Gaming galore!

So we had the usual weekend of lots of gaming. Saturday was Exalted, where I somehow managed to grab the wrong character sheet, and couldn't figure out why my character was so smart... nor why she had so little Willpower. Eventually, when we got to combat, I figured it out. :) I really need to throw away my old character sheet, or otherwise not have it in the book that we take with us to game. :)

Sunday was the Dragon Blooded game, and it was a whole lot of silly fun. Somehow, my character became the responsible one (she's one of the youngest in the group), paired up most of her cousins with their perfect spouses, and got married and had a kid of her own. :) It's a little bit of a bummer that she became responsible, because she's not really a pirate anymore. But when asked if she wanted to give up her Admiralship, she absolutely refused... meaning she had to do things the traditional way and basically conform to the status quo. Ah well, at least she runs the entire Imperial Navy now. :) (We do have 5 years of downtime between the games, so I MIGHT have her go back to her piratical ways, but there's been a lot of story stuff related to her growing up, so it seems a little disingenuous to go back on that now.)

We've only got two more sessions of the Dragon Blooded game, and then two months off before I start in on my Vampire: the Masquerade game. I'm very much looking forward to getting to run a game for a regular group again, since it's been almost a year since I had that in my gaming schedule. Now I just have to figure out how to keep the game at a reasonable number of players, especially for our tiny little apartment. :)

I'm really happy, though, because all of my gaming books are at our apartment now. And while I've realized that I got rid of a lot of books that would be useful now, I've still got some fun stuff that has reemerged. :)

Hurrah for Friday!

Glad to have made it to the end of the week. As promised, the temperatures have dropped, to the point where we could actually sleep comfortably last night. I even ended up bundled up in a sheet by morning!

I'm anxiously awaiting the weekend, even though I know it will be a zoo. In the midst of all of the moving stuff we need to do tonight and tomorrow, we have two games and a photo shoot! Eek! The games are the usual pair of Exalted games (though there's a chance we're going to call off the second one and go to the EMP instead), and the photo shoot was originally so that Jeremy can hopefully get some photos he likes to use for writer's stuff. Lucky me gets to come along and get some pictures taken with him as well. :)

Because I am a dork, I've had my clothes picked out since I first heard we were doing these pictures. :) I'm going to wear the cute vintage dress I bought from Betsy at the last Punk Rock Flea Market--white with tiny black polka dots, with red and black felt leaves and acorns stitched on (to camouflage the sorts of flaws that vintage dresses often have). I totally love the black and white and red color combination, and it's the closest thing I'll probably ever own to a white dress. :) Now I just gotta convince the boy to wear something that matches what I'm wearing... he has a perfect shirt, which he doesn't like. *sigh* I'll post pictures (or links to pictures) when all is said and done!

Friday!

And since I'm traveling, I only have a partial weekend, but ah well. Get to see my sister Monday night, and the rest of her family, as well as my mom, on Friday. This makes it almost worthwhile that I will be spending 2 weeks in Kansas City. I will be missing Jeremy like crazy, though, which is the big reason I wish I didn't have to go. Hopefully, though, the two weeks will give him some much needed time for writing, which I tend to distract him from. :)

Another bummer is that I have to miss our vanilla Exalted game on Saturday, and the Dragon-Blooded Exalted game on Sunday. In honor of the latter, a quote from the last session is this week's End of the Work Week Wisdom:

"Watch us secretly be related to every NPC in the game."--Katie
"It's like Lost!"--Craig
--Yeah, it's pretty much like that. :)

Monday

I had a fabulous weekend, and getting up this morning to go to work was not high on my list of things I wanted to do, but here I am. :)

Friday night we went on a walk after dinner, and found a neat little trail that runs along the back side of the zoo. There was a stinky elephant part of the trail, and the only animal we could see was something that had its rear end turned towards us, but it was still nice. It's funny that I've lived in my apartment almost 2 years now, and didn't even know what Woodland Park looked like. I've only ever been to the zoo. :)

Saturday was Exalted, and I have officially made a much more effective character than I had previously. YAY! :) But the other players still gave me a hard time about my character being WAY too high concept for this game, because her Motivation wasn't applicable. :)

