Tag: gaming

Can the aliens come save us from the idea of IP?

Played: Zoomwarts. Food fight!

Read: Sandy Pug After Dark (Various): Varied spec-fic smut: aliens, AIs, monsters, gods, queer people. Needed more editing.

Read: The Exodus Gambit (Glynn Stewart): The start of a new missiles-in-space series, a sort-of princess on the run from the traitorous uncle who murdered the rest of their family, and her bodyguard, trying to outwit their pursuers who have a ship that’s much better in every way and get to help.

Written: 113.

Another one I’m in favor of!

Exciting news at work, possibly good, more likely neutral, definitely unexpected.

Played: Lancer. The horrible plan that could not be avoided is put into action, and goes okay, although not well enough to avoid the set-piece battles, and we are far too late to save the future of the colony. Finally, we reach the scene of the crime and gaze upon extremely distressing sights. Next session, the Final Boss!

Written: 123. We haven’t gotten to The Mushroom yet, but the MC finally made the terrible decision. Next: the consequences!

As long as you don’t try to measure it too precisely, anyway.

Played: Librarians Errant. The field trip continues, but while checking out a famous bridge for Grumman’s research paper, the team is accosted by talking goats and “rescued” by a dashing troll vigilante. All is revealed when Thaïs is knocked off the bridge but rescued by troll stagehands (and kissed by a troll, about which the less thought, the better) working for the troupe of troll actors who have been hired to play a prank on someone crossing the bridge that day, who is not the team. Everything is straightened out, but Thaïs will forever use this as an example of the terrible things that happen when you get up too early in the morning. After some additional travel, they arrive in Yartar, make contact with the Water Baron who is only too happy to show them her library, and help the Popesses of the Church of the Crystal Dragon (from the previous campaign) with their recurring Bane problem. Walking into a trap is a perfectly good way of dealing with it, right? (Thaïs used Flirt. It wasn’t very effective. But she did get a minor magic item of the goddess of Death and Rebirth, which is entirely fitting for her background.)

Written: 187.

I no longer use libraries that much, but will always defend and celebrate them, because libraries are awesome.

Boss B is back from vacation, so I had to get up early for 1:1, but all is well.

Played: Lancer. The PCs talked to the historical war crimes NHP in orbit and found out some about the other historical NHPs, but mostly spent a lot of time talking about what to do next and coming to the conclusion that they’ve only put off the thing they didn’t want to do, not found any way to avoid it.

Read: The Abandoned Heiress Gets Rich With Alchemy and Scores an Enemy General! vol 2 (Miyako Tsukuhara, Satsuki Sheena): Road trip to another kingdom that has dragons, but also has demon problems. Further tsundereness.

Written: 120. Meh.

Played: Zoomwarts?! How did that happen? I blame Jus and her spring break. Anyway, I wrote off the entire game so far as a dream, which gave the players the opportunity to fix everything wrong with the setting, but they did nothing except move it forward to second year so they could feel superior to the new first-years. Marith had a great idea that I will have to implement if we manage to play again, and also I guess I should find a summary of book four (since that’s the year they’re in) since they want things to be the same-ish.

Written: 141.

Are you sure about that?

Played: Lancer, although we had no Kelsey. The spiderbots that were placed on the mantelpiece in the last session were definitely used against us, and it hurt a lot, although we were chewy enough that the station scuttled some of itself to try to get rid of us.

Read: From the Red Fog vol 1 (Mosae Nohara): Unrepentant tween serial killers in Victorian England, with the occasional spot of rape. Do not want.

Written: 122 terrible words. I’m not just saying that, they actually aren’t working. I think I need to back up a bit and approach this scene from a different angle.

Played: Librarians Errant. The team, which is now 5th level but still has no cool team name, goes through the Elemental Plane of Books to get to their next stop on the hunt for The Magical Education, instead of walking on muddy roads in the rain and cold like normal people, which saves like 3 days but does get them jumped when they cut through the bad (Dewey decimal) part of the stacks. Fortunately the rabid bat-books and book-lizards (yes, absolutely, you are correct about what they are, no question) are not that much of a problem, and soon the team arrives at the Kryptgarden Branch Campus. Somehow Thaïs is beaten at cute girls by Lily, of all people. Also they meet an absolutely terrifying dragon, find a suspect who is actually a victim, and stop a foolish professor from sacrificing his grad students to bring horrible monsters through a portal from the Feywild. Thaïs finally gets to use both of her new 3rd-level spells, but neither of them helps at all, because this is D&D and there’s no “play to find out what happens”. Bah!

