I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, however you chose to do or not do it
Russet worked the nights of the 24th and 25th, last night we had a big dinner at the observatory. Because of a snow fall and no weather warm enough to melt it, telescope close conditions were really tight and the telescope was closed most of the night because of snow on top of the dome.
We got two pre-prepared pork loins from the grocer, just bake and serve. I made an excellent sauce from PEPSI, plus brown sugar, ketchup, some spices, and the addition of some chipotle powder. Major hit. A second sauce, made of Guinness and cherries, did not work nearly as well. Also featured were two salads, lots of good home-made bread and European butter, and sweet potatoes. Dessert were my eggnog ice cream, my flourless chocolate cake covered in chocolate mousse, and Russet's co-worker made some mini-pies - apple cranberry - that were wonderful. A very yummy repast and no food comas afterward!
Afterwards we played a new(?) game called The Plot Thickens. It's a cooperative story-telling game with cards for People, Places, and Things. We played the science fiction edition, I also have the romance and detective editions, and you can combine the sets - it doesn't slow down the game, just gives you more descriptors to work with and expands the number of people who can play. The rules are identical between the three editions.
It was a lot of fun, and we ended up with a pretty screwy story. I started off with selecting the Cadet card as my persona (from three cards) and went with Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbs. I was flying around on with jet pack, having just left my quarters when I saw lava consuming the warehouse of the base! For every card you link into your story, from your hand you get a point that you can spend. Then when you incorporate a card that someone else has played up in front of them into your story thread, you get to move that point onto their card and it counts as a scoring point.
We had an undead electrical vampire (Russet), a space princess (Russet's co-worker), and a monster trainer (Dave). It was really weird. :)
The first round you introduce your character then play as many cards as you can, building your story. That earns you the initial points that on subsequent rounds you expand your story to tie to other people's starting story. Then the final round you still expand your story so that others can play on it and try to spend all your points on other's stories. I expect adding the romance and detective sets would be a blast.
We had fun, just played a three-round intro game to get a feel for the rules with four people. Each expansion your scoring tokens are a different shape, so with all three expansions you could have a game of a dozen people! Keeping track of other people's stories could get really complicated, though.
We got two pre-prepared pork loins from the grocer, just bake and serve. I made an excellent sauce from PEPSI, plus brown sugar, ketchup, some spices, and the addition of some chipotle powder. Major hit. A second sauce, made of Guinness and cherries, did not work nearly as well. Also featured were two salads, lots of good home-made bread and European butter, and sweet potatoes. Dessert were my eggnog ice cream, my flourless chocolate cake covered in chocolate mousse, and Russet's co-worker made some mini-pies - apple cranberry - that were wonderful. A very yummy repast and no food comas afterward!
Afterwards we played a new(?) game called The Plot Thickens. It's a cooperative story-telling game with cards for People, Places, and Things. We played the science fiction edition, I also have the romance and detective editions, and you can combine the sets - it doesn't slow down the game, just gives you more descriptors to work with and expands the number of people who can play. The rules are identical between the three editions.
It was a lot of fun, and we ended up with a pretty screwy story. I started off with selecting the Cadet card as my persona (from three cards) and went with Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbs. I was flying around on with jet pack, having just left my quarters when I saw lava consuming the warehouse of the base! For every card you link into your story, from your hand you get a point that you can spend. Then when you incorporate a card that someone else has played up in front of them into your story thread, you get to move that point onto their card and it counts as a scoring point.
We had an undead electrical vampire (Russet), a space princess (Russet's co-worker), and a monster trainer (Dave). It was really weird. :)
The first round you introduce your character then play as many cards as you can, building your story. That earns you the initial points that on subsequent rounds you expand your story to tie to other people's starting story. Then the final round you still expand your story so that others can play on it and try to spend all your points on other's stories. I expect adding the romance and detective sets would be a blast.
We had fun, just played a three-round intro game to get a feel for the rules with four people. Each expansion your scoring tokens are a different shape, so with all three expansions you could have a game of a dozen people! Keeping track of other people's stories could get really complicated, though.