD and thousands of possible tools. Once you have your initial total project list in hand, experiment a little to find the system that works for you. Simplify out the parts that make the system harder and stick to the parts that succeed in making the system easy to use and complete. For example, I tossed my tickler file when I realized I could send myself calendar items to remind myself of items to do later. I got rid of "waiting for" lists because I catch items I'm waiting for when I go over my projects each week. Instead of carrying around a 12 month calendar, I only carry my current week. Everything else is on my Outlook calendar. Simplifying the system as much as possible can do a lot to customize a system around the way you live.

1. Manage your inbox.

Inbox management is the core component of GTD. Know what your inboxes are, where they are, and clear them out daily. Get rid of inboxes that don't work right. Consolidate inboxes as much as you can so all the new stuff coming into your life gets funneled to the same place. For example, get rid of multiple email accounts or auto-forward one to another. Auto-respond on inboxes you don't check to point human beings to the one you do check. Do the same thing with multiple voicemail systems. Find new simplified ways to receive new tasks at work. Tell your best friend that you simply don't have the time to update his web page and maybe its better if he did it himself with Blogger.

1. Don't skip over the weekly review.

Next to the ubiquitous capture of the inbox it is the most important part of the system. The first few times the Weekly Review can be pretty painful. It can take up to an hour, has a lot of complicated steps, and requires a lot of brainwork to build a good set of Next Actions. The further along you get, the easier the weekly review gets. Eventually you can carve it out in 30 minutes and even do 5 or 10 minute mini-reviews during the week to keep yourself fresh and empty of worry. Make a checklist of your Weekly Review items and follow it. Ensure it is uninterrupted and find a good time to do it. My favorite time is Friday mornings. This lets me get everything straight, complete a few tasks before the weekend, and know that I'm ready for Monday. It keeps my weekends free and relaxing instead of full of angst and worry for the troubles of Monday.

1. Find the tools that work and forget about them.

Tweak too much and you'll build a system that just gets in the way instead of one that works as smoothly as it needs to. Merlin Mann once stated "geeks like anything that make them feel like a computer". GTD is such as streamlined system that its hard not to fall so in love with it that we don't stop playing with it. Gods know I write a whole lot about GTD but I haven't actually modified my system that much in the last year. I have it down to the simple system that fits well into my life. Tweaking a system too much may make it too complicated to actually use. Now new projects are falling on the floor, you have no idea what your next actions are, and you just missed two meetings. Keep your system streamlined and effective and get on with the things that matter.

1. Eliminate.

Clean out projects that don't matter to you. Reduce your overall system and get rid of the parts that don't work. Get rid of the sources for new projects and actions that don't make your life better. While your at it, invoke my favorite zen simplification rule: One In, Two Out. For every item that enters your life, make sure two leave. This can be from your closet full of shoes to your fine collection of D&D Miniatures (oh shit, I just got 30 new ones yesterday). If you clear out two projects for every new one you take on, soon that insurmountable amount of stuff you have to do will thin out and leave room for the things of greatest importance to you.

Getting Things Done can be a complicated system and the path is fraught with pitfalls. Some will never get past the initial brain dump of every possible project in your life. Some may watch their system deteriorate as they miss one weekly review after another. Some may never have a system solid enough to gain their trust. Some may tweak it to the point where it no longer works at all.

I was very lucky to avoid most of this. Since first starting out, my GTD process has worked with few flaws for two years. I have an easy system that works very well for my life and lets me focus on the things of greatest importance to me. As cheesy as it sounds, GTD has made my life better and that is the reason I choose to share it.

Another browser? Do we really need another browser? I think all of us asked this question, including those within Google, so they developed this online comic book on Chrome to explain exactly why. Of course, they start in with the techno mumbo jumbo. After using it, however, it is clear what Chrome's strength is:

Chrome is built around how we use the web.

All of us have a workflow for web browsing. Often that workflow is different. One of the common features I use in Firefox is the "Google I'm Feeling Lucky" effect of the address bar. Type any two words in the address bar separated by a space and Firefox will do an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search for those terms and directly send you to the most likely site associated with those two words.

Google does something similar but even more wonderful. Type in the name of a site like Amazon and then hit tab. Now you can enter a search query without actually going to Amazon yet. Amazon TAB Forgotten Realms Players Guide goes directly to the product page. That's a browser built around how we use the web.

It's unfortunate that there isn't an OSX client yet for Chrome, but as soon as there is, I am very likely to switch to it and stick to it. I want a browser built around my flow. I want to get the interface out of the way and find a purer connection between the data on the internets and my brain. God help me when I find it, I still don't exactly know what that stream of data is actually DOING to my brain, but the information addiction is still there and Chrome helps me get my fix.

