EGX

You would think that when you decide to go to a convention you would remember the date and be hyped up about it for weeks beforehand. Apparently both me and my partner forgot that we had tickets to this until reminded that we’d agreed to give friends a lift back from the event.

So Thursday, Friday and Saturday were spent in mild anticipation, but I’m still unsure how I managed to forget about my first convention.

Of course, now I have been, and I am certainly not forgetting it.

I was bundled into the car fairly early in the morning (I am very much not a morning person, so rolling out of bed and into the car at 7am in the morning was not my idea of fun) and then the partner drove us up in very good time, so we got there a little after ten, got our wristbands, and stood in a huge queue for half an hour. That gave us time to study the map and plan our first moves. And watch a helpful videos highlighting some bits and pieces of the show.

Gates opened at 11am, and my partner made straight for the Elite Dangerous booth where they had VR set up. I am not all that interested by tiny flying spaceships, so I left him in that queue and went over to Nintendo.

I played Zelda Tri Force heroes, which looks really fun, and the best part is you only need one copy of the game and two friends with 3DSs to get a team together. Or you can play over the net 🙂

I then went and looked around the Indie block of games. I watched a fair few, and played an interested puzzle game called Induction. Cubes and timelines have to interact to solve the puzzles. It was good.

Then I went into the over 18s area, picking up a free energy drink sample, and went and played the Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate Demo. I liked a lot (although I am slow at playing it and didn’t get that far through the mission).

I went back to the VR line, where my partner was still queuing, and handed the energy drink off to him. It took him another twenty minutes to get to the front of the queue (for a total time of two hours) and get into that VR chair for five minutes, but his face as he climbed out afterwards was one of pure ecstatic joy. He even said “I could have driven here for three hours, queued for two, played that for five minutes, driven home for another three hours, and it would still have been worth it.”

Thankfully, that wasn’t it. We went and pre-ordered Halo 5, getting a bunch of free swag for doing so (including cortana’s chip USB sticks) waited around the Xbox area, had a talk from the lead designer person for Halo 5, snagged a free Halo 5 tshirt, and then we both went and queued for the demo they had running. It was AMAZING. 12 v 12 arena fight, with AI, bosses, bases and a whole bunch of gear as you level up. I got 50 points for my team by killing mini bosses! My partner got 600. Because he’s a freaking show off. But seriously, it was great, and normally I’m happy to leave online battle alone, but I think I might get into it if it’s that good! And the introduction videos for the games itself were amazing and so hype inducing, and Nathan Fillion is in it! I’ll admit it, I fangirled.

We walked around a bit after that, he checked out the Indie games whilst I flumped on comfy seating. There were some other bits and pieces. We attempted and failed to win an Wii U, but got Pokemon cards instead. Met up with our friends, played a couple more small games, then headed home.

All in all, it was really great, and I had a great time for my first convention. Sure, I would love it if there were less people, but that just goes to show how popular gaming is 🙂

And as well as checking out a bunch of new games, we got a heck of a lot of loot by the end, only a couple of bits of it bought!

Empire Y3E4

So,four times a year, I and a bunch of my friends, take ourselves to a field and pretend to be citizens of a great empire, and I run around doing my magic thing and being one of the six grandmasters of magic.

Normally, after this event, I do a hot and nots. It’s a thing that a lot of players do where they talk about the bits of the weekend that they enjoyed, and the bits that were not so good.

However, this event, event 4 of year 3, I do not have hots and nots.

Or, rather, my hots and nots of the events have been utterly eclipsed by one single thing:

DRAGON!

Photo Credits to Judith Dawn Taylor & Charlotte Moss.

They made a freaking dragon! (Okay, technically a Drake, but who cares!)

It was mobile and everything, the neck moved, the mouth opened, it bobbed up and down, there were sound effects, smoke pouring out from it’s mouth due to excellent special effects.

After the main fighting was done, I went over to see it (still in character, being a human mercenary as we were monstering) and it was amazing, they had put so much thought and detail into it.

And then we realised that we had eight or so prisoners.

