Previously, in Trip's Life...
28 February 2016 - Sunday
Jus and Nonny and Auntie Tabby and a bunch of their other grownups had
dim sum this morning. Hurray!
There was some doubt as to whether we would play PAD&D5
this week, but it mostly came together. No ranger for us, though, as
Deirdre was attacked by a feral escalator and has a broken elbow which
prevents driving.
Arbitrarily, the PCs choose to explore the Cavern From Which None
Return before the Sinkhole Where No One Goes. This involves swimming,
but they have water breathing rituals and a tug-crocodile
(druid FTW!). It is haunted by carrion crawlers that are infested with
replicant electronics as seen in Prometheus's dream, which are
annoying in themselves but quite alarming in their implications. There
are also tiny tools, even smaller than gnome-scale, which seem to be the
source of the Titan infection. Also, frog bones.
There are several sinkholes in this cavern, which lead into a maze of
twisty little passages, all different, like the one in the main cavern, so
there's no point in swimming all the way back to do further exploration.
Plus, a source of Titan infection cries out for
exploitation investigation.
The caves go on and on and down and down, but there is the sound of
distant music to give direction to the PCs' wandering. After a bit, they
realize they are following cracks around the edges of a truly enormous
bronze cylinder embedded in the earth, and it shows signs of having been
mined for metal and clockwork. Then they encounter the work party of
frogs with adorable little oxy-acetylene torches to mine the artifact.
Apparently peaceful contact is made with the tiny batrachian worshippers of
Ares ("King of the Gods") and the PCs are escorted in the direction of
frog HQ, but Zach can eavesdrop on the froggy thought-glyphs and warn
everyone of the imminent ambush.
The frogs are surprisingly mighty, and get to make use of the "climb
on a creature two or more size categories larger" rules like the PCs did
on the giants in previous sessions, but are finally defeated just before
they can summon reinforcements and The Tank. Sadly, the captured frogs
have little to say beyond "Yay Ares!" (which does not go over well with
followers of Athena), so the PCs will have to continue on and find out
what kind of tank industrial frogs have.
The frog tank is an Apparatus of Kwalish, built following the pattern
of the wrecked Apparatus that they use as a temple. However, it plays
little role in the battle as The Frederick's Sword of Terror forces the
crew to bail out before they can pincer a single "giant". The frog
chieftan with barbarian levels and the frog priestess with some kind of
spell-casting levels are not as easily dissuaded, but at the end of it,
all the frogs are in bags, and the druid (in the form of a bear) is only
slightly stuck in the tank.
In the temple (the original Apparatus) is a body with a
necklace of familiar design. When Zach nabs it, it tries to possess him
and fails miserably, so the bronze statue animates and causes some
trouble. Not as much trouble as a swarm of augmented frogs with wrenchs
and cutting torches, though.
When the corpse's notes are recovered and deciphered, it turns out that
Ares sent these frogs to be infected by the buried Titan hand to carry the
infection up to the giants, so that they would take it back to Mars for him
to use to become King of the Gods. This is totally against everything the
gods stand for, of course.
The Frederick, having already been cursed by the gods once, lays
claim to the amulet of nondetection.
Writing: Ugh, whatever. It's all
horrible.
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27 February 2016 - Saturday
Dave's mom (Auntie Tabby to Jus and Nonny) is visiting. She is
super-nice.
Nonny is still crazy for the juice game.
- Brother, Dear Brother 16: Most interactions in this
episode were positive, or at least within the bounds of normality. I
can only conclude that Miya will be utterly horrific in the next
episode.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 3: I wonder if Shinji would
have saved them without Katsuragi's intervention?
- Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth 6: I'm pretty
sure it's not that kind of show, but Alice's interest in Yune really
does read as romantic to me.
- Steven Universe 27-28: This definitely clarifies
whether Steven's dad is a Follower or a DNPC!
- Legend of Korra 4.10: Everybody makes up! Now they can
definitely defeat the evil tyrant!
