Blankshield

Roleplaying.

I've been roleplaying for [mumble mumble] years now. Suffice to say, longer than some of my friends have existed in this world. It has outlasted any other single hobby or activity I've ever been interested in. Some of my favorite moments, in no particular order:

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Scene: One full-of-itself vampire LARP, a toreador party.
Cori (as a sardonic vampire): "They're all pretentious fucks."
James (as an arrogant mage): "I could use a good pretentious fuck."
pause
Cori: "How exactly would you do that?"

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Maurice, the man of Smouldering Potence.

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That Kenneth Brannaugh fellow manages to throw together a good Shakespeare movie, and his Henry V is truly majestic. But to me, Non Nobis will never again summon up images of the dead and dying at Agincourt, amid the smoke and haze of early morning.

To me, Non Nobis will always bring forth images of Oberon, just returned to his throne and hall, and the silence and pain as pallbearers carried in the body of his eldest loyal son, Benedict.

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The two half-orc barbarians Ugbash and UEM pulling the "pull me" levers.

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Young knights, torn by conflicting oaths and friendships. A church burns in the background.

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"Donovan, of clan Nosferatu, come forward"
"Ah'm at yer feet."

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By now, generations of gamers have discovered Ravenloft, both in it's original form, and in the sub-genre of D&D horror gaming that it spawned. But I knew it, many years gone now, when it was young and mostly unheard of. When, in the hands of our friend Scott, Strahd toyed with and tormented us through a weekend without sleep.

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In Star Frontiers, the discovery that sheathing a car in spaceship armour, while making the car *painfully* expensive, would not only make it much more than merely bulletproof, but also prevented the automatic traffic controls from working, bringing high speed escapes back into the future. The subsequent discovery that high speed escapes turn into high velocity impacts with poor dice luck.

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The slow, painful slide to insanty, turning a well meaning curio-shop proprietor into a fanatical cultist trying to raise Great Cthulhu.

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Telling the story of the Glasswalker with one hand and one eye, and what it means to be Baka.

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Dishi: "My time serving you as Seneschal has come to an end."
(Jinx, playing the Seneschal): "Seneschal? What does that make me??"
Wilhem, returning Prince of Minneapolis: "Gangrel Primogen."

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When Huntsman and Sentinal first met in the New World.

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"Tall Black Man"

Saw this on Jeanne's blog, and had to immediately go and try it myself. I discovered that I too am Cap'n Jack!


You're Captain Jack Sparrow
You're not always clear when you say something, but
you are trustworthy.


-x-What charater from Pirates of the Carribbean are you?(with pictures)-x-
brought to you by Quizilla

Woo! :) Fun little quiz, although it tripped my "ARGH! Grammer!" alarm. Your. You're. Consistently mixing them up would have been less annoying if they weren't starting every sentence with it...

Your: possessive. Used in the same way that one would use "my".
You're: contraction of "you are". Used in the same way that one would use "I am".

Translate the sentence in your head, and see if it still makes sense. "Your car" would become "My car", not "I am car". "You're annoying" would become "I am annoying", not "My annoying". Unless, perhaps the quiz was written by Jar Jar.

Yurg.

Ah ha! I have conquered it! I have conquered the seemingly-random and highly frustrating 002 dk.eos.net.FtpError: Login incorrect. errors Blogger was feeding me.

I had the wrong password written down. So, rightly enough, Blogger was only allowing me to update when I mis-remembered the password! The rest of the time, when I would carefully enter it as written, or remember it correctly, de nada. Excepting, of course, those few occaisions when my fingers were smarter than my brain, and entered a password not of my choosing.

Some days I am absolutely frikkin' amazed I ever accomplish a damn thing.

Jamse. or perhaps Jmaes. or...

Ooooh, color.

Oog... Busy weekend.

Possibly it feels so busy because it started on Thursday morning... Got woken up 8-ish by the Dread Snuggling Kalen Beast, who sneaks into your bed in the early morning hours and proceeds to pretend to sleep with you without actually sleeping, which manages to just keep you at that annoying not-asleep/not-awake state. After a bit of this, and seeing that she wasn't going to settle properly, I got up, plunked her in front of the square babysitter, and went back to bed for another half-hour or so of not-awake/not-asleep. Got up 9-ish, kissed a sleepy Raven on the forehead and drove to Saskatchewan. Driving to Saskatchewan involved a slight (1 hour) detour out to Fort Saskatchewan to fetch my wallet that I foolishly forgot at work. The wallet being necessary to buy gas at some point, otherwise I'd be stuck in Saskatchewan, a fate worse than death.

