rhienelleth | Entries tagged with rpg

I spent half my weekend laid up with some form of stomach flu. It's been a long time since I've actually been sick enough to throw up. The experience is just as awful as I remembered it being.

That took care of Sunday/Monday. And Monday I still had to crawl into my car and drive an hour and a half to the airport to pick up my husband. That was so NOT FUN. I had a bottle of diet ginger ale with me, and had to roll the windows down in hope that the fresh air would keep my queasy stomach from rebelling. Fortunately, a lack of anything resembling solid food for the previous 24 hours helped keep me from having to pull the car over at any given time. And Mark wisely took the keys from me and drove home.

Am still feeling under the weather today, but am at work. I so hate being sick.

Oh, and also, L killed off a major NPC in her RPG Saturday. Ok, so SHE didn't kill him off, the dice rolls did. But his death completely fraks my character six ways to Sunday. Emotionally, politically, she is so screwed. Plus, he was a really, really cool NPC. One of those that if you were reading a book, he'd be one of your favorite characters, if not your favorite. I am personally very saddened that he's dead, and also in a quandary about how my PC will respond to this. More characters could very possibly die, and some of them might be other PCs, and other players will take that personally. *sigh*

I feel hungover. Probably because we never had time to breath this weekend, what with all the stuff we fit in.

Friday night we had our friends Den and Jess over for dinner, with their one month old baby, Ilea, who is the cutest baby ever! Seriously. Her Dad is a mix of African-American/Korean/Caucasian, and has the world's best afro when he grows it out (which he does periodically), while her Mom is blond, blue eyed and basically the quintessential 'California girl' with really fine, straight hair. Ilea has her Dad's dark curls, but with her Mom's fine-ness - which we don't know if that's just the baby hair, or if it will stay - and blue eyes that may or may not stay, and this beautiful kind of caramel skin tone that's in between both parent's coloring. I have this image of her in my head as a two-year-old with these curly pigtails, blue eyes that just seem to glow framed by her little caramel face, and a pink dress. I have no idea if my mental image is what she's really going to look like, but either way she's going to make an adorable toddler. I hope the blue eyes stay, even though it is likely they won't. And, poor kid, everyone else in her life is going to loooooove her hair, but she will hate it and say things like "But it's always curly, I can't ever do anything with it!" As a teenager, anyway.

Ok, enough baby gushing. :) Anyway, Jess gave Mark a massage and worked on my shoulders/neck some. We're pretty sure my almost-migraine last week was caused in part by not getting our regular sessions in, what with her giving birth and all. Den watched our copy of Predator and regaled baby Ilea with pearls of wisdom about Arnold's biceps back in the day, and how amazing it is that two of the burly men in that movie both ended up being governors years later. (And also how Carl Weathers is, apparently, The Man.)

Saturday was roleplay day, and OMG, it was so wonderful, it almost brings a tear to my eye. Why can't our games always run so smoothly and fun? Oh, that's right, because our old gaming group is scattered to the four winds, and this was the first time in two years that we've been able to manage something. We played from 10:00am, to almost midnight, with two hour long breaks for food, and the making of tea and honey for Mark's abused voice. On one of the breaks, Doug - a friend who is really into photography, and has his own darkroom and stuff - showed me how to do some cool stuff with my camera to take better jewelry pics. I am very excited to try it out. I also finished Mark's Mom's B-day gift, a rosary made with lapis lazuli beads. I think it's the best of the three I've made so far, and I can hardly wait to give it to her at the end of the month.

RPG highlights, that will be meaningless to, oh, everyone but me, most likely:

( In which I go on in far too much detail about the game )

Then, yesterday Mark's parents woke us up far too early to load up the dogs and troop over ot the coast for the day, which was beautiful and fun, but we came back exhausted last night. As a result of both fun but exhausting days, I am v. tired at work today, and as I said, feeling slightly hungover. But it was worth it. :)

*warning - this is kind of a drawn out post that has to do with girls' night, so if you don't want to read the latest on that, skip this post.*

You know what really, really irritates me no end? Assumption. It's an evil, evil thing. Because of it, people make bad choices, end up in embarrassing situations, or wind up feeling bad. Assumption is the root of most misunderstanding.

Take, for example, my friend L, normally the most reliable, level headed, emotionally mature, know-you-can-count-on person of all my friends. But even she falls victim to this terrible woe occassionally. See, usually when we girls get together to game, it's on Saturday nights. Fridays are my "date night" with Mark, so usually L and her sister get together that night and play games or watch movies or whatever. Except, tonight, Mark is going out with a bunch of guy friends to smoke cigars and talk guy things. This kind of thing happens occassionally, and it's never before been an issue to hastily throw together a 'girls gaming night' on a Friday when it has. Unbeknownst to me, apparently their Fridays have fallen into a fairly rigid schedule, though.

Since Wednesday, when all this schedule changing went down, I've been assuming that our usual Saturday schedule would be our Friday schedule this week, ie getting together sound 7:30, starting the game around 8:30, when little ears go to bed, and gaming until 2:30 or 3:00am. So i made plans to eat dinner with Mark before he takes off with the guys.

Then, this morning I get an e-mail from L, saying something about "at 6:30, when we're all here" and then "will four hours be long enough for you to run this next session?", since my game is at a pivotal point and the next game session will be a major one. So, I e-mail her back, basically asking WTF? And come to find out, they had been assuming their usual Friday schedule would apply - which I had no idea they even had a 'usual' schedule - getting together around 6:30, eating dinner, and then everyone going home around midnight. Let's see, with dinner, figure we start at 7:30-ish, that gives us about 4 and a half hours for gaming. No, definitely not enough time for me to do the next game session. Well, it might be. If the villains have their way. But the whole point is to not let the villains have their way, yes?