Alliance (SK Dunstall) is the sequel to
Linesman. It is less about discovery (although some
discoveries are made) and more about intrigue (as people try to use or
overcome the discoveries from the first book). The main character is
remarkably unfazed by his sudden rise in status. His bodyguard is still
cool.
The Games of Supervillainy (CT Phipps) is the sequel to
The Rules of Supervillainy. It is even more silly and
over-the-top, but in appropriate comic-book style. Also, tragedy!
Emma and the Banderwigh (Matthew S Cox) is not the sequel
to anything. It is another book from the publisher of Please Don't
Tell My Parent's I'm a Supervillain, and sadly not as good. It
would probably be fine for a kid old enough to not be scared by the
scary bits, though.
The Testament of Sister New Devil (Tetsuo Uesu,
Miyakokasiwa, Nekosuke Okuma (Nitroplus)) is completely without socially
redeeming qualities.
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25 February 2016 - Thursday
Bah, I had to actually do stuff at work today. How is that fair?!
Both Kelsey and Grant are missing this week, so instead of 13th Age we
played Tzolk'in,
the fabled game of many moving parts. It's a worker placement game, but
the gimmick is that the places move, being on gears turned by a master
gear. The longer you let a worker ride, the generally better the result when you
take it off, but a particular result might not be what you need for your
strategy, so timing is essential. Corn is also essential.
It took a million hours, but I eventually somehow tied Mike for
second place, probably because no one else was competing for crystal
skulls.
More supermythos thoughts:
Ghouls: stealthy, have sharp claws and fangs, see in the dark, eat
meat. Catgirls: stealthy, have sharp claws and fangs, see in the dark,
eat meat. And we know that humans turning into ghouls is a thing, which
leads directly to the (previously alluded-to) Great Nekomimi Plague of
the late 80s. However, telling a catgirl that she is basically a ghoul
with cleavage is not recommended (and not even completely accurate).
The aliens travelled through interstellar space to nuke what they
referred to as "violaters of corpses", so people call them the
Gravekeepers. There is a rich body of literature, innocent of evidence,
linking them to everything from the sinking of Atlantis to the building
of the (now-slagged) pyramids.
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24 February 2016 - Wednesday
I was supposed to do some work after seeing Avalon, but at some point
the customer cut off our access and no one noticed. I ended up doinking
around waiting to see if they would get things straightened out and then
going to bed, instead getting of any writing done.
No supermythos thoughts today. Only Zuul.
Make a comment!
23 February 2016 - Tuesday
But a superhero setting is nothing without superheroes (or
supervillains, if you can distinguish them). Can I come up with twenty
origins? Maybe!
- Astrally-projecting alien explorer accidentally merged with human mind
- Bitten by a rare spider from the plateau of Leng
- Built a Great Machine using principles those narrow-minded fools
at the university would never dare understand
- Children conceived in the contaminated zone around a Ghoul-Hunter
target zone manifest strange powers at puberty
- Creator and only practitioner of shoggoth-style kung fu
- Cursed into beast form by romantic rival, learned to make the best
of it
- Gained wisdom by hanging from the branches of the dark young of
Shub-Niggurath for nine days
- Impregnated by alien worm-god, divinely empowered for 99 years of
gestation
- Infected with spores from abandoned ghoul meth lab
- Inherited a strange artifact with limited documentation
- Lonely mad scientist releases virus that transforms humans into
catgirls
- Mage with high pain tolerance inscribed spells on own skeleton
- Mind transferred from terminally ill flesh body to electromechanical
chassis based on Antarctic brain-eaters
- Parents sacrificed by cultists, dressed up like a nightgaunt to seek
revenge
- Penultimate result of secret ghoul breeding program, ran away to
escape compulsory cannibilism and incest
- Raised by ninja velociraptors in fantastical underground realm
- Secret government aquatic supersoldier program using gene therapy based on
Deep Ones
- Sole survivor of attempted Yog-Sothoth summoning, now coterminous
with some space and time
- Spacewalk to retrieve Ghoul-Hunter debris unexpectedly successful
- Symbiotic worms repair all physical damage
- War-dinosaur biodrone of the Serpent People, gained free will after
human psychic broke control engrams
- Went to the Dreamlands, came back with imaginary friend
Speaking of supers, The Outlaw: Origins, Infected:
Die Like Supernovas, and Sanctuary: Among Monsters
(Alan Janney) are the first three of a projected eight-part series with a
somewhat unusual basis for superpowers. It's pretty commonly used in other
sorts of fantasy, but I'm not sure if leaving off all the usual
side-effects makes it more or less plausible (taking it beyond the
bounds of biology is completely traditional, though).