After that I went with Dave back to his lair, to have Easter dinner with everybody. It was very nice because friends and ham and glazed shallots and friends!

Played: Uno Flex. It’s like regular Uno, but you can make the cards do extra stuff if your checkmark is right-side-up.

Written: Only 188, but I had lot of socializing today.

A good holiday to ignore, really. I don’t need beer, green or otherwise.

Played: Librarians Errant. The team had a brilliant plan to heist the manuscript full of old secrets that their boss wanted, but were thwarted when the people they wanted to offer their book-cataloging services to were out of town for the season. Fortunately(?), the house was in the process of being robbed by bullywugs and other such undesirables, so the team was able to look good by saving the surviving the guards, defeating a recurring bullywug villain, and then rushing down to prevent a hag and her lizardman flunkies from rifling the vault. The lizardman shamans had obnoxious spells like heat metal and roomful of crocodiles, but Thaïs managed to do 65 points of damage with a second-level spell slot (not even a second-level spell, it was upcast!) and also realized the hag had not actually phased through the wall but was lurking invisibly. It was painful and messy, but victory in combat and a victory in refraining from stealing anything except the one object thney were there to steal (unless somebody passed the GM a note and I didn’t notice). The manuscript told the team many salacious and useful things, so now they are packing for a trip to Yartar by way of the Kryptgarden Forest, in search of further volumes of The Magical Education. Level UP!

I tried to get ice cream on the way home, but I had actually eaten so much gaming food that I didn’t want any.

Written: 114

But in Canada, every day is poutine day. I hear.

Early meeting was cancelled, but I didn’t find out until I was already up, so bah.

Played: Lancer. We finished shooting down killsats with giant robot pistols and made it to the creepy abandoned space station, which naturally is full of rabid Second-Comm repair mechs. At least I can punch these ones.

Written: 166, mostly spent rewriting yesterday’s words. I think I might be reaching the point where there are so many notes about things to fix that I should just start over.

I like to think I’d still be okay, because my cats are sweetie pies, but probably it’s mostly because if they were able to open cans they would be too round to attack me.

Played: Librarians Errant. This session was pretty much one huge set-piece battle, with the players getting to also control their allies. The githyanki I played was clearly the best, but she did lose a few hit points to friendly fire (from my primary PC) and so did not make it through entirely unscathed. A lot of people got pretty beat up, but you’d think the area would be running pretty low on goblinoids by now.

Read: “On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!” (William Tenn): Future Jewish argument. I am not the target reader, but I hope those who are liked it.

Written: 150.

The dwarf planet with surprising amounts of geology, or the Sailor Scout? Both good!

Played: Librarians Errant. Another two-fight session, first against goblin and hobgoblin mercenaries sent to hunt down the PCs get their wolf-riding asses handed to them, and then against whatever hideous cow monster Beasley Knees missummoned when Lily’s shoggoth book bit in him the middle of the incantation. There was a lot of dwarf-trampling in that fight, but literacy prevailed in the end, and Thaïs got to play hero to the local girls. Nobody even got ridden out of town on a rail!

Written: 183.

Hello, please accept this gift of space yogurt.

Had no brain and accomplished almost nothing at work. I have to get the things done tomorrow! And not stay up forever the night before getting up early to commute.

Played: Lancer. We spent the entire session trying to make a plan to accomplish our really stupid goal, without managing to make it any less stupid. It is both what we clearly need to do to find out what’s going on and what the module expects us to do, though.

Written: Only 118, but I got to talk to a Real Writer about ideas I wasn’t having and now can move that tiny bit forward.

Or is it Canadian Maple Syrup Heist Day?

I was expecting to not have power until sometime today, based on the PG&E status page, but in fact it was restored overnight and I did not end up having to go into the office today. That’s good, because there was a surprise early morning meeting that would have made commuting a pain. This makes twice that I’ve ordered goat curry and then not gone into the office. I will eat you someday, goats!

Everything in my fridge and freezer has become untrustworthy, so I had to get pizza while getting gooshyfood for the cats. Fortunately I liked the pizza and they like the gooshyfood.

Played: Lancer. We got to make some decisions as both groups, but then the entire situation was overtaken by events. Well, this module is advertised as being about the traumas of war.

Written: 157.

Another one that should be every day.

Successfully made it to gaming despite the weather, then successfully made it home despite the intense weather. It, as they say on the Internets, fucken WIMDY.

Unfortunately, when I got home, I had neither Internets nor electricity. Usually PG&E gets it fixed pretty quickly, but everything was still out after I took a nap, so I went back to sleep. This was probably not the best thing I could have done, but it was easy.

