I feel like a dumbass occasionally in the real-life game I play in. Our GM has this really intricate plot with about half a dozen different groups who (might be) working against us (and / or each other) with all these agendas and goals that we don’t completely understand. We keep finding people who we think are allies then they turn out to be enemies (maybe) and people we think are enemies turn out to be allies (maybe). There are prophecies and counter prophecies, things exploding for no discernable reason, various people impersonating each others' hidden identities etc.
My only consolation is that when I’m confused, the rest of the group seems to be too. We have this fallback position that when we have no idea what’s going on or where to go or what to investigate next, we’ll wonder around town for a bit and wait for someone to attack us, defeat them, and then interrogate them as to why they attacked us. You know what, it usually works.
Heheh,
I feel your pain sir!One of my best (college) buddies was like that, he could take a straight-forward plot and twist it into something that would make a pretzel cry! After a while I gave up trying to keep track of who was really a friend and who was really an enemy. (Fortunately, I was playing my iconic crazy-mage! So he didn't need to be able to know what was going on!) :)
The good news, I may not have known what was going on in any of the 13 subplots he had running, but we were NEVER bored! :)
(ANd the wait for someone to attack you, defeat them and then interrogate them technique? I don't think we would have gotten anywhere without it!) ;P
nomnomnom....
nomnom......reeses puffs.....nomnomnom.....
Huzzah! kid's third birthday tonite.
I never seen a kid dig their birthday so much in my life. I don't know how my genetics created an optimist; maybe she's a throwback to some optimistic ancestor I had.
I'll build some stuff tomorrow; Sat; see if Stiggy ever shows up, and it's on!
Gratulerer med dagen to the littlest one! Man, time flies - I remember suggesting all kinds of terrible names before her birth, and now she's three??!!That’s what I was thinking, unless Heath has a yet younger one; I was sure it was less than three years ago that we were talking about all of that.
Naah; that's the one; little Audrey Alexandria Vatnissa.
She's the last of them.
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By the way, have any of you guys read the Laundry novels by Charles Stross? They're a sort of spy thriller meets bureaucratic satire meets Cthulhoid horror. There's three: The Atrocity Archive, The Jennifer Morgue and The Fuller Memorandum. I have to say that they are pretty cool. Stross (who also invented the slaad and the githyanki/githzerai back in the day) is a little bit too pleased with himself sometimes (I attempted to read one of his non-Laundry novels and really didn't need all of the description of quantum mechanics he piles in to demonstrate to the reader how clever he is, and as the story really didn't grab me I gave up) but these are actually pretty good contemporary fantasy thrillers, and quite funny too.
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Dread wraiths... Huzzah... :( How 'bout some 12-headed half-fiend pyrohydras? Hordes of demonic ethereal marauders? The possibilities are endless, I tells ya.
I just read that "dumb PC" thread. Those of you who haven't - don't go there. It's the usual coterie of jerks and twerps yelling at one another for no good reasons. Depressing.
Too late. There is a serious point in that thread, but it got hijacked. I think most people missed the point and thought it was about whether the OP was asking if it was cool what he did to his player, and failed to see the issue of why he felt the need to do it in the first place.
By the way, have any of you guys read the Laundry novels by Charles Stross? They're a sort of spy thriller meets bureaucratic satire meets Cthulhoid horror. There's three: The Atrocity Archive, The Jennifer Morgue and The Fuller Memorandum. I have to say that they are pretty cool. Stross (who also invented the slaad and the githyanki/githzerai back in the day) is a little bit too pleased with himself sometimes (I attempted to read one of his non-Laundry novels and really didn't need all of the description of quantum mechanics he piles in to demonstrate to the reader how clever he is, and as the story really didn't grab me I gave up) but these are actually pretty good contemporary fantasy thrillers, and quite funny too.
I'll look for them; sounds possibly obscure though;
oh yeah; (duuuh).
I have this odd habit, even in this age of extreme availability of obscure (or not) commodities over the internet, of wanting to find whatever golden ticket is my Grailquest of the day;
I'm still searching for Clark Ashton Smith Averoigne stories in Half Price Books; I did find Stranger Tides after years and years for $2.50 there.......
Oh,.....they're making another Pirates o.t. Caribbean movie, directly based on that book; with Jack Sparrow thrown into the mix somehow.
I guess he's our Tom Cruise//Last Samurai type character for interacting with the (semimythic) Golden Age of Piracy.
He's British and the books themselves are quite British, so they may not be that easy to get in the US. However, he's Nova nominated and all so he's not that obscure.
Yeah, his Accelerando, and Merchant Prince series kick serious ass. I haven't gotten to the Laundry books yet, but also, for a real trippy novel, Glasshouses is a truly bizarre look at a Post-Singularity culture.
Gonna crash....I'm wiped out and useless right now anyway's.
See you guys tomorrow.
Time to read??!?,...
I remember that,...
Vaguely,...
I did read American Gods though.
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Yeah, the scene where the fellah disappears up the woman's vagina in American Gods rather freaked me out (must say something deeply Freudian about me) and I didn't really feel like picking it up again after that. Plus I did feel that Tim Powers had written similar stuff better. Without freaking me out.
Yeah, the scene where the fellah disappears up the woman's vagina in American Gods rather freaked me out (must say something deeply Freudian about me) and I didn't really feel like picking it up again after that. Plus I did feel that Tim Powers had written similar stuff better. Without freaking me out.