And a dragon.

😀

We fed the prisoners to the dragon.

All of the love to those poor players that did get eaten, they roleplayed it magnificently. Some of them were screaming and crying, others tried to attack the giant head, punching and kicking it, struggling with the orc monsters that were dragging them towards the head. I mean, it was epic, so so epic, and I had front row seats!

So happy.

They have since released a blog post, which you can find here, detailing how they went about making the dragon head, and even knowing how it’s done only serves to make it more amazing, as you realise just how much work PD puts into the games that it runs. It’s amazing.

So I have no hots. I have no nots, all I have is the magnificence of a dragon overulling all of my weekend. And I am so okay with that.

Tsuro

Last week I accidentally tripped over and managed to swipe my card at just the right time to buy a board game. Whoops.

However, considering the board game in question is Tsuro, I think I can forgive my feet and hands for having this little slip up.

Tsuro: The game of the Path, is a wonderful board game that I have played at many different events and been charmed by. It has an asian, spiritual theme to it, as the players walk along the “many roads that lead to divine wisdom” in a “classic quest for enlightenment”. The fact that there is a large Asian dragon on the box and pieces only serves to further draw me into this game.

The game is designed for 2 to 8 players, and each player chooses one of the adorable little tokens in one of eight colours which have dragons printed on them.

You then have the board, which is a six by six outline of a grid, and the token starts on one of the white marks at the edge of the board.

Each person is then given three tiles to start off with, you choose the first player in whatever way you see fit, and they play the first tile.

The point of the game is to be the last person on the board. Each tile has a number of paths that criss-cross, go off in different directions, and when you place a tile, you have to follow the path that you have laid down. If this path goes off the edge of the board, you die. If this path leads you to collide into another player, you both die. The simple premise is quick to play, but beautiful in execution.

And is it a really clever game. It’s designed so that you can never get stuck in a loop, you have to follow the path and there is always a path available to you, and if you actually cover the board, the last tile is a dragon tile and the first person to reach it wins. I personally have never seen this happen.

It’s a lovely game, and quick to play. A round can take between 5 and 15 minutes, and it’s easy to set up and pack away. It really does have a lot going for it. So if you get a chance, give it a go, I really do recommend it.

Warlords of Draenor

I have my collectors edition, and I have passed through the Dark Portal opening zone.

Both are beautiful.

I am in love with Shadowmoon Valley already.

I know NaNoWriMo is still going on. But I already did 50K. I can slack off for a little bit, right?

Man, November is a busy month. How are the rest of you getting along?

Character Generation

Dark Met is finally here!

And by here I mean that last night we had a stating session. But not your average stating sessions, Oh no, we didn’t even touch numbers and mechanics. That for the second session. This session was all about play styles and setting.

So, we opened with a quiz. I love quizzes, it’s part of being a nerd, but it was a multiple choice questionnaire, and at the end you tot up the number of As, Bs, Cs and Ds, and then see what dominant play style you have.

I came out with 4 Ds, 3As, 2Cs and 0Bs. This means I had 4 Actor points, 3 Socialite points, 2 Fixer points and 0 Cultivator points.

What are these four play styles? I’m glad you asked:

• Socialite – a player who enjoys being part of a team, talking to other people/characters/needs attention from their gaming.
• Cultivator – focuses on mechanical development, enjoys using mechanics and solving challenges with rules
• Fixer – Someone who enjoys the setting and lore of the story the most, like finding challenges and solving problems and puzzles
• Actor – enjoys the story of a character, character driven role-play is important

Now, this is a very simplified version of all of this. The quiz they gave us was based on Eddy Webb’s game theory. If you are interested in more about this, see his presentation here on youtube. It is fascinating.

He also has a 2014 updated version called Your Game Still Sucks. Here’s the mp3 and here’s the slides.

