 |
Main
 I'm seriously thinking about this camera (thirty bucks, so... less than a tank of gas), plus Skype (free), for in-home video conferencing.
It'll be more and more useful as Kaylee gets older and I need some remote face-time, but for gaming? Yeah, I'm seriously thinking about this. Maybe just as a test run if enough people are interested enough to shell out for the camera.
Why? Mostly so I can play with more people without everyone bankrupting themselves for the gas money. :P
... or, to be fair, a Gaming-widow in general.
I've been giving my Google-calendar a workout for the last couple days, because although I am a gamer of many different colors and stripes, I have traveled down the road of life-imbalance quite a few times since the early 90s (oh, those early MUDs and MUSHes; oh those hours of Space Hulk and Battletech map creation), mid-90s, and far far more recently... and I'd just rather not go back there, thanks.
So: I raid in WoW (though I could wish for a little more progression-status and a little less farm-status -- I did my farming in my youth :P), and I have some alts I really enjoy, and I play LotRO, and a have a copy of Tabula Rasa winging its way to me for a practically criminal discount, and I have table top games I'm running and even more that I want to run, and then there's writing stuff, and reading stuff... the question before me is "how do I get enough time to 'blow stuff up', without ensuring that I have "ALL THE TIME YOU COULD EVER WANT, AND THEN SOME, YOU BASTARD"?
Ahem.
I'm not an expert, but these are the guidelines I'm working with right now.
1. Schedule my time. I don't mean just my play time, but just flat out schedule the Big Stuff that needs doing during the next week. Note: I use the word "needs" advisedly, and not without some irony; leveling my druid does not "need" doing... it's just one of those things I'd enjoy getting to do.
2. Kate and Kaylee first. The time I will, without fail, spend with My Girls during the week goes on the calendar first. Everything else bends to adapt. Non-negotiable. This is fairly easy for Kaylee-time, as Jackie and I already have a set schedule that pretty much ensures I see her every day (barring the off-weekend). Kate and I -- not habitually that detail-oriented -- are working on actually scheduling stuff, too: weekly date nights and the Regular Tuesday Night Activity (currently swing dancing). This also (happily) includes some activities like LotRO and watching geeky shows like Avatar, so... Win/Win!
3. Limited 'play commitments'. I have a limited amount of time to be online and playing stuff. Call it 15 to 20 hours a week. My guild has planned activities that take about 15 to 20 hours a week. I do ****NOT**** want to spend all my online time on those planned activities. Therefore, I need to strictly limit my raiding commitments. This basically boils down to (selfishly, very selfishly) signing up only for stuff *I* really want to do, and NOT signing up for things just to 'help folks out'. I've prioritized my time helping online-people out before, and it always means I spend too much time online with an exponentially decreasing amount of personal enjoyment. I play so *I* can have fun; bugger off, internets. This rule means I get to spend a good portion of 'me' time completely unstructured. I approve.
4. Vetoes Unless I am currently involved in some kind of group activity in which my sudden departure will result in screwing over a bunch of other people. (I'm GMing a game, a central player in a game, or in some kind of group, online), Kate (and, to a lesser degree, Kaylee) can ask me to drop what I'm doing. ((Emergencies, of COURSE, mean that I say "sorry guys, gotta go" and I f-ing GO. Duh. Obviously.)) Conversely, I reserve the right to go kill stuff instead of watching a third hour of Trading Spaces... or Little Einsteins.
There are unspoken parts of this, like the assumption that there will be lots of 'white space' on my calendar that will get filled in naturally with the "sand" of honey-dos, chores, random acts of laziness, and especially impromptu fun stuff involving either The Girls, or Games, or both.
But you have to lay out the Big Stuff first, before the whole area fills in with sand and leaves no room for them.
Or so it seems to me. I'll report back, maybe, on how it all works in practice.
When shall we get our reality-bending Amber Pulp on, chilluns?
So one of the players coming by on Friday to make up a character for our spirit of the century game "The Century Club Presents..." writes:
"What year do we start in? I need to know if soap operas exist yet."
It's a Spirit of the Century-palooza. First, we had a character generation shindig down at Lee and De's for Nine Princes in Pulp (Amber, with a thick layer of pulpy goodness), and now...
"The Century Club Presents..." is (a) a fictional pulp periodical that tells the heroic tales of the Century Club and (b) a pulp pick-up game using the Spirit of the Century system. That means a game influenced by the pulps -- serial adventures of the early Twentieth Century starring iconic characters like Doc Savage and The Shadow and echoed today in movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Rocketeer.
We're aiming for each session to be relatively self-contained, so that the players participating each session can change with no real problems. The characters are all affiliated with the Century Club, and this loose structure provides continuity, while allowing the freedom to create nearly any sort of adventure and include whomever shows up that week to play.
The idea here is to get a regularly scheduled game going for which the specific day of the weekend, the locale, the participants, and even the GM change as we go, depending on who can make it that week.
As of Sunday, we've got seven characters mostly made up, but WE NEED. MORE. POWER.
