Word of the passing of Gary Gygax has been travelling throughout the gaming community today. Gary was a legend and a giant to anyone who has played D&D for any length of time. His passing is a huge loss to the community. His wit, wisdom and humor will be greatly missed.

Everyone please take a moment today to remember Gary and his impact he had on gaming in general. We will all miss you, Gary.

I was away for a little while, between work and vacations, and time slipped away from me, but I'm back now, and you can expect to see pretty regular content again.

Apparently, I have been immortalized in the pages of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. A friend informed me of this, but did not say just what form that immortalizing took. I haven't gotten my issues yet, so if you have the final printed issue of Dragon, please flip to page 115 and tell me if it the news is good or bad.

More about GenCon later, but the big news was the announcement of 4th edition D&D in May of next year. What follows is my opinion on this...

I must apologize, both to our loyal readers and to Steve. A few months ago, there was talk of closing d20 Magazine Rack's doors. I was one of the ones that fought to keep it up and alive, volunteering to take the bulk of administration duties, as well as keep new content coming. Of late, I have been very negligent.

To be honest, I think I just need a break; from everything. Work has been weighing heavily on me, my wife and I work different shifts, so we get to spend precious little time together, and I have other concerns to consider as well. But that doesn't change how I feel about d20 Magazine Rack. This site (and Steve) gave me my first big break, and I'm not willing to let it go that easily.

Some of you may have noticed that my reviews have gotten few and far between of late. A few of you might even have wondered why. This is for those faithful few who actually found anything I had to say of relative interest or value.

When I was getting products coming in for review almost every month, I got a lot of flack from my gaming buddies. "I wish I could get free stuff," was a commonly heard phrase. In response, I would hand them a product and say, "Let's see what you can do." All of them returned the product after a week. None of them produced a review.

The most common excuse was a lack of time (although a few admitted that they just wanted free product). Time is a precious commodity, all the more so when you work a full-time job and try to have a life in addition to writing reviews. Writing a review requires, on average, about twenty hours. That gives me time to read through the work, jot a few notes, write a first draft, read the work again, make more notes, and write the final copy.

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer

While at GenCon, I had the chance to sit down with David Eckelberry, whose name will no doubt be familiar to any fan of the Alternity game and the Star*Drive setting in particular. David, along with Richard Baker, designed the Star*Drive setting and also designed the Lighthouse supplement for the Alternity game. His other works include Masters of the Wild, Savage Species, One Last Riddle, and Diablo II: To Hell and Back, and he has served on the development team for numerous other D&D and Alternity products. These days, David is a Senior Game Designer for Atari, working on the new Dungeons and Dragons Online, which will be unveiled sometime in the first quarter of next year. David was kind enough to sit down with me and answer a few questions about the game, as well as demonstrate some of the nuances.

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer

Have you ever heard of the Nokia N-Gage? I hadn't, until I had the chance to view one in action at GenCon! The nice folks at Nokia were very friendly and helpful in demonstrating the system to me and I'd like to offer a big thank you to Rannie, Wini, and everyone else who made me feel so welcome and who were such a wealth of information regarding this remarkable little device.

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer

As many of you may be aware, I recently attended GenCon game fair, where I had the privilege of chatting with Ed Stark and David Noonan, two members of the design team at Wizards of the Coast. I have to say, it was a very enlightening chat and they are two of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. They, along with Claire Vail and Joe Hauck, were simply wonderful in providing me with answers to a few of the questions that I had.

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer

While at GenCon, I had the immense honor of meeting with Peter Adkison, designer of Magic the Gathering^TM and Jesper Myrfors, creator of Clout Fantasy, a new collectible throwing game that is poised to sweep the gaming world. I'll begin with a little about Clout Fantasy itself before moving on to the actually interview.