Played: Librarians Errant. A two-fight session! First, as the team was seeing off the astral pirates, their ship was attacked by a dragon made of evil books and its sycophants in a literal flame war. They drove off the dragon and saved the books, but now the githyanki are stuck in Waterdeep trying to arrange transfer credit at the university. Then Shia was accosted by an origami butterfly that led the team cross-country to a deserted mill/smuggling den where Gladys’s minions were up to no good. They managed to set an ambush instead of just charging in, which was only partly successful because 5e doesn’t let you block enemies’ movement but did involve Grumman stealing a coach with a hootin’ and a hollerin’. The villains escaped, but the senior librarian was rescued in good shape and admitted the team might be worthy to be called librarians, but only very junior ones and only until next time they screw up.

Written: THWARTED.

No pie for me, still waiting on the medical-financial complex to refill my medication.

Got up early to meet, did another work.

Kit’s FIFTIETH BOOK, Death By Irish Whiskey, is out! It’s the fifth in a series, but buy it anyway!

Played: Lancer. Still playing as the corporate goons. Pretty sure the “corporate execs” we rescued were actually locals who hacked the system, but that’s an issue for the IT department. Besides, we’re not actually in favor of killer robots murdering people, even if altruism isn’t in our job description. Kelsey’s character got to run around slamming into people like a wrecking ball, so it was all good.

Written: 103, which is still in the triple digits, if only barely.

A gaming session is like a playdate for gamers, right? Definitely a comparable maturity level!

Played: Librarians Errant. Thaïs is doing okay at rescuing herself by pushing Gladys the turncoat librarian out a window, but doesn’t mind at all when her friends show up to help. There’s a comparatively minor kerfuffle and then everyone escapes with the books Gladys bought at auction, which are only moderately helpful in tracking down the Education, but take that, Gladys! Serves you right for locking cute girls in boxes! Martin is still nowhere to be found, so the next day the group is given into the care of Garth, an extremely hard-ass Librarian Errant who immediately takes them back down to the Elemental Plane of Books or whatever it is to help clean up the hellfrog damage. Naturally, they barely get started before Thaïs trips over some githyanki book thieves and a running fight breaks out. Alas, the githyanki excel at fighting in the narrow stacks and Lily is forced to surrender when she’s the last one standing. She does talk the githyanki out of taking a book that’s not on their list of books that the library stole from them, but the astral pirates make their getaway pretty much entirely successfully. Bah!

Maybe next time I’ll remember what shocking grasp is for.

Written: 141. I may need to delete it all, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

Every day I play Numbword, Connections, Wordle, Waffle, Squaredle, and Squardle (as well as Metazooa and Chrono), so uh it me.

I skipped out on the 7:30 all hands meeting, but I didn’t manage to get back to sleep, and also apparently there was actual content, so that was a poor choice.

Played: Lancer, this time for real. The corporate goons successfully fought off the robot army squad and rescued the major investor and his NHP expertise. Now they have a better understanding of how much trouble the colony is in, but maybe they can send those random do-gooders off to do something on another planet where they can’t get in the way of necessary corporate activity.

Written: 139 of outlining. I think I have a good cliffhanger, although I don’t know if it’s end of book or some random chapter or what, because I have no idea how many words this outline is supposed to turn into.

Programmers that make software? Programmers that arrange convention panels? Both okay in my book.

The first actual gaming of the year is unsurprisingly D&D. Time to roll a d20 to confirm that nothing happens!

Played: Librarians Errant. We start with the fight against animated books that was threatened last time, and the team pretty much get their asses handed to them, since each book is about as strong as one PC and they outnumber the team three to one. Fortunately their mentor shows up to save them and forbid them from returning to the Main Branch of Library Space until they are much higher level, so nobody actually dies. He also tells them to absolutely not engage with the renegade Librarian Errant who got past them in the stacks. Naturally, as soon as they’re done doing cleanup work and get to go pillage an estate sale, they run into her again. They do try to get word back, but their mentor is nowhere to be found, and shadowing somebody is the opposite of engaging, right? They each stake out the snooty auction hall in accordance with their personal idiom, but only Thaïs, who gets a job as one of the waiters because she looks good in a uniform, gets kidnapped. Next session, villainous monologue! I’m not sure what Thaïs’s resistance to that will be.

Written: 202. A bunch is still outlining, but maybe it will turn into real fiction.

I dunno, probably none of the interesting days want to be this close to Christmas.

Last 1:1 with my boss for the year, all is chill.

