Fall and winter weather always held some kind of far-off mystique for me, when I was growing up in Florida. November signaled the tail of hurricane season - sometimes the end of the tail and sometimes the rump - and winter usually just meant 50-degree damp weather. I would read Calvin and Hobbes and marvel at the idea of a place where the leaves turn beautiful colors, and where snow would fall in great amounts that were sometimes charming but often cumbersome.

Now I'm 38 and I live in Austin, and I'm still searching for the charm of those seasons. I love the trappings of it - the hot drinks, the cozy clothes, the melancholy playlists - but the seasons themselves don't especially turn out in the great big displays that I had dreamt of. Will we get snow in Austin again, this year? Do I dare hope so, for my own private mystique, knowing what Texas's winter infrastructure is like?

Really, I just need to travel more. I need to see the places I've dreamt of and longed to experience. Every year, I say this. The world might be turning into a place where it's possible, again. And if I'm lucky, I won't have to spend another year switching jobs more than once.

For now, I'll relish having a warm house with some cozy animals nestled inside of it.

• FATHOM work continues slowly. The lag is owed to some real-life interruptions for both my coworker and me, but December should see us past those distractions and back to the work of making it easier for people to pick-up-and-play the game with greater ease than they can at present. We're also making some substantial changes to how drifters suffer the consequences of their actions. I'll be starting a campaign of FATHOM with those changes in mind after the turn of the year, so I've got extra incentive to make sure they're all done and published by year's end.

• Despite both of us being too busy to give FATHOM the time it needs, the estimable Matthew Guzdial, have embarked on a short sprint of game design borne out of that usual necessity - we couldn't find a game that did the specific thing that we wanted, but we both had more or less the same idea for what that game COULD be, so we started making it ourselves. Playtesting to follow soon. More later if it's good, which I think it might be.

• At the start of the month, on the day of the lunar eclipse, I released Two Guys on the Moon, a bad joke turned into a real game. Sometimes - very often, maybe? - I'll get a bit stuck in my head and it will not leave until I've made good on the bit. Thankfully, this is a bit that everyone seemed to think was as funny as I did, which is a relieving feeling no matter how good a comedian you are. I'm happy to say that it's also a fun little game, too - like all good jokes, it doesn't wear out its welcome.

• I've had some additional fan material for HEART in the works for a bit, with the aim of answering the often-asked question, "are there any premade HEART adventures I can use for my home game?" Playtesting it has been less regular than I'd have hoped, it's been great fun so far and I'm hopeful that it will see the light of day sooner rather than later. Hoping for next spring, depending on how quickly I spin up the art pipeline, but don't hold me to that.

• While I'm not planning on dropping FATHOM any time soon, I have been tinkering with a fantasy heartbreaker idea that I think might turn into my big project for 2023. Some end-of-the-world, epic-level-adventuring stuff. I'm at the stage where I'm saving art into a folder on my computer and periodically staring at it while listening to moody post-rock. This is indisputably the best stage of tabletop design.

• 📺 - Like most of my contemporaries, I've been swept away by how good ANDOR is. That a Star Wars TV prequel to Rogue One would be some of the best television I've seen in a long time is not a prediction I'd have ever made, even with my love for the franchise. The script, the writing, the costuming, the camerawork, the locations (shot on locations! in physical sets! instead of greenscreens!) - it beggars belief what a treat this show is, and what a joy it has been to look forward to the first season week after week.

• 📽️ - GLASS ONION is out this week and I've just bought a ticket. I've still to watch THE MENU, which I don't know will be a GOOD movie, but it has Ralph Fiennes in it, so I'm contractually obligated to give it a try. I'm most looking forward to Korean spy-thriller HUNT at the end of the month.

• 🎮 - I would love to be able to say I've been tromping around the frozen north in GOD OF WAR: RAGNAROK by now, except my release-day disc crashed and wouldn't reinstall, so I haven't seen much of Kratos and Atreus's adventures yet. Considering I'm on day three of my vacation and haven't played many video games yet, I should probably get a move on. PENTIMENT threatens to occupy most of my time, though. A game set in a Bavarian medieval manuscript? Where you solve mysteries? It's made for me!

• 🎲 - CRESCENT MOON, an asymmetrical board game set in medieval Arabia, is a beautiful game, but not one my group got on with very successfully. We're probably in for some some more Cthulhu-inspired card adventures before the winter break.

• 📚 - Very slowly making my way through Cameron Kunzelman's THE WORLD IS BORN FROM ZERO about video games and speculation.
  

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  Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and family, and happy Thursday to everyone else. Hold fast to one another.