Sunday was the first real session of Dragon Lines, and we had a wonderfully fabulous time. Because I have made the decision that I will not run away from plot, no matter how much I know that the plot will suck for my character, I ended up in all kinds of fun situations. ("No, I have a totally horrible plan. It'll be AWESOME!") And I also discovered that there's no use in trying to keep secrets from my character's family, because two of her cousins are totally spies. :) But I totally squicked out several of the players, and had much Fan Mail thrown in my direction. I call that a win! :)

We've got a fairly tame week ahead of us, though Jeremy is trying to finish up a story by Thursday night, and I really need to manage to get some crocheting done this week. I normally crochet during Exalted, and get quite a bit done. I had all my yarn and was ready to go, and then discovered that I left the notebook that I write down my patterns in at home. Sadly, I do not have my patterns memorized, which meant that I couldn't work on any of the projects I had with me. *sigh*

Nope, I didn't fall off the face of the earth...

Just been even busier than normal, and out off the office. I don't foresee my schedule improving much in the near future, of course, because that's just how I am. But I am about to go on vacation for 6 glorious days (counting the weekend), so that will be sort of a break. :)

I honestly haven't even been doing a whole lot aside from work. I squeezed in about half an hour of Rock Band one night last week, got caught up on a few things at the writer's group, and have otherwise been filling my spare moments with gaming and a tiny bit of crocheting. I made my new character for the Exalted game (though ended up not getting it done quite in time to actually play on Saturday), and yesterday we got to make our characters for the Dragon-Blooded Exalted game.

That was seriously some of the most fun I've ever had with character creation. There were 8 players, and we started out paired up with a family member--in my case, we defined ourself as cousins, though a couple of the pairs chose to be siblings (and then because of cross-breeding, more or less, we are almost all cousins to one another). We then had to come up with some defining event that had happened before the older sibling turned 9. And that's when we discovered that really and truly, my character was meant to be a pirate her whole life. :)

Throughout the course of the afternoon, we then paired up with 4 more players, and worked out events that had occured between our two characters at other stages in our lives, up until the point where we were all hovering between the ages of 31 and 29. By that point, my character had stolen a boat, cut off another character's hand, created a makeshift hot air balloon, witnessed an assassination that she had paid for, and stolen an airship (losing an eye in the process). So yeah, all sorts of pirate-y stuff. :)

The really cool thing about this is that my character now has a strong reason to be hanging out with 5 of the other 7 PCs. And as it turns out, the two PCs that I didn't have an in-depth scene with are the siblings of two of the PCs that I did have great scenes with. So we basically know each other, just indirectly. It also really helps to flesh out my character's personality to know that even when she was 7, all she really wanted was to go where she wasn't, and that she's never grown out of that tendency.

So I'm really looking forward to the continuation of this game, when we actually start playing. Of course my hope is that everyone will end up on my airship, and we'll maraud and pillage across the Threshhold, but even if I end up having to leave my ship in storage for a bit to help out my cousins and friends, it'll still be a blast! :)

More media consumption!

Although not as much as last week. We watched Brazil on Sunday, in preparation for a Paranoia game that we were going to play. The game was cancelled, but the movie still happened. And the movie hurt my brain a bit. I think I need to re-watch Time Bandits now, to see if it has a similarly totally crazy, epic ending. Cuz seriously, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen are both so over the top, I'd be shocked if Time Bandits was not. :)

In other news, I have been ridiculously busy lately, and I don't think it stops until May, maybe. I spent all but one day of last week out of the office. I'm here for 3 days this week, then off to Rhode Island. Next week, I won't be in the office at all, though I'll still be in town. The following week, I work 2 days, and then head out on vacation. I get back from that to a 4 day work week, and then I may be traveling the last week of April. On the few and far-between days that I am in the office, there's tons for me to work on. Whee!

In the meantime, I've been working on my characters for Ambercon, which has been an interesting process. I'm used to convention games with pre-generated characters. In the 8 games that I'm in for Ambercon, I get to make the characters for 7 of the games. I'm done with 6 of those 7, and hopefully will finish the last tonight.

Of course, I also need to make a new character for Exalted, as Laine (my Night caste archer-sorceress-tomb raider) died in the game on Saturday. So I'm going to play a Lunar now, since everyone else who shows up to the game regularly plays Lunars. Laine's demise was pretty unsurprising, as I decided to have her go out in a tiny rowboat on a lake in the middle of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Yes, there are many bad decisions there. :)

Remember that chicken? Yup, still headless.

