Even big, bad bad boys get scared at night. It keeps them safe.
Despite sleeping on it, I'm still not sure how I feel about 7V. I have my issues with heroic fantasy, particularly in the form of a large LARP, and it doesn't help that I began the weekend already exhausted. I'll have to wait and think on it, and inevitably post here once I have. But that said, I'm glad that I got to spend my weekend in the company I did. Bits and pieces of the Endgame crowd were around, and it was nice to interact with them both IC and OOC outside of the context of Temple; I met a couple new and interesting people I hope to keep seeing around; and there were even a few people I know from the theater LARP crowd around, which was a pleasant surprise. rigel and I roomed with a couple of the Endgame crowd, and while I was my usual meepy and flailing self OOC around them, nothing seemed to go horribly awry.*
On the real life front, work is...special. I'm in training, which means I get to work sometime around 8:30 and start teaching myself about the securities industry. At some point the newest guy might head over for a directed teaching session on some topic for an hour, then I go back to reading. Confession: Even when cramming for tests in college I studied at most for a couple hours at a time. (And more often I didn't bother studying at all.) This is slowly driving me insane. But the people are friendly, and the information is...interesting, if utterly ridiculous. (Our economy is run by people selling the sale of meta-debt that may or may not actually be theirs to sell. I have no more faith in currency. I'm still fond of acquiring it, however.) Eventually I finish downing my seventh or eighth cup of tea and most of the office has left, so I skedaddle back home, where, get this, I don't have to do anything. It's like 9 and while I'm doing laundry I don't have to be. Good times. Tonight I will sleep, and tomorrow evening I'll see about finally unpacking a box or two while the pumpkin streusel muffins are baking.
That's about it. If stuff other than Rage is happening this weekend, I don't want to hear about it. I'm sleeping and finishing the moving process and starting up my exercising regimen again. The weekend after that? We'll talk. But a single weekend this month where I don't have to drive far away to pretend to be someone else might be too nice to give up. (I say that, but I'm already looking forward to Endgame in October.)
Speaking of Endgame, I'm debating mechanics things. So here's the deal: I don't yet have a real header. I knew this would happen when I clung to Scoundrel with a death grip during my respec process, and now I finally have enough CP to fix it. But I'm not sure which way to go. The two factors I'm most concerned with balancing are efficient stat usage and ookiness/plot-relevance. To explain the latter: Endgame appears to have three kinds of plot. There are giant overarching plots where something tries to kill or convert everyone in the town, and that keeps everyone engaged and usually provides a central connection for an event or period. There's personal plot, in theory, which is less of a big deal here than in other games from what I've heard. (Which makes some amount of sense. If the world is horribly different and the vast majority of humanity is dead, it's really hard for what you did pre-Apocalypse to remain relevant. Well, unless you piss off someone particularly mean and powerful, who goes out of their way to dig it up and wave it in your face, but how likely is that to happen? ... Actually that would be kinda awesome. Hm. GMs get to torture people and have them like it. I might have to look into that one day.) And then there are the little side plots and story arcs associated with various headers. (DISCLAIMER: This is a knowing oversimplification, but is hopefully clearer than 'there are shiny things and I wants them.') As it stands, Spence has no reason to go talking with the various creepy NPC mentor folks or to attempt to unlock deeper potential in what he already has, because what he has is bombs and stabbing. But I'd be interested in that kind of thing, and there are definitely routes he could go with it. Quite honestly, that (and my feared inability to crack jokes on command) is the main reason I'm resisting Buddy. It cuts off a ton of interesting routes. (There are other reasons, including silly English major ones, but I'm still looking at it, just resisting for the time being.)
But back to the topic at hand. Headers. I don't think anyone would blink twice if Spence showed up with Artificer tech eventually. It's certainly the header that most appeals to him. But half or more of the skills are gun-based, and I don't particularly want to be a gunner. Still, I could dip into it for a couple things. But the first thing I'd want to grab is healing, and hey! Earth is the only stat I use regularly. (Maiming being somewhat simpler to arrange than backstabs and the like.) So that's..awkward. Wonder working, which made Spence cringe at first but has since grown on him, has the same problem. (I could go with not-healing at first in both instances, of course, I'm mostly cursing my apparent love of Earth.) Focusing entirely on increasing efficiency, I could grab Skirmisher, which honestly feels like it should encompass Scoundrel anyway. And from there I could grab air armor, disengage (well, that I can grab whatever I do), and whichever of the fire purge or resist things it happens to have. And finally (unless other headers come to mind), I could take Buddy, but I think the previous three are all more likely for the various mentioned and unmentioned reasons. I might eventually take it, but probably not as my first legitimate header.
Making that concise rather failed. Advice always welcome, though even trying to explain has helped.
