The Secret Lair

My wife and son have food allergies. Both are allergic to tree nuts and peanuts, and my wife has an intolerance to all things containing even trace amounts of wheat or wheat by-products. As a result, doing the shopping every week is a challege. We need to plan for her menu, the kids’ menu, and my menu, as I am working hard to lose weight.

I work very hard to NOT have three menus. I try to make things that will feed everyone. The Venn diagram of the ingredients that I can use to make dinner limits us. It’s a battle, but the rigid borders proscribe a small circle which causes us to eat very differently from those around us. Fast food is out. Lots of white flour and carbs are out. Processed and frozen foods are out.  Most things need to be made fresh, from scratch.

I love to cook, and I love a cooking challenge. The result is that I’ve expanded my ability to to cook well from scratch. I’ve learned how various components interact, and how to substitute gluten-free items for more conventional fare. The challenge of the working within the boundaries has caused me to level up.

In this age of constant data and wondrous new technologies, I think it is tempting to put of starting projects until one has all the tools one thinks one needs. The idea of simply making due with what one has can fall by the wayside in the name of “getting it right.”  I believe this is just an excuse, and as a result, causes one not to act on one’s desires to do neat things. I’m reminded of the story that a technical author once told about working on a book for O’Reilly. He was so obsessed with getting the typography right that he never actually finished the book. Rather than doing the most basic thing, writing the book in text files, he obsessed on the layout and font composing that fancier word processors allowed him. As a result, the project suffered.

Boundaries causes us to stretch out creativity. With boundaries, you get Star Wars: A New Hope. Without boundaries, you get The Phantom Menace. Lucas had limited resources on the former, and limitless on the latter. Look at the difference.

When starting your next project, work within your boundaries. Keep it simple and streamlined. Do the work, don’t worry about the fancy toys. That’s the only way to push yourself and realize that latent creative genius lurking within.

Unlike Overlord Johnson (and many of my friends and compatriots, to be frank), I have never touched a Massively Multiplayer Online game. This is for two reasons: first, that they all fall short of being truly great gaming, and roleplaying, experiences; second, that my obsessive-compulsive gamer impulses would kick in, and I would find myself unemployed for being unable to tear myself away from an endless social-combat-XP-level grind.

As such, having rich and enjoyable gaming experiences with definite endpoints are key to my enjoying myself while continuing to have marital and financial happiness. Bioware has been my primary source for this of late, through both the excellent Dragon Age and Mass Effect series. Since these are not trivial games to delve into if one intends to complete them and simultaneously succeed at real life obligations – I put over 140 hours into completing Dragon Age: Origins, exclusively playing it in my free time, and it took me 7 months to do so – it’s fairly important to know if the journey is going to be, truly, worth it.

For this reason, I was eager to snag the Dragon Age II demo that was released Tuesday. DA:O was, simply put, the best roleplaying experience I’ve had in the digital medium, and so I happen to be rather excited for the sequel. What put the original over the top for me was the depth of non-player character interactions and the quality of the writing, from dialogue to world building. DA:O is also fairly strong in almost all the mechanics one has come to expect from digital RPG’s, such as combat and loot management. Much ado has been made about Bioware’s announcements on how they are going to change these mechanics for DA:II, and the Rise to Power demo does alot to show off the results.

