Geekiest Memorial Day Weekend Ever
Memorial Day weekend was memorable, so I should probably post a little something here :) Not much, though, since I'm slightly headachy and have other things I should probably be doing today.
We drove out to Brandon/Jess/Victor's house in Norristown outside of Philly on Friday night, getting there around midnight (no thanks to some frankly confusing directions from Google Maps). There, we commenced celebrating the Geekiest Memorial Day Weekend EVAR. Imagine a small three-bedroom house, and about 15 geeks or so crashing there for four days straight. There were board games, video games, a cookout, a trip to a small local zoo, and a huge group trip to IHOP. Between all these events were lengthy conversations about all things geek, including comic books, anime, and anime LARP at various conventions. Also, the watching of YouTube viral videos and anime music videos.
Particular highlights include several games of Red Dragon Inn; an Abbey Road marathon on Beatles Rock Band (with me singing harmonies); a game of competition Charades featuring Dan and Jason; a nail-biting game of Shadows over Camelot that ended with one of the greatest last-minute dramatic wins I have ever seen in that game; and the aforementioned zoo trip.
The Shadows game went thus: Brian, our Sir Kay, had revealed himself to be the traitor fairly early on, and spent most of the game hamstringing Arthur by stealing cards out of his hand. We'd won Excalibur and were rushing to win the Grail, while siege engines propagated ominously. Merlin cards were lost in attempting to stave off various Special Black cards, and we were getting down to the wire. One of our players (unfortunately, I didn't know half the names of the people at the house) used Clairvoyance to rearrange the top five Black cards, buying us a little time, but warned us that we had three turns left before the end.
I was playing Sir Palomides, who was actually being somewhat useful. His "leech" ability meant that I had a little extra life to burn (and believe me, we were ALL burning life points to stave off the progression of evil by that point). I had one grail card left, and there was only one more needed to win the Grail, but I didn't want to tell anyone lest Brian pull from my hand. The ominous third turn fell to me. I was going to burn a life point for the progression of evil, but the guy who'd played Clairvoyance told me to play the Black Card instead. I drew the Black Card--and it was Guinevere. If her power went off, it meant I couldn't play the final Grail card. I looked up in horror, but the guy sat there nodding, telling me he knew what card it was, and that I should play it anyway and not to worry. I kept asking, "Are you sure?" But I knew he wasn't the traitor (Brian was), so finally I gave in and played Guinevere.
And the guy, who was also the current wielder of Excalibur, says, "Oh, Guinevere shows up at Camelot? I chuck Excalibur through her chest." And he burned Excalibur to destroy her.
We were all . . . o.O . . .
And then I laid down the final Grail card, winning both the Grail and the game.
Yes, it was one of the coolest in-game gambits I have seen in a VERY long time.
The other big highlight was the trip to the Elmwood Park Zoo, a smallish zoo but well-maintained. We went in the afternoon on a warm and sunny day, so most of the animals were inactive, hanging out in the shade and trying to beat the heat. The weirdest thing ever was that dozens of turkey vultures saw the zoo as a big roost for them (probably because of all the nice landscaping, trees, shade, nearby river, and the knowledge that people wouldn't bother them that much). So here's an African boar in a pen...with about a dozen turkey vultures, just chillin' with him. Here's a bald eagle...and a few turkey vultures on its roost. Here are a pair of rheas...and a bunch of turkey vultures. Look up into the trees, and half a dozen huge dark shapes are just hanging out in the branches above your head. You get the idea. None of the animals seemed bothered by their presence.
There were also a pair of peacocks walking around the zoo freely. I was able to get fairly close, but unfortunately I had no camera. But they were beautiful...especially when they slipped from shade into sunlight, and their feathers glowed bright sapphire, trailing shining aqua tailfeathers behind themselves.
The only other event of note was that whenever I couldn't find a game I wanted to get in on, or just needed some decompression time, I sat on the couch with my library copy of Perdido Street Station. I held off on reading this book for a long time despite rave reviews and its status as an important novel in the modern wave of urban fantasy, mainly because the story supposedly had a very gritty, graphic writing style that I wasn't sure I'd enjoy. But my online book club picked it up, so I thought "what the heck, why not?", and it has seriously been rocking my socks off. This book is doing things that I normally either don't see often, or don't see done well very often.
