eddyfate

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us planning to play in a Victorian-era Mage: The Awakening game run by Joe (oakthorne) found out that due to his illness and workload, he'd have to postpone it for a while (although he has time to play -- just not to Storytell). So, after some talking, Link proposed doing a short series of Primetime Adventures. Last Thursday was our "pitch session." During the time leading up to the pitch session, our group grew from six people to ten (but back down to nine in the end -- eight players and one Producer). Last night was supposed to be our pilot, but we ended up having so much fun with the brainstorming that we forgot to make characters, so we spent all of last night just finishing up the series information. Joe gave me access to his wiki so I could make edits on the fly while we were brainstorming, and he started work on polishing it up. It's still a little rough, but here's what we have so far:

Verona, a five-part miniseries on the CCP network

The basic idea is "what happens after the end of Romeo & Juliet." Two families who previously hated each other were joined by the marriage of Ryan and Julia, who died in a mysterious accident. The first episode is the reading of their wills.

We spent a lot of time talking about story arc and balancing issues and creating adequate tensions between the cast of characters. It really felt like a creative development session by a bunch of television writers, so in that respect the game is already performing flawlessly. In fact, Link had to reign us in a little bit, because we were already plotting out episodes and coming up with conclusions to our character's stories in the season. I had never played PTA before, but thus far it's been one of the most creative experiences I've had with an RPG. I never thought I would be excited about an RPG that has absolutely no supernatural or historical element to it, but we all have a very strong vision about what this show is, and there's been more than a few suggestions that we should sit down and write this up as a serious television pitch at some point, because we can all just see it on HBO or Showtime.

Anyhow, all this awesome has totally worn me out today. My brain is dead, and now I have to scrape up some creativity for work.

Did character creation last night for Serenity. We decided to do a fairly straight rip from the series, which should be fun. I'm a touch worried that eight players might have been too much, but we'll see how it pans out.

Today I have an appointment with my academic adviser, so hopefully I can get moving on figuring out what I still need to take for my classes. It will somehow have to include 19th Century Detective Fiction, though.

Since we got the new car, we've all been listening a lot to NPR (although I believe garchangel was listening to it a lot before), and I am starting to become addicted to NPR's Wait, Wait -- Don't Tell Me! For those that don't know, it's a live comedy quiz show about the week's news. I've always liked shows like You Bet Your Life, which WWDTM has some of the feel of, but aside from that it's just really hysterical. If you want to listen or can't get NPR where you are, the website has RealPlayer and Windows Media streams of last week's show.

Last night was the last session of Greco-Exalted, the ancient Greek campaign that garchangel ran using Exalted 1.0. It was, in a word, amazing. The whole game felt a lot like a Japanese computer RPG, both in plot and pacing. Some of the roleplay between players during the course of the campaign was awesome, and last night's session was amazingly cool. garchangel really let the throttle open on our power levels, and yet the game didn't feel like rampant munchikinism. Our end scenes were all appropriate, and the epilogue was particularly awesome. Games like last night are the very reason why I still enjoy being a gamer. I mean, we all had the chance to become gods, and then turned it down, completely unwriting the entire campaign we just played through. How cool is that?

Our group has really latched onto the whole "mini-series" idea of self-contained RPG campaigns, and a number of players started tossing around ideas for games they want to run in future. However, I claimed my spot in line next, and I'm going to be running a few adventures of Serenity after school's over, which will be a nice change of pace from the intense noir of Midway City and the epic metaphysics of Greco-Exalted. cresida is also still debating a Cartoon Action Hour version of Eternia (He-Man with some She-Ra). After that, I think it's a toss-up between mrogre's Rage Across the Amazon game (Werewolf: The Apocalypse, totally old-school), greebotrill's Deadlands game, or garchangel's stock Exalted 2.0 game.

Good times, good times.

Crawling out from under my projects for a real update.

A couple of nights ago garchangel rented Smackdown vs. Raw for the PS2. I did what I usually do with wrestling video game -- I jump right to the character creation mode, make Eddy Fate as best as I can, and dive into season mode. I had a miserable experience, and nearly threw down the controller in disgust.

Last night, after hammering at "PunkRock" and then getting something to eat, I decided to kill an hour giving it one more try, after garchangel got a copy of the rulebook. I spent ten minutes trying to figure out the arcane season mode again, and managed to finally switch characters. After some consideration I decided to play Eddie Guerrero, in memory. I had a very different experience. I don't know if my knowledge of the game improved, but I think it's more likely that I made a really bad character. So now Eddie's the US champion after a cage match with Booker T, and has Torrie Wilson as a manager.

Tomorrow I turn 31. My plans are pretty much to sit on my ass and watch DVDs and play video games. Exciting. Woo. (I kid -- it actually does sound pretty entertaining to me.)