Potatoes, Come Forth! (H Jonas Rhynedahll) starts off as
sort of strange deliberately-systemless fantasy, but then the main
character gets mixed up in the doings of higher-order beings and is
given immense power and meh.
No Avalon, yes writing. Still terrible.
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22 February 2016 - Monday
I was thinking about superhero web serials, and it seems like any
good superhero setting needs an alien invasion plotline. Hey, wait, I
have an alien invasion plot that I never did anything with!
One otherwise normal day in the 1960s, a fleet of asteroids appears in
Earth orbit, disrupting the magnetosphere so badly auroras are visible in
the daytime. Before humanity can even start to deal with that, the
asteroids light up multi-dozen-terawatt energy beams and start burning
holes deep into the Earth's crust. Some of the target locations are in
the middle of nowhere, some are at archaeological sites, but some are in
or near existing cities.
This being the Cold War, everyone with nukes freaks out and launches
them all. The aliens divert some of their output to shooting down the
missiles and bombers and destroying the launch sites, then send a message
of about two million trinary bits and go back to what they were doing.
After a day or two, they gradually switch to a more superficial and
sporadic attack pattern, and intermittently transmit a new message about
three times the length of the first one. Some of the new targets are in
or near refugee camps, so the death toll continues to rise.
The first message is finally decoded to a picture of a page of
extremely old-style Egyptian hieroglyphs, which translate to something
like, "DO NOT SLAY YOURSELVES WHEN THE VIOLATORS OF CORPSES ARE AMONG
YOU". When the authorities investigate, many of the strange occurances
near death ray targets turn out to be connected to repulsive, rubbery,
light-averse humanoids that could fairly be called ghouls. The second
message is three pages long: a picture of the full moon, an outline of
Antarctica with a point marked, and more hieroglyphs: "BRING FORTH THE
GREATEST AMONG YOU THAT HE MAY BE EXALTED".
In the indicated spot is a huge crystal formation like the ones on the
orbiting death asteroids, so by the full moon about four thousand people
have gathered to gain the advantage of alien exaltation (whatever that
means) for themselves or their countries or at least NOT the
Commies/Capitalist Running-Dogs/Chinks. At the exact moment of the
astronomical full moon, the crystals pour forth a horde of howling
brass-and-vacuum-tube monsters which leap upon everyone within a couple
of miles, rip out their brains and spinal cords, and eat/incinerate them.
About a third of the monsters immediately fall over
discharged/broken/dead on the bodies of the humans they just killed, but
the rest flood back into the crystals, which then rise into the sky with
a miles-wide chunk of Antarctica in tow.
The asteroids gather around the lump of stolen Earth and the whole
mass breaks orbit just over two weeks after first appearing. Within a
couple more days, Earth-bound tracking can no longer pick them out
against the surface of the Sun.
"Aliens came in, shot up the planet, murdered a bunch of our best and
brightest, and then left without responding to any messages" should be
worth 5 or 10 points off the average SAN for most of the world, which
justifies both some people becoming superheroes/supervillains and other
people putting up with them. The ghouls have lost almost all their
population and resources, but even a low-level Mythos critter can cause a
lot of trouble, and the orbital bombardment would definitely stir up other
things. Supertech based on defunct brain harvesters or other alien stuff
can't be commercialized because anyone who understands it develops other
priorities. Magic, alternate universes, and time travel are also
covered. What's not to like?
No Avalon. Some writing.
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21 February 2016 - Sunday
Today is the day when I went to the Children's Discovery Museum with Ken and
Jus and Nonny. It turns out that being three means Nonny can engage in a
ball-related activity just about forever, but that is okay.