It's been one of those weeks where I'm barely in my actual office, let alone anywhere near the internet. Whee!

So the weekend was good, with an EtsyRain leadership meeting Friday, followed by gaming for the rest of it. Exalted was a short game, which worked out well since Jeremy was not feeling well, so I got him all comfortable on my couch while I worked on cleaning and such for a while. Sunday was the kids' game, and it ended up being the final game of that campaign. This means that we are now moving on to a game that I get to play in. YAY! :)

The new game will be Exalted also (oddly enough), though it will be Dragon Blooded, and it's going to be all sorts of fun. Many years ago, when Exalted was new, I wanted to play in a game where the PCs were young children, maybe 5 years old, who had already exalted as Dragon Blooded. I later found out that this didn't really work within the system. :) But the plan for Jeremy's game is for us to go through our childhood, adolescence, etc. and play out a few scenes from each. This works great with Dragon Blooded because he's going to set it up that a number of our characters are related to one another. :)

I've already worked out some of the details of my background, even though we'll probably play through some scenes that I may or may not have thought of. I suppose some of my thoughts are still subject to change, but I'm gonna have an airship and I'm gonna be a pirate. I wonder where that idea came from... :)

I've already had two research days this week, and I've got another tomorrow. It's like I have this office, but I'm never here. :) Ah well, at least I'm busy for the moment. :)

Oh (yes, I know this post is all over the place today), and we watched Muppet Treasure Island on Monday night, as I was told I needed to see Tim Curry as a "professional pirate." I approve. :) The song he sings is fabulous. :)

Gaming madness!

Had a fun weekend of gaming, with one game as a player and one game as a helper! :)

The game I got to play in is a 2nd edition Exalted game, where we're trying to go through the Temple of Elemental Evil. Yes, that's the D&D Temple of Elemental Evil. The game is very much meant to be one of really kewl powerz and showing off awesome anime-like stunts. I'm playing a Night Caste, who is a mix between Lara Croft and Legolas, with MAGIC! :) This particular game is not big on the roleplaying, but it was fun nonetheless. Once we figure out how to combo my kewl powerz most efficiently, then maybe I'll actually be an effective character, as well. :)

The game I got to help with is a super neat game that Jeremy runs for the "kids" of some of his friends. Now granted, the "kids" are all teenagers, though most of them have been playing in a game run by Jeremy since they were kids. :) I was thrilled about helping out with the game because it's a predominantly female game--6 girls, and 2 or 3 boys. Seeing as I don't think I've ever gotten to play in a game that is so predominantly female, I had to give this one a shot. So I ended up making a couple of Werewolf: the Forsaken NPCs to play, and also got to help out as the finder of names. The kids were referring to me as the "other tormenter" before the game, and I think I lived up to that expectation. :) They all got very concerned whenever Jeremy and I were both furiously typing on our laptops rather than talking out loud. :) I have a sneaking suspicion they'll let me come torment them again, though. :)

Of course, my own Werewolf Wild West game seems to be on indefinite hiatus. We haven't played since October, and there is no indication when the next game will be. But I do get to run a Star Wars one-shot in three weeks, which I'm looking forward to (even if I do still have to learn the system!). So my gaming fix is quite satisfied these days. :)

Whee!

Had a pretty nice weekend, despite the fact that I think I almost melted on Saturday. It got up close to 90 degrees, and while 80 wasn't bothering me much (mainly because I was inside most of Friday), 90 was a bit much. However, we now have a fan for the living room and two for the bedroom, so I think we can survive the summer.

Saturday was Exalted, and we decided to play outside until the bugs started bothering us and we couldn't read the dice anymore. :) Pretty good game all around, but it seems that my games always start trickling off around 10:30. This may have to do with the fact that I generally turn into a pumpkin around 10:00, even on the weekends. Ah well, I think it was a good game, and the good news is that we're finally reaching the portion of the game where there are things to follow up on. So it's back to Nexus for the next game to follow up on some things. The end result of this for me: less planning is necessary.

Sunday, I went to the University District Street Fair with a bunch of EtsyRain folks and families, and it was a pretty good time. My only complaint is that I opted to NOT wear my silly black straw hat, and ended up with a partial sunburn on my face for my efforts. It's kind of funny, really, because you can basically see where I actually hit my face with the sunscreen stick. This means the middle of my forehead is still white, but right at my hairline is red. This may also be a product of only having SPF 30 to use for my face, while I slathered on the SPF 45 for my tattoos and other exposed body parts. However, I have now seen a commercial for SPF 75, and I think I'm going to get that before Mayhem, in July.