I got to Quad Site (the only thing Saskatchewan has worth noting, except for Imoto-chan, and Amy & Randy) around 12:30-1 to discover I'd beat Dirk & Corry out there, although not by much, as they drove up while I was sweeping out the cabin, and deciding where to start. We started with a quick lunch, then Corry started painting their cabin, and Dirk started on framing/installing windows in our cabin, and I did a temporary frame & install of our back door, so that it was not either a hole in the wall, or a sheet of wood nailed in place, those being the other options.

I finished hanging the door mid-afternoon sometime, and then started painting our cabin. I took a relatively brief break in the middle (often called "night"), and stopped painting late Friday, when we ran out of primer, and it was about time to go home. Blag. Did I mention that it was 32 in the shade? Drove home, with a pause in Lloyd to inhale some chicken, and discovered a house full of gamers, which was cool. The gamers weren't in my shower, which was even better, and a solid indication of my priorities at the time.

After a shower I felt human again, and went down to socialize with the Friday Night crowd, who I hadn't expected to see, as I'm currently the Friday night running-things-guy, and had called around to cancel. It was Other's birthday though, so the Friday night crowd, not having the regular friday night thing, decided to do something for Other's birthday, which ended up being Other running a quick-and-dirty game to have all the characters in the next game meet each other. In other words, the regular friday night thing. :) I also turned on Nevercrack for the first time in about 6 months, being inspired by all the D&D in the air. I killed hill giants, yay for casual slaughter of the bad guys. It was good.

The next day was Saturday, and I got up with da kids, and let Raven sleep in a lot, which she seemed to need. Shortly thereafter, Eric dropped off their cute things so that he could go watch his lady do battle, or at least seem to kick people a lot. Or seem to get kicked a lot, or both. Capoera is like that; it's really fun to watch. After they came back to reacquire their children, they stuck around instead, and we RPed. Mmm. Riddle of the 7th Steel Sea goodness. It was one of those good gaming sessions where the clock jumps - it's 10 o'clock, and a few minutes later it's 2 am, and almost immediately after that it's 20 after 5. Oog. Good RP. As was pointed out, how often is it that all three of us will be available for gaming, and not have to get up with the kids in the morning? Somewhere in there, Raven offered to let them have a kid-free day on Sunday, and to let me sleep in. Raven is crazy. Good-crazy, but crazy. And boy did Andre ever feel the lack of his pin. Stupid bad guys with even tempers anyway. Grump. What's the use of insulting a guy if he's not going to start a fight over it? And I think he got the better of me in the insult department, too. It's just not fair. :p

Sunday started with a whole lot of sleeping, which was wonderful. Did I mention that Raven is crazy? After I got up, I monitored the Quartet of Doom until supper-time, when Eric and Star came to take over that part, and I fled into the basement. the QoD wasn't too bad, in fact was pretty managable - right up until I tried to do something. Yarg. Never try to accomplish anything while watching the Quartet of Doom.

After that, the three of us had a relaxing evening of lying in the basement, and playing [game who's name I can't remember, but was fun], a tile-laying boardgame from those crazy Germans. Germans make good boardgames.

Then I went to bed, and then it was today.

James

Woohoo! B5 season 3 is out today! Woo! And I might have accidently bought season 2 of Highlander while I was at it. But it was on sale, so that makes it OK, right?

Mmm. Many hours of idiot box for me. I can turn my brain to gruel!

Sweet nourishing gruel.

Grr. Work evil.


Mmm. Weather pretty.

Higher thought not do.

Ow. Muscles say "no more spontanious trampolene time without warning us first". Brain says "Bah!"

Last night was fun, from trampolene time to watching Steph's new present (and yes, I do mean the video, not her other present), to melting chocolatey goodness. Even wearing a box on my head was OK - it saved me from a tapeball. :)

Ok, I don't expect the majority of you to get this, but I have to tell you anyway:

On my way home from work today, I passed a 3-ton truck (one of the 'bigger than a cube van, smaller than a semi) types. It was entirely white, except for a big label above the cab and on the back door, which proudly proclaimed:

YELLOW

Hee! I was wasting time doing non-work things in Word, which involved typing the word droid in. Apparantly, if you typo it as driod Word will autocorrect, as is it's won't - but won't fix it to be droid. Oh no, it fixes it to be 'druid'. Obviously that's what I meant to type.