Ugh, writing.
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20 February 2016 - Saturday
Confusion abounded, so I accomplished nothing today. I did get caught up
on writing, kinda, but still have no idea whether to link it from my
writing page or just delete it all and live in a hole full of bugs and
worms forever.
- Brother, Dear Brother 15: It's not a real exclusive
in-group if it doesn't ritually sacrifice someone every so often.
- Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth 5: Why yes, France
is full of looming ogres.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 1-2: Wow, this looked a lot
cleaner and shinier two decades ago. I guess an otaku can't fall into
the same anime twice.
- Steven Universe 26: A direct follow-on to the previous
episode, and more intimations of plot. And maybe doom!
Apparently I fail at reading as well as at writing because instead of
reading any of the ten squillion (1 squillion = the number of tentacles
on a million randomly selected cephalopods) unread books on my iPad or
even in my Box Room, I reread The Awesome (Eva Darrows). But if
there were a new one, I would have read that too! And hopefully not
gotten hypnotized by the author photo.
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19 February 2016 - Friday
Hurray, Avalon hugs!
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18 February 2016 - Thursday
No writing today either, but I knew that in advance because it is 13th Age
night. Picking up food at the Chinese place right around the corner and carrying it
to Monkeycat Towers worked pretty well, and ensured an acceptable density of popcorn
chicken.
There was a lot of talking, but in the end we agreed to let the thief guy look
good with the medical books we retrieved from the Eater of (F)Lies temple, in
exchange for a magic item linked to the Prince of Shadows that would let us find the
Book of Doom where he stashed it out of easy retrieval. When the
Stone Thief
surfaced to cause trouble for someone, we went looking for the book, but instead
encountered the Swordapus and its sahuagin sidekick. Three rounds and half a dozen
crits (by us) later, there was no more Swordapus problem. The GM was sad, but not
really.
I tried reading other stuff from the same publisher as Please Don't Tell My
Parents I'm a Supervillain, but so far nothing else measures up.
Acne, Asthma, And Other Signs You Might Be Half Dragon (Rena Rocford)
had potential, but I think it went to the supernatural stuff too quickly. More of
the main character's doomed normal life and more build-up for the villain would have
been good.
The Last Condo Board of the Apocalypse (Nina Post) is rather
British comedy about fallen angels, a condo tower, a monster hunter in a career
slump, and the end of the world.
The main character of Leap of Space (Sharon T Rose) is a physically
very non-human alien, but the author doesn't seem to be up to portraying alien
minds. Aliens seem to be monocultural (possibly because their worlds are the size of
sound stages), being spiritually enlightened and being liked by the alien
protagonist both correspond to having 21st-century American values, etc. On the
other hand, intelligence is an admirable virtue to extol.
Make a comment!
17 February 2016 - Wednesday
Still no Avalon. :(
I have been writing regularly for several days now, but tonight I failed.
Probably because I suck.
Magika: Swordsman and Summoner (Mitsuki Mihara, MonRin) is pretty
much the exact same genre as Dragonar Academy.
Poseidon's Wake (Alastair Reynolds) is the conclusion of
the trilogy of elephants and STL space travel and scary alien machines,
with more of all of it. Consciousness is a plot point, but at least it's
not quantum, even if there is some talk of philosophical zombies (which
annoys me).
I was going to say that Broken Dolls (Tyrolin Puxty) is
very much a Twist Book, but actually the mystery is set up from the very
beginning, it's just not answered until near the end. I guess that makes it more of
a Reveal Book.
Make a comment!
15 February 2016 - Monday
Today I mostly sat on the couch with Ghirardelli and read. Later, there was a bit
of writing. Ayse and Jus and Nonny did not come over because they had a different
thing to do, but maybe next weekend.
Zero's Familiar: Chevalier (Noboru Yamaguchi, Yukari Higa),
which picks up where the first series left off, is complete after four
volumes of warfare, romantic discord, dark pasts, and cheesecake.