• Rise to Power consists of approximately an hour’s worth of gameplay, inclusive of the game’s prologue and an unrelated scene further into the story. Many of the fun fiddly features, such as inventory management and character customization, are inaccessible for the demo. The goal seems to be to present the two elements of gameplay that have been revamped the most: combat and the dialogue tree.
• On the surface, little has changed from DA:O about how combat works. It takes place in real time, with the ability to actively control any party member; you can pause the action at any time to use the radial menu to issue commands; and every character in your party can be assigned different tactical decision algorithms for when you aren’t in active control of them. What’s changed is that, simply put, combat feels more fun – the overall pace has been sped up, the attack animations are more dynamic and diverse between classes, and magic spell effects are more vibrantly detailed. The net effect is that combat feels more action-oriented without losing tactical precision, which is most certainly A Good Thing.
• The dialogue trees for interacting verbally with NPC’s have been completely overhauled to match the superior system from Mass Effect. Instead of a silent protagonist, the main character of Hawke has a fully recorded dialogue track for both the male and female gender choices. While DA:O often featured four or five possible lines of dialogue per conversation point, some of which seemed ambiguous in terms of how they would be interpreted, most conversations in DA:II include three responses – positive, snarky, and negative – in addition to other situationally-specific options. Each choice has an accompanying icon, which makes it easy to judge what effect your selection is going to have on a particular character or situation. This leads to a more immersive experience, which is also A Good Thing.
• What the demo doesn’t provide is much insight into the story content, but it does give some tantalizing hints. Most of the game is going to be told as a frame story from perspective of a dwarf named Varric, who has adventured with Hawke. Varric has been captured and is being interrogated about Hawke’s exploits, and the player goes through the game segments as the dwarf tells them. Interestingly, he is not a reliable narrator: one example is that as he starts his tale, the initial tutorial puts you in the role of the default iconic Hawke in a hopeless battle. Varric’s captor then interrupts him because she doesn’t want to hear the legend of Hawke that she already knows, but the true story of what happened. This leads to you customizing your version of Hawke to what she or he really looks like, and Varric restarting his story.

If you are thinking of making the time for DA:II, the demo is worth checking out as a quick taste of what you’re in for. While I’ll be talking more in this space later about storytelling techniques between different games, it’s worth noting that DA:O gave us a complete epic Hero’s Journey with a character who was also The Chosen One. DA:II promises another take on this, only with a character who is Everyman, looking out for her/his family, and happens to be in the right place at the right time to change the world. And I’ll be definitely making time for that.

[This review is based on the PS3 demo for Dragon Age II. John Cmar has no financial or personal interests in Bioware.]

This is why well-known people should be very afraid of their fans. I think I met these two at a con some years ago…

Chuck Wendig asked me to buy his book. So I did.

He asked very nicely on Twitter.  He pointed out that it was a collection of his short stories and that it was available on Kindle for $.99 for a short time. He pointed out he would shoot a kitten if I did not.

Okay…he didn’t say that last bit, but if his writing style is any indication, he was probably doing it anyway for fun. This is a compliment, believe it or not. Chuck Wendig’s style is so brash, so in-your-face, so ball-busting that I have no doubt that he eats buffalo-style kitten wings while he’s drinking himself into a stupor.

Again, to be clear: this is praise.  I first discovered Wendig when Jay Lake linked to his  Penmonkey’s Paean. This is a manfiesto about the craft of writing that contains such gems as:

These words march in the order I choose. They are my little bitches, cobbled together of letters and made to carry heavy notions and lofty ideas and character motivations and bad-ass non-stop mad ninja action. In this way they are like ants, carrying more than they should rightfully be able to carry.

They can even be forced into  sentences that no one has ever written before. “Betty Scarpetti can take pictures with her robotic hoo-hah, and those pictures will steal your dreams and sell them to goblins working the Secret Carnival down in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly.” See? Nobody has ever written that before. Every word journey is a Journey West. I am Lewis, and I am Clark. I am not the Donner Party.

These are good words. They made me smile, and they resonated.  I took them to heart, reblogged the link, and promptly forgot the man existed.  I am a fickle audience.

About two weeks ago, someone retweeted Wendig’s plaintive cry. “Buy my book! It is cheap right now!”  Being cheap myself, I thought, “Isn’t that the clever fellow who made me smile? I liked his style. I shall purchase this book and make it my own.”

I’m glad that I did. Wendig’s writing is a bit like watching Harlan Ellison on a three-day-bender possess Neil Gaiman. There are fantastic things, horrible things, beautiful things that happen that sing with myth but suckerpunch you  when you’re not looking. Not one of the short stories in Irregular Creatures was predictable. Not one of them was stale. They are living, hungry beings, and in the best tradition short story crafting, leave you wanting more at the end.

