We are superheroes! From the future! With jetpacks!
Ohhh YEAAH.
It's my last month in Germany! (And I'd be using this time much more productively by preparing for upcoming exams!) Time has, in a way, gone really fast... and there's still much to do before I fly home on the last week of July. I should be getting all the bureaucracy done next week, so I'll have some time to relax. I'd like to visit places I haven't been to yet, but I'll have to see if I'll have money for that.
Other activities? Well, I made my time management more difficult by purchasing a used Disgaea DS! And what else - oh yeah, I officially raised my nerd level by trying roleplaying (pen-and-paper variety) the first time at Feencon, the biggest roleplaying convention in Germany that was held in Bad Godesberg, Bonn!
The DS version of Disgaea has some advantages: all-new Etna Mode (haven't tried that one yet), Pleinair as playable character and Prinny Commentary, both unlockable in a New Game Plus (losing to Mid-Boss on purpose was worth it!), and practically no voice acting at all, though at least Etna and the Prinnies have new lines in battle, which are at least in my opinion an improvement. I'm only in the 5th chapter since I need to train my troops a bit... Let's see how big my army is right now!
- First of all, I have the actual story characters - Laharl, Etna, Flonne, Pleinair and Hoggmeiser, at this point.
- Secondly, my prinnies are named after a certain trio - Chika, Yuuji and Kouichi, respectively. See what I did there? (((83
- Thirdly, there's a bunch of characters named after Pyhä Sylvi characters - I have all the PowerPuff Girls, Sinappi, Jyrki and Ice-Kebab, plus my healer Atena and Ice-Kebab's pupil, Ljosha.
- Fourthly, some are named after original characters from my still-in-development comic book script - Kassandra, Lahja and Aulis (Lahja's pupil, obviously).
- And then it gets a bit scattered: there's a Fire Mage called Vaarsuvius, an Ice Mage called Ogin (after the Hyakumonogatari character) and a Thief called Dorian. You know after whom I named him.
And I should make a whole new bunch of characters so that I could unlock other classes >_< Pleinair is really strong, she just guns everything down! And Flonne just kicks ass with the fire spells she learned from Vaarsuvius. I have even had my Prinnies cast some spells since they are the PowerPuff Girls' mentors, but naturally that doesn't help much since they can't use staffs. It's still pretty cool, I'm planning to teach them magic permanently. Extra Gain is so much fun.
There's not much else to tell since I'm still quite at the beginning and haven't had many great adventures - aside from that one fiasco in the Item World x/ - but I'll probably write about it every now and then, you know me with games.
On to the next issue: I have been curious about roleplaying for a while, not least because of RPG webcomics I've been reading such as Darths and Droids... and then I found out about Feencon. Some people on The Spoony Experiment's forums was going to put together a Spoony group and play a few sessions. It turned out that the con was held in Bonn, so I told them to count me in. They even chose to play Heroes Unlimited, a superhero setting, and you know I like superheroes. (Although I do feel like I've exhausted pretty much every naming method already with my comic book script - you won't believe how difficult it was to name the last member of the main character's rogues gallery!)
Anyway, we made plans and on Saturday 11th, I met with one of them at Bonn Hauptbahnhof, took an underground train to Bad Godesberg together with him and spent a couple of hours checking out the con. It really was big! Many rooms were filled with tables for roleplaying groups and people in medieval garb/fantasy armor went around. And, of course, there were tables full of sourcebooks, trading cards, cheesy DVDs and sci-fi figures at which to spend your money - I bought OOTS prequel Start of Darkness and some dice >:3 (Am sorely missing the Star Wars chessboard. I wish I had money to get stuff like that.)
After our GM was done with his shift (he was working at the con), we went out and started character creation. We let the dice decide on the origin of the characters' powers and the education, which turned out pretty... interesting for me - my character uses magic, and had acquired her powers by studying magic herself. Then I rolled for her education... and she turned out to have grown on the streets, never having set a foot to an actual school. And she's a member of a street gang!
So after we all had a great laugh at my streetschooled magician, it started to rain and we moved inside. We got a cellar room all for ourselves, so we finished creating our characters while a couple went to get snacks, and then we got into the story. One of the players was also staff at the con and had played with the GM before, thus he had a more experienced character ready, a trigger-happy cyborg. Other heroes in our group were a mutant with light-based powers, another magician who gained his powers from a godlike entity and a psionic police officer. Some highlights from our adventure:
- When our group was gathering information of a hall where the bad guy was going to have a press conference, I sent some of my guys from the street gang to check it out. They told me they had seen someone walking around, staking the place - our cyborg friend. So when our group met again, I told the others "You should know that the boys saw this extremely suspicious guy sniffing around!" The cyborg mused to himself that there were possibly others after the same goal, and that we'd have to be careful from now on. xD
- So there was a time machine at the press conference, and the bad guy used it to go back in time to World War II and give the Nazis advanced technology. We ended up hijacking a chrome-plated tank with careful application of diplomacy from our psionic and driving it towards Berlin. Too bad we didn't know how to operate its weapons!
