I’ve been a gamer for my entire life. I’ve seen games provide entertainment, education, and bring families together. But one of the coolest (and most important) thing that games and gamers can do is to make the world a better place!

Over the last few years, gamers have organized to raise money for a fantastic array of causes: to support relief efforts after the Haiti earthquake of 2010, and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. To provide toys and video games for children in hospitals across the world. Blood drive, fund raisers, awareness campaigns. Every one of them shows that gamers are interested in more than just games—we are eager to use the community and cooperation we build around the gaming table for good causes.

Enter Extra Life.

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year over at “One Geek to Another”, and so I was thrilled when the great folks at Flames Rising asked me to do a guest blog on etiquette for the spooky holiday this month! From my desk to yours, here’s 13 ways to have an awesome (and polite!) Halloween!

1. Be a Good Ghoul-guest! – If you’re invited to a Halloween party, regardless of the age group, bring a little something for the host. Flowers in a Halloween arrangement are always appropriate, as are small gift baskets (especially things the host can save for after the party!) Bringing something to share at the party can also be fun!

Today’s monster is brought to us by author and game designer Jess Hartley (Hunter: the Vigil, Reliquary) and artist Brad McDevitt (Blood!).

Vampires have always been a favorite monster here at Flames Rising.

Reflections

Created by Jess Hartley
With art by Brad McDevitt

No one knew the “real” him.

Everyone says that – that people just can’t see the “real” them – but they had no clue what it was really like. No idea what “different” really meant. The leather soles of his shoes sounded out a slow, steady heartbeat on the sidewalk as he approached the club. It was early, only a few hours after sundown, but a crowd had already gathered. Corralled behind red-velvet ropes, the has-beens and wanna-bes milled restlessly, preening and posing as they waited for an opportunity to make a break into the club itself under the bouncer’s watchful eye. He didn’t bother queuing up, but instead directly approached the mountain of a man who guarded entrance to the club.

Today’s monster is brought to us by author Jess Hartley (Hunter: the Vigil) and artist Jeff Preston (Key20 Games). This tale brings us a new twist on the legend of the succubus.

She just might steal your heart…

Falling for Her

Created by Jess Hartley
With Art by Jeff Preston

“Call it a birth defect,” she’d said, the first night they’d been together. He’d not stopped to ask more, too hungry for what she offered. And in the morning, she was gone.

Every night, he tried to ask her about it, that raw-tipped stub at the base of her spine. It seemed somehow important that he ask. But, although he knew everything else about her, every time he raised that topic she managed to change it, so swiftly and gracefully that it was the next morning before he realized he’d once again been distracted.