Rowan Tree and Red Thread

We had a real gang of friends round to play boardgames last night. Ivan, Suzanna, Irene and Ian were down from Dublin, and we met them in Fota for picnic during the day. A good time was had by all I think.

In the evening after the kids were off to bed Ivan, Irene and Ian dropped round to join Alai and Kate to make a total of seven for games. I scratched my head and poked around until I found Incan Gold, which plays up to 8.

After explaining the rules and making our tents we got down to play. Quickly Sam established a pattern of cautious play, making for the exit once a reasonable number of points were available. This was only partly because of her dramatic reaction to the revelation of the Snake cards. The first game ended Myles 24, Kate 22, Ian 21, Sam 18 and Alai, Irene and Ivan all on 14.

The second game was initially lower scoring, with piles of hazard cards coming out early, but the artifacts were more plentiful later on and the final scores were Alex 31, Sam 25, Ivan 21, Ian 17, Irene 17, Kate 15 and Myles a pitiful 13.

Good fast games, made better by lively table talk and poor Pedro the bearer, who in our stories ended up set on fire, turned into zombie, trapped in a landslide and eaten by spiders.

I'm reading a new roleplaying game called ICONS. It uses random generation of superpowers (if so desired) and I got the urge to roll for powers. I don't have my dice at work and...
Well to cut it short I found this QuickKwiz link and generated super powers for my game group. It was a slow lunchtime.

( Powers beyond mortal ken lie within... )

Happy birthday stupidgoatboy. I hope you have a fun-filled day.

As part of my recent splurge on boardgames I got a copy of Ticket to Ride Europe and we had a chance to play it last night with alaimacerc. I was surprised that the play was distinctly different to the original TtR, and I think I like the map as least as much as the original. I'm not convinced the tunnel rule with its additional random element is all that great, but I do like the long tickets being separated from the standard tickets.

As it happened in our game we didn't see the need to use the stations, so I don't know how much impact they'd have in play normally. Our play did seem to split the board down the middle, with me the only player really laying track in the west, and sammywol and alaimacerc fighting it out over the eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. As it turned out the lack of competion in France and Spain didn't help me much. I placed last.

Final scores were sammywol 131, alaimacerc 101, me 97. With an additional +12 to everyone for stations unspent.

We had my daughter's school's winter fair yesterday and had a good time of it, with plenty of baked goods, Christmas decorations (see previous post) and sundry stuffing of faces. My M&M cookies all sold so I'm pleased.

After the chaos of the fair we had friends round on Sunday night for a board game. We had our first play of Trias, and found it an interesting game, though one with potentially painful end conditions that may screw the player to the left of the one who draws the comet. I loved the little dino pieces (Meenosaurs I suppose, if the little fellas in Carcassonne are Meeple) and the gradual separation of Pangea that the tile movement rules produce.

Final scores were Myles 29, sammywol 27, irishkate 19 and alaimacerc 17.

We had irishkate and alaimacerc round last night and played Ticket to Ride. It was irishkate's first game of TTR, which explains why she creamed us. Final score something like irishkate 130+, me 100, sammywol 98, and alaimacerc 50+.

A good draw of a late game ticket helped irishkate, but really she would have won handily even with her starting tickets. A good run all across the Canadian cities at the top of the board secured her big tickets and gave her a good reach to lots of other cities.

Beginner's luck, obviously. I'm scared to play Puerto Rico with her, at least for the first time, as she'll probably buy the whole island.

A very happy birthday to muskrat_john, his first of many with his adoring daughter to brighten the day.

It was lovely to meet fjm and chilperic this weekend, on their holiday visit to Cork. sammywol and I enjoyed a very pleasant meal and excellent conversation at Isaac's, one of Cork's better restaurants and a favourite of our before the kids cramped our eating out habit.

My mother was down from Dublin too, bringing swag for the kids and providing much welcomed babysitting for our meal out on Saturday night.

In all a good weekend marred only by the onset of a cold. I need more ginseng!

A very happy birthday to a_d_medievalist. May your students be wise and engaged, your colleagues helpful and witty and your family warm and good cooks.

