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This weekend: More gardening: My eggplant and pepper plants are flopping over because they're starting to bear fruit. Need to stake them.
Also: My wife and I are going to a local theater production of the musical Once. Really looking forward to that: We haven't seen live theater in nearly two years.
And our church is opening for in-person services this weekend, so I'll be attending for the first time in a year and a half.
As for gaming...
This past week, I played in our "Shattered Star" PF1 game. We defeated that seugathi and then leveled up. We'll start the next session in Dungeon Level 2.
Several people couldn't make this week's Wednesday session, so I didn't run Secrets of Cats this week.
Last night, I ran a one-shot of the "Rooted in Trophy" game Candlelight. We really needed another full session: We didn't get past the first Gate (i.e. encounter area) of the scenario. (A Candlelight scenario has five Gates the PCs must pass through.)
This weekend, I need to do some prep for two games I'll be running next week: Paranormal Minstrels on The Gauntlet, and Trophy Dark: Isle of Water and Blood for Magpie Games Community Play.
No game this weekend but we're getting closer to one (if we don't get shut down again because of the spike in Delta variant COVID cases here in Arkansas because people are too stu...never mind).
What's everyone else doing?
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Gaming this week...
I played in our "Shattered Star" PF1 game on Tuesday. We had a single long role-playing encounter with a half-insane cave giant: We tricked her out of her treasure, leaving her behind. (I imagine that we'll encounter her again...)
Two of the players in my Fate: Secrets of Cats game are out of town on their honeymoon this week and next, so that game is temporarily on hold. One piece of good news on that front: We're returning to in-person play, starting in two weeks! And, we're going to be playing at Modern Alchemy, a new game bar that just opened in town!
I ran Paranormal Minstrels on The Gauntlet last night. The game...isn't good. It's got a fantastic premise and a fun chargen process, but the dice mechanics are brutal and extremely frustrating... one player didn't roll a single success the entire game. I don't think that game was playtested much (if at all) before being published: It feels like an alpha release. I'm how adding a back-burner game design project to make a playable game out of its premise.
Still, we had fun: It was a great example of Gauntlet's table culture where the players all managed to make a fun session out of an interesting premise and generous role-playing even if the game itself is kind of a dog.
Saturday morning, I'm running a session of Trophy Dark for Magpie Games Community Play Day. I have one (and possibly two) seats open. The game is at 11 AM EDT... if you're interested in that seat, private message me and we'll get you registered!
And for non-gaming stuff...
My wife and I are taking our daughter and her fiance out for dinner tonight. Nothing fancy: It's a local brewpub with really good burgers.
Tomorrow night, we're heading over to Auburn to see Black Widow at a drive-in! We're also trying to organize a little tailgate with some of our friends before the movie starts. (Still no definite takers. Their loss!)
And Sunday evening, we're hosting a neighborhood "Drinks in the Driveway" cocktail party... weather permitting.
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Going on a trip to visit my wife's family in Rhode Island next week. Mostly preparing for that. We make the trip every year, but we didn't go last year for obvious reasons. We'll be gone for 10 days.
Back when I had a desire to travel I thought about visiting Rhode Island. The photos just made it look pretty cool.
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Cooler than Houston, although one year it was hotter and more humid. I felt betrayed.
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Well, I'm not carving Roman numerals out of onyx, that's a Monday thing, also today and yesterday.
Our new washing machine arrives tomorrow morning, I sprang for the extra 60 dollars so they'll install it for me and take away the old one.
Last week in non-gaming...
We ended up having to cancel both our trip to the drive-in and our "Drinks in the Driveway" party due to heavy rain all weekend. We ended up paying the $30 fee to Disney Plus so that we could watch Black Widow at home. (I liked it.)
Last week in gaming...
I made a bone-headed scheduling error and was unable to run the Trophy Dark game for Magpie Games Community Play Day. I'm working with my three players to find a time to reschedule it.
Two of the players in my Wednesday night Fate: The Secrets of Cats game were still on their honeymoon, so we took this week off.
