Cosmic Encounter came out in the 70s. It’s gone through several publishers, always staying in print. It’s an amazing, fast-to-play game (20-40 minutes), and game designers (like me, Richard Garfield, etc.) are generally quite familiar with it. It’s the ultimate asymmetric game, ground down to basics.

Every DM’s favorite treasure coinage in OD&D was electrum, because the rules stated that it was worth either half as much as gold or twice as much as gold. So depending on where the adventure had gone, you could change the value of the coin on the fly.

Fish of Thunder. i’m serious.

Remember - the werewolf is just as scared of you as you are of him.

Most superhero games - in fact most roleplaying games - have trouble simulating interactions on the far ends of their power spectrums. DC Heroes managed to solve the problem. You could literally have Superman arm-wrestle Jimmy Olsen, using the same mechanics as other interactions. (Jimmy loses.) I was impressed.

Another reason to love orb weaving spiders besides their glorious webs is how they spin them. Every night, the spider lets the web sit out under your porch light. Tiny little bugs - too small for the spider to detect - fly in and get stuck. Mosquitoes, gnats, etc. In the early morning, the spider goes around the entire web and eats all the sticky parts, along with the mosquitoes. Then it re-spins the web. Thus, every orb weaver eats 100+ mosquitoes every single morning. They're fabulous.

Golden Garden spiders are the best. They never ever bite, and their webs are gorgeous. I admit they look pretty scary to an arachnophobe. Also on the off-chance you DO manage to stimulate one to bite you, their venom is completely innocuous. It's designed to kill sketchy flying bugs, not vertebrates, and has almost zero affect on us. Compare to a wolf spider which does sometimes eat small vertebrates - their bites can hurt.

This video is all about how id Software really wanted to follow up on Doom with a flight sim. Yes really.

My gaming philosophy. In the last years of his life, Roger Ebert famously claimed that games were not art (he was referring to computer games, but it applies elsewhere). He gave three reasons to back up his opinion. 1) he had never played a game 2) you can win a game 3) Art must consist of a single visionary. (This objection seems odd for a film reviewer, since films are famously collective projects.) Penny Arcade skewered Ebert with a single comment; "if a hundred artists create art for two years, how is the end product NOT ART?" 1/

I loved everything about Monster Squad except that my favorite monster - the gillman, got killed way too easy.