Chrome is an excellent browser, and why shouldn't it be? Google has the best programmers on the world.

And what sort of world will that soon become?

The science fiction part of me loves to ponder Google's huge success. I wrote a short story about Google taking over the world called "Citizen Fred's Book". I also remember the Matrix anime short film, Second Renaissance 1 & 2. If you want to see one possible future for Google, consider that short film with Google taking over the robotic AI nation of 01.

We're at a dangerous point in the world where the majority of information funnels through a single corporation. I'd be more concerned about it if they weren't so goddamn good at it. I use google many times a day. I count on it for email, search, and soon web browsing. I use it to see where I am and look back over my own data. I can't even imagine what someone could put together about me based on all the data that one company holds. And should that data fall into the wrong hands? Who knows what would happen to us.

In the mean time, ignorance is bliss. I'm going to switch to Chrome.

Today I went to the Hair Cuttery and got a haircut at about 11:45am. The place was empty and, as I sat down, the stylist said "It's good that you came when you did. At noon or twelve fifteen the place fills up. I realized that, without trying, I scheduled in my haircut at the best time of the day. It was during a lunch hour for me but earlier than everyone else's lunch hour. Why can't we do this with everything?

My goal for this article is to save you, dear reader, up to a year of your time. The process is simple and probably elementary, but hopefully rooting the philosophy deep will make it so regular as to save a great deal of time we spend doing things we don't want to do. There is no commodity worth more than your time. While money can come and go, time only goes. We have only so many minutes in our lives to enjoy. It is important to enjoy every one of them.

The core of the process for saving some time is simple: don't go where other people are going. Feeling the urge to go out to dinner? Likely so is everyone else. Do the opposite. This can be applied all over life and will in turn save you an incredible amount of time. Find those perfect times to run an errand, buy groceries, go to dinner, see a movie, go on vacation, or get a haircut when it fits well into your life and avoids the time everyone else does the same thing.

Without further introduction, here are five ways to save yourself time:

1. Have dinner no later than 5pm. Sure you may feel like an old retired couple but there's nothing better than going to a popular restaurant and finding the place empty. The staff haven't yet burned out serving a thousand people, the food is all fresh, and you can get seated right away.

2. Go on vacation a week after labor day. Almost all vacations are built around the school year. For some, I suppose, there is no other choice. However just because every parent has to go on vacation during the summer doesn't mean you have to. My wife and I celebrate our anniversary with a two week vacation in the middle of September. The tourists are all gone, the lodging is cheap, and the delays are short. A lot of popular places are squeezing in last minute deals as well making it even more beneficial.

3. Find that ideal grocery time. Grocery shopping can be a big time sink if you're waiting in line behind every other jackass with a cart full of Red Bull, Vodka, and Ho-Hos. Go early on Saturday morning and avoid the big rush. The food is good and the lines are short.

4. Watch movies at home. As TVs get bigger and cheaper, the reasons for seeing a movie in the theater get smaller and smaller. First, most movies suck. Second, they cost way too much. Third, they add about 30 minutes of advertisements, 15 minutes of expensive food shopping, and all the parking, lines, and ticket buying hassle. Avoid all that. Wait three months for the DVD to come out. Once you're on a good schedule, you won't worry if Batman came out in the theater, you just got Ironman at home! If you miss the social interaction, invite your friends over for a big party. It's a lot nicer sitting on your couch eating a burger you grilled yourself than it is waiting in line to buy a stale heavy-bag of popcorn.

5. Stay at home. Find enjoyment at home rather than seeking it out. Shop, eat, and entertain yourself from your own fortress of solitude. Build the sort of environment you enjoy living in and being in. Take comfort from being at home. Again, if social interaction is your goal, invite people over for a party, a movie, some D&D, or any other reason.

Now time for some advanced tips. These aren't nearly as easy as the ones above, but if you can swing them, you'll save even more time.

Work from home. If you can work it out with your boss, working from home saves a ton of time in preparation and commuting. Often people report that working from home makes them more productive in less time. While the social interaction of work is one of the primary individual benefits, taking a regular work at home day can make a big difference.

Live close to where you work. Another tough one since selling and buying a house, townhouse, or condo isn't as easy as waiting for The Dark Knight on DVD, but if you have a choice, live close to where you work to cut your commute time. Easier still - add some great value to your commute time by listening to audiobooks. Listening to the Dark Tower series during my 45 minute commute was one of the great joys in my life during that time.