I played in our Pathfinder 1e "Shattered Star" game. We continued our journey down the underground river and encountered a gargantuan aquatic ghoul... which we managed to sneak past. We then finally encountered the troop of Gray Maidens that we'd seen signs of... by befriending one of their own whom they'd betrayed and turned over to a depraved sea hag to be tortured to death. We then ambushed a group of them to thin their numbers. (We didn't murder them: We tied them up and left them in the now-dead sea hag's lair... but they don't know the sea hag is dead!)
I facilitated one of my favorite RPGs last night: Fall of Magic. It's a GM-less story-game about a group of travelers accompanying the Magus on their final journey across the world to the land of Umbra, where magic was born. It went really, really well... part two will be next week.
Weekend plans:
We have tickets to see a live outdoor stage production of Sweeney Todd tomorrow night, which we're really looking forward to!
What have y'all been up to this week, and what plans to you have for the weekend?
My group is having our first game night since February 6th tomorrow night. I'd like to say I spent all that downtime writing adventures and brushing up on rules and whatnot but I didn't do any of that. It actually sort of felt good to not have to think of gaming for a while. Also, I learned it's best to not write adventures too far ahead because my games tend to follow each other in a serial pattern with varying degrees of connectivity. It's sometimes a hassle but I've found it works better for our style of gaming to take the results of the most recent game and build the next one from there.
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I'm here in balmy Rhode Island. I've been able to avoid any in-law drama, and we've been having a nice time so far. (We'd still be having a nice time even if there was any in-law drama. The drama I'm talking about is between my mother-in-law and father-in-law. Arguing is their love language, but it's exhausting.)
I've reconnected with some online friends that I game with. With two small kids, most of my PbP and forum time is in between tasks at work, and the personal website that this group of friends hangs out at is blocked from work, so I sort of fell out of the habit of visiting the site when I started my current job two and a half years ago. I've been trying to go back off and on for a while, but it's amazing how much a creature of habit I am, and how hard it was to make visiting the site in the evenings a habit. But I'm back and visiting regularly, and I've picked back up two PCs that have been around since 3.5 days.
Welp, our first game since February 6th was an unmitigated disaster - for the bad guys. We actually ended up finishing earlier than expected because the dice rolls the players were making were all insanely good (though some terribly low Initiative rolls occurred that didn't affect the outcome whatsoever) and all the bad guys' rolls su-huh-hucked. While most of the party engaged what I believe is someone's homebrewed monster (the origins of which I cannot recall called an Eye of Oblivion. Drejk is it one of yours?) and several very, very angry cultists, all of them covered in their own diseased blood and attempting to infect the players with a disease called Bloody End from "Horror Adventures" (look it up...yeesh), the player with the Unchained Monk took out the Anti-Paladin single-handedly. He had the worst Initiative in the entire combat round and went last. He was knocked prone and never got a chance to regain his feet before she sent him into the double-digit negatives.
But ya know what? We had fun. We ate bad food. We made terrible puns. We got sidetracked over and over because we hadn't been together in person in almost half a year, and we laughed until we were breathless. I'll gladly accept my terrible rolls for that stuff any day. It was a good day to dice.
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That sounds beyond amazing! I'm glad you got that, Cal.
That sounds beyond amazing! I'm glad you got that, Cal.
Thank you. I am, too. All the side chatter and silliness sort of gave us a name for our style of gaming, I think. Since we're in Arkansas and a couple of guys come all the way from Olive Branch, Mississippi to play we decided our gaming style is "Southern Style". All we lacked last night was a casserole made by someone's grandma and someone to say Grace over it...LOL
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While I did not win against the tightly closing net of the law, I did lead them on a merry chase around Whitehall and even managed to drop my third grisly trophy at its planned location. But the heat was only a step behind, making the lucky guesses needed to follow my trail and make the arrest.
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Did your new computer show up?
Trying to not go utterly bonkers with using a 'shared' laptop while waiting for new computer to arrive, and trying to stay cool.
Yes, yes it did.
