Monte's Christmas List

With Christmas fast approaching, I'm thinking about what I'd like Jolly Old Saint Nick to put in my stocking (and no, despite what people who have lost PCs in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil tell me, it should NOT be coal).

Here're some things on my Christmas list:

Miniatures. I love 'em. I love to paint them and I love to use them in my games. My current favorites come from Reaper, and a French game called Confrontation. In the past, I've been a big fan of Chronopia as well. Some of the new Chainmail minis are cool as well.

DVDs. I'm a big movie fan. I'd love, for example, for the newly released Godfather movies to end up under my tree. Someone once said that those movies are very much "guy" films, and I think he was right. I'd be just as happy with the new special edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, though. And they've put the whole first season of Twin Peaks on DVD -- ooh, I'm just getting greedy now.

CDs. I'm also into music. Perhaps like many of you, I got into the whole progressive/sci-fi/rock thing as a teenager -- you know, Rush, Yes, ELP, and so on. I'd be lying if I denied that a lot of my early design work wasn't at least in some way influenced by songs like "Starship Trooper" or "Cygnus X-1." While I've moved on to very different and considerably more eclectic tastes now, I'm sentimental enough so that if one of those groups puts out a new album, even though they're really not all that good anymore and they've changed their music styles entirely, I still like to get them. I hear Yes has put out yet another album, so that's on my list. (As a child of the eighties, I also occasionally find myself craving to hear the occasional "Rock Me Amadeus" or "Turning Japanese" -- I can't really explain it, as it has little to do with the sort of music I currently like.)

The original Arduin books. I used to have these, but they got lost some time long ago. I understand they've been reprinted in their original form, and I'd love to own them again. If you're not familiar with them, they are original D&D "knock-off" supplements from the very early eighties written by Dave Hargrave. It's not that these books are really all that great, but what they lacked in good solid mechanics or presentation (and remember -- this is back when no one really had great mechanics or presentation), they made up for in cutting edge cool for the time. If you wanted to play a giant insect man and have a spiked shield, these books let you. While that might not seem that great now, remember that back then, playing an elf was still pretty "out there."

Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill book. Eddie's the funniest man on the planet, and I'd love to get a copy of this book. I'd love even more getting his latest tour, Circle, on video, but I know that's not coming out for a while.

I'd also like a computer program that allows me to input the initiative rolls of everyone in a given combat in D&D, and then arrange them in order, with another file assigned to each name, so that when a PC comes up in order, I can see his character sheet, and when an NPC comes up, whatever notes and stats I have for him pops up. (No, I don't want the program to give me a form to retype all my PCs and NPCs into -- I don't have time for that. I want the program to conform to me, not the other way around.) No, nothing like this exists that I know of, but that's why they call these wish lists, right?

And speaking of wishes, I have some other Christmas hopes as well: I hope that the troops in Afghanistan find Osama bin Laden, and that peace can be restored there quickly, with a minimal loss of life. I hope the Western world can realize that not every Muslim wants to kill every Christian, and I hope that if we do realize that, that in turn the Islamic world realizes that. I hope that economic recovery comes to our nation soon. I hope that in fighting terrorists we don't give up some of the essential freedoms that it looks like we're already giving up.

On a less globally significant front, I hope Dragonstar is good (I do so want it to be). I hope I can get The Book of Eldritch Might II finished on time without killing myself. I hope that the show 24 keeps up the level of quality that the first five episodes have possessed. I hope that The Lord of the Rings movie is as good the fifteenth time as it was the first.