Tag: gaming

Bah, work. Why not nap instead?

Played: Lancer. Brand couldn’t make it, but the rest of us started the battle Dave set up. As expected, Ken has the most effective mech, Vivian has the weirdest, Brooks spends the most time thinking about what to do, and I’m just kind of lame. We did avoid taking too many huge AoE attacks, though.

Read: “This Place Is Best Shunned” (David Erik Nelson): A cosmic horror encounter in the backwoods of WV, including revelations that severely damage the protagonist’s sanity. I feel like there are knowledge skills that would have protected her, though.

Written: FAIL.

Last day of the superspreader event! Only one session for us today, so we didn’t have to be there until mid-morning, but then we hung around for free lunch and team bonding (mostly admiring coworker UK-T’s vacation photos). Aside from the ever-present risk of viral doom, it was pretty nice. I had to log in again when I got home, but the customers were mostly quiescent.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Still trying to manipulate Chi’s sister into abandoning nanoterrorism as a viable tactic for liberating the oppressed peoples of Mars, still not getting very far because in addition to being crazy, she’s also psychic. GML, who knows nanotech stuff, nerded out with Nadine’s pet mad scientist and made some discoveries, but I’m not sure I understood them. I’m not smart enough to play this game.

Written: FAIL. But I expected that.

Played: Lancer. It turned out to be grey goo after all, but it was imitating normal matter and assimilating it. Also we had gotten sent three days into the past to avert the catastrophe, which was really confusing when we thought the time discrepancy was part of what was happening in the base. We put the grey goo ghost of the mad scientist into a jar (Dave swears he wasn’t listening to Jus’s game yesterday), which caused the base computer to freak out and send the big guns after us. This fight had lots of burn and lots of area denial, but by complete coincidence (Dave swears) there was a Full Service Robot Wash as one of the features of the battlefield and it didn’t get blown up until it had been used to negate burn a couple of times. The lava pit never did get used, but we were definitely worried about it. The battle ended with ASK punching the last enemy down to a few hit points, Kappa stomping toward it using each of her weapons as she got within range to get it down to a single hit point, and then Lena popping out of her completely destroyed mech to finish it off with her personal weapon. After that, we talked down the base and found the Horus connection, which in fact is all over ASK’s and Lena’s mechs. This was agreed to be the most climactic of all our battles, and Dave is getting tired of running Lancer, so we’ll switch to something else. Not sure what, people have to bring suggestions next fornight, or maybe to Rachel’s party next weekend.

Written: 255 words, for a final weekly total of 4447/3000. Next week looks pretty dismal, though.

Ayse has a cold, so Marith didn’t want to visit, and I was on call so I couldn’t make long bus trips. It was very sad. Especially for Ayse!

Played: Jus ran a thing! I was a crow spirit, Marith was a disgraced apprentice jeweler, we hunted ghosts! The little kid ghost was very sad, but we did the thing you do with sad ghosts. Jus is probably as good of a GM as I was in college.

Read: Legends & Lattes (Travis Baldree): An orcish adventurer retires to open the coffee shop of her dreams, which is harder than it should be because some people are jerks.

Written: 776 kitten words = 4192/3000. I don’t seem to be writing other things, do I?

Return of the training meeting. I wasn’t completely out to lunch, although apparently I sound terrible over the Internet. Also the Corporate Superspreader Event draws ever-nearer. Ugh.

Played: The tragic conclusion of Vivian’s 189X horror scenario. From best to worst outcome: Brand’s character survived with only mental scarring, Dave’s character lost a hand, Brooks’s character died, and my character was dragged screaming into the Black Forest. It was awesome! Vivian ad-libbed great spooky descriptions.

Read: The OP Lich Is A Returnee vol 5 (Stuart Grosse): 130% exposition by weight.

Written: FAIL. Still at 2506/3000 for the week.

I was backup on call for the new person (who isn’t the newest any more, but she’s the newest who can be on call) all day, but fortunately nothing happened. Also I did a lot of nothing, although I did manage to go grocery shopping and also play too much Squaredle (and also Squardle and Waffle and OG Wordle, but those are much quicker) instead of getting a real lunch. Then we went over to Monkeycat Towers and ate delicious Thai food.

Played: Zoomwarts, end of session 2! The expedition into the land of the dead was successful, because I didn’t make Voldemort terrible enough, but I supposes it’s okay for the PCs to win sometimes. I have no idea how to top that, though!

Played: Among Us. I was definitely the worst imposter ever and deserved to be spaced.

Read: FAIL.

Written: +363 = 3576/3000 for the week.