A brief sample of what you can find in Irregular Creatures:

DOG-MAN AND CAT-BIRD (A FLYING CAT STORY)

Joe’s got job woes and family problems, and it’s made all the more complicated by a cat who dies on his porch one night – or, so Joe believes. The cat is not only dead, but it appears to be some kind of improbable mutant: a cat with wings. The cat initially appears to complicate Joe’s life as he hides it from his family, but he soon learns that more may be at stake than he realized. Little does he know, a battle for good and evil, between Heaven and Hell, is about to be fought in his garage.

A RADIOACTIVE MONKEY

That bartender you really like, well, she just whipped up a potent cocktail called a “Radioactive Monkey.” Would you drink it? (Hint: you shouldn’t.)

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

Imagine one morning you wake up and you discover that the world is now home to products you don’t recognize but everyone else does. Flix candy bars? Jack Kenny whiskey? Burrito Hut? Donnie’s never heard of these brands, but those around him say such products are beloved and have been here for years. Donnie’s quest to discover the truth – and prove he’s not nuts – reveals a marketing and advertising scheme not of this dimension.

THE AUCTION

Benjamin’s father shows his son the secret behind his job: he is a buyer and seller of very forbidden things, magical things, objects of a fantastical purview. He takes his son to “The Auction,” a place where anything can be bought and sold: mythological creatures, insane machines, haunted and horrific artifacts. Benjamin is lead astray by a religious man with pious words but sinister intent. When Benjamin encounters a sickly mermaid on the auction block, can the boy step in and avert disaster?

BEWARE OF OWNER

A short story of how father teaches son: Dad teaches the boy that you don’t need to beware of a dog, but you damn well better beware of owner.

To sum up: Chuck Wendig is an author to watch. We have him under surveillance, and look forward to reading his novel, Double Down, when it arrives in November 2011.

About Chuck Wendig

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, a screenwriter, and a freelance penmonkey. He’s written too much. He should probably stop. Give him a wide berth, as he might be drunk and untrustworthy. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with a wonderful wife and two very stupid dogs. He is represented by Stacia Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

You can find his site at: http://terribleminds.com

Thanks to the fact that I read Mr. John Scalzi’s Blog, I am able to report to you the list of Nebula Award nominees for this year.

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. The awards will be announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet (http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-weekend/) on Saturday evening, May 21, 2011 in the Washington Hilton, in Washington, D.C. Other awards to be presented are the Andre Norton Award for Excellence in Science Fiction or Fantasy for Young Adults, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and the Solstice Award for outstanding contribution to the field.
Short Story

• ‘‘Arvies’’, Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine 8/10)
• ‘‘How Interesting: A Tiny Man’’, Harlan Ellison® (Realms of Fantasy 2/10)
• ‘‘Ponies’’, Kij Johnson (Tor.com 1/17/10)
• ‘‘I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno’’, Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed Magazine 6/10)
• ‘‘The Green Book’’, Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine 11/1/10)
• ‘‘Ghosts of New York’’, Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith)
• ‘‘Conditional Love’’, Felicity Shoulders (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 1/10)

Novelette

• ‘‘Map of Seventeen’’, Christopher Barzak (The Beastly Bride)
• ‘‘The Jaguar House, in Shadow’’, Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 7/10)
• ‘‘The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara’’, Christopher Kastensmidt (Realms of Fantasy 4/10)
• “Plus or Minus’’, James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine12/10)
• ‘‘Pishaach’’, Shweta Narayan (The Beastly Bride)
• ‘‘That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made’’, Eric James Stone (Analog Science Fiction and Fact 9/10)
• ‘‘Stone Wall Truth’’, Caroline M. Yoachim (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 2/10)

Novella

• The Alchemist, Paolo Bacigalupi (Audible; Subterranean)
• ‘‘Iron Shoes’’, J. Kathleen Cheney (Alembical 2)
• The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
• ‘‘The Sultan of the Clouds’’, Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 9/10)
• ‘‘Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance’’, Paul Park (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1-2/10)
• ‘‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window’’, Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean MagazineSummer ’10)

Novel

• The Native Star, M.K. Hobson (Spectra)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit UK; Orbit US)
• Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
• Echo, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
• Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis (Spectra)

