Busy month. It feels like I just returned from France, and in two days I’m moving to San Francisco (that’s right, potential employers, moving to San Francisco). In between those major transitions, I completed two non-digital games and a pretty nifty Off the Grid. It’s probably why I haven’t started packing yet.

First up is Gygaxian, developed in response to Brenda Brathwaite’s challenge to design a game in memory of the late Gary Gygax. It’s an inverted game of Dungeons & Dragons, with multiple Dungeon Masters (here called GGs) battling for narratorial control.

May’s Escapist game (which actually went up a week early) is myNo, a fun, fast-paced dice game I promised myself I’d work on as a break from headier designs like Gygaxian and Petrol Panic. I’ve been using a lot of dice in my designs lately. Maybe next month I’ll do something a bit different.

Over at Joystiq, my latest Off the Grid column deals with Hasbro’s limited-edition Risk: Black Ops, which is ten times hotter than the commercial re-release of the title coming this Fall. As I write this, only five copies of the game are up for auction on eBay, and each is going for over $400. That has to send a pretty strong message to Hasbro re: the demand for the game.

I’m falling behind on the blogging again. Need to not do that.

Two weeks ago I reviewed Zombie Fluxx for Joystiq. It’s good, but it could be better. I’m still working on exactly how it could be better. More on that topic (hopefully) soon.

This past week, I reviewed Ticket to Ride, which is quite, quite, quite good. In fact, I’m recommending it. Consider it recommended. Now play it.

Also last week, The Escapist published 9am class, my dice game about falling asleep in early morning colleges courses. They did a phenomenal job with the piece, giving it a snazzy logo and even re-designing the game board to make it look less like I just threw it together in Photoshop. I tip my game designer hat to them.

December’s going to go by awful quick. Here’s hoping I can keep up.

Well… kinda. I use my Powerbook as a display for video game consoles. It’s the easiest way for us to continue playing new releases on our North American systems while living in France (we’re damn sure not gonna miss Super Mario Galaxy or Smash Bros. Brawl). How it works exactly is the topic of this week’s Off the Grid, although the picture below is kind of a giveaway.

This piece actually marks the hopeful end to a bit of a dry period for Off the Grid. The move to France disrupted my normal flow of reviews, and I’ve spent the last week or so attempting to arrange for more review copies of games to be sent to my new address.

It’s going to be harder to review games here, in part because fewer companies are willing to ship review copies abroad. The larger problem, however, is the lack of players. It’s just me, Bonnie, and at the moment nobody else in this country that I’d feel comfortable subjecting to board games they’ve never heard of. At the moment, that limits me to games for two players. I guess I’ll have to start making French friends if I want to play anything more substantial than that.

I’m surprised and delighted by the number of comments to my latest Off the Grid post, which talks about the difficulties of continuing a video game obsession hobby while living abroad. The column is part one of a two-part series, in which I explain how I managed to get our American-born Wii and PS2 working perfectly in France. It’s no Not Without my Daughter, but it still makes for a good story, I feel.

I was concerned that the content of the piece would be lost on a lot of non-traveling gamers, but it seems a surprising number of people have been in my exact same situation. The comments I’ve received on the piece are extremely helpful, and I’ll definitely be taking their input into consideration while I write next week’s thrilling conclusion. I look forward to sharing my crazy, ass-backward solution with the world.

In travel news, we’re headed to Italy tomorrow. By train. We can take a train to Italy. How cool is that?

My Off the Grid column at Joystiq is back from its unofficial, unannounced hiatus. This week, it’s about good games to play on international flights. Not to spoil it or anything, but the answer is “None. I don’t want to play any games. Why am I not there already? More wine, s’il vous plaît.”

I passed my flight to France watching Dexter with Bonnie, replaying Metroid: Zero Mission, replaying Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and playing the same three or four Neutral Milk Hotel songs on Jam Sessions over and over again. I was going to do some design work, but… yeah right.

Next week is a very special Off the Grid. It’s special because it’s about video games.

Maybe that’s an obvious statement, or maybe not. I get the impression from the Joystiq readership that they feel being a professional blogger is easy as pie.

Truth is, even I’m a little surprised as to how hard it is to do the full-time blogging thing. For anyone out of the loop, I started as a full-time blogger for Joystiq a few weeks ago, and it’s been, well, hard! I’ll get into the swing of it soon, I’m sure. But it’s no cakewalk, I’ll tell you that.

On top of all my new coverage, I’m still doing the Off the Grid thing. This past week was Diceland, a very clever strategy game from James Ernest which uses paper dice. I like it, but even after reviewing it I know I need to go back and play more of it to build a solid, game-design-y opinion. We’ll have to revisit it later.

Scottypedia is going well so far. I’m not ready to hand out the link (although you can probably guess the URL); I’m still trying to get a certain number of starter articles set up before going public. In the longer term, I’d love to get random article excerpts appearing in the sidebar here. As if I’m starved for things to do.