Played: Vivian’s Victorian Germany Backwoods Horror thing. Brand joined, as the blacksmith who was first to find out the true horror of the mysterious growths. It turns out the villagers are only fine with them when they don’t know what’s in them, so probably we do have to help them deal with the ancient, lurking, ever-evolving vampire witch. This is bound to go well.

Read: Unicorns Aren’t Horny vol 2 (Semi Ikuta): I was hoping for more about the bicorn, but no, just a bunch of human angst and finally they get together and The End.

Written: FAIL.

I got up and went shopping even earlier, since I didn’t even have the excuse of needing to wait for the bookstore to open. I guess that was like being awake at a reasonable time? Anyway, I’ll claim I slept okay even though I felt lethargic later in the day.

Played: Zoomwarts, at long last. You’d think a game with only two players plus a GM who has no life would be easy to schedule, and yet… Bella and Rosamund and the lizards have found most of the students and conned a hapless psychopomp into helping them escape, but now two of the four are unconscious and a partially-overlapping two are trapped in a cave full of slugs and bubbles with an evil octopus who hates them.

Played: Among Us. I am still terrible at this game, and also after playing like ten rounds I have never been an imposter, but I will keep playing because it makes people happy.

Played: Uno Flip. What name should we give to the most greenish of the colors on the dark side of the cards? Ayse maintains it’s teal, but it doesn’t seem blue enough to be teal to me.

Read: The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious vol 3 (Wakame Konbu): Still has no socially redeeming value, but the bystander who ships the two leads has finally suggested a name to give to their feelings.

Written: 505 kitten words, resolving the Existential Dreads and bringing me to 3414/3000 for the week so far.

Offloaded all my cases to coworker L who just came back from leave, did some stuff on the project with the exciting new deadline, and now it’s vacation time!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. After derailing (SWIDT?) the plot to explode the 24:12 express to Olympus Mons, the intrepid Firewall agents meet up with the charismatic Barsoomian leader who is certain she can control TITAN nanotech well enough to make the Planetary Consortium knuckle under. Chi knows perfectly well that their sister is a narcissistic megalomaniac who definitely underestimates the rest of the solar system, and tries to talk her down from this without mentioning Firewall. Project Ozma is not shown, but is described, as something Nadine obviously has to go deal with before she can liberate Mars. Next week, we’ll find out whether this works at all.

Read: That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon (Kimberly Lemming): What it says on the tin. Farmer girl rescues a demon, discovers that literally everything she thought about demons and gods is wrong, grows increasingly attached to demon, has wild sex with demon, marries demon. There’s a plot where other characters are also surprisingly quick to completely reverse their worldview and help the hot demon boys, but the spicy romance is definitely the point of the book.

Written: 331 words today, 2986/3000 this week.

I was pretty much useless today, but I did find some peach diet Snapple to alternate with the raspberry that I thought was the only flavor sold any more.

Played: Lancer, at long last! Allegedly this mission is to contain a potential grey goo outbreak, but I think something much more Horusy is going on. Also we got it all over us, so I’m sure that will come up later. We made it through two fights in one session, too.

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 2 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): The honorable old-school yakuza reincarnated as a fantasy princess continues cleansing the kingdom of drug dealers, pimps, demons, and other sleazy criminals.

Written: 510 words, bringing me to a total of 3237/3000 for the week. I did make my goal, but it’s a bit lame compared to previous weeks.

No training meeting today, just customer cases. And lethargy.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Our octopus managed to get entangled with a terrorist plot that turns out to be masterminded by Chi’s sister and may or may not be related to our actual mission. In theory, we should probably ignore it or just tip off the authorities and move on, but none of us think very highly of the authorities and their ability to prevent atrocities, so we’re going to take care of the Purple Death Express ourselves. Somehow.

Read: Lazy Dragon Queen vol 2 (Ace Arriande): Even more ridiculous and full of cute girls and affection and cat abuse and tower defense and crafting.

Written: 89 measly words.

Why is there so much temperature? I didn’t order this! At least the customers were mostly quiet.

Played: Zoomwarts. The lizards and their mammalian sidekicks made it back into the land of the dead, to rescue everyone!

Eaten: Coq au vin and kale salad.

Watched: The Slayers 4-5: Attack of the fish-creature! Also joke which caused Jus to die of mortification, which fortunately will never be brought up again.

Written: 286 kitten words, for a total of 4119/3000 so far this week.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2, now with additional octopode action! Okay, really, octopode investigation, but since we lost Kelsey and her Titanian Science Cop, having Brand and his freelance forensics octopus is very useful. Chi being in an excessively-gendered morph is much less useful, although at least they’re somewhere their cold hard cash is useful.

Read: Micchi vs The New World vol 3 (Jammin’ Rabbit aka Tony Huo): Further adventures of the isekai delinquents looking for their former leader and being massively OP all over the place.

Written: FAIL.

I used a suggestion from a pocket friend for the team meeting activity, and it wasn’t quite a disaster. Now I have five weeks to find something I can do better at.

Played: Both Eclipse Phase and Lancer. Oh no, are we crossing the streams? Anyway, the PCs on the Jovian station who were not whatever the hell Brooks’s second character were successfully exfiltrated due to multiple critical successes to avoid complications (I told you, Chi is too fabulous to die!) and went back to the scum swarm where GML made an isopod-cat hybrid. Its name is Smooth Randy and everyone who is not a heartless spider robot loves it. Then we got Ken’s progressive technopriest integrated with the rest of the Lost University weirdos and got mechs set up on Comp/Con. Now we can have a giant robot fight someday!

Written: 348 kitten words.

I don’t actually need to shop for groceries until Monday, but I ended up buying some less-perishable stuff because I had to go to the bank to get quarters anyway, and then the bookstore is right down the street, and I didn’t have to be on call until the afternoon…

A few weeks ago, Nonny wanted a “My books are calling and I must go read” shirt like mine, which was I was finally able to deliver. Now we’re Book Buddies.

Played: Zoomwarts, although not very energetically. Jus had a sleepover last night so of course very little actual sleep occurred, and Marith is always oppressed by work.

Eaten: Japanese food, but it wasn’t great. Or maybe I was just wrong about that being what I wanted. I’m not sure about this whole “eating” thing, TBH.

Read: The Gulp (Alan Baxter): Five linked stories about an extremely creepy town on the Australian coast and the horrible things that happen there: fungus, mutation, ancient dreams, inbreeding, eyeball eating, murder, the usual fun stuff.

Read: Babalon’s Hangover 2 (various): 100+ pages of horrible things, places, people, and happenings for the doomed, decaying world of Mörk Borg.

Written: FAIL.

Ugh, commuting is the worst. Being in a warm office with a bunch of other humans is also the worst. Free barbecue lunch, whatever. But I knew many several a few things when I imprudently sat across from former boss M in the training meeting.

Played: Ken is going to a con or something (they still have those?) so we worked more on Lancer characters and determined that our characters are actually ex-university cast into the future by spatial anomaly research, not ex-military, and have been recruited by the people who took over the university station after everyone ran off to become Horus.

Read: Enemy Action (Terry Mixon): Third in the series about a refugee from genetically-engineered commieland who becomes a space marine for the empire ruled by wild-type hereditary aristocrats (which is somehow better?). It’s fifteen thousand years in the future, so naturally all cultural references are to the mid-20th century, and makeup is a surprising revelation. It’s a good thing these books are free, because old white guys are dumb.

Written: Wait, I’m an old white guy!

Ken and Ayse and their household are full of plague and woe, so we didn’t go visit them.

Played: Zoomwarts, over zoom, but very badly. I had so many hopes for the Land of the Dead arc, but I am very dumb in addition to my numerous other failings.

Watched: The Owl House 15-16: Amity has feelings! Also what is going on with Luz’s mom? And is Luz nonbinary? I thought they were a girl, but I didn’t notice any pronouns this time, and that Grom outfit was not particularly binary.

Written: 635 kitten words.

I answered almost every question that came to me in the training meeting correctly, and the one I missed was one the expert running the meeting had missed the first time he encountered it, so it was hardly a great blow to my standing as somebody who has a clue what’s going on.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Fortunately the character who has to decide what to do with mine and Vivian’s current character is played by Brooks, who is the opposite of a hard-ass, so we’re just getting kicked off the station, not murderized. Events may still hose us, but so far it looks we’re okay, as is Dave’s character. That just leaves Brooks’s character to face the replicants. We were joined by Vivian’s friend Brand, who will make a character for the usual team when we finish this side arc, probably next week. They seem cool.

Read: FAIL.

Written: FAIL.

The only useful (…) thing I managed to do was go the bookstore after gaming to make up for not going yesterday. It’s not that I need more books, but at least now I know I could go grocery shopping after gaming if I completely failed on a Saturday.

Played: Lancer. We had the fight that was foretold last time, and showed that the opposition’s careful setup was useless against modern mechs. Unfortunately, that was pretty much it. At least we got to level up again, and can claim to have made the Lancers look good.

Read: Starship For Sale (MR Forbes): A young man dying of brain cancer and his best friend get sold a spaceship far beyond their tech level for complicated reasons that result in them being embroiled in a Star Wars-like universe of scams and blaster fire with only a single, vaguely trustworthy, native guide. Theoretically things will be explained, but I’m not sure it will end up making much sense.

Written: FAIL, although I listened to part of a zoom presentation on being a good editor. Possibly my problem is that I have to get better material to work on.

Skipped looking for new manga to rush through grocery shopping, so I could get to Ayse and Ken’s in time for Eurovision! It’s finally streaming legitimately in the US, so it has a real start time and everything, and we had a very nice afternoon. Even Marith showed up, although Eurovision is not her thing, and we ate frittata and something involving garlic anchovy olive oil to dip veggies in,

It is no surprise that Ukraine won, but their entry was actually good, so that’s fine. Much more surprising, the UK came in second, getting possibly more points than in every previous Eurovision combined! No one knows what to make of that. There were too many ballads, but also bangers like Moldova. Norway was the Maximum Eurovision this year with the masked banana wolves, but Australia and Serbia were also up there, albeit in completely different genres. France was totally robbed, their entry was a banger. Spain was okay, but did better than they would otherwise due to the butt floss visuals. The American presenter was very fabulous and had angel wings.

Nonny showed me a bunch of Splatoon stuff, and eventually I played a little Zoomwarts with Jus and Marith, and then Dave kindly fetched us burgers from down the street and we ate and played three-square until it was time to disperse.

Played: Zoomwarts! Bella and Rosamund and the lizards seem determined to find out what happens when you blow off Bellatrix Lestrange-Riddle’s explicit instructions. I’m sure that will go well for them, especially if I manage to prepare for their expedition into the land of the dead.

Read: “Min Zemerin’s Plan” (Katherine Addison): Short story set around Witness for the Dead.

Written: FAIL. I did not accomplish anything after I got home.

Teeth cleaning, wheee. At least I have apparently been doing a good job with the flossing and the brushing.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. As was foretold by the decahedral oracles, my first character was eaten by a bush robot. Then Brooks’s character, the last remaining of the original set, went mad and ran off into the depths of the TITAN to protect his team. My new character and Vivian’s second character, like Dave’s second character, all turned out to be transhuman infiltrators not particularly concerned with the Jovian project, so now we just have to get out of there and all will be well.

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 1 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): An old and old-fashioned yakuza is done in by scuzzy modern gangsters and reincarnates into the body of a princess in a fantasy world beset by the kind of problems that need yakuza honor (and punching) to solve.

Written: FAIL.

The morning training meeting ran more than an hour over, but except for the last bit where even the presenter was losing focus, it was all really good information, so I’m not mad.

When I went to get tacos to eat before gaming, I was reminded of the date. I can’t object in principle to… Modern Mesamerican? drumming and dancing, but it was very loud.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. For some unfathomable reason, the Jovian Marines went looking for trouble, and definitely found some. They also found a spaceship that is probably not at all a trap. Next session, my character gets to die heroically to save the squad. It’ll be great.

Read: FAIL.

Written: FAIL.

I had no brain at any point today.

Something I read on the Internet suggested that opening links in new tabs is usually not the right path, especially when thinking about accessibility, so I guess I’ll change how I do things.

Played: Lancer, at long last. I leveled up my invisibility, but sadly, we had to make Unity look good, so the whole session was diplomacy and investigation, and we only got to the pre-fight cliffhanger. Next fortnight for sure! Probably.

Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 6-7: Yep, still ridiculous. I want to see Star’s next instar.

Written: 520 kitten words.

I was stupid in the training meeting too.

Played: Nothing, but when Ken canceled at the last moment due to a family emergency, the rest of us tried making Lancer characters. Our group origin is a special ops team that ended up being lost after a light-speed jump caused them to miss the end of the war. We have an engineer, a weirdo who listens to NHPs, and a pilot.

Read: FAIL.

Words: FAIL.

Finally, a day with a normal start time!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. After missing a couple of weeks, we are back to Jovian doom. Somehow, understanding the eye-spiders doesn’t make them less horrible.

Read: The Furthest Station (Ben Aaronovitch): Ghosts and more ghosts, and also gods! I feel like everything was not wrapped up neatly, though.

Read: The October Man (Ben Aaronovitch): Germany’s answer to Peter Grant, who isn’t nearly as geeky or as popular with river spirits, but gets the job done.

Words: FAIL.