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

• Despicable Me, Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud (directors), Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul (screenplay), Sergio Pablos (story) (Illumination Entertainment)
• Doctor Who: ‘‘Vincent and the Doctor’’, Richard Curtis (writer), Jonny Campbell (director)
• How to Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders (directors), William Davies, Dean DeBlois, & Chris Sanders (screenplay) (DreamWorks Animation)
• Inception, Christopher Nolan (director), Christopher Nolan (screenplay) (Warner)
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Edgar Wright (director), Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright (screenplay) (Universal)
• Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich (director), Michael Arndt (screenplay), John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, & Lee Unkrich (story) (Pixar/Disney)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

• Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
• White Cat, Holly Black (McElderry)
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press; Scholastic UK)
• Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Barry Deutsch (Amulet)
• The Boy from Ilysies, Pearl North (Tor Teen)
• I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett (Gollancz; Harper)
• A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
• Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

For more information, visit http://www.sfwa.org/

And thanks to the twin miracles of Cut and Paste, I did not need to retype any of the above. Marvel at my cleverness, and please…congratulate the nominees. Bravo, all!

I confess. I am a wannabe junky for Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs).  I say wannabe, because I have yet to find the right game that scratches my itch for the MMO experience. Perhaps the closest I have ever come to that level of passion and devotion was when playing the original Everquest.  That experience ended with the birth of our first child, when my wife said to me “I don’t think you realize the extent to which this child has changed our life.”  She was right, of course. Being a dad is a lot more important (and fun) than camping for another <generic creature> to kill and acquire another <generic material> to make another piece of <generic armor>.

Since that time, I have sampled many MMOs, but I have not stuck with any of them for more than a month or so. I have also spent a lot of time thinking about why those games fall short of what, in my opinion, prevents them from being great games.  Let us hit a few of the highlights:

Endless Combat
Is this all the Role Playing game has become? Must everything be about the next kill / battle / raid?

Grinding
Constantly repeating actions in order to advance skill just so you can reach the next level is not that much fun. I have seen people wedge their keyboard keys down so they can keep running or swimming just to increase those skills.

Career Options
Really, you can only be an exceptional craftsperson (merchant) if you have the fighting skills to go out and get your own supplies. Want to be a priest, monk, or cartographer, you’d better be a fighter first.

Instances
“Lord Muckgrunk is a real challenge to take down, so we’re going to let everyone kill him once every ten minutes.” or “That other group just entered that dungeon, but don’t worry about running into them. They have entered a parallel dimension where everything is fresh and new for them.”  Instances might as well be minigames in a pub for as much as they contribute to a persistent game world.

Yard Trash
Apparently, all major metropolitan areas within games cannot extend their peaceful existence more than about fifty yards from their front gate.

NPCs, or Lack Thereof
I played a game for a while where frequently I was the only person in the entire city, and the only NPCs in the city  stood stock still in their shops all hours of the day and night. There were no wandering NPCs, no other players, and apparently undead shopkeepers. It was creepy.

Ganking and Consequences, or Lack Thereof
I’ll address the accusations of “Care Bear” gaming a bit later, but giving gamers free reign to kill or take advantage of other players without consequence is just dumb. I’m all about dangerous gameplay, however there should be consequences beyond “this faction now hates you and you have to sneak into this city.”

The list could go on and on.

Why do games fall victim to these common and worn out elements? Personally, I blame the wildly successful consoles. The rise of the console gaming platform has contributed to a decline in role playing. If not a decline, then it is certainly transforming role playing as a genre. Role playing was originally born of the desire to explore and develop a character as though one were living in a story.  Gamers were less concerned with loot and power than developing a memorable character.  Console games have created an endless loop of “cut scene for exposition, follow with mission, follow with training or loot, follow with cut scene, follow with boss battle. Rinse and repeat.”  Since those games make lots and lots of money, it is only natural that all games try to mimic that success by using the same formulae. Unfortunately, it is the traditional roleplayer that gets left out in the cold. It may not be the most lucrative market, but I think there is room for a healthy niche.

