🕯️Happy Holidays🎄 {name}!

In this update:

• 🥁 Always room for a bard in the party!
• Holiday Bundle savings, up to 75% off!
• Last Minute Gifts
• A Bestiary of Filipino Monsters
• Are you near Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Every year, starting on Thanksgiving after I play a Thanksgiving playlist, I listen to Christmas music almost exclusively until January 6. One of my favorite Christmas songs is, “The Little Drummer Boy.” And the line that always gets me is, “I have no gift to bring that’s fit to give a king. Shall I play for you?”

Religion, tradition, and the Harry Simeone Chorale aside, do you ever feel like you don’t have enough to contribute? I don’t get starstruck by celebrities, but I regularly get to work with and talk to amazing people, people whose accomplishments leave me feeling like, “Who am I to take up your time?”

And yet those same people, because they’re amazing people with compassionate hearts, choose to give me that time. They don’t have to accept interview invitations for Gaining Advantage. (Over half of those I invite don’t respond.) They don’t have to accept my offer to collaborate on a project, yet we get more applications than available openings. They don’t have to chat with me in social media spaces. They don’t have to read and use the projects we create. And they don’t have to kiss me goodnight. (Yeah, my family too.)

And yet those amazing people, which include you, don’t make me feel like they’re doing me a favor, like I owe them something for their time. No matter how unworthy I consider myself, they make me feel valued. And as I think of the people who want my time, I only wish I had more time for each of them and each of you, that we had more time with each other.

But the reality is that people don’t take our time. We share it. When I’m using someone else’s time, they’re using mine. It’s ours that we’re using together. The collaborative nature of TTRPGs emphasizes that. And when we use it together with mutual respect, we both benefit.

I don’t have to ask my kids, “Shall I play for you?” They bring their dice and say, “Daddy, will you play with us?”

No matter what you have, you are a gift to the people in your life. During this season of gifts, know that you are more valuable than anything that a porch pirate could steal.

And if you missed it last week, Monte Cook Games is giving you $10 to donate to a great charity, a loved one, or yourself!

I mentioned last week that my home group is down to two players, so we'd like to add a few, and I mean it when I say I'd like to sit at a table and throw dice with every one of you.

If you live in or near the Twin Cities, Minnesota, we meet the first and third Monday evenings of each month, 7:30-9:30, at the Battleground Café in White Bear Lake.

If you're interested in joining us, reply to this email!

Thanks for your support!

Dale