Wow.
Checked my spreadsheet today. I am finally done paying back my Dad for the fuel pump on my car, which died last February. The head gasket should be paid off, assuming current payment schedule, in October. I'll be done paying Mom back for the alternator in July. In August I'll be able to start putting $50 a month toward paying off the replacement of the transmission, and then in November I'll add the $50 I've been paying to Dad to that, so there is actually an end in sight. Good Lord. (And by "there is an end in sight" I mean, according to my spreadsheet, that at the current rate I will be done paying my mom back for the transmission in September 2009. Which actually is probably about the time I'll be done paying off the first of my credit cards, assuming current rate. And then I can pay off the other within six months. It'll be really happy. If I get a decent raise or change jos, it'll happen even sooner.)
Still, it's nice to visibly make progress.
In other news, the last game of DCP 2006-2007 was yesterday. Basically, the metaplot was Werewolves. Meanwhile, spreadnparanoia, Kevin, and Downey had a huge sideplot going of Infernalists, to which they gleefully recruited about 12 other people over the course of game (plus a couple who died.) Last game was just one huge mass combat, in which I lost a single physical trait and didn't take any damage. We did manage to successfully rip open a portal to hell to pull Baal through. Then unfortunately the werewolves killed Downey and it didn't work. wrenbow and I decided that we, together with the surviving Infernalists, were going to find some people, sell their souls, and resurrect Downey, then take our happy Infernalist family somewhere else. :D
So, paper plates! And secrets!
My first character, Catherine "Cat" O'Shea, was a Gangrel who'd been embraced in Sydney. Since she wasn't real bright but killed things real good, the Ventrue primogen (a twisted s.o.b.) put her in a nice little cage and staged deathmatches against various and sundry other creatures. The night she snapped was when he'd starved her for blood so she was almost in hunger frenzy, then put four mothers in the cage with her and with their young children and told the mothers to protect their children from the monster. Cat snapped, killed them, burst out of the cage and killed the Ventrue and then fled across the continent to Perth.
Now, the ST's warned me my character was going to die, which was fine with me. Plot device FTW. (She died by werewolf after Game 2.) I agreed because I figured I'd be bored of her. Then I ended up really, really loving her and was sad when she died, but moved on. So for Cat, I got the paper plate award "So Meg, we're going to kill your character before Game 3 and not tell you why or how she died, okay? Super." for "agreeing to this deal without half a thought." (Really, I was only upset because I ended up really loving the character. I'm fine with being an ST plot stick. spreadnparanoia, Downey, and Kevin punched Dan in the balls repeatedly last night for Cat dying by plot stick, as they had promised him like back Game 4 when they started to suspect metaplot death. It was hilarious ^_^;
This brings us to my second character, Mary Serena Balardin, batshit Toreador extraordinaire. She had married and Embraced her true love and they had ended up in America, where she threw a ball and failed to invite one of the other Toreador (since said Toreador was badly out of favour at the time.) The shunned Toreador convinced Serena's husband that he was a danger to Serena and the only thing he could do was die peacefully. Since Serena was his true love, he walked out to greet the sunrise. Serena Spirit's Touched his ashes, found out what had happened, and went more than a little insane, vowing vengeance against the entirety of the clan for his death. She killed every Toreador in that city over a period of a couple decades, and then moved on to another city, and another.
Eventually she ended up in Perth, where she targeted the Toreador primogen, Mary Pruess (played by a_leprechaun.) Since vampire LARP works on a totally different timescale than Vampire should, I was basically hanging on until I had the XP for Telepathy to hunt down Toreador flaws. The game I got it, herod_the_nut pulled me aside and basically said "So you've got this Vengeance flaw you've not been acting on. GO! GO! GO!" (this was my paper plate for Serena, the "GO!!!" paper plate.) And, indeed, the very next game I killed Mary Pruess (which I still feel horribly bad about, since she didn't do anything to deserve it except be Toreador, and because I won like all but one set of chops). At that point, my remaining choices were the Sherriff, played by spreadnparanoia (bad idea if I ever saw one) and one of the Brothers Three, so I swapped out Serena for...
Tang Mei Jia, Ventrue extraordinaire. She was the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and I got the distinct pleasure of terrifying Paul H. when I first brought her into game completely by accident. He, Toni, and Evil were playing Kindred of the East from the Flame Court, and of course my character had the appearance tag "Asian" since she was. My first game, I choose to wear a red business suit just because I can. I walk up to Paul to introduce myself. He looks kind of scared-wary. I bow and introduce myself as Tang Mei Jia. It goes something like this:
Paul: My name is Mr. Seven.
Me: Pleasure to meet you.
Paul, very warily: Are you one of the Thrashing Dragons?
Me: Oh, no, I'm a Ventrue.
Paul: *visibly sags with relief* Oh. Pleasure to meet you.