*I'm not entirely sure how I manage to transition from that to a complete bastard around people I'm fond of, but one day I'll figure it out how to skip the awkward phase and be an apparently-endearing bastard all of the time.**
**I wonder if my ability to be annoying without actually upsetting people is tied to my inability to be killed in LARPs***
***Alternatively, I might be shifting my theater LARP death quota over to boffer LARPs. I swear, one day I will join a boffer LARP and not die my first event. To be fair, a ton of people died this time.
On the real life front, work is...special. I'm in training, which means I get to work sometime around 8:30 and start teaching myself about the securities industry. At some point the newest guy might head over for a directed teaching session on some topic for an hour, then I go back to reading. Confession: Even when cramming for tests in college I studied at most for a couple hours at a time. (And more often I didn't bother studying at all.) This is slowly driving me insane. But the people are friendly, and the information is...interesting, if utterly ridiculous. (Our economy is run by people selling the sale of meta-debt that may or may not actually be theirs to sell. I have no more faith in currency. I'm still fond of acquiring it, however.) Eventually I finish downing my seventh or eighth cup of tea and most of the office has left, so I skedaddle back home, where, get this, I don't have to do anything. It's like 9 and while I'm doing laundry I don't have to be. Good times. Tonight I will sleep, and tomorrow evening I'll see about finally unpacking a box or two while the pumpkin streusel muffins are baking.
That's about it. If stuff other than Rage is happening this weekend, I don't want to hear about it. I'm sleeping and finishing the moving process and starting up my exercising regimen again. The weekend after that? We'll talk. But a single weekend this month where I don't have to drive far away to pretend to be someone else might be too nice to give up. (I say that, but I'm already looking forward to Endgame in October.)
Speaking of Endgame, I'm debating mechanics things. So here's the deal: I don't yet have a real header. I knew this would happen when I clung to Scoundrel with a death grip during my respec process, and now I finally have enough CP to fix it. But I'm not sure which way to go. The two factors I'm most concerned with balancing are efficient stat usage and ookiness/plot-relevance. To explain the latter: Endgame appears to have three kinds of plot. There are giant overarching plots where something tries to kill or convert everyone in the town, and that keeps everyone engaged and usually provides a central connection for an event or period. There's personal plot, in theory, which is less of a big deal here than in other games from what I've heard. (Which makes some amount of sense. If the world is horribly different and the vast majority of humanity is dead, it's really hard for what you did pre-Apocalypse to remain relevant. Well, unless you piss off someone particularly mean and powerful, who goes out of their way to dig it up and wave it in your face, but how likely is that to happen? ... Actually that would be kinda awesome. Hm. GMs get to torture people and have them like it. I might have to look into that one day.) And then there are the little side plots and story arcs associated with various headers. (DISCLAIMER: This is a knowing oversimplification, but is hopefully clearer than 'there are shiny things and I wants them.') As it stands, Spence has no reason to go talking with the various creepy NPC mentor folks or to attempt to unlock deeper potential in what he already has, because what he has is bombs and stabbing. But I'd be interested in that kind of thing, and there are definitely routes he could go with it. Quite honestly, that (and my feared inability to crack jokes on command) is the main reason I'm resisting Buddy. It cuts off a ton of interesting routes. (There are other reasons, including silly English major ones, but I'm still looking at it, just resisting for the time being.)
But back to the topic at hand. Headers. I don't think anyone would blink twice if Spence showed up with Artificer tech eventually. It's certainly the header that most appeals to him. But half or more of the skills are gun-based, and I don't particularly want to be a gunner. Still, I could dip into it for a couple things. But the first thing I'd want to grab is healing, and hey! Earth is the only stat I use regularly. (Maiming being somewhat simpler to arrange than backstabs and the like.) So that's..awkward. Wonder working, which made Spence cringe at first but has since grown on him, has the same problem. (I could go with not-healing at first in both instances, of course, I'm mostly cursing my apparent love of Earth.) Focusing entirely on increasing efficiency, I could grab Skirmisher, which honestly feels like it should encompass Scoundrel anyway. And from there I could grab air armor, disengage (well, that I can grab whatever I do), and whichever of the fire purge or resist things it happens to have. And finally (unless other headers come to mind), I could take Buddy, but I think the previous three are all more likely for the various mentioned and unmentioned reasons. I might eventually take it, but probably not as my first legitimate header.
Making that concise rather failed. Advice always welcome, though even trying to explain has helped.
*I'm not entirely sure how I manage to transition from that to a complete bastard around people I'm fond of, but one day I'll figure it out how to skip the awkward phase and be an apparently-endearing bastard all of the time.**
**I wonder if my ability to be annoying without actually upsetting people is tied to my inability to be killed in LARPs***
***Alternatively, I might be shifting my theater LARP death quota over to boffer LARPs. I swear, one day I will join a boffer LARP and not die my first event. To be fair, a ton of people died this time.