Previously, in Trip's Life...
30 April 2016 - Saturday
The course for the walkathon at Jus's school was allegedly a third of a
mile, and she did six laps around numerous breaks for eating and playing,
so that's two miles, much of it at a run. Hurray for Jus!
There was some tragedy with the Snow Cone of Victory, but it was soon
corrected.
Ayse and Ken and Dave and Jus and Nonny's new house is very nice. I can see
why they want to live there, I just wish it were not so inconveniently
located.
Avalon thinks they will stay there for some time now that they own a house,
but I am dubious. I bet Santa Cruz is next.
- Brother, Dear Brother 24-25: Here, we learn that Fukiko's
problem is a profound lack of perspective. More than other teenagers,
even. But how did Saint-Just know she goes for the ear?
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 12: The infamous plummeting episode!
- Bakemonogatari 3: I think Crab-girl was sincere there,
but I can't blame Araragi for thinking she's crazy, mocking him, or both.
- Natsume's Book of Friends 4.5: Well, Natsume is pretty cute. If
he wasn't always the new kid and obviously crazy, he'd probably have
even more girls trying to make friends with him.
Make a comment!
29 April 2016 - Friday
Hurray, I made it to Friday.
Trial by Fire and Firewalker (Josephine
Angelini) are about a hapless teenage girl who gets kidnapped into a
dimension of magic, but it's uphill from there. Dimensional duplicates,
potential horrible family secrets, tyranny, and powers that have the
trappings of magic but operate more like psionics all add up to enormous
doom for the main character. I think there is an error about the effects of
[SPOILER], but it is totally an error the main character would make, so I
have no objection.
A Burglar's Guide to the City (Geoff Manaugh) has a little too much
"OMG aren't the philosophical implications mind-boggling?", but it actually is
interesting how criminals interact with buildings in a completely different way
than legitimate users. Plus, many true bizarre crime anecdotes! He doesn't seem
aware of building hackers, though.
After reading MILA 2.0: Redemption (Debra Driza) I decided
I hadn't liked the first two books in the trilogy enough to make it
worthwhile. Ah well.
Date Night on Union Station (EM Foner) has not-very-strange
aliens, a complete lack of organization, fraud, entrepreneurship, and AIs
that understand humans either not well enough or entirely too well to be
running a dating service.
Witches Be Crazy (Logan J Hunder) wants to be humorous
fantasy but is just not that funny.
No Thank You,
Evil! is an RPG for small children. It's clearly related to the system
used in Numenera and The Strange, but uses only
a d6 and similarly small numbers. Roll and see if you get at least the
number you need, spend a point of smarts/speed/strength to reduce the
number by one, or have someone else spend a point of Awesome to reduce it
by one, and you either succeed or fail. (I'm pretty sure Jus could handle
that, although Nonny might still have trouble.) The PCs can be anything you
want, since they're mostly only defined by the four stats; for slightly
older players, they can have companions that can also be anything you want,
although only quite advanced children get companions with special powers.
There is a setting, but it's pretty much just land of fairytale adventure,
land of spooky adventure, land of surreal modern adventure, land of exotic
adventure locations. I see no reason kids could not play this game,
although Jus seems much more prone to LARPing — pretending's no fun
if you can't actually hit your little brother!
I only have the digital version of Mae vol 1 (Gene Ha), but it
seems pretty thin for a graphic novel. So far the title character is still just
a minor player in her sister's extradimensional drama. Also the art style is not
growing on me. I think I might be old.
Speculative Relationships vol 2 (ed Tyrell Cannon, Scott
Kroll) is another collection of short comics about (not necessarily
romantic) relationships between sophonts. Some of them are good, some of
them are okay, most of them have very indie art.
Die Wergelder is by the same guy who did Blade of the
Immortal (Hiroaki Samura), and the art is very recognizable. It
is set in the modern day and has more sex (I think, I never finished
BotI) but also has killers with exotic weapons, extremely
mysterious conspiracies, and some kind of breeding program or something.
Also, violence.
RP by marithlizard (Wed May 4 10:56:12 2016)
That sounds interesting, we should try it with Jus! She does prefer LARPing, but I think she can also do more abstract RP just fine - we used to play out scenarios like Visiting Mars and Baby Lizard's Birthday with our fingers on the tabletop while the rest of her was obediently sitting at the table eating dinner, after all. (Mostly obediently.)