It was kind of hilarious since it was all totally by accident, since I know NOTHING about KoE. Her other big secret was that she was three points blood-bound to a Sabbat bishop, but there was so much extra player-driven plot that that did not come back to bite me. Not that I'm complaining, I just would've laughed my ass off if the city had gotten hit with Infernalists, werewolves, AND Sabbat all at once.
Anyway. When the werewolves show up and kill the Brujah Primogen, I ended up spending an entire game discoursing with one of the Brothers Three. The next game, he offers me the option to be even more awesome by selling my soul to Baal. Now, just before that game, herod_the_nut informed me, as an ST giving a player a friendly warning, that making a deal with the brothers was a bad idea. I willfully ignored this and went on without half a thought (are we seeing a pattern here? this is mostly just because I am the most masochistic player EVAR.) I did indeed sell nine tenths of my essence (which, hilariously, Downey was definitely skimming soul points off each of us and giving us fewer demonic investments than we should've had so that he could spend those points on Dark Thaumaturgy. It was hilarious.)
After selling my soul for demonic investments, that very game the KoE went to investigate one of Downey's ritual spaces. By sheer blind chance, about three-quarters of Team Evil showed up at the same time. Downey initiated combat which was him, me, spreadnparanoia, Kevin, the Brothers Three, and Mike G. versus Paul, Toni, wrenbow and intorporeal, with jrdameonhv skulking around in Obfuscate. spreadnparanoia stakes wrenbow and intorporeal in one round. jrdameonhv counts up the sides and decides to play on our team since we had numbers on our side. We basically brutally destroyed the KoE, signed up wrenbow, intorporeal, and jrdameonhv. It was a good night for Baal.
As an amusing side note, once I had signed up for Team Evil, I made a remark to Rob that "I'm finally involved in the Meta Plot," because I somehow thought the Infernalists were the metaplot and was impressed at spreadnparanoia, Kevin, and Downey. So I get the "I'm finally involved in the metaplot" award "for stumbling onto a side plot." XD
Anyway, there were great paper plates and great secrets all the way round, and I am super happy at the way game turned out. I also have my primary and backup concepts for next year.
There were some other great Team Evil moments as well, like the Ventrue clan meeting in which half of us are Infernalists and the poor cute little Ventrue with True Faith is going "we need to stop the Infernalists!" And I look around the table going "True faith, not with us, on Team Evil, I'm on Team Evil, Melzer's not with us, Kevin's on Team Evil...well crap" and without missing a beat, Kevin goes "I agree that's an issue, but let's talk about werewolves" and completely pulls the conversation onto a different track. It was pretty great.
And for the second year in a row, the Prettiest Princess of Narnia award for the first to buy Majesty...went to a male.
Anyway. Enough of DCP. I'm going to get dressed and go see rage_goblin. Also totally not bat around ideas for running a short Demon game. Definitely not doing that. Not a bit. Oh God I have no time for bunnies.
Still, it's nice to visibly make progress.
In other news, the last game of DCP 2006-2007 was yesterday. Basically, the metaplot was Werewolves. Meanwhile, spreadnparanoia, Kevin, and Downey had a huge sideplot going of Infernalists, to which they gleefully recruited about 12 other people over the course of game (plus a couple who died.) Last game was just one huge mass combat, in which I lost a single physical trait and didn't take any damage. We did manage to successfully rip open a portal to hell to pull Baal through. Then unfortunately the werewolves killed Downey and it didn't work. wrenbow and I decided that we, together with the surviving Infernalists, were going to find some people, sell their souls, and resurrect Downey, then take our happy Infernalist family somewhere else. :D
So, paper plates! And secrets!
My first character, Catherine "Cat" O'Shea, was a Gangrel who'd been embraced in Sydney. Since she wasn't real bright but killed things real good, the Ventrue primogen (a twisted s.o.b.) put her in a nice little cage and staged deathmatches against various and sundry other creatures. The night she snapped was when he'd starved her for blood so she was almost in hunger frenzy, then put four mothers in the cage with her and with their young children and told the mothers to protect their children from the monster. Cat snapped, killed them, burst out of the cage and killed the Ventrue and then fled across the continent to Perth.
Now, the ST's warned me my character was going to die, which was fine with me. Plot device FTW. (She died by werewolf after Game 2.) I agreed because I figured I'd be bored of her. Then I ended up really, really loving her and was sad when she died, but moved on. So for Cat, I got the paper plate award "So Meg, we're going to kill your character before Game 3 and not tell you why or how she died, okay? Super." for "agreeing to this deal without half a thought." (Really, I was only upset because I ended up really loving the character. I'm fine with being an ST plot stick. spreadnparanoia, Downey, and Kevin punched Dan in the balls repeatedly last night for Cat dying by plot stick, as they had promised him like back Game 4 when they started to suspect metaplot death. It was hilarious ^_^;
This brings us to my second character, Mary Serena Balardin, batshit Toreador extraordinaire. She had married and Embraced her true love and they had ended up in America, where she threw a ball and failed to invite one of the other Toreador (since said Toreador was badly out of favour at the time.) The shunned Toreador convinced Serena's husband that he was a danger to Serena and the only thing he could do was die peacefully. Since Serena was his true love, he walked out to greet the sunrise. Serena Spirit's Touched his ashes, found out what had happened, and went more than a little insane, vowing vengeance against the entirety of the clan for his death. She killed every Toreador in that city over a period of a couple decades, and then moved on to another city, and another.