I will probably write more about it when I'm done reading it. But, as usual, this post grew to be longer than I expected.
Time for me to actually get some work done!
We drove out to Brandon/Jess/Victor's house in Norristown outside of Philly on Friday night, getting there around midnight (no thanks to some frankly confusing directions from Google Maps). There, we commenced celebrating the Geekiest Memorial Day Weekend EVAR. Imagine a small three-bedroom house, and about 15 geeks or so crashing there for four days straight. There were board games, video games, a cookout, a trip to a small local zoo, and a huge group trip to IHOP. Between all these events were lengthy conversations about all things geek, including comic books, anime, and anime LARP at various conventions. Also, the watching of YouTube viral videos and anime music videos.
Particular highlights include several games of Red Dragon Inn; an Abbey Road marathon on Beatles Rock Band (with me singing harmonies); a game of competition Charades featuring Dan and Jason; a nail-biting game of Shadows over Camelot that ended with one of the greatest last-minute dramatic wins I have ever seen in that game; and the aforementioned zoo trip.
The Shadows game went thus: Brian, our Sir Kay, had revealed himself to be the traitor fairly early on, and spent most of the game hamstringing Arthur by stealing cards out of his hand. We'd won Excalibur and were rushing to win the Grail, while siege engines propagated ominously. Merlin cards were lost in attempting to stave off various Special Black cards, and we were getting down to the wire. One of our players (unfortunately, I didn't know half the names of the people at the house) used Clairvoyance to rearrange the top five Black cards, buying us a little time, but warned us that we had three turns left before the end.
I was playing Sir Palomides, who was actually being somewhat useful. His "leech" ability meant that I had a little extra life to burn (and believe me, we were ALL burning life points to stave off the progression of evil by that point). I had one grail card left, and there was only one more needed to win the Grail, but I didn't want to tell anyone lest Brian pull from my hand. The ominous third turn fell to me. I was going to burn a life point for the progression of evil, but the guy who'd played Clairvoyance told me to play the Black Card instead. I drew the Black Card--and it was Guinevere. If her power went off, it meant I couldn't play the final Grail card. I looked up in horror, but the guy sat there nodding, telling me he knew what card it was, and that I should play it anyway and not to worry. I kept asking, "Are you sure?" But I knew he wasn't the traitor (Brian was), so finally I gave in and played Guinevere.
And the guy, who was also the current wielder of Excalibur, says, "Oh, Guinevere shows up at Camelot? I chuck Excalibur through her chest." And he burned Excalibur to destroy her.
We were all . . . o.O . . .
And then I laid down the final Grail card, winning both the Grail and the game.
Yes, it was one of the coolest in-game gambits I have seen in a VERY long time.
The other big highlight was the trip to the Elmwood Park Zoo, a smallish zoo but well-maintained. We went in the afternoon on a warm and sunny day, so most of the animals were inactive, hanging out in the shade and trying to beat the heat. The weirdest thing ever was that dozens of turkey vultures saw the zoo as a big roost for them (probably because of all the nice landscaping, trees, shade, nearby river, and the knowledge that people wouldn't bother them that much). So here's an African boar in a pen...with about a dozen turkey vultures, just chillin' with him. Here's a bald eagle...and a few turkey vultures on its roost. Here are a pair of rheas...and a bunch of turkey vultures. Look up into the trees, and half a dozen huge dark shapes are just hanging out in the branches above your head. You get the idea. None of the animals seemed bothered by their presence.
There were also a pair of peacocks walking around the zoo freely. I was able to get fairly close, but unfortunately I had no camera. But they were beautiful...especially when they slipped from shade into sunlight, and their feathers glowed bright sapphire, trailing shining aqua tailfeathers behind themselves.
The only other event of note was that whenever I couldn't find a game I wanted to get in on, or just needed some decompression time, I sat on the couch with my library copy of Perdido Street Station. I held off on reading this book for a long time despite rave reviews and its status as an important novel in the modern wave of urban fantasy, mainly because the story supposedly had a very gritty, graphic writing style that I wasn't sure I'd enjoy. But my online book club picked it up, so I thought "what the heck, why not?", and it has seriously been rocking my socks off. This book is doing things that I normally either don't see often, or don't see done well very often.
I will probably write more about it when I'm done reading it. But, as usual, this post grew to be longer than I expected.
Time for me to actually get some work done!