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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) sjgames | |
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http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archives.html?m=May&y=2008&d=10 Okay, kids, it's time for another Good News/Bad News situation. Allow me to hit you with the Bad vibe first. The price of metal has gone up. Ogre minis, being made of metal, are more expensive to produce. What that means is come June 2nd, the individual Ogre minis will increase in price slightly. We're looking at about a 10% increase. Yeah, bleah, not exactly happiness. If you've been on the fence about filling out your army for The Last War, now is the best time to pick up those Raptors you've had your eye on.</p> This only affects the individual minis, mind you. The boxed sets will remain at their current prices.</p> The Good side? Your Ogre collection just jumped a little bit in value! Score!</p> (Hey, come on, lemme have my silver lining here, huh?)</p>-- Fox Barrett
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![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) docbrite | |
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Sigh. I just called the vet and made an appointment to get Frankie fixed on Monday. This should have been done ages ago (he's ten months old and has great big bouncing cojones), but first I didn't do it because Augie was sick and I didn't want to separate them for even a day, and then Augie died and I just couldn't bring myself to turn loose of Frankie knowing he would have to be anesthetized. Gotta be done, though. He hasn't started spraying -- in fact, I've never known an Oriental Shorthair to spray -- but I suspect the macho pheromones he's emitting may be responsible for all the unauthorized peeing and pooing that has gone on around here lately. Also just made reservations for my birthday trip to Grand Isle week after next. Our usual hotel is booked until next year (! -- it's an apartment-style hotel, and apparently some corporation has put up all their people there, the lucky bastards), so we decided to stay at a place closer to the bridge, on a wilder part of the beach. When we stayed there once before, we would float on our backs in the water as Brown Pelicans dipped down to check us out and Magnificent Frigatebirds soared and swirled far above. I need to cleanse my soul with some Grand Isle time; it's been far too long ... in fact, we haven't been there since my 40th birthday last year, when the picture in my icon was taken. Oh, and reader Leah H. asked if I would help spread the word about The Cat House on the Kings, an amazing but underfunded no-kill, no-cage cat sanctuary in California. Happy to. (I sent them $25 myself -- wish it were more, but our own vet bills have been crushing lately. I also just discovered that my printer seems to be dead, but I can't get too upset about that, as I've always hated it and have been waiting for an excuse to buy a new one.) Here's the video her brother-in-law made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwM6f0liHpo#GU5U2spHI_4My favorite line: "Basically, it's like Planet of the Cats." I know the feeling.
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robin_d_laws | |
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 Last night I assisted in running a new variant of HeroQuest, which might aptly be named DrunkQuest. In DrunkQuest, one is called to the table to assist when a game has begun even though the GM and at least half of the players have been down in the old town dramatically overindulging in the libations for which the region is famed. The gaming equivalent of a designated driver, if you will.
Through a Q&A process it was determined that all of the players were residents in a tiny splinter version of Hell—an experimental rebranding initiative, if you will. PCs included a just-arrived soul, a pair of guardian demons, the beleaguered Stygian project manager, an auditor from the heavenly host and, just for variety’s sake, Jack Burton from Big Trouble In Little China. Hell itself is the worst place imaginable—Essex. A traffic circle of eternal congestion that sears the soul of inmate and warder alike with its cosmic mediocrity.
DrunkQuest must for obvious reasons be simpler in design even than the new stripped-down HeroQuest. There is only one rules mechanism: players who find themselves in conflict with one another roll d20s and the high one gets what he or she wants.
No doubt miraculously, the storyline was eventually steered to shore, to a conclusion that was positively Sartrean in its pitiless thematic appropriateness. The apocalypse came, and the participants, in order of success, all got to define one thing about the new cosmo-theological order.
You see where this is going.
Horribly, they wound up putting everything back just the way it had been before—except that now they’d forever languish in the knowledge that they could have made it all different, if only they had chosen to.