Tonight's game included wingless griffins with the temperaments of cats, a library with a secret door, headless badger spirits intent on mischief, a caldera lined with ice, tobogganning down a sheet of said ice on the rib cage of a steer, mighty magics sufficient to turn an entire caldera of ice into a lake - incidentally freeing the trapped heart of a primal dragon entombed beneath the ice - and for one character at least, being bent over a chamomille bower and rogered by the king.

In short, a good night.

Happy birthday to friends wanton_heat_jet and Ken, who is curiously without a LJ account.

Happy birthday purplecthulhu, may you dream peacefully in the depths of glorious end times.

A very happy birthday to lordess. Best wishes for a fun time celebrating!

Happy birthday thoughts and hugs in irishkate's direction. Once we've sammywol back on her feet we'll take you out to the movies, or have you round for cake, as you prefer.

Best birthday wishes to mnemex. Have a fun time celebrating!

A very happy birthday to the dear daftnewt in far off Canuckistan. Have fun today!

A very happy birthday to delichan. May it contain fun, frolics and little rain.

Many happy returns of the day to smalley_smoot. Hope it's a good one.

Last night for the first time in an age we had alaimacerc over for a board game session. We dragged out Puerto Rico and played a three hander. alaimacerc's shipping strataegy looked good at first but didn't really get the money rolling and he suffered in the end game as a result. I thought I had a pretty good lock on first place, but I was surprised (pleasantly enough) to find that sammywol pulled up sharpish in the last couple of turns to grab first place in the tie-breaker. Final scores: 49, 49, 39, I think.

Well done, sammywol!

A very happy Independence Day to all my US friends. I hope each of you is enjoying life, liberty and pursuing happiness in your own way. Have fun with the fireworks!

A very happy Canada Day (a little late but what else can you expect from us Easterners) to all my Canadian friends, be they Canuck by birth, adoption or the alignment of the stars.

Wordle takes a bunch of text and makes a pretty word cloud from it. For example, the recent sessions of our new ftf role-playing game look like this:



Looking at the result I think Urhiteshub is going to have to make a come back. He's too much fun to dump after one adventure.

Try it yourself, with whatever text you have to hand.

Have a good birthday filled with pulp-tastic fun.

Or is it more plasticy?

I was up at chefted and mizkit's place yesterday to lend a hand moving a wardrobe up the stairs preparatory to their fleeing the bustling Cork metropolis for the greener charms of the midlands.

A lot of my time there was spent not lifting wardrobes but rather geeking with chefted over the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. It seems he not only has the new books and the introductory adventure, but also a huge (no, bigger than that. No. A bit bigger again) collection of D&D miniatures too. I learn this when he has less than two weeks left in town.

Sigh.

I had a very pleasant weekend. sammywol and the kids and I went down to Castletownsend where we stayed overnight with James Wallis, his wife Cat and their delightful little girl, Eliza. We ate well, drank well and talked the talk of well fed, well watered folk 'til late.

One of the things that came out of the talking was an idea I had for coolness. Why not cross a Wikipedia-like repository of knowledge with a MMORPG set in Borges' Infinite Library. Everybody gets to hang out, build an edifice of human knowledge and kill the Orc shelvers in 636.8

Last night we finished up our Dungeons & Dragons campaign, after about 16 months of play. We offed the vampire mage at the heart of the tomb, hit 7th level and returned to the tavern for ale and whores.

We're wrapping the campaign now, giving PMcH the GM a rest as I take up the GM's reins again to try something new. We haven't really firmed up the setting yet, but I'm leaning towards a Diana Wynne Jones A Sudden Wild Magic style multiple worlds with the PCs all wizards and magic workers from different traditions and worlds. It's pretty undefined so far.

In other news I am, once again, feeling sick as a dog.

Warning: game geekery at its worst follows.

Last night's D&D game had some fun moments. First our party met a pair of Shadow Mastiffs who promptly scared the armoured pants off our fighter and sorcerer, leaving only Fidd the rogue and Grann the cleric to fight.

And fight they did. Aided by a Daylight spell the two smacked down the naughty doggies after much wacking.