This is where the Minister of Crackpot Schemes earns his title. If I had the capital, I know exactly how I would design and implement an MMO appealing to real roleplayers. Take a stroll with me now through Crackpot Scheme Number 763:

Permanent Character Death
This should go a long way to shut up all of the griefer gamers who complain about “Care Bear” games. Time to put your money where your mouth is.  Before you go up against an enemy or another player, better be sure you can win or escape, because there is no such thing as a “corpse run.” Your character is gone and so is your stuff. Sneaking through dangerous areas is much riskier now, not to mention raids. Big, bad monsters are big and bad for a reason. How much of your guild is an “acceptable loss” when going up against a dragon guarding its lair?

Consequences, Consequences
Want to be a thief? Assassin? Fine. Are you prepared to have a price on your head that other players can collect? If you ganked another player, how would you feel if his guildmates put a bounty on you? Let the thieves actually sneak into homes and businesses to steal things, but also create a way for some Crime Scene Investigation to occur that might reveal who they are. Combine consequences with permanent character death, and you have yourself a recipe for excitement that does not require massive monsters and demigods.

Limit the Grand Storylines
Provide an expansive and interesting world for your characters to play in and populate it with lots of NPCs and human actors. Leave out the global cataclysm. The only reason anyone cares is because it usually opens up high level raid areas to keep the 1337 crowd happy.

No Levels. No Classes
The open skill trees have been explored a little with existing games, but I’d take it further. There’d be no such thing as level. Skills and abilities come as you explore, train, and use other skills.

Real Player Housing
Put your house wherever you dang well feel like it, but you’d better be able to defend it. That’s where the mercenaries come in…

Mercenaries
Hire NPCs to run your shop, guard your house, and do menial tasks when you’re offline. You want to have a wizard’s tower in the middle of nowhere? Maybe you should invest in some guards. Are you an awesome blacksmith? Hire some NPC apprentices to create armor while you’re offline. It won’t be as good as yours, but it will provide you with a revenue stream.

Human NPCs
Less eye candy and more story. There are tons of people out there who would love to spend time as a game character in exchange for free play, in-game items, or even a small salary. Recruiting and managing a corps of gamers willing to contribute to the game world is completely possible.

Creating great MMOs should not be as hard as the industry has made it. I have notes upon notes of what else I would do regarding merchant classes, ships, mounts, physics, priests and tons more. That’s what it means to be the Kingfish – the crackpot schemes are a never ending stream, for better or for worse.

And if someone came to me with a pile of money and asked if I knew how to turn this into reality, the answer is yes.

Yes I do.

Watch out, world. I’m going to try my hand at gardening.

Yes, please…doubt me. I do. I have been staring at the timber box filled with soil that the previous owners left all winter, wondering just what the hell I’m going to do with it.  For them, it was a garden,. For me…well…it’s a box of dirt.

Unless. Unless I get some skin in the game. Unless I start to try to grow food.

This seems like something you should prepare for with schooling and hands-on training. After all…this is food…people will need to eat this stuff. It seems irresponsible in the extreme to let anyone who wants to pick up a hoe and start planting seeds¹.

And yet…it taunts me, this box of dirt. It challenges my manhood. It stands as a very concrete reminder that I have always wanted to try to Grow Things, and I have never done so. That’s about to change.

I have purchased a book. It has all sorts of full color pictures and maps and graphs and tables. This ensures my success. Armed with this book, a sturdy set of implements means for tilling the soil, and a handful of seed, I will coax life itself from my backyard this spring. This summer, we will enjoy the fruit of my labors, in the form of ripe, red tomatoes, green beans, peppers, and lettuce. Vegetables will burst forth from the earth at my touch and there will be great joy.

I’m ready. I’m willing. I’m convinced that I’m able.

Now, if only the snow would melt. Back to the books.

1. Get your mind out of the gutter. C’mon, people. [↩]

Every well organized Overlord has a little black book. That’s common knowledge. Indeed, The Secret Lair Overlords have also adopted this time honored practice into their everyday Overlording. It’s a place to keep track of whims and whimsies, a  place to hold revenge lists, and a place for general overlordish brain-dumps¹. Each Friday we will give you a rare glimpse into the pages of the Overlords’ Notebook.

Please note, we take no responsibility for any loss of sanity that may occur from viewing such diabolical greatness.