So I glanced up from my typing to see that I'd just finished writing:

handwave "These are not the druids you're looking for."

Heehee! I had to share.

Ha hah! I have conquered the vagueries of Blogger! No, I haven't fixed the font thing, but I did find the setting that kept making my older posts go away. Now you may again read my entire blog, back to the beginning of it's glorious, um, something. Someday soon I will learn the mysteries that are archiving. Maybe then I'll consider getting off my butt and not using such a lame format.

But probably not.

Went to Angel's place last night, and discovered others hanging around. We vegged in the living room, watched mediocre TV, and chatted a lot. Chatted about work, and kids and Tempest, and made fun of the Sons of Ether. It was all good.

Also previous to that had roast beef for supper. Mmmm Roast. I like it when Raven decides she wants real food. I also like it when the weather is not so obscenely hot that considering turning on the stove is grounds for an insanity plea.

Speaking of BBQ, which we weren't, Friday Night gamers get steak again this week, or so Raven has decreed. Cute little steaks with bacon wrapped around them. Note to self: make maranade tonight. Mostly I think Raven likes BBQ steak, and is using 'feeding our friends' as an excuse.

Blogger sucks. do do de do.

If you view the source for my last post, you will see a font size +2 tag on the first line. If you log into blogger as me, you will see it in the preview. However, as you may have noted, here you do not see it.

Blogger sucks do do de do.

I'm too lazy to code real HTML do do de do.

Coming out of the Closet, in Style

"Hi, my name is James, and I'm a Closet Fan of Schmultzy Tragic Romance and Musicals."

Everybody: "Hi James"

They say the first step is acknowledging you have a problem. I think the first step is indulging in your vice, but I'm probably on a different program.

There was a boy
A very strange, enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far, over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.

And then one day
One magic day he passed my way
While we spoke of many things
Fools and Kings
This he said to me

the greatest thing you'll ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return
-Nature Boy, David Bowie

Sometime in the near future, Star and I are hosting a Night of Schmultz and Tragic Romance. Activities will consist of such acts as watching romantic movies (with some combination of tragic, schmultzy and musical traits), listening and/or performing music in the same vein, lingering stares over romantic food by candlelight, and so forth. If necessary we may even recite spontaneous sappy poetry, but I doubt we'll need to get that depraved.

So, if there are any other closet fans of romance and melodrama and schmultz and music (preferably all in the same movie), e-mail one of us and let us know. We'll add you to the list of schedules to be juggled.

James

Raven and I were looking for my copy of Watership Down the other day, and couldn't find it. Did I happen to lend it to someone who reads my blog?

Tempest last night was fun. It's always cool when the story can not only slap you in the face, but can do it to the entire player base, in a manner consistent and foreshadowed by story so far. We get to be Ma-rau-DERS! We get to be Ma-rau-DERS! If Father Dave ever starts chanting that, it's time to kill him. Quickly.

For the non-Tempestuous in the audience, we don't really 'get to be Marauders', except in the same sort of way that people with consumption 'get to die', and by all implications it will take as long and be as painful. So it's really really not a good thing, but it is good Story. And it hangs together, or at least looks to do so from this side of the plot. Kudos. And I need to make some "patron saint and archangel" cheatsheets or something; I think I called on the Madonna del Buon Consiglio about half a dozen times last night, because I forgot to look up some less generic ones. For the folks in the audience who haven't yet Googled, that would be the aspect of Mary that is the patron saint of enlightenment. When I discovered that in researching Fr. Dave, I decided that in Tempest, that is also the aspect who's charge is the Awakened and their works. Since I'm the only Choruster in the game, I declared it and it was so. Fiat voluntas mea.

In other news, I am steadfastly avoiding cleaning the dogs' breakfast hit by a whirlwind that is my Lego room. Which is bad, because I have a lot of stuff that needs building before the train show in September. In fact, before the trial run we'll probably do in late August sometime. Ack!

We now return to your regularly scheduled oog blag hot.

ech. drip drip drip splat. Oh look, it's a James-puddle.

ugh. Hot.