My play style is Actor with Socialite elements. Personally, I found that I have a lot of the good points of an Actor (character development and story) and a lot of the negative points (potentially) of a Socialite (I like standing out and having attention). There is no right or wrong play style, all of the play styles are equally valid, and all of them have good points and bad points. The purpose of the exercise was to see what our play style was and to think about what we want to get out of games and how we play the games. And you can be more than one (as a lot of people were). Many people were surprised at my lack of interest in cultivating. I like numbers, and I like statting, but it’s not how I play. It just happens at the start of games. To me it’s part of building a character, leading into my actor style.

So once we had our play style, we talked in small group and compared play styles and found some of the bits in games we had played in that we liked. I had some stuff about personal character arcs and learning special things, and also the time where someone tried to dick me over, so I got most of the player base and we had a big fight in the game and overthrew the prince. It was awesome. Also banishing that demon. That was awesome, I got to rock out, and had an arm bitten off. In character, not in real life.

The aim of this was to work out what we like and want from a game. Why do we play, and what do we enjoy the most. From here, we actually started thinking about characters.

They told us to turn up with three character concepts, which I did. Start with a one sentence idea. My three were Shy Artefact Scholar, Tough as nails Storyteller and Blind Architect.

Then, figure out what you would do in uptime. Aka, when the game is going on. Here’s where I hit a little stumbling block. The blind architect didn’t have anything to do in uptime. I tried to think of stuff to do, within my actor and socialite play styles, and I found that the novelty of the character would get old quickly. Beyond the initial “oh, she’s blind” there really was nothing there, so the character got scrapped. The other two, happily, had things to do in both uptime and downtime. My scholar gets to go after plot (I do occasionally like the fixer stuff) and I can develop her out of her shyness slowly, and my storyteller gets to be social and develop by bouncing off other people and being very reactive and the start point for other people.

Then, right at the end, is the question: What clan and Covenant do you think they might play. And the refs were encouraging us to not fix this down, but to have options. This is in Blood and Smoke / Vampire the Requiem so we have the new WoD clans and covenants. My scholar is definitely a Mekhet, starting unaligned to go into any covenant, although maybe Ordo Dracul over any others. My storyteller is Gangrel (maybe Ventrue?) and could either be Invictus, Crone or Lance, leaning towards Lance.

We then talked to other people, each of whom had at least one concept with options and we talked about all the concepts and there was lots of talking and speculating because we have favourites but no concretes because the refs need a level of balance between all the clans an covenents so we might have to change bits and pieces.

But anyway, the upshot of this all is that I am hyped, I have found out a couple of new things about myself as a gamer, a new way of approaching character building (which also helps with writing things), and I am ready to have fun. Now I just need to see if I can come up with a reasonable third character concept. I’m probably not going to want to play it as much as my first two, but it’s good to have options.

More Kickstarter

Man, food poisoning sucks. Yeah, that’s what I spent my weekend with. Hence lack of anything resembling a post.

In more pleasant news, I’ve found this kickstarter I want to tell you about. It’s a game about writing. Two of my favourite things bundled up into one neat little package. I was excited when I found it.

It’s called Elegy for a Dead World, it’s currently funded to the tune of two stretch goals with 28 hours to go. So if you fancy getting what looks like a neat little game for $10, check it out here.

 

 

Empire Event 8

So. I was after a relaxing weekend. Hang out in the field, with some friends, maybe do some magic. Nice and relaxing.

I did not get relaxing. At all. Ignoring the fact that I had a bad piece of news from the family this weekend (not unexpected news, but that doesn’t make it any less bad), everything that happened at Empire definitely did nothing to calm my nerves down. In fact, they had the complete opposite effect.

 

Friday Evening

Turn up, pitch tent, time in. Standing (meeting of the Navarr nation) happens and I recommend a friend for the position of Coroner because she wasn’t there and I know her character would love that.

I then happen to be going past the Regio (powerful magic circle for casting rituals) when it exploded. Spent the next hour healing people who exploded in rituals. I’ve never seen labyrinth script engraved on someone’s organs before, so that was fun, and then there were a lot of venoms. So many venoms.