...You know, I don't think I've ever seen Jus even roleplay hitting another human (as opposed to a monster). The last time we played pirates, we oppressed prisoners by eating pizza in front of them and Not Sharing. (Nonny, on the other hand...)
Re: RP by Trip (Wed May 4 14:00:29 2016)
Well, of course Nonny is always a monster when fighting is called for.
Sitting at the table might actually be helpful in that case.
Make a comment!
28 April 2016 - Thursday
This week in 13th Age,
our protagonists plot to get a city full of ogres eaten by the
Stone Thief,
if only they can trust each other enough to cooperate. Then the enemy from
Percy's future shows up, and a fight ensues. Labyrinth Horace
of the Northlands finally managed to land a hit in this, the fourth battle of
the adventure, so he had momentum and was able to be awesome. Percy was just
weird. Like, really weird.
Make a comment!
27 April 2016 - Wednesday
Writing: fail.
Make a comment!
25 April 2016 - Monday
No Avalon, because her head is afflicted with aches. :(
I have now written my quota of words for April. Too bad they are all
terrible.
How to properly operate and maintain your
frog (via Earl).
Both Kit and Cat are reblogging lots of stuff
from my tumblr. This
pleases me inordinately.
Make a comment!
24 April 2016 - Sunday
Today the plan for PAD&D5
came together even though Rachel and Jeremy had to hurry back from
Sacramento (but it turns out driving early in the day works pretty well).
The gaming munchies of affliction were surprisingly edible.
Multiheaded multidimensional octopoid horror defeated: check! (Zach's
tentacle-fu was strong in this fight.) Mermaid princess extracted from the
higher dimensions and returned to her people, thus opening the sea to
travel: check! Random slave-catcher giant trounced, afflicted with thoughts
of rebellion, and left to be humiliatingly found by his comrades: check!
Venusian giant persuaded (or "persuaded") to let the PCs aboard her
interplanetary wheel of fire: check!
In two weeks, we get to try to hijack the flying saucer. This cannot
possibly go wrong.
The fourth playtest packet of
13th Age in Glorantha is
pretty final, it looks like. There is clearly still a lot of editing needed,
but the rules are pretty close to their final shape. Sadly, there is no
Babeester Gor berserker, although the Zorak Zorani berserker and hell mother
troll classes are both available. It is now clear (from examples) that players
can make suggestions for their temporary runes, but it's up to the GM to
narrate them into the story. It is also clear that even a first-level 13G
character is almost rune priest level, and by the end of adventurer tier
there's no almost about it. More monsters! An adventure on the Crimson Bat!
Doom for everyone!
Now I want to play more 13G.
First Law of Mad Science vol 1 (Mike Isenberg, Oliver
Mertz, Daniel Lapham, Jeff McComsey, Jamie Noguchi) has snarky teenaged
robots, lost cities, horrible monsters, and conspiracies, but I don't
really like the art style.
Dirty Diamonds (ed Claire Folkman, Kelly Phillips) is a series
of collections of short autobiographical comics by women, with a theme for
each volume: Alcohol, Jobs, Travel, Break-Ups, Comics, Beauty. They are
highly variable, but the art is mostly in one part of the space that I'm not
terribly fond of. Apparently I'm picky.
After the Fall (ed Jaym Gates) is a collection of
Eclipse Phase
fiction, some reprinted from the books but some either reprinted from
elsewhere or new for the collection. They are a good mix of transhuman
adventure and inhuman (or sometimes just capitalist) horror.
Based on her story in After the Fall, I went looking for
other stuff by Tiffany Trent. In
The Unnaturalists and The Tinker King, Victorian
London has been sucked into fairyland, and the inhabitants promptly set
about stripmining it for power. Everything is downhill from there, until the
book actually starts. Doom ensues. No, wait, they started with doom.
Adventure ensues.
Writing: fail.
Make a comment!
23 April 2016 - Saturday
Now my apartment is clean.
Now I am full of fajitas.
Now I am watching anime and oppressing Marith. It builds character!
- Brother, Dear Brother 23: Yes, covering up attempted murder
is definitely what a good Japanese girl of the 1970s should do.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 11: As always, if the PCs can use
teamwork, the monsters are much easier.
- Bakemonogatari 1-2: I had forgotten about the animation
style. And the scene in Hitagi's house. But Ayse likes it!
- Natsume's Book of Friends 4.4: Natsume does seem to have
Reiko's youkai-punching powers, he just doesn't like using them.
Make a comment!
21 April 2016 - Thursday
Bah, after-hours upgrade. But it worked and did not make me late for
gaming, so okay.
