As many of you know, I was picked as a finalist in Kobold Quarterly’s King of Monsters 2 competition for my entry, the Horakh. The final phase of the competition relies on public voting. I’ve already gotten alot of support from my friends, family, fellow bloggers and my tweeps, but I still need more votes to cinch the title.

In preparation for the DM Challenge at PAX Prime, I thought it would be a cool idea to incorporate the monster I designed for Kobold Quarterly’s King of Monsters 2 contest called the horakh. I looked through my garbage bags full of minis – YES! I have a sickness – but I couldn’t find quite the right fit. I needed something memorable. This is the DM Challenge after all! The current champion is none other …

It’s official. My monster, the horakh, was picked as a finalist in the King of Monsters 2 contest. In case you haven’t heard of the contest before, here’s the low down. Kobold Quarterly periodically runs a monster building competition open to all. Designers can submit their monster’s statblock in Pathfinder/3rd Edition or 4th Edition D&D formats complete with flavor text…

On the last day of Gencon, I was finally able to snap some pictures of the new Lords of Madness set. The display was well hidden. It was the bottom shelf of the glass counters in the Wizards booth… right on the floor. The exhibit hall was wall to wall geeks. The only way to see it would be to be right in front of counter and look at your feet. Luckily, I caught a tweet from @bensrpgpile that helped me find it and even then I circled the booth twice.

I attended Luke Crane’s “Self Publishing Crash Course” today. It’s was chock full of great information for anyone who has ever wanted to publish their own game. Luke Crane, author of Burning Wheel and the Mouseguard RPG as well as other successful titles, graciously shared the knowledge and experience he has gained over the years.

If you are heading to GenconIndy, Vectorform and the Microsoft Surface team have a big surprise for you. Settlers of Catan on Microsoft Surface is heading to GenconIndy this week. A new video of game play was posted today and it looks amazing. Surface is shaping into the holy grail of tabletop gaming

Writer, game designer and creator of the Eberron campaign setting, Keith Baker, is running a cool contest on his blog. The winner will win a spot at his game table at GenCon 2010 where he will be running a 4E Eberron game. The game has been scheduled for Sunday, August 8th at 11:00 AM.

Want to find out about the newest updates for 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, but don’t have the time to read the entire document. We’ve got the skinny on what the latest 4E updates mean to your game. We have created an summary of the latest changes and an index. The biggest shocker? Magic Missile is now auto-hit!

D&D Encounters have finally arrived in downtown Seattle. I’ll be running a weekly D&D Encounters: Dark Sun Season 2 game at Gamma Ray Games on Wednesday nights at 6:30PM. I’m looking forward to meeting some new gamers.

Follow this link to add the event to your Google calendar.

The target audience for this book is primarily aspiring game designers, but most of the material is of interest to gamemasters in general. I’m more of a game design tinkerer than an aspiring game designer, but I found plenty to love in this volume. If you are the type of gamemaster who enjoys the “Design & Development” series of articles in Dragon magazine, you will love this book.