- Later, we infiltrated a Nazi camp where our cyborg was mistaken for a "new model" and taken to a room with a robot constructed in the likeness of Churchill. The cyborg happened to be British and, shocked, muttered "Blasphemy!" at the sight. The robot made the mistake of trying to attack, our cyborg rolled a 20... when we got there, there was nothing left of the robot but a pile of ashes.
- After that little incident, we tried to escape detection while looking for a bad guy to snatch for interrogation. Our mutant got separated from the group and I went looking for him, since I was the only one who could move silently (that skill proved way more useful than I thought before the start of the adventure). Too bad I fudged my roll and a Nazi soldier found me, pointing a gun at my face... Did I mention my mana was depleted and I couldn't use any spells? Nevertheless I managed to wrestle the gun from his hand and then ran for my life, providing a handy distraction for our mutant. I ran to the tank while two guys tried to shoot at me (I kept rolling atrociously for Initiative, too, I was always the slowest of the group), but when I finally got to the tank, I proceeded to run the suckers over! Take THAT, you losers!
- Afterwards, I looted a jetpack from the soldier we interrogated. (It's not like I could've operated it, but it was a Nazi jetpack! I had to!)
- Next, we stumbled upon a concentration camp with American prisoners. We pretented to be an investigation group (with the nice uniforms we had stolen from the earlier fortress) and looked for a prisoner who could operate the tank's weapons so we could attack the camp. So when we were left alone with a group of prisoners, I got a bit enthusiasted and announced loudly - well, it went sorta like this:
Me: "Do not worry! We have come to rescue you! We are superheroes!"
"From the future!"
Me: "From the future! With jetpacks!"
We did manage to find a guy to operate the weapons, free the prisoners and learn of a secret British resistance group, and that a great superhero of the time had been imprisoned and we'd have to save him. Too bad we ran out of time and couldn't play further than that ;_;
As you might have noticed, I had a great time and could follow everything nicely despite us playing in German. We had so much fun that our GM is now starting a new adventure of the same setting at the Spoony forums, play-by-post style, and I'm going to play the same character there. Yay \o/
Well, it's nice to write detailed reports once in a while... The damn camera just seems broken, the power kept shorting out even with fully-loaded batteries. We may have to get a new one, just now when there's enough holes to throw money into!
Now that I have successfully spent time I could've used to memorize Russian verbs to write this entry, I'm going to sign out. Hope at least someone actually reads my ramblings.
It's my last month in Germany! (And I'd be using this time much more productively by preparing for upcoming exams!) Time has, in a way, gone really fast... and there's still much to do before I fly home on the last week of July. I should be getting all the bureaucracy done next week, so I'll have some time to relax. I'd like to visit places I haven't been to yet, but I'll have to see if I'll have money for that.
Other activities? Well, I made my time management more difficult by purchasing a used Disgaea DS! And what else - oh yeah, I officially raised my nerd level by trying roleplaying (pen-and-paper variety) the first time at Feencon, the biggest roleplaying convention in Germany that was held in Bad Godesberg, Bonn!
The DS version of Disgaea has some advantages: all-new Etna Mode (haven't tried that one yet), Pleinair as playable character and Prinny Commentary, both unlockable in a New Game Plus (losing to Mid-Boss on purpose was worth it!), and practically no voice acting at all, though at least Etna and the Prinnies have new lines in battle, which are at least in my opinion an improvement. I'm only in the 5th chapter since I need to train my troops a bit... Let's see how big my army is right now!
- First of all, I have the actual story characters - Laharl, Etna, Flonne, Pleinair and Hoggmeiser, at this point.
- Secondly, my prinnies are named after a certain trio - Chika, Yuuji and Kouichi, respectively. See what I did there? (((83
- Thirdly, there's a bunch of characters named after Pyhä Sylvi characters - I have all the PowerPuff Girls, Sinappi, Jyrki and Ice-Kebab, plus my healer Atena and Ice-Kebab's pupil, Ljosha.
- Fourthly, some are named after original characters from my still-in-development comic book script - Kassandra, Lahja and Aulis (Lahja's pupil, obviously).
- And then it gets a bit scattered: there's a Fire Mage called Vaarsuvius, an Ice Mage called Ogin (after the Hyakumonogatari character) and a Thief called Dorian. You know after whom I named him.
And I should make a whole new bunch of characters so that I could unlock other classes >_< Pleinair is really strong, she just guns everything down! And Flonne just kicks ass with the fire spells she learned from Vaarsuvius. I have even had my Prinnies cast some spells since they are the PowerPuff Girls' mentors, but naturally that doesn't help much since they can't use staffs. It's still pretty cool, I'm planning to teach them magic permanently. Extra Gain is so much fun.
There's not much else to tell since I'm still quite at the beginning and haven't had many great adventures - aside from that one fiasco in the Item World x/ - but I'll probably write about it every now and then, you know me with games.