It's good for what I expected and holding together reasonably.
Hate Win10 with passion, but I've been back on-line.
Now, tonight's plan is to 'keep breathing'. It'll be a bit of a challenge as our Air Quality here in the NE IL area is exceptionally Poor.
Gonna try to wrap up the loose ends of last week's adventure tomorrow night and get started on the next story arc, which, if things go according to my plans, will see the party's Rogue actually have to serve as its Paladin at the end of the storyline. It'll probably take three or four sessions for that to finally happen so we're trying to cram in as many as possible before another COVID lockdown (which, according to one of our illustrious state leaders, said he'd "consider amending the law that made mask-wearing ILLEGAL in state offices and public schools if one-third of Arkansans became sick", which is approximately one million people. Yeah, it's illegal to wear masks now in certain places and there are no exceptions for people with existing respiratory issues. A couple of school districts are suing the state, though, so we'll see where that goes.Sigh....
Anyway, what's everyone else got going on?
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I'm messing around with pebbles and time lines.
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Last week in gaming...
I received a dinner invitation I really couldn't refuse on Tuesday night, which is when my Pathfinder game runs, so I had to bow out of the game. The rest of the group played on, but they haven't yet posted the synopsis.
I ran my first in-person RPG since March 2020 on Wednesday! The game was our continuation of our Fate: The Secrets of Cats minicampaign. Our caboodle of cats went off in search of a mysterious grey owl who lives in the North Woods to find out what he might know about the plague of weird mind-controlled rats that's befallen the town of Silver Ford, Maine. Bur first they had to get past some hostile faeries and the ghost of a bloodhound who hates cats!
I attempted to run session two of my Fall of Magic game, but about half an hour before the game was to start, a band of sever thunderstorms blew through my town. We didn't so much lose power as have it flicker six or seven times, followed by about 45 seconds of low voltage. That fried my cable modem. Alas, once I figured out that the modem was toast, Best Buy had closed, so I couldn't run an online game. I had to cancel via my smartphone. We're going to try to reschedule, although my August gaming schedule is pretty full.
This weekend in non-gaming...
Tonight, I'm taking my wife, our daughter and son-in-law to be, and a few of my wife's friends out for dinner to celebrate my wife's birthday... it's a milestone.
Looking at next week in gaming...
For August, I'm in four weekly games!
Monday night, I'm playing in the first of a five-session Trail of Cthulhu game over on The Gauntlet.
Tuesday nights is my existing Pathfinder 1e "Shattered Star" group.
Wednesday nights is my existing Fate group.
Thursday nights, over on The Gauntlet, I'm running the first of a four-session series of Comrades: Hell's Rebels, in which I'm running the basic plot of the "Hell's Rebels" Pathfinder adventure path using the "Powered by the Apocalypse" Comrades: A Revolutionary RPG, with the magic system of Monster of the Week grafted in.
I think that the last time I played in four weekly games outside of a convention was when I was in college!
Well, shoot. I had to cancel tonight's game and the next available night for everyone is August 21st. Tonight's game was going to be highly combat intensive with a lot of foes having Spell Resistance. Two of the three frontline fighters were stuck in traffic in Memphis (they just re-opened a bridge that had been closed for repairs) and he had been stuck in traffic for over an hour and a half and was still nowhere near the bridge. Traffic was so bad that he couldn't make it to the "old bridge", either. So with some tough to fight physically critters that were fairly spell resistant, it would've been tough to revamp everything in the time I have before the game.
On top of that my pain levels are insane today with a root canal-candidate tooth doing its best to kill me. So it was in the best interest to just close up shop for the night.
I hope everyone else has a great weekend!
Visitation hours for Cyz are going to be greatly reduced
Apparently, I'm out of the loop. What's going on with Cyz?
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We got back yesterday from a ten day trip to Rhode Island, which was very fun and had amazing weather (compared to Houston). This weekend is laundry, grocery shopping, and some more laundry.
Thanks for the link. I had no idea.
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Last week in gaming...