Ken was delayed by terrible drivers on the 101, so we didn't get a whole
bunch of 13th
Age, but we did retake a dwarven pumice galleon from the sea elves who
had massacred the crew and plunder the giant emerald we need for the next
stage of the plan. That the emerald was the head of a giant golem and I
can't roll higher than 1 to impersonate a dwarven legate hardly slowed us
down at all.
What happened to my dice since Alazaïs rolled two crits in a row
to put down a vampire cleric and his demonic concubine?
Make a comment!
19 April 2016 - Tuesday
I tried to go home after work in the far office to see Avalon, but
the train was late and double-full and generally unpleasant. I blame
people in cars.
This
is what I need to do to run Dungeon
World with less sucking.
Freedom at Feronia (Richard Penn) is the second in the
"Asteroid Police" series. After the first book turned into sort of a
naval action, the small-town cop sets forth in her prize vessel (well,
the vessel built around her prize reactor core; close enough) to bring
the law of the Belt Federation to whatever den of corruption might need
it. This is a very slow process, since the Δv between refuelings
is in the single digit kilometers per second.
At a slightly higher tech level is the
Eclipse Phase Firewall
sourcebook, which details the inner workings of the default conspiracy
for PCs to be pawns of, as well as its allies. Also, some new gear.
Make a comment!
18 April 2016 - Monday
After the Monday Morning Meeting, a bunch of us went to look at a
potential new office, which is really nice. If we can strike a good deal
with the landlord, everyone is in favor of moving the few blocks to the
new place. Then we went out to sandwiches, and came back to find that
the company-provided lunch for tomorrow is sandwiches.
Sandwiches for dinner.
Did work in the evening instead of anything fun like writing or
Avalon. Bah, customers.
Make a comment!
17 April 2016 - Sunday
No PAD&D5
because Earl is in LA and other people are busy.
This weekend I have watched the first episode or two of a bunch of
new shows on
Crunchyroll.
- Re:Zero 1A-B, 2: A gormless Japanese teenage boy is sucked
into a fantasy world. He meets a cute girl, gets mixed up with
criminals, and is disemboweled. It gets confusing.
- Big Order 1: Some people get superpowers based on what
they wish for. The world is devastated. The protagonist thinks it's
his fault. His hallucinatory friend is not very helpful.
- Flying Witch 1-2: A ditzy Japanese teenage girl moves
to a small town to stay with relatives. She is a witch. Not a whole
lot happens, but it is disconcerting to those around her.
- Kiznaiver 1-2: I think this is the psychophilosophy
genre. Six Japanese teenagers are cybered up so that they feel each
other's pain and forced to bond.
- Hundred 1-2: Monsters attack. Select humans have magic
rocks that give them superpowers in the form of summoned gear. They
go to high school on a giant ship. There is discord and jiggling
and an extremely effeminate but allegedly male roommate and unwanted
celebrity.
Oh, and earlier I watched:
- Konosuba 1: A gormless Japanese teenage boy is run over
and dies. As a special offer, he gets to reincarnate in a fantasy world
and take one thing with him. He pickes the cute but dim goddess who
handled the reincarnation. They start at level 0 with no equipment or
money.
- BBK/BRNK 1-5: Mecha fall from the sky and cause havoc.
Their limbs can be taken away and used as magic weapons (which may
or may not look like mecha limbs). A group of five teenagers hope to
overthrow someone who uses her mecha to oppress Japan.
I don't know how to write.
Make a comment!
16 April 2016 - Saturday
Today, I accomplished nothing whatsoever! But at least I am not sick
like Ayse and Jus.
- Brother, Dear Brother 22: The trend in Miya's behavior
is not good. I wonder if she'll manage to actually kill anyone by
the end of the show?
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 10: Extremophile angels are
hardcore. I have to wonder if it would have been easier to drain the
caldera first, though.
- Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth 11-12: The end!
Claude's backstory is still tragic, but at least we know it now, and
Yune is his friend, so everything is fine.
Make a comment!
15 April 2016 - Friday
I survived another week! And oppressed Marith, at least
virtually.
Writing: fail. The problems Avalon pointed out are legit, I'm just
not sure how to fix them. Is going back and changing earlier chapters of
a pseudo web serial cheating? But is not doing it worse?
Make a comment!
14 April 2016 - Thursday
Today I went to the doctor to be physically examined. The lump on my
head is just excess brain tissue leaking out, nothing to worry about.