Next the party encountered a group of 4 Xorn, whose bizarre appearance put the wind up the rogue something fierce. Nrel the sorcerer webbed the lot and proceeded to execute a text book Baleful Transposition and Cleric of Farhlanggan trick. Swapping Grann the cleric for the nearest Xorn, the group beat the living pebbles out of the Xorn while Grann, using his god-given power of Free Action ran out of the web unhindered. Rinse, repeat, exit 4 Xorn.

Best quote of the night:

Nrel on Grann's vital role in the Xorn swap: "Hah, a trained monkey could do this."

Grann, aggrieved: "Hey, a trained monkey of Farhlanggan, maybe."

We also have to thank the GM, whose lousy saving throws made all this possible.

In other news: still sick, but now armed with antibiotics to stop this spreading to my sinuses. Or so I hope.

Last night, after juggling two reluctant kids off to sleep, sammywol and I had a very pleasant evening with mizkit, chefted and irishkate. Tea and cake were consumed (note the passive voice to protect the identities of the culprits), and much badinage was indulged in.

So why is it I feel like death on defrost this morning? If I'd known I'd be like this in the morning last night I'd have hit the Laphroaig.

It was a family sort of day. I took Rowan swimming in the morning, before we dropped her to a party at Monkey Maze (handily also in Glanmire). We came home for a while then and let Oscar get thoroughly dirty and wet messing about in the garden. He loves the trickling fountain. We arranged to meet I and S, who were in Tipperary for the weekend, in Glanmire around the time we had to pick Rowan up from her party.

In glorious sunshine we spent some time at the park and playground in Riverside near Glanmire, catching up with old friends I and S. They brought their kids into Cork for a couple of hours to meet our kids, climb on things, spin around and slide down other things and generally have a good time. Yay!

Happy birthday, M, and big best wishes for a splendid wedding day tomorrow. Love and hugs from Cork to you and the Hun.

Ed Byrne has just saved President Bartlett from death by painted tennis ball on Graham Norton's show. TV at its finest. Accent Monkey must be so proud.

I've recently raised the idea of taking up the GM's mantle again for our Thursday night face-to-face group. We've been playing for about 15 months now in a D&D 3.5 game (as previously mentioned here, here and here) and are thinking of moving to something new. There's also the possibility of switching the current characters to True20 and carrying on with the campaign more or less as it is, only with me in the GM's chair. If we go with this, the players can expect to see not too subtle rehashes of some or all of the following ideas in play.

What follows then is more or less the email I sent to the group with the various campaign ideas I had knocking round my head at the time.

The Wolf Age - a sword and sorcery style game, probably set around the Mediterranean in a history that never was, before the Flood/Ice Age/Collapse of the Euro. Characters are freebooters, heroes and villains set to leave their mark on the world. System could be In A Wicked Age, which I'd like to try but doesn't bind players closely to a single PC each, Reign, the fantasy game of rulers and heroes based on the system we used for Godlike and the earliest games of Tudor Talents (the dice pools of d10s), or a modified Pendragon/Runequest/True20. This appeals to me from the world building perspective and the ease of using some of the traditional fantasy staples (dark sorcerers, tempting demons, deep jungles and ancient ruins, that sort of thing) but not having to worry about an established canon to kick against.

Search, Retrieve, Squirrel Away - a fairly light-hearted game of a Warehouse 23 extraction and retrieval team collecting various interesting things from the weird occult and conspiracy world. Allows for extra-terrestrials, inter-planar travel and alternate worlds, cools powers and all sorts of stuff. Can be played light for laughs, or dark with a threat to humanity and the Earth to be taken very seriously. The player characters are troubleshooters and finders, tracing down rumours and leads to get their hands on the choicest and most dangerous sorceries, dread spells and items, and magically charged knick-knacks from multiple realities. System to be decided.

City of Sorcerers - A city-based campaign, drawing on the Musketeers and other swashbuckling staples with flashy magic thrown on top. Competing schools of sorcery - Vancian fops and duelling rapiers - and the players are all involved with one, maybe two, of the schools, trying to get ahead and compete and all that. Roistering, duelling and the occasional outbreak of demons are all de rigeur. Inter-PC rivalries encouraged but not required.