Monday, I played the first session of a 5-game series of Trail of Cthulhu on The Gauntlet. It's set in New York City in 1936. I'm playing journalist Sarah Jenkins, reporter (and photographer) for the New York Daily Sun, a mid-tier newspaper. She's also got a side-gig as a paranormal investigator, because she can see and talk to ghosts.
Tuesday, I played in our ongoing Pathfinder "Shattered Star" game. We're still in the dungeons below the Lady's Light, and have successfully defeated and captured the remaining members of a troop of former Gray Maidens who had come there to look for treasures to fund their attempt to re-take the city of Korvosa from Queen Cressida.
Wednesday, I ran another session of our Fate: The Secrets of Cats game. Our feline heroes defeated the ghost of an angry bloodhound with a vial of Chanel No. 5, made a pact with an owl, and attempted to cross a dilapidated covered bridge that's home to a flock of unfriendly bats.
I was supposed to run the first session of my "Comrades: Hell's Rebels" game last night, but I had a terrible bout of insomnia the previous night and just wasn't up to running it. We'll try again next week.
And in non-gaming...
Instead of running the game, I watched the new movie The Suicide Squad on HBO Max last night. I thought it was a lot of fun. I'd put it on a par with Birds of Prey, albeit with a much higher body count!
Tomorrow night, my wife and I are going to see Jungle Cruise at the drive-in!
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Wow, I miss going to the drive-in. In my mid-teens, my friend Mike, who was three years older than I was, was the projectionist at our drive-in and one of the downtown theaters. He taught me how to run the projectors and if he wanted a night off I'd show the movies and he'd pay me out of his paycheck. The owner was this guy I only knew as "Old Man Worthen", and he thought I was a part-timer and never once questioned me about my working there or even asked my name. I did this for about three years...LOL I could get in free at the theater because he thought I worked for him. My friends were soooo jealous!
No game this weekend, and likely not until the 21st. Too many of us have other commitments until then, so I have more time to tinker with the next story arc which will begin as soon as we wrap up the current one. With luck, both objectives will be accomplished in the same session.
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My wife somewhat-randomly decided that our kids should get new beds. I said yes* so now I'm putting cool kids beds together this weekend.
* If the situation were reversed, and I wanted to make a major purchase like that, I'd also clear it with her.
Other than that, it's our first weekend since our vacation, so there's plenty to do, such as recovering from my first week of work after our vacation.
The only gaming thing I'll probably do is finish designing a character for a PbtA City of Mists game. I still don't really understand the rules, but ignorance isn't going to stop me from ACTION!
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The owner was this guy I only knew as "Old Man Worthen", and he thought I was a part-timer and never once questioned me about my working there or even asked my name. I did this for about three years...LOL I could get in free at the theater because he thought I worked for him.
This kills me. hilarious.
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Over the weekend, I was working on my Comrades: Hell's Rebes game that I'd been planning to run this month, but I got really deep into the weeds and came out feeling kind of exhausted. I hadn't done that kind of prep for a game in years, and it reminded me why I stopped GMing Pathfinder. I took the wrong approach in conversion: I started with In Hell's Bright Shadow and tried to adapt scenes and set-pieces to Comrades. And I pretty much lost my enthusiasm to run the thing.
If I ever decide to try this again (I still think the idea is solid), I'll build a Comrades scenario frame, and then just use the situations and NPCs from the PFRPG adventure to dress it up.
I just emailed my players and said that I'm not up to running the game they signed up for, and offered an alternative: "Harpy's Maw," a nautical-themed scenario I wrote for the RPG Trophy Gold.
No game this weekend, as we can't get everyone situated until next Saturday. Also, it might not even happen as the Delta variant of COVID is wiping the floor with Arkansas right now. We've all been vaccinated, but there have been cases where that didn't keep someone from catching it but it did reduce the severity of their symptoms.
How about all y'all?
In fairness if you're vaccinated you have less than a 2 percent chance of getting the Delta variant, although it's been a few hours so that might have changed.
