pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry
I have a New Resolution for today. When the Dear Little Students knock on the door, I will attempt to school my inevitable, snarling gut-reaction into a welcoming smile. If it kills me. It may be more of a terrifying grimace, in which case score, they'll all run away and never come back, but hopefully it will, via strict behaviourist principles in which I do not believe owing to early romantic conditioning, at least modify my behaviour slightly towards the "sweetness and light" end of the spectrum. Maybe.
I've been at home for two days, wrapped in the loathsome embrace of Sid the Sinus Headache, and while I'm back at work today, I still feel as though some bastard snuck in and packed my skull with hot cement. It is not unlikely that this is affecting the tendency to red rage. I also think my hormones are horribly out of whack, the homicidal urges seem to be fairly cyclical, so seeing my Nice Doctor is high on the agenda. That would be the agenda labelled "Let's Not Kill Students Today and, Incidentally, Remain Employed". My incredibly lovely boss is very cool about me working at home fairly regularly, she says because she's not sure the university insurance will cover it if I dismember anyone. This means she is noticing the snarling. Busted. Oops.
In other news mostly unrelated to my decomposing state of health, we finished the Lady Blackbird game last night. This was completely indecent amounts of fun, at least as much because of the composition of the group as because of the game ethos and setting, and the fact that Lady Blackbird herself was a deluded and flamboyant narcissist who I could only play while drunk. The player input to the scenario is fascinating and, in our hands, completely demented. Example: I do a sort of general magical sense thing to see how many people are in the three pirate ships parked on the asteroid for our rendezvous. I randomly come up with:
(a) one ship with 37 people on board;
(b) one ship with only four people on board, only they're extra large; and
(c) one normal pirate crew complement of 12.
The rest of the group refine this into
(a) the Raven, crewed by Captain Emeritus Fop and his 36 dandyish, effeminate, bureaucratic incompetents;
(b) the Potato Chip, crewed by four cyclopses, who are very large and very fearsome fighters with high squeaky voices; and
(c) the Knotted Pine, crewed by Captain Jack Table, who is efficient and manly and completely backstabbed us at the last minute, the bastard.
The scenario finally ended on a large scale, with betrayals, revelations, disillusionments, rejections, realisations, hostage scenarios, allegiance shifts, lightning bolt attacks, an enormous space battle between the pirates and the Imperium, and a successful annexure of the pirate kingdom by librsa's character, more or less accidentally. Ten minutes before the end the DM was planning to suggest we made this into a campaign. Ten minutes later we'd utterly stuffed that by bombshelling the party in all directions while role-playing to the hilt. It was epic. And enormously good fun. I want to play more with that group of people and with that particularly open-ended contribution thing. It made me realise that actually DMs and LARP designers are wasted as players.
Finally, since we're working this "a propos of nothing" theme, here is China Miéville being blackly funny about Britain's current state of political incompetence. Now with added political superheroes.
I've been at home for two days, wrapped in the loathsome embrace of Sid the Sinus Headache, and while I'm back at work today, I still feel as though some bastard snuck in and packed my skull with hot cement. It is not unlikely that this is affecting the tendency to red rage. I also think my hormones are horribly out of whack, the homicidal urges seem to be fairly cyclical, so seeing my Nice Doctor is high on the agenda. That would be the agenda labelled "Let's Not Kill Students Today and, Incidentally, Remain Employed". My incredibly lovely boss is very cool about me working at home fairly regularly, she says because she's not sure the university insurance will cover it if I dismember anyone. This means she is noticing the snarling. Busted. Oops.
In other news mostly unrelated to my decomposing state of health, we finished the Lady Blackbird game last night. This was completely indecent amounts of fun, at least as much because of the composition of the group as because of the game ethos and setting, and the fact that Lady Blackbird herself was a deluded and flamboyant narcissist who I could only play while drunk. The player input to the scenario is fascinating and, in our hands, completely demented. Example: I do a sort of general magical sense thing to see how many people are in the three pirate ships parked on the asteroid for our rendezvous. I randomly come up with:
(a) one ship with 37 people on board;
(b) one ship with only four people on board, only they're extra large; and
(c) one normal pirate crew complement of 12.
The rest of the group refine this into
(a) the Raven, crewed by Captain Emeritus Fop and his 36 dandyish, effeminate, bureaucratic incompetents;
(b) the Potato Chip, crewed by four cyclopses, who are very large and very fearsome fighters with high squeaky voices; and
(c) the Knotted Pine, crewed by Captain Jack Table, who is efficient and manly and completely backstabbed us at the last minute, the bastard.
The scenario finally ended on a large scale, with betrayals, revelations, disillusionments, rejections, realisations, hostage scenarios, allegiance shifts, lightning bolt attacks, an enormous space battle between the pirates and the Imperium, and a successful annexure of the pirate kingdom by librsa's character, more or less accidentally. Ten minutes before the end the DM was planning to suggest we made this into a campaign. Ten minutes later we'd utterly stuffed that by bombshelling the party in all directions while role-playing to the hilt. It was epic. And enormously good fun. I want to play more with that group of people and with that particularly open-ended contribution thing. It made me realise that actually DMs and LARP designers are wasted as players.
Finally, since we're working this "a propos of nothing" theme, here is China Miéville being blackly funny about Britain's current state of political incompetence. Now with added political superheroes.