In Which I Enjoy Some Fun and Games
Fun and games filled this delightful weekend, starting on Friday evening with a wine tasting curated by gotham_bound and attended by bewcastle , richardabecker , citizenbrown , Rzelle, Miss Brazelton and her beau, and new friend Susan the Goth. We tasted six hand-picked wines, including the delightful Dr. Loosen's Riesling (my personal fave - I definitely think I'm becoming a Riesling fancier!) and noshed on complementary snacks. Even bewcastle , who doesn't drink alcohol, partook of some of the vintages on hand ,although our attempts to find some end-around for her general aversion to alcohol enjoyed only the barest of limited success. Great drink, great food, great company and great conversation that ranged from the wine to politics to film noir. A wonderful way to start the weekend!
Saturday I trekked down to Orange County, where I joined fellow ELGL designers aaronjv and hagdirt at the latest installment of Melodramatic Mysteries, a regular series of live games written and produced by two of the players I met at WyrdCon while running Monsieur Beauregard's. The setting was the Nirvana Farm commune in upstate Vermont, the year was 1969, and the problem was murder. The band Psychadelic Toad had suffered a tour bus breakdown on its way to a little music festival in Bethel, NY, and whle waiting for the bus to be repaired, the band's manager had turned up dead. I played the dead man's younger brother Bobby, the band's head roadie. While I wanted to see my brother's killer brought to justice, I also wanted to step out of my brother's shadow and take over management of the band. The latter goal took precedence, and after replacing our lead singer, securing the master tapes from our latest album, and cementing our record deal with Groovytunes Records, we headed out onto the road to win fame and fortune. There were plenty of twists and turns along the way and I enjoyed some great roleplaying in a marvelous setting. Our hosts were most welcoming, and the care and commitment that went into designing the game - from the amazing handouts to the Psych Toad t-shirts that each player received as a gift at the end of the game - were nothing short of amazing. I am thrilled to have made some new friends, and look forward to joining their troupe for future events down the road!
Speaking of new friends, today we headed up to Burbank to watch the World Cup finals with PopeBabylon, he of the amazing board game collection. The game was not exactly what I'd call a stirring introduction to the sport for casual fans - but cup finals tend to be played a bit tight - but the company was excellent and afterwards we played a game of Tales of the Arabian Nights to our great delight and amusement. I suspect that bewcastle and I may be becoming board game geeks a little bit. Not that that's a bad thing at all - some of those games are great fun!
Another week at work - although some fun will be liberally sprinkled amidst all the course planning - and then it's off to San Diego for a long weekend! More updates later!