I'll be sending out another message today, organizing a "There's still time to SAVE THE WORLD!" get together for this weekend. The more players we have, the better the chance that there's always enough people to play. :)
City of Heroes Champion Server Olympics
That's just... awesome. Seriously. Would that the actual CoH devs came up with ideas this good.
When shall we wrap up the Shadow Shard TF #4? Saturday or Sunday evening?
Chime in below, and ring the bell quickly.
I posted something on the Alliance boards about finding a time to finish this up. To quote:
Got most of the way through the Fourth Shard TF last night, with Malcalypse, Psi-Clone, Amorpha, Puck Bunny, Sword, Hang Time, Noelle, and a very helpful tanker named Monstress. In the wee hours, as we were considering the next time to meet, to finish up, the following suggestions were raised:
*This coming Tuesday, the 8th, around 8pm Eastern. In which case we'd probably be missing Monstress.
*This weekend, in which case, Hang Time and Noelle are unavailable.
*Next weekend, when we may lose Puck and Sword
Any other possibilites or thoughts?
What? Shadow Shard Task Force 4
Where? Shadow Shaaaard
When? This weekend, prolly eveninks
Why? We wants it, precious
How? cf. Hook, crook.
Who's in(terested)?
(Note: War Bones is unavailable -- we'll need a tank.)
The guy who wrote PrimeTime Adventures (Matt Wilson) is working on a new game called Galactic!
The game takes place... let's ballpark it and say 5000 years or so in the future -- where a world of humans has discovered that they are the last survivors of a disaster, one that all but destroyed a great spacefaring civilization. Whatever happened was so catastrophic that the people of this lone surviving world -- Caliban -- were thrown into a state of technological savagery for generations. They had to rebuild and relearn, and in that time they forgot what had happened to them.
The truth became myth.
Then they returned to space to find an old galaxy waiting for them, full of secrets and dangers. Their ships explore the black, seeking the truth about the past they've forgotten -- which has in no way forgotten them.
Everyone in the game plays the captain of a ship (pretty much anything from a tiny little scout ship to a battle cruiser), exploring the galaxy for their own personal reasons. In addition to your 'main character' (a captain), you also play a crew member onboard each of the ships of the captains being played by the other players. This isn't an open ended kind of RPG -- there is an end-game, and it is a big deal. Eventually, one of you -- maybe a couple of you -- are going to try to save the Galaxy. Maybe you will...
... or maybe you won't, and humanity will be Doomed, and everyone at the table will be a little sad, because it's sad when humanity is Doomed, usually.
It's more Battlestar than Babylon 5. It's more Firefly than Farscape. It loves Science Fiction alot, and likes Science... pretty well. It's got The Drama, and The Funny, and resource management, and tactics. It's a little bit like PrimeTime Adventures meets Cosmic Encounter.
----
I want to run this thing. I want to run it so so so very much.
Here's what I'm looking for:
Continue reading "Galactic!" »
Game stuff, both in the recent past and upcoming:
CoX stuff -- not a lot. Got Dolmen to 20. Ran a TF with Bear Claws. The end.
Running a one-shot face to face Freebooters game using The Shadow of Yesterday on Wednesday with (mostly) some Indie-RPG folks who happen to be from Denver. Should be a good time, though I'm stressing a bit (too much) about prep.
Playing Jubal Goodall, grizzled marshall, in a game of Dogs In The Vineyard being run online on Thursday nights. Last Thursday was Chargen, this week will probably be Accomplishments, and thus onward to the first town in the next week. Playing this on Foundry MUSH, using a DitV Dice/Conflict handler I've been tweaking the code on. Amazing what all I remember from the old Mushing days.
Running Heroquest Firefly on Friday with the usual suspects.
So... gaming stuff. Good stuff.
I know some folks are off the grid for the long holiday, so for Monday Munchies, I thought it might be cool to run a couple task forces -- maybe get one crew to run Synapse and another to run Positron.
Clearly, this would be an Influence-churning scheme, rather than XP, but it seems like everyone's short of cash, so ...
Thoughts?
((Nothing also that I might not be around much, as my family is getting into town a day earlier than normal.
Okay, they fixed ArchVillains and Giant Monsters on CoX.
Who wants to do the last Shadow Shard TF, and when?
This weekend is very much "out" for me.
What? Legend of Rudalak Task Force (SS TF2)
Where? Shadow Shaaaard
When? Weekend surrounding June 10th
Why? Well, we wants it, precious, and any weekend before then isn't going to work.
How? By hook and/or crook.
Who's in(terested)?
If you're interested in staying up to date on the Game Calendar for Casa/Consortium events, and you use some kind of RSS feed-reader, point it at this address:
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/et03k4fcfececqbbiugjsgpqbk@group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
And you'll see everything going on.
Blowing the dust (just dust, not Dust) off of the Game Calendar, since we've got stuff going on a bit more regularly in the near future.
Things to do:
Figure out a time to get together on character generation for the Sorcerer game. (Clicking Sands: Blood Simple)
Figure out a time (weekly or bi, mid-week-ish) to do Xian Quan via chat or IRC. I need to install AIM and look at the dice bot... and test out the ability to run multiple group-chat... things. What I want is one OOC 'room' for rolls and kibbitzing and one or two IC 'rooms' to have scenes running, concurrently... I know IRC can do it -- dunno if AIM can... I'd rather run GTalk for it, but I don't think it handles groups at all... or has a dicebot.
