Dream: The Dungeons of Vapor Something
Wednesday morning:
Veils of gray cloud shifted under the low ceiling. A blurred figure walked away, and several sheets of haze slid after him. I heard xcorvis's voice and headed in his direction. He handed a fist-full of nothing to someone, and they walked away cloaked in fog. xcorvis turned to me.
"Want some smoke?" he asked.
Walking through the cafeteria, I saw a huddle of friends on an otherwise empty table. beltramgregor laid out his game on the tabletop while players and spectators clustered around him. I sat down and they told me I should join them, since they'd just had a few fatalities.
A younger Mac gamer was running the game now, one of the people I've never met long enough to retain a name or any pertinent details. He wore a long gray-green coat, and when he turned around he reminded me of the guy with glasses whose invisible wizard had obliterated Deathboy's (?) character in the marathon finale of the City-States game.
malcubed looked back excitedly. "I'm playing an energy druid," he said.
I sat down in the long alcove. fayde bubbled a friendly greeting and said she was glad I'd brought a spell-caster. They'd just lost three PCs, and Katie and Genevieve were bringing in something else. Backs against the side wall, the girls giggled conspiratorially.
"What'd you make?" I asked.
They grinned. "Oh," Katie said, "We're vampires." Which was fine for White Wolf, but we were playing D&D, so I got a little nervous.
We'd been playing this adventure (White Plume Mountain, but it'd been renamed "Vapor something") for a couple sessions now, even though I'd just sat down. Electra joked I was more of a drug lord than an archmage, which was funny because of my repeated attempts to solve problems with the Alchemy skill. I think someone else joked about my trench coat.
The Annotated Monty Python and the Holy Grail played nearby, but instead of a screen, the DVD staged it in physical space, created scrims and backdrops. A section of a cardboard hedgerow concealing the sound crew flashed in yellow outline and faded through black transparency--the viewer had just clicked on one of the "making of" extras.
We were far enough away to keep clear of the action, but the English countryside rolled on beneath us. My character had become the exaggerated sum of his shticks. I wore a long robe for protection. I bent opponents to my will with a wave of my hands and a crippling chemical addiction. Also, I could cause earthquakes by clicking the button on my car's keyless entry remote, which was satisfying, since it hasn't worked on the car in over a year.
I pulled the keys from my pocket and tested the new feature; the ground shook in a most gratifying manner. I walked to a nearby stream, which I realized was actually a flooded road. An English fellow nearby said most British roads flooded for a couple months this time of year, and it was always worse after an earthquake. Upstream, a rolling ground wave dropped the road surface by a couple feet as a surge of water rushed down the deeper channel.
Veils of gray cloud shifted under the low ceiling. A blurred figure walked away, and several sheets of haze slid after him. I heard xcorvis's voice and headed in his direction. He handed a fist-full of nothing to someone, and they walked away cloaked in fog. xcorvis turned to me.
"Want some smoke?" he asked.
Walking through the cafeteria, I saw a huddle of friends on an otherwise empty table. beltramgregor laid out his game on the tabletop while players and spectators clustered around him. I sat down and they told me I should join them, since they'd just had a few fatalities.
A younger Mac gamer was running the game now, one of the people I've never met long enough to retain a name or any pertinent details. He wore a long gray-green coat, and when he turned around he reminded me of the guy with glasses whose invisible wizard had obliterated Deathboy's (?) character in the marathon finale of the City-States game.
malcubed looked back excitedly. "I'm playing an energy druid," he said.
I sat down in the long alcove. fayde bubbled a friendly greeting and said she was glad I'd brought a spell-caster. They'd just lost three PCs, and Katie and Genevieve were bringing in something else. Backs against the side wall, the girls giggled conspiratorially.
"What'd you make?" I asked.
They grinned. "Oh," Katie said, "We're vampires." Which was fine for White Wolf, but we were playing D&D, so I got a little nervous.
We'd been playing this adventure (White Plume Mountain, but it'd been renamed "Vapor something") for a couple sessions now, even though I'd just sat down. Electra joked I was more of a drug lord than an archmage, which was funny because of my repeated attempts to solve problems with the Alchemy skill. I think someone else joked about my trench coat.
The Annotated Monty Python and the Holy Grail played nearby, but instead of a screen, the DVD staged it in physical space, created scrims and backdrops. A section of a cardboard hedgerow concealing the sound crew flashed in yellow outline and faded through black transparency--the viewer had just clicked on one of the "making of" extras.
We were far enough away to keep clear of the action, but the English countryside rolled on beneath us. My character had become the exaggerated sum of his shticks. I wore a long robe for protection. I bent opponents to my will with a wave of my hands and a crippling chemical addiction. Also, I could cause earthquakes by clicking the button on my car's keyless entry remote, which was satisfying, since it hasn't worked on the car in over a year.
I pulled the keys from my pocket and tested the new feature; the ground shook in a most gratifying manner. I walked to a nearby stream, which I realized was actually a flooded road. An English fellow nearby said most British roads flooded for a couple months this time of year, and it was always worse after an earthquake. Upstream, a rolling ground wave dropped the road surface by a couple feet as a surge of water rushed down the deeper channel.