So now I have no idea what we're doing tonight. Maybe my game. Maybe something else. Maybe nothing. I hate that, being up in the air. I've e-mailed L that it's no big deal to me, and I don't want to make them change their plans because my schedule has suddenly changed, so if they still want to stick to their usual thing, I'm fine with it, but there's no way I can run the next game session in the time allowed. And I don't feel comfortable starting it, anyway, before Gabe is in bed, cause it's kind of an adult game. My villains are really bad villains - they do awful things to people that little ears should not overhear.

This is one of those posts that at least 90% of you can skip. Cause I'm pretty not even 10% of you actually play RPGs, so...

Mostly in LJ, I talk about the girl's group I play with (mostly because that group has had the most drama lately, and not in a good way) but today I'm going to diverge and talk about the 'regular' group I play in.

( D&D, with a little bit of Star Wars thrown in )

Current Mood: awake

I'm sorry, this is going to be really long, and of interest to maybe 2% of you, MAYBE. If you don't play RPG's, definitely skip, and if you do...well, it still may not prove interesting reading. I had a doozy of a game yesterday, in which I failed so many rolls - or really, really made ones I didn't really want to make that well - it has to be a record. L was running, and she went through every D20 in her collection in an effort to find one that would roll something in my character's favor. Didn't work.

( Long, rambly, RPG woes )

Current Mood: awake

I think I am taking my frustrations with X3 out on my gaming group. One of the players wasn't sure what she wanted to play, beyond a very general concept, so she started out with her character in a coma, and then subsequently amnesia once she woke up. The only active power she had at the point was telekinesis. She handed me complete creative control.

You see where this is going, right? Yeah. I have this whole background story I've created for her, which I'm running now. It doesn't even remotely resemble Jean Gray and her background...but the powers she's developing sure do. I didn't even realize until last night. I was thinking about her character, and the next time I'm going to run, and thought "crap, I'm creating Phoenix!"

*sigh* Fortunately, the player in question has never read the comic, nor yet seen X3, so she's not going to see the similarities. Yet.

Ah, blessed relief. Headache gone! Five ibuprofen really do work better than two or three! (No, no, don't worry. I asked my pharmacist cousin how much was safe to take in a single dose, as I really didn't want to mix migraine meds with cold meds. I could have taken up to six.)

Yes! No more pain! No more tightness across my forehead and eyes.

So on to other, funner things. ( Cut because only two or three people on my f-list know or care what RPGs are, and I'm ranting )

So I'm posting about RPGing. Not online RPGing, but traditional tabletop with dice and character sheets RPGing. Which means an extremely small portion of my f-list will even find this remotely interesting. In point of fact, I can only think of 2-3 other RPGers on my f-list. But I'm posting about it anyway.

I both play in and run roleplaying games. My most famous games (by mine, I mean games I ran) have been a Star Wars game and a Mage game. In both games, I was famous for my villains. As in, players still talk about them in reverant tones. But see, I've come to the conclusion that this must be because so un-villainous in my real life (ie "angelic";), that people just don't expect my villains to be really bad. This is a gross underestimation on their part. I love bad guys. They're usually my favorite characters (not that you didn't already know that, right? *cough*Sark*cough) When I create one, I make him/her charismatic and intelligent, and often powerful. But they also have flaws and weaknesses that could be exploited by a smart player. Unfortunately, there's the whole "underestimation" thing working against them.

As an example, Kadric, my Star Wars villain, was a dark jedi. One of the players was playing his long lost sister, a good jedi. Another was playing a "princess" type character, and both of them were just sure they could turn him and save him. Well, they could have, if they'd gone about it the right away. Instead, he ended up turning his sister into his apprentice and top assassin, while the princess became his wife and he became ruler of her people. (She was just sure this would eventually save him, you know, through love. I warned her, I did. She didn't listen. The results were not pretty, and she did not save him, and her character ended up an alcoholic. Yeah. Not quite how I pictured the game turning out. The other players, btw, were smarter about their decisions and didn't end up turning to evil.)

My point in saying all this is to talk about a game I'm currently playing in. The DM wanted us to play a party of evil characters. Ok. Sounds great! I'm playing a Melnibonean(sp?), which you'll only recognize if you've read the Elric books by Michael Moorcock. If not...hmm, think dark elves only not elven, and their magic system is based on summoning and controlling demons. Since he started running this game six months ago, this DM has basically run us as if we're a good party - trying to prey on any hidden morals we might have to get us to save villages and stuff. I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish. He's a psych major, so who knows? Anyway, his latest thing has been having his character, a succubus, assume my character's form and have her go out and...er...do her succubus thing, seducing the men of the town we're in and the like. We're playing again tonight, and it should be interesting. This goes back to the "people don't ever expect me to actually play evil" thing. Valeska (my character) is most definitely not a succubus. She thinks all these people are beneath her anyway, and she's a warrior bred and born and has a demon possessed blade. The first guy that pinches her butt is in for a nasty surprise, and thus far she hasn't been privy to Dawn's actions while wearing her face. I told Bill last week that Valeska was unlikely to react well to discovering this. This was sort of my delicate way of warning him that Valeska might well kill Dawn when she finds this out. (This would not be difficult - Dawn is not a combat character.)

Oh, they're here. Should be interesting, like I said.