On to the next issue: I have been curious about roleplaying for a while, not least because of RPG webcomics I've been reading such as Darths and Droids... and then I found out about Feencon. Some people on The Spoony Experiment's forums was going to put together a Spoony group and play a few sessions. It turned out that the con was held in Bonn, so I told them to count me in. They even chose to play Heroes Unlimited, a superhero setting, and you know I like superheroes. (Although I do feel like I've exhausted pretty much every naming method already with my comic book script - you won't believe how difficult it was to name the last member of the main character's rogues gallery!)
Anyway, we made plans and on Saturday 11th, I met with one of them at Bonn Hauptbahnhof, took an underground train to Bad Godesberg together with him and spent a couple of hours checking out the con. It really was big! Many rooms were filled with tables for roleplaying groups and people in medieval garb/fantasy armor went around. And, of course, there were tables full of sourcebooks, trading cards, cheesy DVDs and sci-fi figures at which to spend your money - I bought OOTS prequel Start of Darkness and some dice >:3 (Am sorely missing the Star Wars chessboard. I wish I had money to get stuff like that.)
After our GM was done with his shift (he was working at the con), we went out and started character creation. We let the dice decide on the origin of the characters' powers and the education, which turned out pretty... interesting for me - my character uses magic, and had acquired her powers by studying magic herself. Then I rolled for her education... and she turned out to have grown on the streets, never having set a foot to an actual school. And she's a member of a street gang!
So after we all had a great laugh at my streetschooled magician, it started to rain and we moved inside. We got a cellar room all for ourselves, so we finished creating our characters while a couple went to get snacks, and then we got into the story. One of the players was also staff at the con and had played with the GM before, thus he had a more experienced character ready, a trigger-happy cyborg. Other heroes in our group were a mutant with light-based powers, another magician who gained his powers from a godlike entity and a psionic police officer. Some highlights from our adventure:
- When our group was gathering information of a hall where the bad guy was going to have a press conference, I sent some of my guys from the street gang to check it out. They told me they had seen someone walking around, staking the place - our cyborg friend. So when our group met again, I told the others "You should know that the boys saw this extremely suspicious guy sniffing around!" The cyborg mused to himself that there were possibly others after the same goal, and that we'd have to be careful from now on. xD
- So there was a time machine at the press conference, and the bad guy used it to go back in time to World War II and give the Nazis advanced technology. We ended up hijacking a chrome-plated tank with careful application of diplomacy from our psionic and driving it towards Berlin. Too bad we didn't know how to operate its weapons!
- Later, we infiltrated a Nazi camp where our cyborg was mistaken for a "new model" and taken to a room with a robot constructed in the likeness of Churchill. The cyborg happened to be British and, shocked, muttered "Blasphemy!" at the sight. The robot made the mistake of trying to attack, our cyborg rolled a 20... when we got there, there was nothing left of the robot but a pile of ashes.
- After that little incident, we tried to escape detection while looking for a bad guy to snatch for interrogation. Our mutant got separated from the group and I went looking for him, since I was the only one who could move silently (that skill proved way more useful than I thought before the start of the adventure). Too bad I fudged my roll and a Nazi soldier found me, pointing a gun at my face... Did I mention my mana was depleted and I couldn't use any spells? Nevertheless I managed to wrestle the gun from his hand and then ran for my life, providing a handy distraction for our mutant. I ran to the tank while two guys tried to shoot at me (I kept rolling atrociously for Initiative, too, I was always the slowest of the group), but when I finally got to the tank, I proceeded to run the suckers over! Take THAT, you losers!
- Afterwards, I looted a jetpack from the soldier we interrogated. (It's not like I could've operated it, but it was a Nazi jetpack! I had to!)
- Next, we stumbled upon a concentration camp with American prisoners. We pretented to be an investigation group (with the nice uniforms we had stolen from the earlier fortress) and looked for a prisoner who could operate the tank's weapons so we could attack the camp. So when we were left alone with a group of prisoners, I got a bit enthusiasted and announced loudly - well, it went sorta like this:
Me: "Do not worry! We have come to rescue you! We are superheroes!"
"From the future!"
Me: "From the future! With jetpacks!"
We did manage to find a guy to operate the weapons, free the prisoners and learn of a secret British resistance group, and that a great superhero of the time had been imprisoned and we'd have to save him. Too bad we ran out of time and couldn't play further than that ;_;
As you might have noticed, I had a great time and could follow everything nicely despite us playing in German. We had so much fun that our GM is now starting a new adventure of the same setting at the Spoony forums, play-by-post style, and I'm going to play the same character there. Yay \o/
Well, it's nice to write detailed reports once in a while... The damn camera just seems broken, the power kept shorting out even with fully-loaded batteries. We may have to get a new one, just now when there's enough holes to throw money into!
Now that I have successfully spent time I could've used to memorize Russian verbs to write this entry, I'm going to sign out. Hope at least someone actually reads my ramblings.