View From the Bushes

Well, it's our first full day of taking subscriptions, and to those of you who have already signed up, thanks! Of course, if this ends up being a dry recitation of marketing statistics I doubt anyone will read it (not that anyone does, but I think you get the idea). As many of you may know if you frequent the Industry Forums on ENWorld, my wife and I just had our fourth child. As far as I could tell, the conventional wisdom was that the big jump in difficulty was when you went from two to three kids, but I'll tell you that at least for us, it was a lot tougher to go from three to four. A big part of that was three of the four kids having ear infections, plus all of them are six and under, anyway it was crazy...

Of course, just when you think your children will lead you to an early grave, they do something precocious. My four year old soon was watching the baby breast feed and asking questions, A few of the questions seemed to cause him to enter deep reflection. After a couple of minutes he walked over to me, raised his shirt and under-shirt and said, "See, I have a nipple too, it's just really tiny."

Currently the only D&D campaign I am involved in is the "Family Campaign." It consists of me, my wife, her sister and her sister's husband, my sister and her husband, and my best friend as DM. My son (the one with the tiny nipple) just loves to look at "monster books" and "monster magazines;" at four he's still too young to play, but boy, does he love the pictures. Speaking of "monster books," if you haven't picked up the "Monster Manual II" I would highly recommend it. Initially I avoided it because of it's dearth of OGC, but despite this shortcoming it's worth the money.

I suppose it's required by law that if you write something on April 15th, and you live in the United States you have to mention taxes. As someone who's voted libertarian, more than anything else, my feelings on taxes border on psychotic, but I think devolving into a rant this early into the game would be a bad omen.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero,
Ross