I picked up Ani-Imo (Haruko Kurumatani) because I have a weakness
for stories of men transforming into women (body swap, in this case, so the balance
is maintined). However, as of vol 1, it really could stand some acknowledgement that
the way the now-male lead is behaving is Not Okay. It's not as bad as one could
infer from the back cover blurb, but he needs a severe smacking.
The Shadows (Jacqueline West) is pretty standard
middle-school present-day fantasy with a creepy house and creepy paintings
and talking cats and no hint of romance.
Ex-Isle (Peter Clines) is the fifth book in the story of
superheroes vs the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. In this volume, they
encounter yet another enclave of survivors which has collectively not dealt
well with the end of civilization, and Corpse Girl saves the day.
Make a comment!
14 February 2016 - Sunday
This week's PAD&D5
was mostly one huge fight against: one Martian giant druid, one Martian
giant fighter with a lightning cannon, two Martian banths, and a
semi-endless number of green Martians. There were several points where we
were completely doomed, and even Zach was knocked out twice, but at the end
of it, both banths were dead, both giants were captured and interrogated,
and the green Martians had collapsed the tunnel rather than let the PCs out
into their base.
There are still something like 50 giant warriors, plus dozens of ogres, green
Martians, and less-well trained giants, so next session will be looking for
alternate ways out of the cavern where we are holed up with the remaining escaped
thralls. Surely the Cavern From Which None Return and the Mysterious Sinkhole will
not have any threats.
No Avalon tonight because her kid is still sick in some undefined but messy
fashion. :(
Make a comment!
13 February 2016 - Saturday
- Brother, Dear Brother 14: Saint-Just: still crazy, still
well-equipped with drugs and knives.
- Dennou Coil 25-26: The end!
- Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth 4½: I am sure this
episode would be terribly emotional if we knew old-fashioned Japanese songs.
- Legend of Korra 4.9: I guess this episode teaches kids the
practical value of repealing the death penalty?
Next week, Neon Genesis Evangelion!
Make a comment!
11 February 2016 - Thursday
FedEx could only give me a 12-hour window for picking up my bum TV to RMA it,
but in the event they showed up promptly enough that I was still able to go in to
the office for the afternoon. Yay, I guess?
No 13th Age
for us this week! Ken has to do something with Jus's school, and no
rescheduling worked out. (There is a reason we decided on Thursday
originally!)
After Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen, I had
to reread Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain and
Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon (Richard
Roberts). Reading books about young people always reminds me how much of my
youth (ie, all of it) I wasted being me, but they are awesome anyway.
The Hunt (Chuck Wendig) is the sequel to Atlanta Burns,
in which everyone's favorite psycho teenager continues to work out her PTSD by
kicking the asses of evildoers all over her small Pennsylvania town. The evil she
fights is at least as sordid than in the last book, but on a somewhat larger
scale. Also, guys suck.
Too cute.
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9 February 2016 - Tuesday
I had to do something to a customer right during the time when I would be
commuting to the far office, so I ended up just working from home. Bleah.
A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!
(Eliezer S Yudkowsky) is an Original English Language light novel (or
novella; it's pretty short). The protagonist is hikkikomori ×
nymphomaniac; she does go to school, it sounds like, but the rest of the
time she's in her bunk with the Internet. Mages from a fantasy universe
summon her because their spell says she has a 100% chance of defeating the
Dark Lord. The implications of these two points make up pretty much the
entire plot, which seems very philosophical for a light novel but actually
fits pretty well into the light novel stream-of-consciousness style.
Broken Hero (Jonathan Wood) continues to focus on the emotional
trauma of saving the world every week while having no support from the world being
saved and also dating coworkers. The degree to which MI37 appalls people from
functional organizations is telling. Spoiler: The world does get saved.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen (Richard Roberts) is
the third book about middle-school supervillains The Inscrutable Machine. This
time, their greatest threat is their schoolmates, a surprising number of whom have
superpowers and some of whom did trade their sanity for power. Oh, the doom!
Make a comment!