The pain in my arm is tennis elbow (tennis not included).
Since we will have no Kelsey for some time to come, we started the
flashback side campaign for 13th Age. Before
the first age, we are playing crazed 5th-level characters who will become
icons, or something. We have a time-traveller from a 4th Age in which
things went very wrong, a gnome mercenary, a shape-shifting fox spirit, a
pirate captain, and a fungal master of disguise. The Eyes of the Stone
Thief must be blinded!
I still cannot either roleplay or roll dice.
Reread Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen
(Richard Roberts) as an example of what people who can write do. I still
can't write.
Dark Beyond The Stars (ed David Gatewood) is allegedly a
space opera anthology but I'm not sure all the stories are in the same
subgenre. They are all by women, though.
Earl semi-recommended Richard Penn's "Asteroid Police" series, of
which The Dark Colony is the first. It's like a small-town
police procedural, where the procedures include a 20-minute lightspeed
delay each direction to higher authority and analytical capability.
Unusually for asteroid colonization, the tech level is only a tiny bit
higher than present: cell phones are more advanced, and they're willing
to use fission-thermal rockets, but that's about it.
Make a comment!
12 April 2016 - Tuesday
It seems like I have spent most of today chasing Route 64 busses, with
various degrees of success. It turns out that if I really hurry, I
can just barely make it to the train station on foot before the train
leaves. But I'd really rather ride the bus and not get all sweaty.
Writing: still awful.
Reading:
What happens to kids who fall into magical worlds and then come home
again? In Every Heart A Doorway (Seanan McGuire), they end up
at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, where they try to keep their
madness reined in. This apparently rarely works, because little is easy
or pleasant when McGuire is writing you.
Make a comment!
10 April 2016 - Sunday
No gaming today, because some new relative of Jeremy and Rachel's has
to be mutilated as a sacrifice to Sky Chimp Omega.
Today, only sloth. I am caught up on writing, at least.
Rereading Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain
did help, but am I beyond help? Probably.
Also read recently:
Stutterhug.
UQ Holder! vol 4-7 (Ken Akamatsu) brings the master villain
from Negima! back into the picture, along with the setting
and one of the scarier non-central classmates. Also, new villain and new
hero and doom.
Was Once A Hero (Edward McKeown) is fairly old-fashioned
adventure SF with monocultural human-like aliens, improbably beautiful babe
from Murder Planet, FTL travel, and Mysteriously Hosed Planet of Mysterious
Hosage that can be solved by a sufficiently large explosion.
In A Study in Charlotte (Brittany Cavallaro), Sherlock
Holmes and John Watson were real people, and the Holmes and Watson
families have carried on breeding, respectively, deductive geniuses with
drug habits and romantic writers with sidekick tendencies. In the
present day, Charlotte Holmes and James Watson meet at prep school and
murder ensues. Also possibly unhealthy obsession, although calling it
"romance" might be a bit much.
If you can only read one of these, read Stutterhug.
terminology by marithlizard (Tue Apr 12 16:50:29 2016)
You might want to put that a bit more tactfully. Some folks prefer a more dignified name for Sky Chimp Omega and hir rituals. (I mean, what are you going to put on the bumper stickers? "Ook is my co-pilot"?)
Make a comment!
9 April 2016 - Saturday
People came and cleaned my apartment. Yay.
- Brother, Dear Brother 21: I'm pretty sure Tomoko was
thinking, "But I want hot college guys to hit on me".
- Neon Genesis Evangelion 8-9: Finally, Asuka appears, in
all her glory! Also, synchronization.
- Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth 10: Watching a
computer-generated video on an LCD display about a magic lantern show
is very something.
- Natsume's Book of Friends 4.3: Not just tribbles, but
highly evolved invisible tribbles!
- Steven Universe 31: Keep Beach City Weird!
I am too dim to write, apparently.
Make a comment!
8 April 2016 - Friday
I think the thing with Avalon is kind of sorted out? Maybe? Wum.
Make a comment!
7 April 2016 - Thursday
CostCo cruelly betrayed Grant, so we had to order from FPD, but we did
eventually eat and play 13th Age. After
playing with a home defense automaton and clobbering a bunch of rude
mechanical goblinoids, the PCs got to the Gatekeeper and managed to fit him
into their giant diamond. The giant diamond then promptly rolled downstairs
into a forcefield labyrinth where a medusa was bound as a guardian,
tormented by harpies. After some conversation, the imp Chortle is convinced
to take over the guardianship and immortality as a refuge from his
displeased masters in Hell and the remaining harpies are convinced to
permit this. With a partially-petrified medusa in their party, they finally
escape the Stone Thief
near Santa Cora.
