Our good friend Pat Rothfuss, also known as The Name Of The Wind Guy, or perhaps even the swashbuckling sub-employee sellsword Viari of Acquisitions Incorporated, is spinning up an Overwatch competition for his Worldbuilders charity. Their mission is to channel as much money as possible into Heifer International and Mercy Corps, and we're gonna help 'em do it.

People sometimes ask if Kara and Brenna hang out. And then Gabriel and I laugh and laugh, but nobody knows why. I can tell you in confidence that the reason we laugh is because almost everything about them is different. And it's like, well, have you seen a circle? Yeah. How about a square? The box-looking thing, yeah. Okay. Well, it's that level of different. They get along very well, all things considered, and better than ever recently. We're keeping our eye on this phenomena. But there isn't a lot of overlap.

I really am hooked on Shadow of Mordor again. The graphic bump you get with the PS4 Pro makes it look fantastic. I think the plan is to play it on Twitch this afternoon. You might try tuning in around 2:00pm PST if you want to see us disembowel some orcs.

Fathering in 2016 has a unique texture. When I was in Australia, I chose not to play a game on Steam because it would have kicked my son off Minecraft: Story Mode. As I subjected myself to this nominal, almost nonexistent snarl of momentary inconvenience, I could feel myself taking on that ancient mantle. Gabriel is undergoing his own grisly trials, this time in Pokemon Sun and/or Moon, and the price he paid is dear.

I did a test drawing stream last week on Twitch that ended up working really well. I am still very new to this Twitch biz but people seemed to like it so I'm doing it again tomorrow. I should be starting around 10:00 PST tomorrow morning and I will be drawing the strip for Wednesday. You will be able to watch it live over on our Twitch page but it will also be archived like the last one I did. I had a lot of people asking questions about my setup so let me break it down for you:

Hey! We've got another PAX coming up, specifically PAX South, which you should buy your tickets to. You want to do it now, or before December 18th at the very least, because of you do that we'll send the pass right to your house. It's the optimal play.

We've both played it off and on, but now that I'm home from Aus and Desert Bus I want to make it Dishonored 2 an authentic dealio. I think I have the basics down.

Or don't. You don't have to. Maybe you shouldn't.

Desert Bus is an Internet Institution; it's nice to know that even on this unruly young Web, a global, perpetual collision of thoughts, there exists such a thing as tradition. Ten years in, and they've only condensed their hearty broth: on many occasions, and for many years, a sickly world has been made plump.

I was going to say that we are the only two people playing Titanfall 2, but I know for a fact that isn't true: we also play with Kara. When you play, AI Grunts scramble around asking if there are any Pilots In The Area, and we always answer Yes, technically, we are Pilots. We are garbed in a manner befitting a Pilot. But in terms of our performance, you know, maybe not Pilot level. I'm like one of these goofball Grunts in every way, basically, except you get a lot more points for killing me. I am a source of points in the way liver is a source of iron.

The thing that must be contended with in any discussion of Battlefield is this: Battlefield is very Battlefieldy.

We posit an artifact in today's strip, one of great power for the writer.

Here's the strip we did for Wednesday's Make-A-Strip panel, concerning Gabriel's legitimately weird gambling prowess. It seems like you couldn't really have gambling "prowess." It seems like a game with a very specific outcome and what he does in these places shouldn't be happening. If he gets anywhere near a computer, the machine ceases to be a computer at all; but when he gets near a table, pit bosses start to sweat from their necks and they don't know why. I used to think I was good at Blackjack, but after this year's devastating financial excavation, I realize that I'm only good at it when operating in his probability shredding nimbus.

I'm completely obsessed with Westworld. There are a lot of articles about Westworld, but I don't read them; I only talk to my friends about it. I know enough from the headlines out barking for their wares inside that HBO has essentially weaponized the thinkpiece as a modus of self-promotion. But how could you not write about it, is my question. We're constantly hearing about the eternal, whirling dangers of games aping cinema, or not being willing to accept that they exist in the continuum of storytelling and thus have much to learn from it, or being desirous of the cultural cache afforded other media, but here you have something quite odd: a show informed by games, but not in the gaudy, obvious way this tends to happen. A show informed by the fundamental ideas behind games, gamers, and gaming that - if you start getting into it - is a kind of game itself, by virtue of its folded mysteries.

Why am I awake at 2:43 in the morning, when I SHOULD be asleep? Ask fucking Firaxis, they'll tell you. They'll tell you that, in collaboration with Satan the Devil, they made an electronic prison for the mind. But I managed to escape long enough to deliver unto you a vision of incredible merchandise, all of which can be clicked to see larger versions: