Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
21 September 2016 - Wednesday
I did feel kind of sorry for the owlbears in
13th Age,
unnatural abominations of flesh though they are.
The Greek food, on the other hand, got everything that was coming to
it.
Not Your Sidekick (CB Lee) has a non-white, non-straight,
non-male protagonist, and also some trans representation in secondary
characters, but on the other hand, it's extremely predictable. Even I
guessed many of the plot twists, and I am well on the side of being
carried along by the story. Ayse could probably write out the entire
book word for word after reading the cover blurb.
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20 September 2016 - Tuesday
Necrotech (KC Alexander) is pretty straight-forward
cyberpunk, except that cyberpsychosis sufferers are zombies. The main
character is unsurprisingly a kind of awful person, but not as bad as
she could be, and possessed of a few virtues.
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19 September 2016 - Monday
I have nothing against various DC superheroines being reimagined in
WWII, and certainly not as lesbians, but volume 1 of
Bombshells (Marguerite Bennett, Marguerite Sauvage) is still
only okay. I think I am not enough of a fanparasite to appreciate it.
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18 September 2016 - Sunday
There is no gaming today. Sadness.
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17 September 2016 - Saturday
HAPPY HAPPY KEN-DAY (observed)!
Boo on Ken for telling me the part was at 12:00 instead of 14:00, but
Nonni was happy to have someone different to play with.
A lot of Ken's friends from Before San Jose showed up, like Brooks who is playing 13th Age
and the rest of his poly family including two small creatures, and there
was a lot more talking and drinking and less playing games than I hoped,
but it wasn't my party! Anyway, I got to prove that I am worst at
7 Wonders,
so what more do I need?
I ate very unhealthily, but it was tasty.
Sadly, Dimension W does seem to be veering into the
"alternate universe" direction.
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16 September 2016 - Friday
Fix (Ferrett Steinmetz) completes the story from
Flex and The Flux, about magic based on obsession
and what it does to the world. It's not like the previous two books were
easy on our heroic bureaucromancer and his family, but of course the climax
is particularly grueling. We do get to find out what is going on with the
Unimancers and the Thing That Ate Europe and other setting details, at
least.
Why can I not write about the doom of feelings?
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14 September 2016 - Wednesday
I finally got the picture of my 13th Age
character Anwë that I commissioned,
although I haven't managed to paper it yet. I'm not sure people were
properly impressed.
Then we ate cheap
Chinese food and thwarted a villain by finding out that Ktang's is
probably a node in the vast Lich King Network. Next week, rescuing
non-sacrificial virgins from diabolists!
Like The Invisible Library, The Masked City
(Genevieve Cogman) is not deep but pretty fun. It seems like there may be
secrets hiding in the cosmology, waiting to leap out at the poor heroine.
(For example, I suspect X and Y are actually the same thing.)
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11 September 2016 - Sunday
Celebrating 15 years of fear-mongering and encroaching government
shit for our own "safety"!
Hurray, it's PAD&D5!
This week, we found the [SPOILER] cultists, although sadly Jeremy had them
jump directly to fighting us, thus depriving us of the chance to get
advantage by cruelly betraying them.
Lam definitely needs to be saving her spell slots to add 2d10 radiant
damage to her melee attacks, or at least her crits (in 5th ed, all
damage dice get doubled, so that would be +4d10).
I don't know why I enjoy this game more than
13th Age.
Maybe it's just that we game for hours, instead of socializing for a
while and then sort of gaming for a little bit and then dispersing. Or
maybe I am actually not good enough to play story games and need a
concrete system.
At least in volume 1, Wandering Island (Kenji Tsuruta) is
about a girl, her airplane, and a mysterious floating island that only
sometimes appears. It's by the same person who did Spirit of
Wonder, which explains why the art style is familiar.
Story games by Jeremy (Fri Sep 23 21:06:55 2016)
Games are for fun and a break from concentrated mentation. When I want a complex, multi-layered story full of relationships, emotion, carefully considered actions, and the psychic rewards therefrom, I go back to my quotidian life. Managing the real one is hard enough. I haven't yet succeeded in simulating another in real time.
Also, I like smashing things and taking stuff, but I'm way too inhibited without a plate of cheese and a bowl of carrot sticks in front of me.
Re-ordering those paragraphs also works. :-D
Re: Story games by marithlizard (Mon Sep 26 13:28:57 2016)
Mild-mannered Jeremy lives an ordinary, non-smashing life - but little do his neighbors know that exposure to many-sided dice and snack food can transform him into BIOLOGIST HULK!
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10 September 2016 - Saturday
- Brother, Dear Brother 38-39: The End! All the survivors
are happy, although heteronormativity is rampant. (The audience is
unanimous that our heroine's parents are in denial, though.)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 24: I remembered the Kaworu
stuff as taking more than a single episode, but then I also didn't
remember how gay it was, which shows you what my memory is worth.
- Nisemonogatari 5: Well, at least the naked vampire is
clean. I have no idea what is up with that house, though.
Make a comment!
7 September 2016 - Wednesday
Everyone made it to 13th Age! Then we
fought a basilisk, which resulted in no permanent PC deaths even though Ken
completely nerfed my attempt to use Anwë's backgrounds to keep us from
dying. I don't know that this feat was a good investment.
Stranger of Tempest (Tom Lloyd) is fairly straight-forward
fantasy, with dungeons and magic guns. The main character is fat and
middle-aged and about as well-liked as a German in France in the 1950s (for
similar) reasons, which is something.
Make a comment!
5 September 2016 - Monday
Finished the first season of Alice Isn't
Dead, and finally found out the narrator's name! I'm not sure if I'm
supposed to be smart enough to have figured out what's Really Going On from
the existing 10 episodes or not, but I look forward to the second season
anyway, and will even send them some money if I remember.
Oh no! These cats have never been fed ever! Just ask
them!
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4 September 2016 - Sunday
Still in Roseville! Their game store failed me because I do not play
Pathfinder, but that is okay. I have the Internet for that.
We played Dungeon
World but without Jason (so no Druid) and Ken changed characters (so Beguiler
(no idea if that's the correct link but it looks close) instead of
Barbarian). Apparently in this setting, we make city names by
anacronymizing a description and adding vowels if needed. Thus, Thon,
Beccs, and Sadar. After descending into the forgotten tombs under the
Secret Dwarven Republic and defeating the psychic undead dwarf who gave
their contact all his power and influence via evil beard transplant, the
PCs successfully got power and nice things and a chance to build a quest
token for an NPC. Next time I visit, they will try to deliver the token and
then maybe work on the Beguiler's goal of overthrowing the tyrannical
council of Beccs. Dungeons may ensue, or maybe I'll decide that a city is
enough of a threat; either way, I can/should prepare.
Marith reports the cats are still adorable.
American food is so full of carbs.
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3 September 2016 - Saturday
The (rest of the) first half of (the first season of) Alice Isn't Dead
didn't have any more of the gory bits that repelled Marith but is darn
creepy.
Now I am in Roseville. Humans are here. Gamers are here.
In the first game of Dominion, I was
betrayed by the lure of Talisman, since there were no 4-point cards that
were worth getting stacks of, but when I resisted the lure, I tied for the
win (with someone who also resisted but used a different strategy
otherwise, meaning it was a good set of cards).
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2 September 2016 - Friday
Avalonhugs!
Marith is now briefed on how to cater to the cats while I am in
Roseville and she is avoiding travel stress.
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1 September 2016 - Thursday
Hope and Red (Jon Skovron) is kind of extruded, but has
creepy biomancers. The fantasy slang is only so-so, but on the other
hand, it has the only female [SPOILER] and the only female [SPOILER] as
PCs, and they are totally PCs.
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31 August 2016 - Wednesday
This week, we have both Mike and Kelsey for
13th Age,
and also more Thai food! (The Thai food did not get a character
sheet.)
This week, my major failings are that I can't roll dice and that I
can't speak in character voice. But it all kind of worked out in the
end, ish.
One Good Dragon Deserves Another and
No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished (Rachel Aaron) are the next
two books in the series that started with
Nice Dragons Finish Last. Julius's meme of "sociopathy is
not the only route to success" is gaining some traction, despite
widespread death and violence, but Marci's plotline with Ghost and
high-level UN mages and the future of humanity is more interesting and
also has a giant cliffhanger.
It isn't Shadowrun, but it's kind of close only with more dragons.
I have completely sucked at writing this month. Some of it was from
computer issues (now resolved with the giant shiny new iMac), some of it
was from brain pill issues (now resolved with a renewed prescription
that should last until I can get the prescription through a more
organized provider), but most of it was from just being useless. And I
am starting off September with a vacation, so maybe I should just die in
a pit.
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