After that Conclave (meeting of the mages) and due to more than one person running off to do other things, I get to stand in a proxy grandmaster of the order and the rod and shield. This was pretty cool, but does mean organising and shouting at people. Luckily, these are things I am good at. There was then the silliest motion I have ever heard, that priests should be present for all Eternal/Herald (powerful MAGICAL beings) interactions. He was laughed out. There was also the narrow contest between Archmage’s for Spring, but Kallendar managed to hold onto it (I like that Orc a lot). There was also a contest for Warmage, but considering the challenger basically spent his entire time trash talking the current Warmage, and not listing why he was better, there really wasn’t a contest in that one.

That evening, we were then approached by a Night herald and offered a really nice new Night Ritual, which will allow us to look like vallorn to other vallorn (nature gone made and started growing, think big trees and bugs, but nasty). All we had to do was go into a vallorn infested area and retrieve an ever blooming weirwood tree for him. Not a problem. Not a problem at all (this may or may be sarcasm). But, I was really interested in this, since if we did it, and got this ritual, we would be able to walk trods (magical paths that counteract the vallorn infestations when you walk them) that we haven’t been able to in years. So I went to bed mulling over that possibility.

 

Saturday

Managed to get a bit of a lie in, which was nice. what wasn’t nice was the first thing I got told when I woke up was that the Archmage of Spring had been assassinated the previous night. That was a big shock, and really sad. He was a great Archmage. The Orcs of course, were also a little annoyed at this.

After that I ambled over to the Sentinel Gate (big portal used to go on away mission and battles) because the army that went out was coming back. I picked up one guy, who when told he had the neastest surgeon on the field working on him, asked to be left with a scar. Since I knew he was a big winter ritualist, I gave him a nice big W shaped scar, and put some little ice crystal round it. He then later became the new Archmage of Winter when the old one stepped down. Appropriate!

I then had lunch at Tykes. they were serving Dawn pig in a bun. So very very delicious.

After lunch we had a meeting to discuss the possibility of the vallorn mission. Mainly, did we want to do it or not. The Navarr, who ancestral home was torn down by the vallorn (maybe because we created them a little through tiny amounts of magical overuse) we obviously very interested in this. But we did have other nations coming along as well. We discussed it, and eventually agreed to try and rescue the tree, and more importantly, see if the ritual worked. I was quite nervous for the rest of the afternoon.

I then spent quite a lot of time sourcing potions, herbs, anti-venoms and a bond ring (magical item that allows you to get one person bonded to you up off the floor when they fall over), just so that we were super prepared for the mission tonight. I decided to wear armour and forgo magical healing, because although I was super excited to go on this mission, I wasn’t going to be stupid about it, and mages are really squishy! (You can’t cast magic in armour. So the choice was armour or magic. I choose armour.)

There was then a big fight between two Navarr. Sort of a grudge match, although the two are friends. They just wanted to know who was the better fighter out of the two of them. Carr won, and I got to patch him up, and that was my first encouter with these new types of traumatic wounds, where someone is infected by a realm of magic and starts turning into the lineage. This didn’t happen during the fight, it must have happened earlier, but it was still slightly alarming to learn that Carr had been turning into a Draughir (Winter lineage) for most of the day. Finding something perfect and beautiful to drive the winter out of him proved a bit of a challenge, but we got there in the end.

I myself then went to find a friend, and had the most terrifying encounter of the whole weekend, where I was tackled by a tiny monster, and defeated! She stood on top of me and proclaimed her victory to the whole world, continually hitting me when I got back up to tickle her. I love having children on the field, they are simply the best. Especially when they run to tackle you, over giving their parents a hug!

I tried to bid on some more Roseweald (the anti-venom herb) in the open auction, but was outbid. Also the Brass coast were having a holiday where they abandon all virtue and make a nuisance of themselves. The auctioneer was not impressed when they dragged their boat in and tried to auction it off. Thankfully, I didn’t need to stay for all of it, and got to escape the mad antics of the freeborn. Although they did chase Wisdom through our camp later that evening. But evening for me means Conclave.