Finding the Words - A game set in Le Guin's Earthsea (or something similar with the serial numbers filed off). Imagine a disaster of some sort at the Namer's Tower in Roke, the wizards school. A huge number of scrolls and records are lost or destroyed, and it is up to a team of young wizards to travel about the archipelago, dealing with dragons, warlords, and hermit mages and wise women to rediscover the missing true names. (This idea is lifted from some forum post I saw some time ago and I'm sorry I can't remember the original author.)

Nexus City Stories - I'm going to keep flogging this one until someone bites. Nexus City sprawls across the multi-verse, grabbing new neighbourhoods now and then and mixing them all up in the ultimate melting pot. PCs are likely fixers and finders, scouring the worlds connected to Nexus for valuable goods, rare spells, high-tech devices - anything they can sell for a profit. Plot could work round a local business or neighbourhood the PCs are trying to keep afloat, or following the adventures of four top-class finders selling their skills to the highest bidder. System would probably be Nexus by default, but I'd be open to other ideas.

Specifically systems I'd be keen to try out include:

A Wilderness of Mirrors - a spy caper game designed to keep the planning short and the drama/action high. Group would be a Mission Impossible-style team taking on a variety of missions designed to showcase each PC's speciality. Missions deliberately go pear shaped with entertaining consequences.

Everway - High fantasy world hopping adventurers and heroes, card-based mechanics and picture-inspired character generation system. Quite different from the usual sort of dice rolling thing.

Over the Edge - Played straight, a collision of conspiracies on a weird, weird Mediterranean island, using the simple d6 based system we used for the Mindy the Vampire Slayer game.

Truth and Justice - a super-heroes RPG that stays true to the comics. Simple system close to FUDGE, with a clever mechanic for connecting the fallout of fights with the PCs relationships and skills (Basically, damage comes off traits, so you can take a hit to your 'Loving Aunt May' relationship as easily as to you 'Tough As Battleship Armour' trait.). Played straight as street-level heroes or bigger scale as Justice League/Avengers style four colour world-defenders.

Given the recent unpleasantness with Jonathan Tweet's public pronouncements I'm less comfortable about Everway and Over the Edge, although they are both excellent games.

Initial discussions with the players have also suggested a Mage-like game, with multiple different systems of magic in the game world. I never really liked the Mage setting in the first and second editions. I know nothing of the reboot setting. Anyone out in LJ-land have any experience of the new Mage?

The responses from the players so far are a little mixed. One player quite likes the idea of the Nexus City Stories and/or the Search, Retrieve and Squirrel Away, another player really doesn't like Nexus City Stories and would probably shy away from an extended run of Search, Retrieve and Squirrel Away. I may have to take a leaf from brianrogers' book and have a vote. Time to go look at Wikipedia and look for the most zany proportional representation system I can find.

Last night we had our splendid friends, mizkit and chefted over for a light-hearted game of Cat, by John Wick. For those who don't know Cat is a game of playing cats, defenders of humanity, furred warriors against the fear-feasting Boggins, elegant victors of the Contest, and sadly distractable kitties partial to a bit of paper on a string.

In our game, Smoke and Damsel (known as Bandit and Bagheera to their 'owners') were new arrivals on the street, fond protectors of the Levitt family, and young Connie in particular. They had recently made friends with Hex (known as Alicanti to humans), a local street-cat, and had given themselves the task of finding a suitable playmate for Connie. The only obvious candidate on the street was Billy, 8 yo boy in the Austin's house next door to the Levitt's.

Problem was Billy had a Heavy. One of those creeping, binding Boggins who spin web upon web, sticking and clinging, pinning you down to the couch, ignoring the sunshine and the big world outside. Billy was stuck to the couch with his Playstation and barely knew Connie existed.

This fine morning the big humans were both at home ("It's a 'weekend'", said Smoke knowledgeably), with Mr Levitt swearing and banging in the garage and Mrs. Levitt unpacking boxes and testing smelly paint in the living room. "We're going out," Smoke and Damsel agreed and left through the cat flap.