And now, a fashion question for my friendly readers. What shoes do you wear with a knee-length, very wide A-line-ish skirt, when you have to walk quite a bit? Yes, I'm looking for practical shoes. Or justification that I can wear my Docs with a skirt and not look too dorky. :) (Wait, who am I kidding? Mostly I don't care about looking dorky. But I'm still asking the question.)

Longest. Day. EVAR!

I know some Seattle-ites are going "80 degrees? In May? Are you crazy?!" But when the sky is this blue, and all the mountains are out, I ain't gonna complain for a second. Plus, 80 degrees is nothing. :) There's still a breeze and you don't feel like you're swimming in it. I call this a win!

It's only the longest day ever because I was cooped up in the office all day long. And it's Friday. So that made it seem like the afternoon took at least 6 days. Maybe 7.

Unfortunately, no rest for the wicked, and all that rot. We're foregoing Prince Caspian tonight so that I can work on my freelancing project tonight, since tomorrow I need to run errands and work on my Exalted game, which runs tomorrow night. Nothing like putting that off till the last minute. :) We're gonna try to catch Prince Caspian on Wednesday, which will also help in the task of avoiding opening night crowds for what is, when it comes down to it, a kids movie.

I'm at the archives all next week for work (local, though), so expect lots of these after work type posts. No wifi in the research room, from what I've been told. :(

Gamer geek post ahead!

(So for the non-gamer geeks, while you are welcome to read today's post, you may not understand much of it. :) Don't worry, I try to keep these posts to a minimum!)

So the Scion game came to a glorious end on Saturday night, as planned. Next on the agenda is my Exalted game, and I'm getting more and more excited for it! :)

I played Exalted 5 years ago, not too long after it came out. We only played for a month or two, and then the game ended due to real life stuff happening. I got rid of my books, and didn't look back. But it was sort of always sitting in the back of my brain, especially once we started in the Scion game. The ST and the other players were all Exalted fans, and Scion incoporated some of the parts of Exalted that I really liked into the system.

So when the Scion ST announced that the game would be concluding in January, and asked what we wanted to do next, I volunteered to run Exalted, to much excitement from the rest of the game. So we started collecting up books from eBay and used game stores (all of them are LONG out of print), and I started putting together ideas.

Last night, I figured out the bulk of my plot while driving to pick up Jerome from work. I sat down and scribbled out a few pages of notes as soon as I got there. Finally, it looks like my game is getting somewhere!

I still need to squeeze in several days worth of reading of course, to get caught up on all of the stuff that's relevant to me as an ST, that I could ignore as a player. I don't know where I'm going to find several days to read, of course, so I may just have to wing it a bit... :) That, and ask a lot of questions of the folks who know the game better than me. :)

Forgot to mention yesterday that we were playing Southern Lights last night... which is probably just as well, cuz I don't have much to report from that game. The Old Man had been on vacation, and hadn't planned much for the game, so we mostly just chatted about things like rules. There was a little bit of IC time though, and it looks like the Circle is going to be okay, without my intervention... :) You don't know how tempted I was to try to get Dark Sun and Dagian to "shake" on the agreement they made to work together... me being Eclipse Caste, they would be stuck with their agreement FOREVER, if they had let me seal the deal with my Anima power... ;)

Other than that, just the usual daily grind at work... my desk is finally beginning to be cleared off, which is a nice change... :)

Day 3 of the ScaryWhiteGirl's vacation is getting close to the end. My major accomplishment for the day: I am now the proud owner of a cell phone! I feel all trendy and stuff! I've been sitting around entertaining my friends by playing with it, and giggling like a schoolgirl when I find something nifty. At the moment, it plays "Ride of the Valkyries" when it rings... sweet... :)

No, I'm not posting the number here. Cuz most of the people I would want to call me won't, and the people who I don't want to call me will. Yeah, that made sense to me... :)

Now we're just awaiting the arrival of two new players for Southern Lights, and then we get to play. w00t! :) I'll update that page sooner or later... probably next week... :)

Southern Lights (Exalted) last night was AWESOME! :) Granted, my character is getting all kinds of fucked with, but it's fun... I really like the fact that everyone in the game has deep backstories, and that those backstories have been worked into the plot of the game... :) And I got an extra XP last night for spending a few minutes writing up the names, occupations, and family relationships of my 25 followers... ;) Nice... :)

Got some really exciting, kewl news last night before the game... but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say anything about it yet... will find out for sure tonight, and post it when I can... ;)

In other news, Megan is coming down tonight with a "ton" of her stuff... she's gonna be down fairly late, unfortunately, which is extra unfortunate due to the fact that I'm soooo tired right now... I'm thinking I won't be at work all day... must get more sleep!