Turning up to conclave in armour is fun, especially since I had to take it all off to cast the magic to travel to the Hall of Worlds (super secret mage club!) and then put it all back on again. But I was still acting Grandmaster since all the other people were off doing other things. It dragged on, there were loads of motions, one of which was for the elction of Archmage of Spring, since the last one had been murdered. However, the person who challenge him for it last night (and was his assistant when he was alive) had been cleared of any suspicion in his death and was voted in with popularity. Also, there was another really dumb motion, and I thought that we had run out of dumb. Someone put forward that we were using too much of our magic on battle magic, and that we should withhold all magical support from the Empire until they build us a College of Magic. Because that’s what we really need. Another College of Magic. Because we couldn’t just ask for one to be built. Needless to say, she was shouted at for a bit, rejected, and then laughed out of Conclave. Which then proceeded to run on, and on, and nearly into my mission time.

Practically running out of conclave when it finished, I thankfully had my armour on me, and could put it on as I join the rest of the party outside, and we had the Night ritual cast upon us in the Regio (which had thankfully stopped exploding) and then we left. Some Navarr had gathered outside the portal and the hospital had been prepared to deal with all of the poison, since that is what vallorn do. We didn’t stick around for very long, just enough to wait for a bumblebee (the refs where yellow and black tabards, so we call them bumblebees) and then we popped through the portal.

It was dark, and we had to go slow just in case we came upon Vallorn. Thankfully, the regio where the tree was growing was very well lit with the magics of spring, and acted like a beacon to draw us in. We started to shamble, and mumble and groan a bit, nervous that it wouldn’t work, but it did! The spell actually worked! Although it was still terrifying to be this close to vallorn, having them sniff at you, and having to remain calm and shamble on. The vallorn didn’t react to us, except in one instance where one member was bumped into, and growled at. When she didn’t growl back, she was attacked and dropped. But it wasn’t seeing through the disguise, it was just a vallorn hierarchy thing!  Then Cormac, blooming Cormac, picked the special bag to put the tree in off her body, shoved the tree in the bag, then dragged Meredith off the floor, healing her up as the vallorn twigged there was something wrong and they pegged it! Corageous to the point of idiocy! He then handed off the tree to someone else, and went back to make sure that everyone else got out. We all pegged it back, got through the portal, got checked over, and then I got to detect magic the tree. Turns out it wasn’t vallorn infected like we feared, it was just very spring attuned, to the magnitude of 20, which is why it’s ever blooming.

Best part? No one was posioned. Apart from Willa, who held the tree with bare hands. But she got cured. I went to sleep very very happy. And a little exhausted.

 

Sunday

Battle day! Woke up, got ready, was feeling rather confident after the events of Saturday. Boy was that a mistake.

The battle was a nightmare. A complete exercise in chaos where little groups were getting cut off, people kept retreating whilst others were fighting, stringing us out, and basically being absolutely terrible.

The first time I got cut down, there was a small group of us who were trying to attempt a fighting retreat, because we had been cut off from the main force (they were too busy moving away to fight the Orcs around us), and a few of us fell because we were a really small group of about five, and there were twenty Orcs. One of them teased us for a bit, saying he was taking us prisoner, how did we like that, and then my potion kicked in, I got back up, and stabbed him, then healed people up and we tried to move on.

The second time was about a minute after that because the main force had gone quite a distance, and there were a lot of Orcs in between them and us. We got dropped, and left for a bit. Then another Orc came up, took out weapons, patched us up, and then one by one took us to go and taunt the other fighters. (OOC he was lovely. He said that it was shit that we were dying there, so he was going to throw us back to the enemy.) I was patch up, dragged off, forced to my knees in front of the front line, at which point people kind of ignore it for a few moments, then an archer shot one of the orcs standing over me, I whipped out the dagger I had hidden up my skirt out, slashed the ankle of the other one and then desperately crawled to freedom. Skinned knees and bruised wrists totally worth it (and the roleplay was amazing, thank you to that Orc!).