In the garden they met Hex and decided the absence of a car next door meant it was a good time to go investigate the Austin's house. Looking in the front window they could see Billy stuck on the couch, playing his games again. To their catty eyes, the room was filled with cobwebs, hanging in great, dusty ropes from the ceiling and furniture. Damsel's keen eyes spotted a Boggin's nest high up in the corner of the room, with many malevolent spidery eyes glaring back at her from the knot of webs.

Hex went round the back to the kitchen window and waited for Billy to take a soda break. Eventually, the lethargic lad peeled himself off the couch and slouched into the kitchen to the fridge.

Up against the kitchen window Hex let out her loudest miaow. It was very loud. Even Billy in his Heavy stupor couldn't ignore that and turned, startled, to the window. Hex did a little dance of 'I'm so pretty' and persuaded him to open the window to say hello. She hopped down on the kitchen floor and distracted Billy while the other two slipped into the house.

Billy's distraction didn't last long. After patting Hex on the head he sloped off to the living room again, back to his couch. Damsel, something of a fraidy cat, gingerly followed him into the living room, only to be surprised by a huge spider dropping on her from above the door. She managed to spring away on her powerful legs (aided by her general nervous disposition) and left sharpish, letting Hex bound past her and onto the Boggin, spitting and clawing.

Hex's first attack was a good one, and she got her fangs into the horrid spider and bit deep. Smoke sprinted along the hall and round through the other door to the living room to charge the Boggin from the rear. Tag-team kitty mayhem ensued, with Smoke and Hex taking turns to bite and claw at the spider-thing. It was not without its own fangs, however and chewed Hex badly on the face.

As the howling rose, Damsel reasserted her cat pride and, spying the Boggin's offspring stirring from the nest, sprang into action. With a wall of death approach to the furniture, and a boost of magic from her mighty tail, she made a circuit of the room and propelled herself off the top of the couch into the air and across the whole room to land smack in the middle of the nest, clawing and biting like the champions of old. The nest shredded, the little Boggins faded and melted under her attack.

Back on the ground, Billy finally noticing the racket, turned to see the two cats, Hex and Smoke, combine their efforts in a flurry of cat fury, apparently fighting each other, but not actually touching one another.

They did more than touch the spider Boggin, however. Cut and bleeding an oily dream substance, it succumbed to the relentless attacks and collapsed, rapidly fading from the world with only a horrible stink to testify to its presence.

Victorious the cats all had a quick clean. Damsel then went to get Connie who was doodling outside her house. The other two lured Billy outside with clever food begging antics. Smoke, who was something of an escape artist, nipped behind Billy and deftly pulled the door shut behind him.

"Aww! I'm locked out!" cried Billy anxiously.

But soon he was distracted. Connie, cajoled by Damsel, leaned over the fence and shyly said hello. "I've got some chalk," she said, "wanna share?"

We agreed that the final shot, if it were a film/TV show, would show the two kids drawing on the sidewalk and, as the camera pulls out, the drawing resolves into a chalk drawing of three cats in mortal battle with a huge spider.

The three heroes sat on the fence and felt quite pleased with themselves, the natural state for any self-respecting cat, I think.

Well...

Gary loves Ramona. Ramona loves Henry. Henry loves Michelle. Michelle loves Abraham. Abraham loves Lului Urarti. Lului Urarti loves sacrificial victims.

Doug hates Dieter. Dieter hates Vanessa. Vanessa hates Ramona. Ramona hates Michelle. Michelle hates Henry. Henry hates Abraham. Abraham hates Slate. Slate hates Lului Urarti. Lului Urarti hates waiting for sacrificial victims.

It's all pretty much a normal day for Mindy the Vampire Slayer.

Our gaming group has started a brief Buffy-style game set in Arkham in 1985, using Over the Edge rules and a large dose of the seat of my pants, and came up with their very own Scoobies and Slayer.

Mindy the Vampire Slayer, brainy college girl studying German and Japanese at the Arkham School of Modern Languages. She's smart, trusts her instincts and has a great singing voice

Jack, burnt-out hippy fairie, singer-songwriter known round Arkham's coffee shops and head shops. Often mistaken for a vampire (souless, avoids churches and religious paraphenalia).

