After a grueling 8 hour journey, fraught with subzero temperatures, slippery roads, and grumpy hedgehogs, I am finally home for the holidays! A salmon is on the BBQ for Norwegian Little Christmas with Layne’s family, and then I’m off to my own family to hang out, catch up, and play a little bit of Guitar Hero. (We are a family who are compelled to Rock Out.) The tree is decorated. The presents are wrapped. The house smells like gingerbread and pine, and the trees outside are coated in frost. It is definitely Christmas!

I hope you all have a wonderful time this Christmas! Enjoy your holidays, and remember - that lull after presents are opened and before Christmas dinner needs to be prepared is just about perfect for a quick game or two…  Have fun!

I wish I could take credit for the hilarious cameos in panel two of todays strip, but the credit for that all goes to Layne. We were brainstorming joke ideas, and he came up with some banter between the guys from Halfpixel that absolutely laid me out on the ground with laughter. When I recovered enough to speak, I said, ‘I must figure out a way to add this into my comic.’ And I did.

This joke is much funnier if you’ve ever listened to the Webcomics Weekly podcast. I highly recommend it, even if you’re not interested in drawing webcomics yourself. It’s a great look at what goes into making a webcomic, and full of hilarious banter to boot! I like to listen to it while I’m inking.

Also. De-HYDRA-ted? Ow. That one’s all Layne, too.

P.S. - If you’re looking to see the complete list of cameos from Strip #300, check out the Webcomic Cameo & Crossover Archive!

There’s some pretty bizarre games* out there, and I mean that in a good way. I am a connoisseur of the strange and wacky, and I love to see the variety of game settings, systems and rules out there.

However, that being said, I am also a practical gamer, and while having neat props** and innovative mechanics are all well and good, there is a limit. If I need to be able to perform higher-level mathematics to create my character, or will require a metric pound of small, star shaped counters, I’m less inclined to give the game a try. I like games, but… maybe not that much.

Of course, this led to a conversation about where exactly I would draw the line with game props. A little punchy at the time, I answered, “Squid”.

And now you know. My limit is squid. If you ever invent a game that requires the use of live squid, I’m out. Sorry.

* Don’t believe me? Check out PRAWN, the pool-based LARP. No. I’m serious. This sounds awesome!
** See Dread - a horror game that builds suspense by having the randomizer be pulls from a Jenga tower.

A few of us were hanging around at coffee after a game one time, and the subject of geeks and weaponry came up. Geeks seem to be great aficionados of all manner of sharp things - from replica swords, to fancy daggers, to the bat’leth and katana my two friends posed with in their wedding photos - there’s few geek households without at least a few stabby implements lying around.

Then, as we were comparing our household stores of medieval weaponry, someone posed the all important question - If zombies attacked while you were sleeping, what would you have lying around next to your bed with which to defend yourself?

I, at the time, had a few blunt practice swords. One guy had a katana within reach of his bed. But the guy who won? He had no less than six daggers, a two-handed sword, and a bat’leth hanging nearby. The image of a guy fighting off zombies with a bat’leth has since forever been burned into my mind, and I now share this mental image with you. Enjoy.

Hey everybody!! Raise up your Slurpees and join me in celebrating Weregeek’s second year! We’ve had more Shadowrun, more gaming, drama, and a whole bunch of zombies. I’ve got plenty of stuff planned for year three, and I hope to make it even better than this past year, so stick around!

To all of the new readers out there - I’m so glad that you’ve found your way here, and I hope that you keep enjoying the new strips. And, to all of those who have been reading it for years now - I’ve gotta thank you for all of your support. Your kind emails and amusing conversations in the forums make all of the blood, sweat & elbow grease that go into every strip totally worth it. A toast, to all of you Weregeeks - new and old! Arrooooooooo!!

Oh, and just a note… Today’s anniversary strip has a few webcomic cameos snuck into it. See how many you can name.