Get off the net and stop checking email. Now we're delving into Merlin Mann / Tim Ferriss territory but the internet is stealing our time so its worth mentioning. You don't need to immediately see if someone sent you a gmail, what the latest Digg headlines are, or what your friend just reported he is doing on Twitter. Go relax and read a book away from all your machines. Shut down the machines completely so booting them up is a pain in the ass (this also saves you quite a bit in power costs). As Tim Ferriss says, go on an information diet. Take the Blackberry off, turn it off completely, and stick it in a dish until you need it the next morning.

What now?

Once you've saved all this time, a likely more difficult question remains. What do you do now? Relax is an easy one. Take it easy. Don't worry about filling up every moment with something productive or fully engaging. Take a break and just sit outside. Go take the dog to the dog park. Pick up a novel you haven't quite finished. Go draw a picture. That won't fill up all your free time but perhaps consider picking up an old hobby you used to enjoy but left long ago.

Sit outside with a piece of paper and write out a list of what you would do if you had $3 million in the bank and could live the rest of your life on interest. When you have a list of some ideas, go start doing them now. Maybe "go to Hawaii and hike the volcanos" isn't quite possible next weekend, but "learn to sketch" might be something more reasonable.

Above all, relax and have fun.

The older I get, the more I return to the things I enjoyed as a younger man. Never is this more the case than on my now yearly pilgramage to Indianapolis to Gencon, the largest fantasy / science fiction gaming convention in the world. Over twenty thousand people go to Gencon from year to year, all there to play just about every table-top game imaginable.

Over the best four days of gaming, starting on Thursday and ending on Sunday, Michelle and I played over ten table-top RPG games including a marathon 10 hour RPGA Living Forgotten Realms D&D game. We played through the True Dungeon, a life-sized dungeon for LARP-lite including a 14 foot tall animatronic ogre and a huge Conan-style animatronic snake, all inside a dank full-sized dungeon.

I learned a few things along the way as well. First, I don't like any sort of competitive championship D&D game. We played one from Goodman Games and one from the RPGA, both championship games, that were tuned way too hard and seemed to be designed to really make it difficult to succeed. We didn't in either game. Competition seems to be a big motivator for games, it is the reason to play Magic the Gathering or D&D Miniatures, but in my tabletop RPG games, I just want to have a good time with friends and roll some dice. The other Forgotten Realms RPGA games were wonderful, although I realize now that I don't really like the rogue class that much. My dwarven fighter, on the other hand, was a thick can of good times.

I also managed to get my players handbook signed by all three of the authors; Rob Heinsoo, James Wyatt, and Andy Collins. I managed to talk to Rob about character building and James Wyatt about his new upcoming adventure "Pyramid of Shadows" which has both pyramids and shadows in it.

I also had a chance to talk to the creator of Dwarven Forge, the 3d terrain I use for my D&D games. He is a really neat guy who started his business small, selling a few dwarven forge sets out of Gencon a decade ago. He and those running the booth seemed surprised at how well they sold their sets in such a rough economy. "People want to invest in their fantasy lives" I told him. "It helps them escape from their real one." Indeed, escape seems to be the primary motivator for everyone at a conference like this. Some choose alcohol or sports. Others, like me, choose Battlestar Galactica and Dungeons and Dragons.

Another highlight of my weekend was meeting with my friends Brad and Mark with Mark's wife Amy, Brad's girlfriend Amy, and their kids Max, Trevor, and Colton. Seeing Max playing the Wii on Brad's 100" screen made me really wish I was five years old again. Hanging out with my old friends playing Rock Band (I will never sing "Roam" again, I swear) was one of those perfect moments in our adult lives. It makes me want to move back out there and do it every weekend.

The older I get, the more I embrace my childhood. I plan to do this until the day I die.

I'm a big fan of independent popular art. My enjoyment of a movie is a simple equation of the quality of the movie divided by the cost. Thats why I so hate movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. It would be a good movie if it cost 30 million. At 300 million, however, the movie sucks.

Independent movies, music, books and independent music have a rough go of it these days. Mainstream producers have cornered the market, making it very difficult for independent producers to get their content in front of the public. Movies like Primer and The Fountain can make it in front of us but we have to wonder how many other good movies never make it because they don't have the 50 million dollar advertisement budget.

Luckily, games don't have it so bad. Microsoft and Sony both promote independent gaming through their downloadable networks. They make it easy for a small production group, even one person, to create a game and distribute it to potentially millions of users. No doubt there's pain involved in this distribution. Microsoft and Sony are still big companies with corporate politics and bureaucracy that get in the way of a creator and his or her audience, but we have seen some excellent small budget games. Braid is one of them.

