Actual play is a movement within role-playing gaming in which players livestream their gameplay for others to watch and enjoy. This new medium has allowed the playing of games to become a digestible, consumable text for individuals to watch, enjoy, learn from, and analyze. Bridging the gap between the analog and the digital, actual play is changing and challenging our expectations of tabletop role-playing and providing a space for new scholarship. This edited collection of essays focuses on Dungeons and Dragons actual play and examines this phenomenon from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. Authors explore how to define actual play, how fans interact with and affect the narrative and gameplay of actual play, the diversity of gamers (or lack thereof) within actual play media, and how audiences can use actual play media for more than mere entertainment.

Starting middle school is hard enough when you don't know anyone; it's even harder when you're shy. A contemporary middle-grade graphic novel for fans of Guts and Real Friends about how dealing with anxiety and OCD can affect everyday life. As long as Maggie rolls the right number, nothing can go wrong...right? Maggie just wants to get through her first year of middle school. But between finding the best after-school clubs, trying to make friends, and avoiding the rumored monster on school grounds, she’s having a tough time...so she might need a little help from her twenty-sided dice. But what happens if Maggie rolls the wrong number? A touching middle-grade graphic novel that explores the complexity of anxiety, OCD, and learning to trust yourself and the world around you. “A charming, compassionate story that’s sure to resonate with anyone who’s ever stayed up worrying.” —Gale Galligan, adaptor and illustrator of the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel series

Once you're dead, you're made for life. --Jimi Hendrix Hendrix. Janis. Morrison. Elvis. Lennon. Cobain. Garcia. Their reckless brilliance held the key to their self-destruction. Their deaths had much in common--and, surprisingly, so did their lives. From lonely childhoods marred by loss to groundbreaking music and turbulent careers that ended tragically and suspiciously, David Comfort explodes the myths as he probes: • The sinister roles of Hendrix's manager and girlfriend in his death and subsequent cover-up • The bizarre odyssey of Jim Morrison's corpse • Why Kurt Cobain was worth more dead than alive to Courtney Love • The twisted motives that caused John Lennon to sail through the Devil's Triangle to Bermuda--nearly going down in a storm--shortly before he was fatally shot • The crippling disease and "miracle" drug that drove Elvis to suicide Charismatic and gifted, but also isolated and conflicted, these are not the rock icons you thought you knew. Here are their larger-than-life stories of turmoil and excess that led to their early deaths and ultimate immortality. It's a wild ride to the other side of fame. "Fame is the soul eater." --Jerry Garcia "Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground." --John Lennon Includes Rare Photos David Comfort is the author of three bestselling nonfiction books. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, including Eclectic Literary Forum, Pacific Review, Coe Review, and Belletrist Review. He has been the recipient of several literary prizes and a finalist for such prestigious awards as the Nelson Algren Award and America's Best. A former rock musician, he has spent over 30 years studying rock music, particularly the revolutionary and fatalistic pioneers of the 1960s. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.

"Finding Ultra" recounts Roll's remarkable journey from an overweight 40-year-old to the starting line of the elite 320-mile Ultraman competition in a beautifully written portrait of what willpower can accomplish.

How did we evolve? Did we have help? In a world torn apart by cataclysmic climate changes, survivors learn answers to these immortal questions as they join together based on their love of various dog breeds. Two voices, the weimaraner Haint and his mistress Amanda, tell the story of how each in their own way come to the realization of what they mean to each other. Along the way, Haint explains how his species came to help humans along in their evolutionary development. Haint also reveals that the world is becoming inhabitable for humans and dogs so he and his kind must make the decision whether to save themselves and what they have learned over the thousands of years on Earth or stay and take their chances with the doomed humans. Amanda, accompanied by her friends Kern and Liddy and their canine familiars Haint and Cloudy, travel across a landscape with violent weather and competing tribes as they look for a way to save their "breed" from drought. During the trip they take on an enigmatic young girl who is much more than she appears. Haint is the story of lives entangled over thousands of years and hundreds of lifetimes as dogs and humans discover the depths of their love for each other.

Includes articles on international business opportunities.