Yesterday’s normal early meeting was moved to today, and then I went right into the meeting that was moved from tomorrow (because tomorrow is a holiday in the UK and my boss’s boss plans to actually take off work). Then I was useless and dumb for the rest of the day.

Played: Ken is still in Portland, so Vivian ran her 189X horror game that she had prepared. Creepy backwoods villages in the Black Forest, close-mouthed locals, mysterious health problems, and DOOOOM. Also a homebrew system which a few years ago would have seemed generic and now seems like too many numbers.

Read: Amongst Our Weapons (Ben Aaronovitch): Further adventures of Peter Grant, Magic Cop, in both law enforcement and impending fatherhood. This feels like it could be the last book with Peter as a main character.

Words: FAIL.

Had to get up early so I could commute and wear a mask all day and watch people booze it up and not be able to properly collaborate with my teammates. If I were still a useless post-college git, maybe I’d be impressed by free food, but apparently I’m a grownup now.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. I did not contribute much, but at least a Navy Puke got fragged.

Read: Rare Swords Are Only Good Until You Lose Them (August): Third in the series, MC is still OP, although he’s burning through his reserves. Also, we finally find out what Elsa’s deal is.

Read: Stars and Steam (Anthea Sharp): Five short stories, not much more than vignettes, in a universe where aliens give humans advanced technology on the condition they can make their society stable, by which they mean Queen Victoria always rules (and apparently mores never change).

Read: The Field Guide To The North American Teenager (Ben Phillipe): A black French Canadian teenager moves to Austin, where he hates everything at first, which understandably makes him kind of a jerk. Sadly, he both stays kind of a jerk even after making friends, and leaves written evidence, so then he gets a comeuppance.

Read: Catch These Hands vol 1 (murata): Years after they were high-school delinquent rivals, two women meet again, and it turns out the one that had a crush on the other still does, so they start dating. It seems very Japanese in that dating is purely a social status, almost no visible affection. Also hardly anything happens.

Words: FAIL.

Cleaners came at 7:00 this morning, so I had to get up, but then I took a nap thing, or maybe was just a huge useless lump for a while. I managed to shop for a grocery and then visit friends to get hugs, though.

Played: Zoomwarts. Bella isn’t dead, nobody is a vampire (although Emily is also not alive), the ministry is taking credit for saving the day, the surviving eight and a half students are going on winter break early, everyone else has been sucked into a pit to the underworld. Maybe we’ll stop here and let Ken run D&D so Nonny can fight monsters, or maybe Bella and Rosamund and the lizards will have to go get everyone’s soul back.

Eaten: Tasty kebabs, tasty feta-cucumber salad, tasty chocolate splenda cream pie. But we do also love Ken for himself! Really!

Watched: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions 1.9: No parasol will protect Rikka from Nibutani talking about feelings!

Watched: Azumanga Daioh 1: Still ridiculous! Also, the fluffy temptation of wheat.

Watched: RWBY 1.4: Sproing!

Played: Zombie ball tag. If a zombie catches a human, they turn into a zombie, but if a zombie gets hit by the ball three times, they turn into a human. Seemed to be reasonably well-balanced in that sometimes the humans won and sometimes the zombies. Also not nearly as contentious as Sneaky Statues.

Words: 554 kitten words about nothing in particular.

Not very clever today, but did some stuff anyway.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We had to stop early because Nonny was exploding, but there was time for Nom’s eyeball to grow legs and scuttle for freedom. Also the LT has bottomed out on SAN, but how do you even tell with an officer?

Read: Aposimz vol 5-6 (Tsutomu Nihei): I guess it’s always important to have a nihilist faction as well as the evil empire and an increasing rag-tag band of rebels.

Words: Finally finished that one paragraph of revision. Getting close to being able to show it to people?

I can get up on time when people expect me to be at the place to do the thing.

Played: Lancer. We defeated the Engineering Mutants and their pet abomination, by the simple expedient of barbecuing them all when they wouldn’t communicate, and some of the things that came through the malfunctioning Blinkgate. The other things we managed to delay in their incomprehensible purpose until we could unplug the console they were trying to use to reset the Blinkgate, and then get xenolinguists who have spent their entire careers waiting for this opportunity to talk to them. I’m sure there will be no consequences.

Watched: The Owl House 1-2. It was not what I was expecting, which I guess means I was expecting the wrong thing.

Read: Aposimz vol 3 (Tsutomu Nihei): Ugh, allies! Also, apparently there are no animals on this artificial world, only robots with edible parts. That’s very on-brand.

Words: 508 kitten words.