One guy dreamed up and built Braid with an independent artist doing the artwork and licensing music from other independent music artists. Now it is a cornerstone Xbox Live Arcade game with a downloadable free demo and a $15 full-game cost. From the moment I heard about the game to the moment I had it in hand was about five minutes with no major investment from me until I played through the first level and decided that I wanted to spend my $15 bucks. This is something I know Nintendo hasn't figured out about downloadable games yet. Give me a sample if you expect me to buy.

Braid is beautiful. The artwork is amazing. The story, though it grows more and more confusing as you go, is quite deep. The gameplay is simple on the surface, deep as you get into it, and is most of all quite fun. The music was so good I immediately purchased all eight tracks off of Amazon. The game's creator, a somewhat pompous Jonathan Blow, described how he chose independent music artists for the same reason that he himself built Braid - because, like him, they created their art for the sake of the art, not for the money.

Jonathan Blow spent about $180,000 of his own money, maxing out his credit cards and spending three years of his life making this game. He knew he was making something special, and he did. Contrast this to the $60 million that Halo 3, a sequel, cost.

Braid proves to me that the independent game market is a real force in gaming. While we will never break away from the huge Halo 3 megahits with their Hollywood-level production costs, I think we're going to see more and more independent games showing up on the top 10 lists. Producers are going to see that too and will do more to fund them. The independent gaming market is going to be huge.

Braid is an amazing and beautiful game. Go try out the demo and, once complete, give them your $15. The game is worth every penny.

You know you're beginning to fall too hard into D&D when $100 a set for 3-D dungeon pieces seems reasonable. You really know you've hit heroin-levels of addiction when you look in your dining room and see seven such sets. Like my love for home theater back about ten years ago, I am finding that there is no upper limit when it comes to hobbies. Though D&D can be played with little more than the three core books, some paper and pencils, and some funny dice; there's quite a bit more to spend your money on if you want to.

Dwarven Forge is a modular dungeon tile system that uses ceramic-like 3d blocks to build out dungeons. The blocks come in various sizes from 2x2 floors and walls to smaller steps and accessories and 4x4 or 6x6 floor pieces. Putting them together you can build small, medium, or for those with too much disposable income, very large dungeons.

The allure of Dwarven Forge is easier to see in pictures than it is to describe, though you can't really appreciate them until you see them in person. Check it out on Flickr and from the Dwarven Forge website's own photo gallery. True gamers instantly begin to drool at the idea. I know I did.

For the past two years I had successfully avoided Dwarven Forge for a few reasons. First, it was clearly expensive and I had no idea how many sets I would have to purchase before it was really functional. Two, I wasn't sure how practical it was at the table. I have a hard time setting up D&D Dungeon Tiles at the table on the fly and I was afraid Dwarven Forge would be as hard or harder. Third, I never know if my gaming group is going to last a while or not. What happens when I hit that stage in my life where I can't find a full group to run a game? A few books isn't much of an investment but with an investment in D&D miniatures and Dwarven Forge, not having a group would be a real waste of such a collection.

Then last May, for my birthday, Michelle and her folks bought me two sets of the Medieval Building set for building inns, cottages, and other above-ground structures (have I mentioned that I am married to the greatest woman in the world?). It blew me away and I instantly had to have more. By the end of May I had four more sets. Earlier this month I ordered one more.

So how did it work out? So far, very well.

The cost is still very expensive. This is the sort of purchase that pushes you well into the hobby. You better plan to use it a lot to get the value out of it and I hope to. Right now I have a weekly D&D game and I use it nearly every game. It's also great for running D&D miniature scenarios with even just Michelle and I as a sort of board-game version of D&D. I hope and expect to have a gaming group for years to come, even if it means hunting down new people to play. I recently expanded my group to six just to make sure we always had enough players at the table.

As far as setup is concerned, it turns out that Dwarven Forge is easier to set up than D&D dungeon tiles. For one, every piece is more useful than most of the D&D dungeon tile sets. Second, since all the pieces come in styrofoam packs, you can easily see where the piece you need happens to be. At the game table I'm able to quickly build some basic rooms in just a couple of minutes. The night before a game I'm able to build entire dungeons and reveal each section as it is explored. Both systems work though the room-at-a-time approach seems to be more enjoyable to the players and cheaper since you don't need as many pieces.