The third time I got dropped was when I was in the middle of a scrum of people, and lots of the people in armour decided that the better fighting was to be had at the front, the direction we were pushing in, so left the back. I got pushed out the back, and directly into the line of Orcs that were there. Thanks people in armour. Thanks a lot. A slave of the Orcs then picked me up, healed me and persuaded her Orc master that I was valuable, and we should ransom me back rather than kill me. I was popped down by a tree, right behind the Orc front line, which was blockading the entrance to the forest, while the Empire army had been forced out into the field. I waited, and waited, tried to heal some other Empire citizen but they were sadly beyond help, and waited, and when the Orc line broke, made a run for it, and tumbled into the waiting arms of a friend who healed me up, because of course the Orcs stabbed me as I ran passed, and all I had was a little dagger.

Then we actually had some cohesion, found one of the bit we were supposed to, made a push back into the forest, found the stone head we had come here to collect, did a ritual thingy, then picked it up and got it out. How we managed all that when we were so fragmented at the beginning I have no idea, but I came back through the portal, shaking all over and couldn’t quite believe that I was still alive after all of that.

I did get another great bit of roleplay, as someone else brought through the slave girl that had saved me that third time, and there was lots of crying and hugs as I told ehr that she had saved my life, and that she was a good person, and she was not horrible for helping the Orcs whilst she was a slave. Excellent little bit of roleplay, and I got to cry, which after being afraid I was going to die two times (the first time I had the potion, so I knew I was okay that time) is what I kind of needed.

After spending twenty minutes shaking and having little bits of food and drink shoved at me, we had a standing. Unfortunately, eight people of Navarr did die in the battle, which didn’t surprise me as that was the worst example of battlefield tactics I have ever seen. We then elected our new general, and my good friend Merryn was elected. The look on her face as she saw how long the line of people backing her was was priceless. We also celebrated Cormac’s courage and he was officially given the title of ‘Illium-Balls’ (Illium being the most precious metal in the Empire).

We then went and delivered that tree to the Night Herald, who was very grateful, and promised to deliver that ritual to us on a scroll by the Spring (two games time), and in the meantime cast it upon us if we needed it again.

Then I actually managed to have a nice quiet hour to myself, and calmed down enough to pack up the tent so that when time out happened we were ready to pack up the car and go.

 

So all in all, this was not the quiet event that I had wanted. But you know what? It was the best event that I have ever had, and I wouldn’t change it (not even the nearly dying bits) for anything. Even if it does mean that I am completely exhausted now, both physically and emotionally.

Oh, and I can find a dragon anywhere. I picked up this cute little guy on the field, made of green and purple felt. I named him Regio :3

Dungeons and Dragon Dice Shaming

So, for the first time in a while, I played Dungeons and Dragons last night. I word my dragon earrings and everything. It was the first game of what is hopefully going to be a long campaign, starting right from level 2 (level 1 was deemed too boring to start at) and going all the way up to 30.

It was good, although my roleplaying is going to take a little while to get right. I’m playing her too high class at the moment. I need her to be snarky, vivacious, not suited at all for the military, but basically a good person who does like helping people beneath it all. I never play the easy characters.

She’s an ardent though, so I’m having real fun with the whole stick my spear in this guy, then shield/heal/protect my allies. It’s really fun. Although I have forgotten some rules, and having the sheet in black and white meant that I was using an encounter power as an at-will for most of the fight – whoops!

But the main part was once again, my dice kept rolling really low for me. I know that there has been a  trend of dice shaming, where people post pictures of their dice with notes about what they have done to them. I prefer a more direct route with my dice. If they failed me, they are banished to the bottomless pool of aqua.

*Note: Bottomless pool of aqua may or may not actually be bottomless.

Emotional rollercoaster

Death is harder on those who are left behind     – Robert La Fosse, Nothing to Hide

My changeling character is a lively, enthusiastic, bubbly, life and soul of the party kind of girl. There’s an innocence and sweetness about her which never fails to bring a smile to other people, and at the national a couple of weekend ago, I got complimented about the way that I roleplayed her, and had people telling me how much they enjoyed it.