Played: Lancer. We played the team of corporate goons sent to protect the colony’s valuable resources, with completely different mechs than the random weirdos that are trying to make things better for people. After the setup, we only got one round into the combat, but surely next session (whenever it is, maybe Boxing Day) will be exciting.

Written: FAIL.

I didn’t think mountains really needed a day, you can’t miss them, but okay.

I did some work, I guess, and then I did gaming homework. My Lancaster build is almost certainly the worst one ever, and I must never show it to Ken, but hopefully he won’t ask too many questions about it. (He absolutely will, and will think I am stupid.)

Written: FAIL, mech design doesn’t count.

These cats are very insistent that they are entitled to three gooshy meals a day and a minimum of eight hours of snuggles!

Played: Librarians Errant. The team’s first assignment this session is tracking down the entrepreneur jerk who tried to hoard all copies of an important textbook. This requires beating up her little gang of  undergrad goons, but Thaïs gets to use a second-level spell and anyway the opposition are kind of wimpy. Only Flint gets beat up much before the team returns to the library in triumph. The next day, as they sort books, the library is invaded by bullywugs looking for volume one of the magical series! Every librarian is mobilized, and the team is set guarding a door deep in the lower lower stacks. Bullywugs come from the sewers, so this is not as pointless as it might seem, but it’s still a surprise when a  very senior librarian appears, chased by bullywugs and fire-breathing giant toads. She is definitely authorized, and also the shelves of archaic legal tomes are now on fire, so the team piles through the door after her and tries to lead the bullies off in a different direction through the maze of even more obscure (and now burning) stacks. Then they find the opening to the Elemental Plane of Books, or something, and the magic card catalog. Thaïs was already looking for books on shoggoth-banishing, so she makes a catalog card for it, and everybody follows the card across the walkway of flying books to the book island. The book on the podium tries to bite Thaïs’s hand off, so she zaps it, and we break as the other books flap to attack.

Watched: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts 4-6: A master villain! Mysterious powers! Metalheads! The shortest romance subplot ever! Probably for the best, as Kipo is way younger than I thought.

Written: FAIL.

A mysterious figure who abducts and devours poorly-behaved children is all well and good, but I’d rather be eaten by the Yule Cat for not wearing my Christmas socks.

I can see the line on my phone (which I only check one million times per day) go up when I expect it do, but it seems to also randomly go up at some times and not at others, so hell if I know how this carbs thing works.

Had to get up early because it’s Tuesday but then that was preempted by getting up even earlier for a different meeting. Ugh.

Played: Lancer. Two weeks in a row!  We finished in the fight from last week in like half a round and then steamrollered the negotiations between the various factions of the rightful inhabitants of the planet and the corporate newcomers by showing them our spaceship. 110% Pancakes brings us success once again! Next week we’re playing the corporate team getting murdered by possessed machinery, so I guess I should actually build that Lancaster.

Written: FAIL. I should be working on the other scene, or more productively, trying to outline the project that got bogged down in detail. I don’t have an ending, exactly, but I do at least have a list of mysteries that must be revealed.

A natural followup to Crystal Skull Day, I guess?

Back to work! It wasn’t bad, I just don’t like getting up in the morning.

Played: Lancer. Of course our attempt to get the non-corporate refugees to safety was interrupted by killer robots. We got most of the civilians out with Abrakyl’s power to make everything teleport and teleport and teleport, but the victory condition is to have all of us inside the zone and none of the enemy in the zone at some point after round three. We got to the middle of round three before having to call it a night, and it’s looking pretty good for next week. Roll20 gave me the good numbers this time and I got one or more crits every time I did a barrage, so the worst enemy is gone, as is one of the foliage management units. I was almost cool!

Read: My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress vol 1 (Chisaki Kanai): An elite anti-vampire cop with amnesia breaks a legendary vampire-killing vampire out of secret government custody. Together, they fight crime vampires. A weird mix of awkward romance between the leads and action-horror with body parts as spell components and casual use of high-level pyrokinesis in downtown Shibuya.

Written: FAIL.

Not sure exactly what that’s about, but better not offend The Skull.

Played: Librarians Errant. We were chasing down a grad student who was using the overdue book for clues to treasure in a dungeon full of unexplained monsters and improbable traps, so it was a surprisingly traditional D&D adventure. The treasure was a book that didn’t belong to the library, so we left the grad student and visiting scholar to their tawdry het romance novel and noped out with the book we were sent for and some incidental loot. Level UP!

That was pretty much it for today.

Written: FAIL.