I'm starting to get the itch to run a tabletop game again. I have to wait until garchangel finishes his awesome Exalted game, but I do have a few ideas, ranging from a game of Serenity, to an old-school fantasy dungeon crawl (perhaps spiced up with the background from X-Crawl) using Savage Worlds, to a pulp action "Dick Tracy" style police procedural campaign set in Midway City, to an interesting concept I'm calling "Manchester" that allows players to make their PC as they play. As usual I'm jotting down notes as they come to me.

Back to the salt mines to earn my salary.

As I was jotting down ideas for my D&D game, another D&D game popped up locally. Since my extended social group now has four D&D games running, I decided to hold off on developing that idea any further. Poking around with Cartoon Action Hour with cresida, though, has given me the idea of converting Darkgate into a CAH series. Then I went a step further, and tweaked the CAH rules a bit so that it actually plays more like a japanese FRPG video game (including a system that I'm thoroughly amused by: changing experience into gold pieces and allowing players to buy their stat increases at stores). I'm toying with some other ideas to make the whole thing a little more Gamist. Again, I've been jotting down ideas in my notebook, and maybe tomorrow I'll sit down and flesh out the notes. I might run it as a mini-series come January, but if worse comes to worse I'll just flesh it out, polish it up, and send it over to cynthiacm to use in a CAH release somewhere.

Ah, the joys of owning the game you're tinkering with. :)

Brainspace got better after a few hours, some time with greebotrill, a little Jade Empire, and a couple of phone calls, so I decided to actually go to D&D last night (mrogre flavor). ( D&D, Darkgate, and my history of Boneshards )

Got home late, couldn't sleep until I jotted down the ideas I got on the ride home, woke up exhausted this morning. Luckily the meeting I was supposed to go to tonight got cancelled or rescheduled, so I'll probably spend tonight transferring notes for a few projects that have been filling up my moleskine, and then deciding which one takes my fancy to work on tonight.

My dog leads a more interesting life than I do.

So, after a few false starts, Puck did manage to master the stairs, even running up the stairs with me when I went into my office. The cats freaked out (again) for a while, but when Puck went downstairs to watch TV and nap with garchangel, the cats actually came into the same room as Puck, and Claudius even got within a few inches of Puck while he was groggy. There was some hissing and fluffing this morning, but that's mainly because Puck was in super-hyper-excited-puppy mode. So, it seems like things are getting better, but only time will tell.

I spent an hour typing up and organizing my notes for "Bete Noire," and then spent most of the rest of my night reading comics and watching "Shallow Hal." Near the end of the night I realized that I have a few projects and a couple of emails I need to work on (minor stuff, like doing the edits on my microfiction that I got from MAY), so over the next couple of days I plan to get all that off my desk -- literally, as it's creating a pile. Then I think I'm going to organize my desk a bit, update my filing, sort out my project list for when September starts, move my to-do list from a few different places into my Palm, excise projects I'm not going to do anytime soon, and generally get my shit in order, because come September 1 I won't be inclined to do it.

(Side note: I have a few ideas for projects when I return. I had originally decided to focus on either Midway City supplements or the modern crime drama game I've been kicking around, but rediscovering my Marvel 2099 comics recently is tempting me to work on Omlevex 2063, and I'm still poking around a bit with One Night Stand. This is the reason why I need to plan out my project work. :P)

Woke up tired today; that's been happing a fair bit lately. Working out and Greco-Exalted tonight.

Getting mexican food last night and getting my computer together with only the most minor of problems helped a lot last night, as well as knowing that today we'll get the car tire replaced and having some solid ideas on how to sort out our money troubles. However, I'm still just emotionally exhausted, swamped with work and Requiem emails, and too drained to really appreciate the end of the Week of Ass. Tonight is the Windows Update Game as well as the wordsmiths meeting, tomorrow is D&D, and Sunday is a classical music concert with greebotrill.

Yesterday I was fairly grumpy for most of the day. Part of the reason was the massive amount of minor things that have gone wrong over the past few days, which include still not having the parts for my computer, Lappy's screen is shorting out, my cell phone dying (people can't hear me most of the time), and Claudius (the orange cat who was declawed last week) not putting weight on his front left paw. The last is more me being worried about him than angry, but it's on my mind. However, online silliness with banzaigrrl, the sense of accomplishment of getting some things off my plate, and a dose of Fable helped me get past my largely unfocused annoyance.

Which is good, because I have a busy week ahead of me. Tonight is an IRC scene I had to put off for months, tomorrow is Exalted, and Friday is the Wordsmiths meeting (although I don't think many of us have actually been writing in the meantime). Hopefully next week I can properly start my "vacation"... a month late, sure, but better than never.