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My boss, who is very open about his political ideology, has told me how little he thinks of vaccines and how, in October, he was sure that this whole pandemic thing was going to go away after the election (both of these things said while knowing full well that my wife is an epidemiologist for the city's health department), has COVID-19.
I am glad that he's recovering quickly.
I'm not looking forward to listening to him pontificate how his viewpoints are still correct after I see him again.
Even after 30 years of playing with this guy, apparently I have to send him daily reminders of our next game session. We all agreed at the end of the last game we'd gather again on Saturday, August 21st. I send reminders out via both email and Facebook regularly. I sent out a note last night outlining what I had planned going forward after they finish the current game (we didn't get to end it last time). Today, just before noon, he texted me to say he and his daughter (she's 15 and plays with us, too) had plans they'd made a couple of weeks ago.
I don't ask for much out of life. I really don't. But for the love of all things both holy and non, update me at least once in a freaking while. I seldom get angry at my bunch because we've been friends for so many years, but good grief, is it that freaking hard to let me know you have other plans when you make them WELL IN ADVANCE of the next game?
b#*!*gripegrumblekvetch...
So, what are the rest of you up to this weekend?
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Plus today's my birthday, so it's a good day!
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Sunday night we wrap up The Jester's Fraud, in what will likely be a short session. Then the bard and magus hit 10th level and we are locked to the final run of 7-11 tier scenarios. Depending on schedules, in two months they could be Seekers and ready for 12th level play.
Plus today's my birthday, so it's a good day!
Happy birthday!!!
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Getting ready to power nap so I can get up on my overnight and play some SFS @ PaizoCon Europe Online.
Gonna be playing my 'short human' custodian. Should be a blast.
My last week in gaming...
Monday night, I played in a Trail of Cthulhu game over on The Gauntlet (session 3 of 5). New York City, 1936: My character Sarah Jenkins is a reporter for the New York Daily Mirror (and part-time paranormal investigator). While working on case trying to track down a missing young architectural student who dabbled in the occult, our investigators stumbled into a mystery involving an under-construction skyscraper with unusual geometries, the Old Money family financing the construction, a Turkish death-cult, and a portal to another dimension. And the death-cult has sicced a literal monster on us: A strange flying snake-like creature seemingly made of millions of tiny soap bubbles... that can pass through solid objects, literally boiling any material it passes through!
Tuesday, I played in our PFRPG 1e "Shattered Star" game. We are drawing to the conclusion of The Curse of the Lady's Light: we found our way into the antechamber of "Sorshen's" inner sanctum, met a disillusioned Greay Maiden, and concluded that this "Sorshen" is really a succubus posing as the long-lost Runelord of Lust.
Wednesday, I GMed another session of Fate: The Secrets of Cats. Our clowder of cats learned that the strange mind-controlled rats are coming from an abandoned silver mine just north of town... and the only way there is across a dilapidated covered bridge that's under the protection of a very unfriendly bat.
Thursday, I played part one of a two-part series of Trophy Dark. The GM is the publisher of the game and a co-author of the incursion we're running through. This game is terrifying... we've met a party of degenerate noblemen feasting on the rotting carcass of a pig; a strange man who seems to really be a skin-sack full of insects; a carnivorous rice paddy; and a troop of undead plantation overseers. And the party members are already starting to betray each other so that each of us can claim the best loot. This will not end well.
In gaming-adjacent news...
I'm selling off part of my TTRPG collection that I'm reasonably sure I won't be using anymore (and for which I still have PDFs.) Most of these are PF1e, Starfinder, and D&D 5e books that are in great shape, including my entire Pathfinder Pawns collection.
In non-gaming news...