While I was on vacation, I saw a very cute baby who can stand up while holding onto things (which lets him get off the Baby Preserve), went on a three-mile hike with Ken and Dave, got help with Squaredle, ate a million unhealthy foods, saw many people I rarely see, and stayed up too late playing board games. I slept more than I wanted although not as much as my body wanted. It was a good vacation, but now, despite traffic, I am back. Marith did a great job taking care of Sage and Nightvale, because she is Best Lizard, but she was not in a position to feed them three gooshy meals a day, so they were glad to see me.

Played: Dominion. I did not win, although maybe I could have if the game had gone on longer.

Played: Ra. New to me, all about drawing tiles from the bag and bidding on them with numbers. As often happens, I seized the lead in the first epoch and then got no more points the rest of the game.

Played: Holiday Fluxx. Like all Fluxx variants, it is fundamentally Fluxx, and this is the rule of Fluxx.

Played: Puerto Rico. Moral depravity and I wasn’t even good at it! (Although neither was anybody else; it was a really close game and late at night.)

Played: Dungeon World. Jus wanted to play D&D, but nobody else volunteered and I wasn’t going to do that, so I compromised with an iron fist. An immolator, a rogue, a druid, and a wizard walk into a dungeon… and SET IT ON FIRE! Also there was some tussling with mooks and mutant frogs and traps, but by the time they got down to the heart of the dungeon, Jus had run out of gas. However, we stopped in a good place, and only had four players who are all likely to be up for gaming next visit, so I kept the character sheets and my terrible notes and maybe we’ll pick it up again.

Read: Perils & Princesses: You are fairy-tale princesses, going on D&D adventures. You have Resolve, Grace, Wit, a fairy godmother, a magic gift, one magic die per level(max four), and the contents of your inventory slots, because despite the fairy-tale theme, it’s a GLOG game. It has the usual D&D problems of “roll d20 to have nothing happen” and “everybody’s a bucket of hit points” but the system is simple and mostly player-facing. Also, because all lists and examples are numbered, it’s possible to create a character entirely randomly, which makes me want to try it for a con game.

Written: VACATION

As opposed to yesterday, which was just my personal cat day!

The cats are still very feline. Sage is remarkably energetic for a cat who has never had a single morsel of food in her entire life, ever, although after eating an entire cat of wet food she cuddled in my arms for an extended period. Nightvale jumped onto Marith’s shoulders when she came to visit, which I can only interpret as a sign of approval.

Played: Librarians Errant. After being manipulated into alarming situations by professors and/or sororities the library had offended, and finding that the eldritch tentacles unleashed by Flint and Shia in the first episode had taken to nibbling on the town’s supply of fine confections, our librarians junior library staff head back to Koboldtown only to find it being bullied by bullywugs! There’s a big fight, but the important parts are that Flint leaps down from the rooftop and chops the bullywug leader right in half, and Lily gets swallowed by a giant frog and carried off. Once they track her down, there’s another fight, but the leader of the bullywugs escapes with the book that was the entire reason they came down here. Thaïs only used one of her spell slots, so this was obviously a less strenuous adventure than last time, no matter what the other characters say.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.7: Another Fizzarolli episode, so sadly lacking in Loona or Millie, but otherwise good. Because seriously, fuck that guy!

Written: FAIL. There were cats that needed snuggles! But I did get caught up here and even figured out how to post pictures, so apparently the cats are less distracting.

But isn’t that every day?

Apparently it was also sleep day, or more accurately, forget to set an alarm day, so I slept through my 1-to-1 with my boss. Fortunately he is cool, so it was okay. I even did a small amount of work.

Played: Lancer, kinda. We still had no Brooks, so we were able to wrap up the previous set-piece mecha battle and reap the rewards, we didn’t move onto the next one. I think we did make a couple of dice rolls, though, maybe?

Written: FAIL.

Isn’t that every day ending in y since at least sometime in November 2016?

You’d think the night after a night of poor sleep would have extra sleep, but no. That’s not even counting having to get up an hour and a half early to start a morning of four meetings and an afternoon of dentistry and laundry and not being able to eat until almost bedtime because my face was numb.

Played: Lancer (without Brooks). We scared away the smaller giant bile worms, but the larger ones had to be put down to make way for Alien Archaeology. On the upside, the explosions revealed a discovery of even greater significance. Also all those points I put into Agility paid off and I didn’t get slimed even once.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 27 (Tomohito Oda): In this volume, Komi and crew play Among Us, and then some people talk about kissing. Hardly any actual kissing takes place, because high school manga, but it’s cute anyway.

Written: FAIL.