Ken wants to run a flashback until Kelsey can start attending
regularly, so I must create a 5th-level rogue with the OUT "Fated to
become the Prince of Shadows".
Mrgh, writing is hard. I have decided I am displeased with the
supermythos thing again, and there needs to be a more plausible and less
grim way to get the protagonist into the basement of preservation and
death. Maybe I should reread Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A
Supervillain. Or die in a pit.
The first plot arc of Tokyo ESP (Hajime Segawa) wraps up
in volume 3, with "who" and "why" explained, but the actual origins of the
superpowers still mysterious.
Volumes 4 and 5 of One-Punch Man (Yusuke Murata) get many
points off for homophobia and a continuing complete lack of female
characters.
Good Intentions and Natural Consequences
(Elliott Kay) are not as good as the student loan warfare books, at least
partly because they are self-insert male fantasy, and I definitely mean
"insert" as many parts of both books are quite smutty. (Cue Tom Lehrer.)
Good points: the hero's major virtue is that he is a good person, not that
he's a badass or has succubus cooties that make him irresistable; polyamory
requires communication; his non-supernatural friends are also pretty
awesome; vampires are dangerous but fundamentally lame.
Royden Poole's Field Guide to the 25th Hour (Clinton J
Boomer) is sadly only a collection of short, incomplete snippets, but still
made me snort my brain out through my nose at multiple points.
Safely You Deliver (Graydon Saunders) is the third "Commonweal"
book, and follows directly, though not immediately, from the second. It is
even more elliptical than previous volumes, although this is somewhat
alleviated by already knowning the characters. Ethics, ecology, and
accounting continue to provide major plot elements, so how can you go
wrong?
Tell The Wind And Fire (Sarah Rees Brennan) is apparently a
retelling of A Tale of Two Cities, only in New York with
magic and dopplegangers. As usual, giving humans any power at all leads to
widespread violence and oppression, which I presume is also the theme of
aTo2C. I didn't not like it, but I like her other works
better.
Make a comment!
5 April 2016 - Tuesday
In the far office, as usual for Tuesday. Bleargh, commuting.
Some of my cow orkers are extremely annoying in meetings, because they
insist on questioning decisions that have already been made, by people who
obviously did not have the privilege of their vast intellects and will
change everything once their errors are properly mansplained.
Similar tendencies were in evidence during the meeting about the new
benefits stuff, but somehow we made it through.
I successfully met a human from the Internet for gelato and used books!
Her name is Liz, she is roughly my age and married and poly, she reads SF,
she used to be a school librarian and then a teacher, but is currently
working on a new career. We had gelato and pillaged
BookBuyers for a bit, and then I
had to go catch a train. It was all very pleasant and hardly terrifying at
all!
Make a comment!
3 April 2016 - Sunday
Earl is full of tax forms, so he could not run
PAD&D5
for us, but everyone else wanted to get together and eat blackberries.
They forced me to run the story of the last time the PCs were all in a
swamp, which involved lizardfolk and dragons and lost journals and hardly
any mermaid/Titan hybrids. The Frederick kicked a baby dragon, because he
is a fiend. Also grappling is overpowered.
Next time, Dungeon
World! Or something. But probably Earl will be back in two weeks so it
won't come up.
Someone from OKCupid wants to get gelato with me. Aieee.
Gelato by marithlizard (Thu Apr 7 03:06:09 2016)
Woot! Do you want to go get gelato with them?
Re: Gelato by Trip (Thu Apr 7 16:43:58 2016)
Apparently so!
Re: Gelato by marithlizard (Fri Apr 8 01:25:39 2016)
Hooray! You are mighty, triumphant, and full of books and safe amounts of fructose-or-unreasonable-substitute!
Make a comment!
2 April 2016 - Saturday
Birthday Sushi
Infinity! Om nom nom nom!
I have long since eaten all the pie Ken and Jus made for me, so we had
to get more dessert for people to sing around. Whole Foods failed on
low-carb, surprisingly, but Safeway did not. There was much singing. Jus
gave me a handmade birthday card.
Once the kids were put away, Ken showed us
What We Do In The Shadows
which was horrific yet funny. Or maybe funny yet horrific.
No writing today, but on the other hand, no stupid April Fool's
pranks.
Make a comment!
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