The construction and design of the Dwarven Forge pieces is astonishing. Every piece has amazing detail, from the drips of candle wax coming from wall-mounted candles to the individual pits in the rocks that make up a rock wall. They're beautiful and wonderful to use. Each piece feels like it is made out of stone. Though I haven't exactly beaten them up, the pieces have survived many games without a single broken piece. They fit together well and are heavy enough to stay in place when you piece them together. One of my only problems is that the pieces are so beautiful and fun that players often start messing with their own little constructions in the middle of the game. They're just too cool not to screw with. I'd go to the kitchen for a drink and come back with an entirely new design to whatever room I had. Everyone wants to play with them when they see them.

Unfortunately, individual Dwarven Forge sets don't work well on their own. You can't just buy one and figure it is enough to build out a room. Even with four sets of the fantasy dungeon rooms and passages, I had just enough pieces to build two medium sized rooms, one large double-layered room, and a few halls. Even with four sets I just barely had enough to build out an entire adventure worth of rooms. Now if you're building out every encounter individually, you might get away with as few as two or three sets but that would be stretching it. Even as few as three sets still costs about $300.

I've been using my Dwarven Forge sets for two months now and I love them. They make me smile every time I set out a few rooms or passages. My players enjoy them, though they don't distract too much from the story. They certainly aren't necessary. D&D Dungeon Tiles, large poster maps, and erasable battle mats work just fine. However, they do add a whole new dimension to tabletop gaming.

Like my love of fine fountain pens, it is very very difficult - probably impossible - to justify the cost for such a thing, but that doesn't stop me from loving them as much as I do. Dwarven Forge isn't for everyone, but if you decide to make the plunge, you won't regret it. Though the Dwarven Forge community is small, for who can really afford such things these days, every member clearly loves it.

I know I do.

Three weeks ago I went to throw out our trash and realized someone had put out a half-sized refrigerator in the community space in front of our townhouse. I narrowed my eyes at it but promptly forgot about it when I went off to work. When I got home, our trash was there but the fridge remained. Of course they didn't take it, its full of freon. So now I watched it sit there for three more days, past the time of the next trash pickup. It wouldn't have bothered me if it was a block away but it sat right in front of our house. Everyone who went by would think it was ours. And worse, given our HOA, its unlikely anyone would bother to take care of it.

So now I had to do something about it. What was my goal? What was my next action? What could I do to get this thing out of my life?

Imagine we live in a sphere both physical and mental. Our lives exist within this sphere. Our friends, our loved ones, our families, our stuff, our homes, our jobs; all of it exists within this bubble. Anything that can reach in and drop off stuff in that sphere is now an input source. It might be a new task at work. It might be a bill. It might be some jackass leaving a fridge on your lawn.

That refrigerator was a new project, whether I wanted it or not, and my front lawn had now become a new inbox. I came up with a clear project goal (get rid of the stupid fridge), and a next action (bitch to my HOA). Eventually, about two weeks before my HOA got back to me, the people who put it out there called some folks and they took it away. In the end, someone else had cleared my inbox. It remained a good example of how things can fall into your world and require your own effort to get them back out again.

There is no part of the "Getting Things Done" system more important than the inbox. Being able to collect, process, organize, review, and do is fully dependent on receiving new stuff correctly in the first place. Understanding, organizing, and correctly using ones inboxes is critical to the smooth behavior of the rest of the system.

We typically think of inboxes with a narrow focus. My email is an inbox. My mailbox at work is an inbox. The little wire mesh basket where my wife puts stuff - that's an inbox. But what about widening that focus? What if we consider any source where we could possibly receive a next action as an inbox? Now my boss becomes an inbox. My telephone becomes an inbox. Hell, I'm surrounded by inboxes. Yes, even my front lawn became an inbox.

"If you want to get more done, do less," David Allen once said.

The easiest way to get control over something is to eliminate it. One of the best ways to get control over all of those inputs in our lives is to cut the inputs out that we don't really need. Does the input directly benefit your life? Does it make you happy? Is it truly necessary? If not, what about cutting it out? What about narrowing the tube so less comes in?

Many times we have little control over this inbox. Our obligations to family, our requirements to make a living, and yes, even the community space in front of our townhouse; all of these are required for our lives. But what about all those sources of actions that don't really matter? What about those obligations we feel we have to fulfill but really have no impact on our lives? What about that website we still maintain for the tens of users who still read it? What about volunteer service we do that fills us with dread when it comes up? What about that favor we keep giving the same neighbor?

Eliminate unneeded inboxes. This alone can reduce dependencies on your time and help you focus on the things that are directly important to your life. If you are over-obligated, you're not going to do a good job at the things you really should or really want to be doing.

Getting control over your inboxes will feed well into the whole rest of a good personal organization system. Control the inputs and you control the flow.

Controlling your inboxes can make you more productive, more responsive, and happier.