My wife and I spent the weekend up in Syracuse to attend the New York State Fair! We drove up Friday night to meet some old friends for dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse. That was amazing... I hadn't eaten that much meat in the previous month! My wife and I stayed at a local Marriott then went to the fair on Saturday morning. The fair was quite a bit smaller than in years past: Many regular vendors were missing, and there weren't as many exhibits as usual, but the crowd was a lot thinner as well, which made it a lot easier to navigate. I ate way too much fair food. We saw two short concerts: "Broken Promises", a Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers cover band. They were great! Later, we saw Ratt (yes, the '80s hair-metal band). They were... loud. I was never a Ratt fan in the '80s, and the only Ratt song I could name is "Round And Round"... which I guess they must have closed with because halfway through the concert, we decided to go get some ice cream instead. After we left the fair, we went back to the hotel for the night. Sunday morning, we found a great local diner for breakfast, and then we drove home.
We used to have a Brazilian steakhouse near where I live. I really miss it.
Happy belated birthday, my friend! Also, I'm the least qualified person on Earth for dating advice, but don't get too discouraged. Just dip your toes in the water for a while. You'll know when it's time to dive in.
Happy birthday, Mark!
What's happening this weekend? Hopefully I'll get to run the game we postponed from last weekend tomorrow, although at the moment I think I've come down with a stomach virus so I'm a little worried that I might have to put it off again. Plus I learned today of the death of an old friend from cancer and it's really dampened the mood today.
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My last week in gaming...
Monday: Our Trail of Cthulhu: Bright Lights Dark City game concluded: We interrupted a mystic ceremony being performed at an under-construction skyscraper that was both haunted and used unnatural geometries. A shootout ensued... and sticks of dynamite were thrown. And the charges we'd placed in the basement blew and the building began to collapse! Still... the cultists managed to open a dimensional gate to somewhere else, and our anarchist and our astronomer both decided to jump through the gate, while our reporter and our antiquarian decided to instead run down the stairs in an attempt to escape before the tower came down... which we did! And our antiquarian managed to grab the mystical MacGuffin on his way out! Epilogues: The anarchist and astronomer ended up in a weird city that was like a parody of Manhattan: The towers seemed to be solid blocks of rock carved by something immense. And there was a weird "factory" where souls were being processed into... something else. But the factory imploded when the building in our world came down! Our heroes were last seen scavenging this weird cyclopean landscape. In the real world, the antiquarian began speaking with the voices inside the MacGuffin, and our reporter broke the story about the collapse of the building, and the corrupt rich family behind it. A very satisfying game! And if anyone wants to watch us play, the videos are on my YouTube channel.
Our GM wasn't feeling well on Tuesday, so our Pathfinder game didn't run this week. And I ended up working am 11-hour day on Wednesday, so I didn't feel up to running Fate: The Secrets of Cats this week.
Thursday, I played in the second session of a two-part Trophy Dark series, "The Plantation." It was a truly horrific game, and everyone met a terrible end... including the one character who survived the experience! A recording of this series is also on the same YouTube channel; Part 2 hasn't been posted yet.
Non-Gaming events...
We had our kid and their fiancee over for dinner on Friday. The kid dropped a bit of a bombshell: They came out to us as nonbinary and that they're now using "they/them" pronouns. I'm trying to be as supportive as I can be, but this is going to take quite a lot of getting used to.
Saturday night, my wife and I went to see the final show of the Summer 2021 series at the local theater company that we support. It was a retelling of The Odyssey, set in a pseudo-contemporary style. The play used a nearly 3000-year-old story to talk about issues such as PTSD, refugees, hospitality, and paying lip-service to one's religion when it's inconvenient to actually follow its teachings. It was very well done.
Sunday night, my wife and I went to a local winery for their annual Winemaker's Dinner. It was really, really good!
That game sounds amazing! I miss being a player in action-packed games like that.
My Saturday night game started with a whimper and ended on a "Thank goodness this is over so I can go to bed." I was still weak from being sick the night before and lack of sleep, I was irritable, and I eventually just let it turn into a cake walk for the players so I could send everyone home and go to bed.
70s funk cures a lot of ills, I'm here to tell ya.
I'm over the gastronomic affliction, thank goodness. In the words of an old friend "I have the constitution of a vending machine" when it comes to eating things but it's a trade off because if there's even the slightest chance there's a stomach bug around I'm going to get it. It's a guarantee.