We had our local game yesterday though, and for once I didn’t get to play her as I usually do. Not even as the slightly confused person she can sometimes be, or slightly sad when she learns an unpleasant truth. No, yesterday we learnt that my character’s husband, and another prominent member of the summer court, were dead. They died taking down a True Fae, killing him so that our freehold and Suffolk’s could live in peace and the war could end.

So as soon as the one member of the summer court who was well enough to turn up to the gathering delivered the news, my character immediately shuts down, picks up for a frantic half hour of, “No he can’t be dead, he can’t be.” Sees his grave, and then immediately goes into a fugue state where nothing really gets through to her.

(I’ll make it extra clear at this point that this is all in character in the game that we play, and no actually people have been hurt, just their character and some imaginary NPCs)

And you know what? It was so hard to play her as a depressed person. And it was completely out of the blue (well, not completely, out of character I knew that they had gone to fight him, but not that they had died doing it), so I just had to make it up as I go along and it was actually one of the hardest thing that I have ever had to roleplay, just sitting there and staring into space and not reacting to anything. I did decide to wander off, back to his grave about halfway through the game, hoping other characters would chase me. They did in the end, but not immediately like I thought they would, as they kind of went “We’ll just give her some space.”.

It’s great, because my character has been after her independence for ages now, trying to prove that she can make her own decisions, and she can be a grown up and look after herself, but then this happens, and she basically shuts down so that she CAN’T look after herself, but people are still trying to let her, not realising that all the will and effort has gone out of her because she still doesn’t believe that he’s really really dead.

And after the game ended, I started crying, because playing a grief stricken person is hard, and all the emotion I had just welled up in me and I started sobbing whilst still going around and hugging people and it was just so emotional the whole game, and I don’t think I’m over it this morning.

I love story telling, whether it’s in a novel, or in a role playing game, but that doesn’t mean that it is always easy! The one thing it is though? It is always rewarding. And the grief is hardly going to be contained in this one game. To a future filled with more drama and roleplay!

National Characters

Last weekend was a pretty good weekend. There was a national, and by national I mean people from all over the UK gathered in one place and we did a lot of roleplaying. There was also drinking and hanging out, but mainly it was for the roleplaying.

I had a pretty good time. I have a definite favourite game that I played it (it was the first changeling game, with the mirror plots. I named all the NPCs and drove people insane, it was great!) but the others were good, if not fantastic. All in all, I had a solid weekend of gaming.

However, since the weekend finished there has been a topic on my mind more than others. In under a year, the whole system, all of the games, all of the domains, is resetting. Chronicles ends, we put our old characters and stories to bed, and then start up a new chronicle with new characters and new roleplaying to happen. So, I think you can see why, I am currently concentrating on hashing out some new character to play.

I just have this tinsey little problem. I like statting characters. I love just sitting down and thinking up idea after idea and putting numbers, costume ideas, backstory and all the other things to them. I love playing around with stats and mechanics and variations, and this is before we even know exactly what the setting is going to be in the new chronicles! The people who are working on it could turn around and go ‘so it’s like this now’ which will entirely ruin a character idea and I’ll have to come up with a new one, and there will probably be some mechanical changes of how things work, or they’ll change how much xp we get or something that means that all this effort I’m putting in now will have to be re-written. Even knowing that, I’m still statting all of them. And coming up with backstory. And costume, and all the other bits and pieces that go with creating a character. I have a OneNote section filled with pages of notes, and seven excel spreadsheets of numbers for the various ideas! I just can’t stop myself!

Does anyone else ever have this problem? Writers for example- can you slow down your brain so that things come at a manageable pace and you don’t waste any effort? I know I don’t/can’t/won’t whichever one is more appropriate at the time.

So even though I know it’s probably going to be wasted effort, I’m statting all my current concepts. I have been neglecting the writing for a little while, and I probably should get back to that (especially since the beta of a web service I’ve been looking forward to just got released) but I seem to be on a big roleplaying high and I do like harnessing enthusiasm when it’s around.