Friday: D&D (mrogre flavor). The most information gathering I've ever had in a D&D game. Something clicked in the game, though, and it seemed less "hey, let's be social and roll dice" and have more emotional investment, at least for me. Good time.

Saturday: D&D (atekes flavor). Fairly moderate change in background prompted some revision of the characters (most especially mine). I'm coming to learn that onecrane and I can't seem to make characters that get along in D&D - either I'm snarky and he's surly or I'm surly and he's snarky (well, as snarky as a half-orc barbarian can be). At least I don't have to be mean to cresida anymore. Again, good time (and good food).

Sunday: By this point, I'm thoroughly possessed by a D&D campaign idea, and I've borrowed books from banzaigrrl, mrogre, and onecrane (as well as getting access to books that garchangel owns) to flip through and contemplate. What I might do is jot down my ideas, toss them in with the other abandoned D&D campaign idea from five years ago, and see if it still appeals to me when it's my turn to run tabletop again.

Ordered parts for my computer, and decided to salvage some memory into greebotrill's computer (as well as putting in the DVD drive that's been sitting there for months). Installed the memory and drive, discovered a CD of porn that no one recognizes but could be from m0nk3y, and went to test the computer, but the monitor wouldn't click on. Unplug, replug, etc. - nothing. Went to get my monitor, and it worked fine, except that the green pins were damaged somehow, so now it's all this lovely shade of puke yellow. Plugged the original monitor back in, works fine (sigh), and added a monitor to the list of things I need to buy for my computer just to get it WORKING again - I'm not even doing an upgrade. GAH! Hopefully I can snag a monitor by Wednesday or Thursday when the parts come in.

Midway City first draft layout is done. Plan to poke at it and send it back later in the week. If all goes well, it should be at the printer next week.

Watched a DVD of Bullshit! and one of fucking cocksucking Deadwood. Very entertaining.

Now, work kicks me in the ass.

I'm idly debating running a short D&D campaign based around a thieves' guild. Can anyone recommend any good 3.0 or 3.5 sources for me to look at? Also, good resources on a robust D&D city to use would also be appreciated.

(crossposted to roleplayers)

Last night I actually got Lappy to connect to the internet (no idea how - just turned it on, and this time it worked). Decided that since this was going to be my main machine for a couple of weeks, I installed Firefox along with plugins (like Acrobat Reader), and then went to town on Firefox extensions. I hadn't looked at them in many months, so I was pleased to see a few new ones that I snagged (and a LOT of really worthless ones or ones that tried to be useful but ended up being not so good). greebotrill turned on BBC World News on BBC America, and I brought Lappy downstairs to work on upgrading, chatting, and drinking tea while watching the same 15 minutes of footage play a few times.

After that, I took a shower, spent half an hour researching something that got a hold of my brain, and then watched the last two-thirds of Million Dollar Baby. Normally I hate watching movies half-way through, but in this case I was sucked in, and the movie was surprisingly good, as well as not going in the direction I expected it to at all.

Afterwards, I cranked out an hour of Fable, finally beating that damned arena quest and inadvertantly finding new strategies to use against two of the tougher fights. Now that I'm nearly 30,000 gold richer, I need to figure out how I'm going to spend my ph4t l3wt. Maybe Saturday.

Tonight is D&D, and tomorrow is more D&D. Sunday is shopping for computer parts.

After work yesterday, I briefly tried to get my wireless card to work on my laptop. It wouldn't connect to the internet for some obscure reason, so instead of throwing it through my convenient bay window, I instead played some more Fable, and managed to court a woman, get married, get laid (worst. sex. evar.), and start my quest before everyone arrived to play Greco-Exalted. The game was entertaining - now that we've played a bit I have a bit of a better feel for the game, and I'm learning to switch gears from characters who need to be subtle and can easily get killed to characters that stride amongst men and impact crowds whereever they go. We had some neat RP bonding moments, and generally had a good time. Afterwards, since I was in the middle of a quest, I finished up my Arena battles in Fable while garchangel and greebotrill went upstairs to watch Iron Chef. I died at the battle-after-the-last-battle because my thumb slipped off the button to use a health potion as the fatal blow struck. (So much for "I don't want to kill you," you bitch. Wait until I reload my game....)

This morning I was in a fairly positive (if sleepy) mood, but then I learned of two negative things. The first one (the Camarilla's new policy on pay-to-play LARP) I'm not even going to go into, since the bombings in London are far more serious. Thankfully very few people were killed, but I am extremely concerned at what this will do to the international community. It's going to be 2001-2002 all over again for a while.

EDIT: I was at that station in my trip to London. Mentally I'm displaced in time but not in space.