Note: need to take a look at WebRPG too. :P
Okay, so a conversation with Kate that really shouldn't have reminded me of this, reminded me of this: Some folks put no small effort into working up characters for Heroquest, to do Xian Quan.
Do we (and by we I mean 'those of you that did that work') want to try to do it anyway? Remotely, via one of the free chat-like-clients that handle chatting and dice-rolls and stuff? Maybe once a week or something?
Post: yea or nay -- my feelings won't be hurt either way.
You people make the mistake of asking me to work out a schedule, then this is what you get.
(Though I'll note will some glee that a GREAT DEAL of this is not GMed by me, and some I'm not even playing in.)
Continue reading "Schedule through February" »
Current schedule, through November
Oct 25, Saturday: Chrysalis C (Presuming Dave and Margie can get away in the later afternoon.)
Oct 27, Monday: Chrysalis A
Oct 31, Friday: Halloween
Nov 1, Saturday: Cry Havoc
Nov 2, Sunday: OA
Nov 3, Monday: OA
Nov 7, Friday: DnD
Nov 8, Saturday: Chrysalis C
Nov 9, OA
Nov 10, Monday: Chrysalis A
Nov 14, Friday: OA Ends (?!?)
Nov 15, Saturday: Cry Havoc
Nov 16, Sunday: Spycraft
Nov 21, Friday: DnD? (don't know if Robert and Lori can make it. Margie can't)
Nov 22, Saturday: Chrysalis C
Nov 24, Monday: Chrysalis A
Nov 27, Thursday: Thanksgiving
Just for reference, this is the game schedule for Casa del Testerman for the next two months.
It is... not to put it too bluntly... fucking insane, due mostly to an effort to wrap up several long-running campaigns in the next two months.
Continue reading "Good grief" »
Pulp Adventures all weekend:
The Tear of Ra - Saturday Morning, 9am
Keith Tatroe, Jennifer Tatroe, Jim Carsten, Chris Sneary [GM Doyce Testerman]
An Evening at the Blue Note - Saturday Morning, 9am
Dwight Reifsnyder, Dan Reifsnyder, Loren Meaux, Troy Latta, [GM Matt Parker]
Gliriform - Saturday Afternoon, 1:30pm
Matt Parker, Troy Latta, Jennifer Tatroe, Lori Hershfeldt, David Geissinger
[GM Doyce Testerman]
The Fiendish Plot of Doctor Malefaktus - Saturday Afternoon, 1:30pm
Dwight Reifsnyder, Dan Reifsnyder, Keith Tatroe, Jim Carsten, [GM James
Stepanek]
Gliriform - Saturday Night, 6:30pm
Dwight Reifsnyder, Dan Reifsnyder, Keith Tatroe, Jim Carsten, Ken Rehor,
[GM Doyce Testerman]
Gliriform - Sunday Morning, 9am
James Stepanek, Loren Meaux, Chris Sneary, Scott Gaeta, [GM Doyce Testerman]
An Evening at the Blue Note - Sunday Afternoon, 1:30pm
Scott Gaeta, Randy Trimmer, Casey McGirt, [GM Doyce Testerman]
Doyce keels over - Sunday Evening, 6:30pm
[GM Doyce Testerman]
No talking about the movie at the game Friday night. Some people won't have seen it yet.
DnD, takes place at the Consortium, since Dave's out of town and Margie can't find a sitter. It's fine -- not as though I haven't GM'd there any number of times before.
Between working on the Pulp Heroes page, the new updates to the Star Wars page, and figuring out how to convert the L5R modules from Living Rokugan to my intermittent Oriental Adventures game, the Price of Honor pages haven't seen a lot of attention, and haven't gotten a lot of prep time. Ahh well -- the plots are a little thing, but they'll be a story to tell by the time I get to the end, and everyone seems to be having a decent time.
Now, I just need to figure out what I'm doing with them tonight. :P
Session Seven? I need to put some GM logs up for the game, but nothing today. Need to get the house cleaned up and run errands.
Robert and Dave G can't make, so it'll be... well, weird, not to put too fine a point on it.
Update
Actually, a couple people couldn't make it, so Session Seven hasn't happened yet, and we ended up running a small Oriental Adventure game that started on Saturday and sequeled into a Sunday afternoon session, so I've yet another intermittent game to write about.
Game this Friday will be the DnD campaign. Margie can't make it, but Robert's wife can. Normally, I'd be against adding a seventh player, but I have ulterior motives -- if I can get his wife psyched about the game, then maybe we'll be able to introduce a little flexibility in Robert's game schedule -- right now, we can only play on Friday nights, which aren't always optimal.
Also, hey, it's always good to meet more people.
No games this weekend. Next weekend is WiCoU, which I plan to be playing in, not running. Good for me. Getting the registrations done this weekend.
Also need to get my Ghenghis registration worked out, because Rey needs a couple Amber game slots on the board. Need to find out when my openings are.
|