7 February 2016 - Sunday
The plumbing demons have been banished (although it sounds like it was
an epic struggle, or at least an epic expenditure), so we had bonus PAD&D5
this weekend. Dave was late, but we hadn't gotten to the point of fighting
anything by the time he showed up, so it all worked out.
The PCs find some ogres doing maintenance work on the giants' longships,
so they wait for one to wander off by himself and jump him with
mind-control magic and cheap shiny trinkets. He spills that the giants are
from Far Away, or more likely from multiple Far Aways since most complain
how wet and heavy it is here, but one has to use an inhaler full of water
vapor in the dry giant lair. They are gathering thralls to work on the
diggings beneath their lair as well as to serve them generally. The ogres
are not cleared to know what they're digging for, but (no surprise) Zach's
key suggests that the armory of the gods is right under the giants' lair.
Kicking in the door and defeating all the giants in personal combat is proposed
but overruled. Instead, the PCs sneak in and mingle with the thralls — all
size M humanoids look the same from above, and Ella is a swarm of spiders (which
her friends may eventually get used to) — and sneak through the drunken
festival to the dungeon underneath. It is a major underground complex, guarded by
enlongated four-armed green creatures and one antisocial giant with his white apes,
so there is more sneaking around until the PCs are spotted and have to quietly
murder the drunk giant and his drunk ape. Then they mind control their way past
the guards on the barricade blocking what Zach is sure is the way to where they
want to go and make friends with the renegade thralls with loaves and fishes.
Finally, the PCs find the room covered in ancient writing: "This is not a good
place. No great deed is commemorated here. There is nothing here that is worth
having. This is a place of danger. Your life will not be improved by remaining
here or disturbing anything." Naturally, they cannot resist going in and poking
around the ominous alcove behind the altar, and the convex mirror lurking there.
Inevitably, but not naturally, The Frederick's reflection comes out of the mirror
and tries to murder and replace him. When it is beaten into a collection of
rainbow-colored bad angles and then destroyed, it leaves behind a magic item, so
of course Ella and Frinka have to try it. Each reflection is more trouble than the
last, and Frinka's almost escapes the room (leaving her trapped within the
mirror's focal range), so they call it quits there and leave, after adding to the
warnings in modern languages.
Now The Frederick has reusable confusion bomb, and Ella and Frinka have
crystallized resurrections. Also, everyone is level 7!
We are the man by Jeremy (Wed Feb 10 17:01:35 2016)
Breezing past, scoring fat lutes, and then adding to the warnings counts as joining the establishment, right?
Re: We are the man by Trip (Thu Feb 11 09:32:17 2016)
It's not like we took the escaped diggers in there and fed them through the Lens of Doom or anything!
Make a comment!
6 February 2016 - Saturday
Writing! Bookcase! Pulled pork sandwiches!
- Dennou Coil 23-24: Isako has doom too!
- Brother, Dear Brother 13: Miya-sama may be experiencing an
unfamiliar emotion!
- Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth 4: I'm surprised Claude let
Yune go off without a chaperone. That rich girl sure looked like she had
designs on her virtue!
- Legend of Korra 4.8: Recap episode. I don't think Mako set out to
become a two-timing weasel, but he sure didn't come off well.
- Steven Universe 25: I think this is the first time we have seen
another gem!
Harmony Black is a spinoff from Craig Schaefer's first series about a
sorcerer/con man, starring the eponymous sorceress/FBI agent. There is occult
investigation, but the genre is mostly conspiracy, and promises to only get deeper
and more horrible.
After approximately one million years, the tenth "Young Wizards" book,
Games Wizards Play (Diane Duane), is out! Pros: non-het
representation, wizarding society when it's not about to explode, a wizard
who is a straight-up asshole and still a wizard, Nita getting The Talk from
her dad. Unfortunately, it feels a little formulaic with the extremely
cryptic hints and the sudden explosion of awesomeness. Also, Nita and Kit's
relationship mostly consists of her going "Boyfriend? I have a boyfriend?
What do I do with one of those?" without even the teenage-boy-embarrassment
of book 9.75. At this rate her little sister is going to figure out what to
do with a boyfriend first, and her boy has been dead for two
books!