Lots of good stuff going through my head for "Angels Laugh," which is the name of my upcoming all-Tremere chronicle, set in New Orleans. I'm planning to work up a page for it either this week or next, because there is a lot of information my players are going to need before the game begins... I've already started plotting some neat stuff... and as soon as I learn a little more about everyone's characters, I'll be in full blown plotting mode... ;) Muhahahah... ;)

Well, it's yet another Wednesday. Exalted tonight! I would like to take this opportunity to tell all of the gamers who read my blog: if you haven't tried Exalted yet, give it a try. It's a LOT of fun!

ST meeting for Garou went nicely. The brainstorming powers of 8 people are quite frightening at times... :) And, to add in my usual taunt. Hey players in Fury! Muhahahahaha... ;)

It seems like I've been really busy lately, but I guess it's actually that I haven't been home a whole lot. So I haven't gotten some stuff done that I probably should be working on... *sigh*... why can't there be more hours in the day?

Just finished the page for Southern Lights. Okay, so the color isn't the greatest, but I'm going for some sunny type color... and trust me, the PURE yellow that I had at first was FAR worse... :)

Exalted last night was pretty awesome, especially my "sexy" bow shot... I dunno, the guys thought it was neat when I shot two arrows off my bow at the same time, and, because of the way that I was positioned, they appeared to come from either side of Dariel's (Gabe's character's) head... :) Anyways, I'm gonna make a page for the game later on... I think the Old Man decided on "Southern Lights" for the chronicle name... nice... :)

Something from Erin's livejournal...

Seven things that scare you: Falling, Going to the dentist, Birds (don't ask), Driving in the snow, the second floor of my Grandma's old house, Rejection, Pain
Seven things you love: My friends, Sleep, Music, Gaming, Writing, Warm rain, My "nest chair" (pappasan)
Seven things you hate: Liars, People being fake, Stupid drama, Hangovers, Being sick, Feeling trapped, Losing friends
Seven things in your room: Maddie (my favorite stuffed cat), Poster of Death, 12 Tales CD, alarm clock, clothes (lots of 'em!), shoes (yup, lots of those too!), and... oh yeah... my BED!
Seven random facts about you:
I claim my confirmation name (Elizabeth) as a second middle name
My eyes have been known to turn green(ish) when I cry
I've never read all of the Lord of the Rings books
I could read when I was 3 years old
I've been in school almost consistently since I was 4 years old
Very few people believe me when I tell them how old I am
I've never been out of the United States
Seven things you plan to do before you die: Visit another country, Visit my relatives in South Carolina, Publish something that I've written (as opposed to edited), Get the side yard on my house turned into a patio, Actually learn how to play the guitar decently, Read the Lord of the Rings books, Have purple hair (at least for one day!)
Seven things you can do: Program HTML, Storytell Vampire and other World of Darkness games, Write passable fiction, Cook some damn good stir fry, Drink tequila without flinching, Drive a stick shift, and Amuse the hell out of people with my crazy stories... :)

(Had to edit part of the list to make it easier to read...)

Hmmm... not a whole lot to say at the moment... the Old Man's Exalted game starts tonight... should be fun... I want to find a picture of what my character looks like when she's all dressed up, though... cuz it's gonna be kinda hard to imagine me playing a character that only has her eyes visible... :)

I guess my comments have been flaky for the past couple of days, which is why I haven't gotten very many... either that, or no one loves me... *sniffle*... this is my shameless plug to get people to comment on my page... I know, I'm pathetic... :)

Still trying to work out my plans for the weekend... the Forgotten _should_ be back on Saturday, but I haven't gotten actual ST confirmation on that yet... you would think they would tell their beloved narrator (and LARP Marm) when things are going on... but I didn't even know the game was going on hiatus until the players found out... yeah...