1. Like brainstorming, only messier. [↩]

And so, it has come to pass that we find ourselves in “awards season”, wherein fond looks are taken back at the prior year in media, and trophies are doled out for various forms of perceived excellence in movies, television, and music. Much attention is showered upon the festivities and celebrities involved, and much ado is paid to the recipients of said awards. That noted, the Grammys last weekend made one thing glaringly clear – beyond his inability to competently carry a tune or strum a guitar, Justin Bieber cannot grow an award-winning beard.

Now, it is time to give awards to those who can.

Every November, whoever shows up to shave and post a select group of Overlords and Minions come together to sacrifice facial smoothness for mammary health. The annual How Not To Grow A Beard Month event has grown from a mere bit of National Novel Writing Month inspired silliness, into a somewhat larger bit of silliness that has raised nearly $8000 over the past two years for breast cancer research. HoNoToGroABeMo 2010 was the largest yet, both in terms of total donations and number of participants. Pete DiLillo and his lush man-thicket ended up dominating the donation race, earning him the title of current, reigning, and defending Champion of HoNoToGroABeMo. Witness his half-shorn shock:

Oh the horror!!, image by Pete DiLillo via HoNoToGroABeMo.org

Bob’s recap sums up the experience, and as a participant, I will add my own effusive thanks to all who donated. Their generosity for our boob-buffoonery was amazing.

All that said, it is time to bestow The Cmar Beard Awards for HoNoToGroABeMo 2010. These have nothing to do with any donations received, and everything to do with the glorious pictography of crackling virility hedges:

• Best Beard Photo: There were many entries during the month that stood out for creativity, humor, or photographic skill, but the trophy for best beardy picture goes to Jim Van Verth for Day 14: Abra-abra-cadabra. The facial contorting, posing, and expression convey that he’s not only gonna getcha, but he’s gonna getcha in a way you may never recover from. This is Mr. Van Verth’s second year in a row winning this category, so step it up, gents.


I want to reach out and grab ya, photo by Jim Van Verth via HoNoToGroABeMo.org

• Man Most Exemplifying How Not To Grow A Beard: One might think that this would be the closest category to judge, but that turns out not to be the case. Even though he allowed his neck beard to stay strong this time around, for the second year in a row, Jeff Greiner takes the prize. C’mon gents, step it down and give him some competition.


One year ago today, image by Jeff Greiner via HoNoToGroABeMo.org

• Best Time Lapse Photo Series: All participants were varied in their choice of poses on a daily basis, but only one of us had enough consistency of follicular posture and backdrop to take this category. Jason Penney, that would be you! (Click through to view the slideshow.)
• Man Most Exemplifying How To Grow A Beard: As noted above, the ability of many of to generate a thick face mane is somewhat surprising. While several of us were in the running, Adam Johnson gets the award by sprouting a 30 day untamed jaw jungle, even after some judicious trimming.


Got the shrubbery all trimmed on the neck, image by Adam Johnson via HoNoToGroABeMo.org

• Best Use Of Non-Facially Generated Props: Our overall champion, Pete, also is the obvious winner in this category, both for framing his beard on a daily basis with an endless supply of amazing headgear (click through for the slideshow), and for this epic hat-gasm on the final day:


Clearly I never win at Tetris, image by Pete DiLillo via HoNoToGroABeMo.org

• Daily Commitment To The Task: November is a busy month, and few find the time and the stamina to start on Day 1 and produce a post for all 30 days. Our founder, Bob, led the pack in this regard as he does each year, and finds himself co-accepting this award with Jeff, Pete, Jim, and Jeffery for 2010.
• Best-Spun Beardy Yarns: Everyone strove to lay down some manner of words each day with their posts, and a few of us we able to tell some good tales. However, as clearly as showed how not to grow a beard, Jeff Greiner blew us all away with his sincere and excellent beardy yarns each day. With topics ranging from gaming to education, they are well worth your time to read.

Congratulations to all of the winners! To all the participants, it was a pleasure joining you once again in this endeavor, and to give recognition where recognition is due. To everyone else, I’ll merely note that only 257 days remain until HoNoToGroABeMo 2011, and this whole mad affair will start up again.