Kevin O'Riordan, unorthodox religious scholar, library assistant and barista at Witches' Brew, the local coffee shop where it all happens. A sympathetic ear to Miskatonic U. students and staff alike.

Damn but there are a lot of vampires and other demons with shoulder pads, shiny suits and big hair in Arkham.

We're in a long-running, well slow-moving, D&D campaign, currently working our way through The Forge of Fury. To be honest the PCs are a bit overpowered for the adventure and it hasn't been too difficult for the most part (we'll leave one irritating troglodyte sorcerer out the reckoning however) but that all changed last night.

We were lucky with an Allip, my cleric Grann turned the incorporeal bugger before it had the chance to suck wisdom from our crew. Next however we met a lovely, raven-haired prisoner, languishing in the dungeon and oh so grateful for our help in rescuing her.

A bloody succubus! I know I said we were overpowered for the level of the dungeon but I mean, really. Luckily for us a combination of dysfunctional wheedling at the GM and the threat of having to use the grappling rules save our sorcerer Nrel from a negative level. I think it worked in play too, as for all his 16 Charisma Nrel has a face only his mother would kiss and we've already established she was a half-draconic crossbreed with odd tastes in men.

and baffle others.

I was just on the phone to my mother and she told me that she had been looking, without success, for a very long zipper to repair a much loved winter coat. Hickeys in two different locations in Dublin were no help (one was closed down, the other had no such zips). She eventually came across a place on Dorset Street near where she grew up.

It was called Ken's Trimmings.

I now have this image of Ken, an old gaming and college friend, now globetrotting aid worker, leaving behind a little shop filled with hair, finger nails and such.

I think I need to get out more.

It's been a busy weekend.marzut was back on Thursday and attended the D&D game; we hacked some stirges and some orcs. My character, Grann Faloon the long-suffering cleric, got swarmed by a gang of stirges and dramatically blood-drained. Sigh.

We went for lunch in Little India with friends on Friday, chatting and such. I was pleased to see that marzut liked the Indian food. We all had a jolly good chat too. It's really good to get back together with friends and catch up, so I count that a very good lunch in all.

On Saturday my mother, Sally, was down for a flying visit and and old friend from college and her husband were in town for part of their Ireland and UK vacation tour. Hadn't really seen them for years, certainly since before I moved to France, so it was good to catch up. They're living in Cluny in Burgundy now, rebuilding a place to live and a gallery in the town to show his photographs. Both seem happy and secure together. After lunch at Milano's (thanks Sally!) Rowan got to go to Waterstones where Sally bought her books.

On Saturday night after Sally had flown home and Rowan was in bed, marzut was over and we chatted until nearly 11pm. More catching up and talk about future plans. She sounds like she'll stick with the UK as long as her boyfriend sticks with the job in Lancaster.

Then we had Sunday and went out to Lumpyland, yet another softplay play centre, located near Ringaskiddy. Rowan climbed a few things and slid down a two storey inflatable slide, while Oscar crawled about a soft blocks area. He had fun tasting everything.

He's started cruising now, very unsteadily, dragging himself up onto furniture and grasping onto whatever he can reach. He's also crawling, delighted to have the mobility to really get around and cause trouble. He's on antibiotics now too for a persistent cough and the doc suspects we've all got something bacterial and opportunistic after the viral dose of colds we only recently fought off.

Atchoo!

Curse you mizkit! One mention of Joseph Delaney's The Spook's Apprentice last night and sammywol bought a copy this morning after we dropped Rowan off to her first day of school. My wife is now missing, replaced by a reader.

Just this evening I met up with an old school friend whom I haven’t seen since a holiday in Canada back in 1988 (that's nearly 20 years ago for those of you counting), and whom I haven’t seen regularly since I graduated from high school in 1986. He’s now working in Leamington Spa and holidaying in Ireland for a couple of weeks with his girlfriend. It was great to see him and chat again after all this time, and pleasantly nostalgic to share old war stories from our gaming youth. He’s living the dream and now works with a computer games company designing games for a living.

I'm feeling all warm in the glow of role-playing memories from the distant past. The couple of pints of Guinness help too, I guess.