I don't even remember that part. Been a while.....
Mainly I remember the kfc chicken part centipede, and the borderline schizo prison guy who related the story.And Svantevit.....as Vatters mentioned; I think Powers, all in all, is a much stronger writer/storycrafter, but Gaiman comes up with some really tight vignettes wrt characterizations of people. He's a God of Many Little Things, and that's his forte. The Ananzi Boys, for instance, just finished out of the blue; like he was in a hurry to meet a deadline. There was still pink in the middle of that burger I felt.
Also, in Bradley's Mists of Avalon,...
minor spoilers
if I'm f+#~ing up minor details, I read this book 20 years ago.....
Arthew's birth name was "Gwydion," as was Mordred's.
There was "the" merlin, and "the" arthew; they were offices apparently, not names.
"Mordred" was Gwydion, but his tag was given by Saxons; it meant "wicked counsel."
And Launcelot "Lancelet" (tiny lance) was Galahad, as was his son; HIS Saxon name was Alfgar or "elf-arrow" which Lancelet was a translation of. He was a quick little badass dude; the du Lac part was due to him being Vivian (the Lady of the Lake's) son.
What's in a name?...
Ah, that’s where I know the name Charles Stross from; I read Accelerando at the beginning of the year, thought it was quite good. Not familiar with the Laundry series but might need to check it out (if I ever manage to find time to read a novel – haven’t much lately).
The Laundry novels are awesome. I'll also +1 Merchant Princes and Accelerando on Patrick.
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Yeah, the scene where the fellah disappears up the woman's vagina in American Gods rather freaked me out.Funny things happen when you have sex with deities and other supernatural beings. He should have used protection.
You can imagine the scene.
"Just a moment, I'll put on a condom. I just step in there, pull it up to my neck, and I'm ready to get jiggy!"
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He's gonna be a dungeonmaster.
Yeah, I get that feeling from my son too. As I was getting him ready for day-care this morning he was telling me this story – “Indiana Jones is in it – the real Indiana Jones with the whip and the jeep – and there’s two kids with dinosaur heads, no one has a tyrannosaurus head and one has a sabretooth tiger head. They’re on an island, they have a map of the island, and then they have to fight all these bad dwarfs, and then the boy with the tyrannosaurus head bites off the hand of the king of the bad dwarves. And then ...”
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Yeah, the scene where the fellah disappears up the woman's vagina in American Gods rather freaked me out.Funny things happen when you have sex with deities and other supernatural beings. He should have used protection.You can imagine the scene.
"Just a moment, I'll put on a condom. I just step in there, pull it up to my neck, and I'm ready to get jiggy!"
I was thinking more like Protection From Evil.
Yeah, I get that feeling from my son too. As I was getting him ready for day-care this morning he was telling me this story – “Indiana Jones is in it – the real Indiana Jones with the whip and the jeep – and there’s two kids with dinosaur heads, no one has a tyrannosaurus head and one has a sabretooth tiger head. They’re on an island, they have a map of the island, and then they have to fight all these bad dwarfs, and then the boy with the tyrannosaurus head bites off the hand of the king of the bad dwarves. And then ...”
He's gonna be a dungeonmaster.
Awesome.
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We had some rain check movie tickets, so the wife and I went and saw that owl movie, Legend Of The Guardians. I was a little skeptical going in, but it was actually quite good. It had satisfyingly creepy baddies, lots of action without any serious violence and awesome animation - I think it would be great for kids 5 years and up. And, hey, who doesn't like owls?
I watched Predators this weekend; it was okay.
That's cool, My son makes up stories too.
(Usually) either Star wars , LEGO star wars, CLone wars, or some combination with LEGO indina Jones and LEGO Batman thrown in for good measure!
I'm actually jealous, my imagination hasn't been that active for years!
;P
Just rented & watched Iron Man 2 & How to train your Dragon.
I enjoyed both of them. HtTyD was actually pretty funny.
Can't find it, but maybe it'll pop up later. What kinda dog is it?
That's the sixty four thousand dollar question; it's a fluffy, docile, featherlight creature really. It was somewhat mortified of my two crazed daughters (I kept thinking of the brat in Finding Nemo); liked me though.
Kids are totally unfettered by convention. Their imagination is totally free.
Kids are totally unfettered by convention. Their imagination is totally free.
Heh. Yep. Not like us old farts, all stuck in a rut and stuff. ;P
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I think the thread where I looked up your buddy MG was the one where he said that Glitterdust was teh phail because all it did was to blind people, and since fights never last more than two rounds anyway, blinding the opposition was a waste of time...
I know I keep saying this, but the game those guys play has no commonalities with the D&D/PF I play.
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I think the thread where I looked up your buddy MG was the one where he said that Glitterdust was teh phail because all it did was to blind people, and since fights never last more than two rounds anyway, blinding the opposition was a waste of time...
He must have changed his tune; in the thread I was in last night he was claiming Glitterdust is the greatest 2nd level spell ever, he would use it above haste any day of the week.
I do think Glitterdust is good, very good – but I don’t think it is the ‘fight-ender’ he seems to think it is. Making your opponents blind is a huge advantage, and as someone else pointed out in that thread, very few things are immune to being blind. What they all seem not to consider is that pesky saving throw, and the fact that normally your enemies don’t conveniently bunch up within a 10 ft radius.
Out of interest, which thread were you reading?