I think I need to reread the first three "Magic Ex Libris" books,
because I had no idea how things got the state they were in at the
beginning of Revisionary (Jim C Hines). But I just rolled with
it, and it all worked out, kind of. Governments are almost as evil as
corporations.
Hunt
The Wicked is a game about interstellar bounty hunters who are the most
organized law enforcement that the sun-eating alien god-machine will put up
with. Add in the explicit disregard for realism as a distraction from
cinematics, and it should be like Feng Shui with
more plasma cannons and powered armor. However, the system is quite
abstract, somewhere around the level of Fate, so I can't
get traction on it, and there isn't enough setting flavor to make up for
it.
The Southlands
Bestiary is for Kobold Press's house setting, not the standard Pathfinder
one, but it is at least fantasy Africa. This means lots of undead with
dessication powers, and lots of monkey monsters, but also dire
spinosauruses and flying jellyfish with tusks.
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5 February 2016 - Friday
Julia came to the office to sell Girl Scout cookies to my cow orkers, who were
all appropriately floored by her adorableness.
Make a comment!
4 February 2016 - Thursday
Costco failed Kelsey, but she did eventually bring us food so we could play
13th Age. This week, I
annoyed the GM by actually making a skill roll to suborn the agent of the Prince of
Shadows. If we can get the mushroom people to stop raiding the town's
mushroom farm, he will hand over the instructions for getting the book from where
he stashed it. Ktangs is overhearing dragons in his sleep talking about the book,
so not letting it escape our control any further seems like a good plan.
Grant has decided that the stupid crazy people at his new job that
conflicted with gaming were too obnoxious, so he is back tonight, and
probably will be in future weeks. His character from the alternate team was
declared to have been swallowed by the Stone Thief
shortly after the Kobold Rocket Incident, so we encountered him in the
library of the Eaters of (F)Lies, where he had been hiding out after
Dungeontown wouldn't let a tiefling in. Allegedly he has turned over a new leaf,
or at least now he has an aasimar in a magic bow to give him good advice, so
despite Claire being extremely dubious about his moral fiber, we recruit him to
help with the mushroom people problem. With his knowledge of spore-based
communion to guide her, Anwë is able to get the fungaloids to suggest
something for the town to eat besides their offspring(?). Sadly, there was a random
encounter before we could get back to town, because of course the bowels of a living
dungeon have giant snails and giant lizards and plain giants wandering around to
trash Anwë's dress.
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3 February 2016 - Wednesday
Worked from home again. Hopefully my cow orkers appreciated it.
I am not just caught up, but ahead on writing. It is still all awful.
Make a comment!
2 February 2016 - Tuesday
I went in to work in the San Mateo office today, because I was lured by free
food, but so many people commented on how unhealthy I seemed and mentioned that
working from home is an option that apparently I probably shouldn't have. And then
meetings went on and on and I didn't get home until like 20:30. But I did do a
little writing.
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1 February 2016 - Monday
I worked from home today, partly so I wouldn't cough on people but at least
partly so I could sleep in. Neither sleeping in nor working went particularly
well. Certainly nothing else did.
The Tomb of Follies is a playset for Costume Fairy
Adventures that lets the fairies rampage around in a huge underground
maze full of insane traps and goofy monsters, with the nominal aim of
defeating someone who stole the Fairy Queen's power (but the real aim of
wearing silly costumes, eating cake, and pranking everything). There are
very rudimentary rules for inventory limits, levelling up, and having to
return to base camp, because those are all important cultural references.
Advice is also included for adapting this playset to other environments
where the PCs must wander around a map and prank the random encounters on
their way to the boss fight, like a city-wide party.
I found The Legion of
Nothing (Jim Zoetewey) through a link from Wonder City, and it
is pretty good, although it does not have nearly as much diversity (or as
much sex). There are some similar issues with being descended from superheroes
and supervillains, though. Plus, magical girl transformation sequences!
This makes me want to write a thing, or a different thing, or maybe run
something. Or die in a pit. Yes, probably that one.
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