Eventually she ended up in Perth, where she targeted the Toreador primogen, Mary Pruess (played by a_leprechaun.) Since vampire LARP works on a totally different timescale than Vampire should, I was basically hanging on until I had the XP for Telepathy to hunt down Toreador flaws. The game I got it, herod_the_nut pulled me aside and basically said "So you've got this Vengeance flaw you've not been acting on. GO! GO! GO!" (this was my paper plate for Serena, the "GO!!!" paper plate.) And, indeed, the very next game I killed Mary Pruess (which I still feel horribly bad about, since she didn't do anything to deserve it except be Toreador, and because I won like all but one set of chops). At that point, my remaining choices were the Sherriff, played by spreadnparanoia (bad idea if I ever saw one) and one of the Brothers Three, so I swapped out Serena for...
Tang Mei Jia, Ventrue extraordinaire. She was the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and I got the distinct pleasure of terrifying Paul H. when I first brought her into game completely by accident. He, Toni, and Evil were playing Kindred of the East from the Flame Court, and of course my character had the appearance tag "Asian" since she was. My first game, I choose to wear a red business suit just because I can. I walk up to Paul to introduce myself. He looks kind of scared-wary. I bow and introduce myself as Tang Mei Jia. It goes something like this:
Paul: My name is Mr. Seven.
Me: Pleasure to meet you.
Paul, very warily: Are you one of the Thrashing Dragons?
Me: Oh, no, I'm a Ventrue.
Paul: *visibly sags with relief* Oh. Pleasure to meet you.
It was kind of hilarious since it was all totally by accident, since I know NOTHING about KoE. Her other big secret was that she was three points blood-bound to a Sabbat bishop, but there was so much extra player-driven plot that that did not come back to bite me. Not that I'm complaining, I just would've laughed my ass off if the city had gotten hit with Infernalists, werewolves, AND Sabbat all at once.
Anyway. When the werewolves show up and kill the Brujah Primogen, I ended up spending an entire game discoursing with one of the Brothers Three. The next game, he offers me the option to be even more awesome by selling my soul to Baal. Now, just before that game, herod_the_nut informed me, as an ST giving a player a friendly warning, that making a deal with the brothers was a bad idea. I willfully ignored this and went on without half a thought (are we seeing a pattern here? this is mostly just because I am the most masochistic player EVAR.) I did indeed sell nine tenths of my essence (which, hilariously, Downey was definitely skimming soul points off each of us and giving us fewer demonic investments than we should've had so that he could spend those points on Dark Thaumaturgy. It was hilarious.)
After selling my soul for demonic investments, that very game the KoE went to investigate one of Downey's ritual spaces. By sheer blind chance, about three-quarters of Team Evil showed up at the same time. Downey initiated combat which was him, me, spreadnparanoia, Kevin, the Brothers Three, and Mike G. versus Paul, Toni, wrenbow and intorporeal, with jrdameonhv skulking around in Obfuscate. spreadnparanoia stakes wrenbow and intorporeal in one round. jrdameonhv counts up the sides and decides to play on our team since we had numbers on our side. We basically brutally destroyed the KoE, signed up wrenbow, intorporeal, and jrdameonhv. It was a good night for Baal.
As an amusing side note, once I had signed up for Team Evil, I made a remark to Rob that "I'm finally involved in the Meta Plot," because I somehow thought the Infernalists were the metaplot and was impressed at spreadnparanoia, Kevin, and Downey. So I get the "I'm finally involved in the metaplot" award "for stumbling onto a side plot." XD
Anyway, there were great paper plates and great secrets all the way round, and I am super happy at the way game turned out. I also have my primary and backup concepts for next year.
There were some other great Team Evil moments as well, like the Ventrue clan meeting in which half of us are Infernalists and the poor cute little Ventrue with True Faith is going "we need to stop the Infernalists!" And I look around the table going "True faith, not with us, on Team Evil, I'm on Team Evil, Melzer's not with us, Kevin's on Team Evil...well crap" and without missing a beat, Kevin goes "I agree that's an issue, but let's talk about werewolves" and completely pulls the conversation onto a different track. It was pretty great.
And for the second year in a row, the Prettiest Princess of Narnia award for the first to buy Majesty...went to a male.
Anyway. Enough of DCP. I'm going to get dressed and go see rage_goblin. Also totally not bat around ideas for running a short Demon game. Definitely not doing that. Not a bit. Oh God I have no time for bunnies.