A silly and accidentally profound exercise that nonetheless reminded me of one of the inchoate questions bubbling on the mental back burner—that we have yet to really establish a solid way of resolving verbal conflict between main characters in a way that resolves as do like scenes in dramatic literature. Instead of a give-and-take of negotiation and resolution, each player tends to stake out a position and reiterate it until the GM calls for a die roll and one of them wins and the other loses. I’m seeing the opening glimmerings of a system to explore this goal, which could be bolted on to nearly any RPG, from HQ to D&D. (Though not Dying Earth.)
As the sun completes its warm and gentle orbit for through the sky, the competition among convention’s English contingent for the last waning patch of shade grows ever more desperate.
Although a few impromptu game sessions are staged here and there, the first day of Tentacles is devoted mostly to social events — opening ceremonies, Cthulhu For President, the pub quiz. (Note to self: submit much less difficult questions next time.)
I do my bit at a "state of Glorantha publishing" panel helmed by Moon Design honcho Rick Meints. Looks like the log jam of printing problems and scheduling issues that has plagued the line of late is about to break. I’m very proud that the new HeroQuest is part of this. And happy to hear very good feedback from playtesters.
The green lights and elder sign gobo on the castle tower are an eldritch delight.
Check out the Tentacles live web cam.
In what is surely mere coincidence, it turns out that the standard wine by the glass served by a hostel café in the middle of German wine country is exceptionally lovely. However, I stop at one. You never know when you’re going to be called upon to serve as designated GM at a surprise session of DrunkQuest. Tags: dying earth, gaming hut, heroquest, on the road
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puritybrown | |
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My parents have been in Marseilles since Monday, and I have been not so much relishing my solitude as wallowing in it. I've been too happy and mellow to bother updating LJ, since dissecting a mood is a good way of making it disappear. God, it's so amazing to have the house to myself. I have made certain choices in my life that have resulted in my needing to live with my parents at this point; I don't regret those choices, and I'm not going to try to undo them or change my direction, especially since I'm headed (slowly) towards a more comfortable life. But, man, I've been so relaxed this past week, just from not having to think about the other people in the house... not having to wait for the kitchen to be free, not having to wait until they've gone to bed before I watch my DVDs, not having to tell them where I'm going and what I'm doing. The constant presence of other people is stressful to me, and the greater the likelihood that they're going to interact with me and expect me to respond (with no notice given and no possibility for me to ignore them without causing offence), the greater the stress. In this respect I'm unusual, I know; most people either tune out the presence of others or find it comforting. What bothers me is not so much that they're there as that they talk to me, but not predictably, which puts me on edge; I'm constantly waiting to be interrupted. It's not as bad as actually being constantly interrupted (I've been there, when I was on phone-answering duty at Ennis & Associates, and it was torture), but it's one of those mild, almost unnoticeable stressors whose effects accumulate over time, until I want to scream at my mother for knocking on my door to say "Goodnight!". I've never lived alone, and I think I need to. But, as any fule kno, the property situation in Dublin is fucked up beyond belief. Renters get sod-all legal protection from landlords (and while my brother is a landlord, and thus I feel constrained from spitting out the full extent of my anti-landlord bile, because I know for a fact that they're not all bad, let it nonetheless be known that I don't consider landlording one of the more honourable of occupations). Prices, while no longer rising, are still too high for anyone with my modest means -- in fact, they're too high for a lot of people with means far less modest than mine. There are people whose means are, compared to mine, positively boastful, but who still can't afford a decent property in a reasonable area. ("Reasonable" and "decent" are of course relative terms, and I will freely admit to having been spoiled by growing up in a gorgeous Victorian semi in Ranelagh.) I don't want to live in a shoebox; I don't want to go back to secretarying; I don't want to move to a dormitory town that's not even in County Dublin, much less within the very narrow confines of what I consider "reasonable areas to live in".[1] I don't want to keep living with my parents, either, but I don't see any feasible alternative that would not make me more unhappy than I am at the moment. All I can do is enjoy the solitude while it lasts, and hope my situation changes. Which, sooner or later, it will: and with luck, it will change in the ways I want it to change. [1] Dublin 4, Dublin 6, and parts of Dublin 8, if you're wondering.Tags: personal
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