The Daily Blink

April Fool’s Stuff

You don’t know how close I came to redoing the entire website like we’d switched over to Rift. I have to admit: I am not an April Fool’s Day fan. There will be 25 obvious jokes that are cute, and one cruel one that I fall for Every. Single. Year. This year was no different. And when it comes to being the one *making* the joke, I just don’t have it in me to keep a straight face and attempt to sell a gag that everyone can either see coming from a mile away, or be upset because we had to get extremely devious in order to sneak it past you.

And so, we came to Friday’s strip. Simple, elegant, and as is always my style, extremely meta. Definitely one for the more regular readers. I’m trying to imagine people coming to the site for the first time being really confused.

Speaking of patch notes, though, did you see Blizzard’s 4.1.11 notes? A couple people in the comments on our AFD strip pointed out one of their notes was simply, “All dungeon & raid bosses now have legs. If they already had legs, they got more legs.” Thanks to Tehcrash and Abronkhar for the heads up, as I completely missed it the first time through. As I mentioned on Facebook and Twitter, we immediately contacted our immense legal team to make important decisions about what actions we would take to protect our schtick.

Big Announcement on Legendary

Also — great news on the “Hey, who the hell is *that* guy” front — I’ll be a guest on Legendary, the World of Warcraft show produced by Gamebreaker.TV, this Tuesday night at 9PM PST! It’ll be on video and everything! Please come out and show some Daily Blink love. I also promise that I’ll be announcing some big news on the homefront and the future of the strip. Nothing earth shattering, but something we’re geeking out about just the same. If you wanna find out, tune into Legendary on Tuesday! (If I can haul enough people along, maybe they’ll invite me back and I’ll be able to haul Mike along too.)

Blizzcon Plans

Finally, a vague little note for those interested: The current plan is for Mike and I to be attending Blizzcon, though in what capacity, we have no friggin’ clue. Keep an eye peeled as we get closer, we’ll have to start organizing sooner or later or risk missing the boat. If anything, we’ll send out an address for a nearby bar and have everyone get together for an impromptu meet n’ greet.

That is all for now. If you’re reading this, you rock, even just because you made it to the bottom of this blog post.

-Chris

We’re getting this question a lot more lately. First, that’s awesome. Second, YOU’RE awesome for asking us first. We’ve updated our information at the bottom of the page to make things a bit more clear cut, but since we dig the way that Randall Munroe goes about it with XKCD, we’re going to follow his lead:

You are free to copy and reuse any of any of the strips in a non-commercial manner as long as you tell people where they’re from. That includes using them to make a guild banner, avatar, etc., just be sure to give us credit when you can so people can learn about the rest of our stuff. You don’t need our permission to post the strips on your personal website; just include a link back to this page. We’re also okay for the most part with the occasional posting on a professional blog, publication, or other outlet. If you’d like to do more, please contact us first. Obviously, if you know of someone not following these wishes, please let us know.

I rarely use this space to pimp things, and I need to change that. Please take the opportunity to read one of my favorite webcomics, Darths and Droids — a comic that answers the question, “What if the Star Wars prequels were one long D20 campaign?”

Expertly written, incredibly clever, and has kept my rapt attention since the very first strip. Do yourself a favor; start at the beginning and don’t make any plans for the rest of the day.

It started when I put this up in my cubicle at work.

I didn’t think it would get any active reaction at all. It’s a board game I’ve owned since I was 10 years old. I played it a handful of times with a few friends or a random session with my father and sister. But since then I’d just held onto it for reasons that I still don’t really know other than that it was a great memory and it was still entirely intact. It stayed in various closets or boxes in every place I’ve lived, not getting much attention but still staying in good shape. And finally, I had a use for it. It was going to earn me nerd cred at work.

One of the Quest Designers on my team, Justin, was the first to see it. He was kind of in shock. We had one of those “So *you’re* the other person on Earth that remembers (blank)” conversations that people in their 30′s have about various things; Things like “My Secret Identity” with Jerry O’Connell, Goosebumps books, or the Masters of the Universe film. We shared stories about playing through HeroQuest, trying to write our own missions, and how much sets go for on eBay now (about 200 unopened).

And that’s when Justin asked a loaded question. “That set doesn’t have all the pieces, does it?”

I opened up the rulebook and rattled off the contents list. Cards, figures, prop pieces, doors, combat dice… it was all there. Almost. The character sheet pad was long gone and the actual movement dice had long been used as replacements for dice in other games. But those were easily replaceable. We had a full HeroQuest set.

“Dude, we should play.”

And that was how it came to be that I started running a full HeroQuest campaign for my co-workers. And not even just a random one-shot, or a brand new set of missions. I’m running it all the way through. All 14 quests, exactly as they were written, cheesy text and all. Next week, I’ll start writing about the sessions and recapping some of the highlights. I didn’t take notes throughout the first quest because we were too busy relearning the game and I was too preoccupied laughing my head off from all the fun we were having.

Me trying to imitate the wizard on my GM Screen. Yes, this is a posed photo, don't judge.

If you’ve played HeroQuest or have a game that you would love to revisit from your childhood, drop it in the comments, share your stories.