Geek-end. (I'm tired)
Feb. 26th, 2007 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleI am not usually of the opinion that imagination is a resource that one can become depleted of, but after this weekend, I'm reconsidering that possibility.
Friday night,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
triadruid and I ran the first session of our Amnesia D&D game. We had painstakingly prepared a lot of things, and then cleverly left some of them at home, so some fairly significant chunks had to be made up off the cuff anyway. Normally, I like to write session reports of the games I run, so that I can remember where we're at later, so I might post one of those later. Best part of the game so far: a large number of folks who aren't in the game, but who saw our beginning character sheets in triadruid's post last week have said to me, "That's a clever idea, but I can pick out your cleric right away." I have asked them to tell me who the cleric is, and so far, they have all been wrong. There have been several different characters put forward, but all wrong. "Ha!", I say.
Saturday turned out to be a session of the other game I'm in, oneerusnoctis is running based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'm just playing in this one, but erusnoctis' style makes it one of the more challenging and emotionally draining games I've played. Bonus point because I had forgotten that we were playing this week, and I totally wasn't prepared for it. We came home from that and gave kittenpants the session report on it, and she says, "You know, normally, I'm opposed to fanfiction, but you guys should write this stuff down. People would like to read it." I'm not sure. I have a vague feeling that a more literal translation of Jordan's word ta'veren into English is "Mary Sue".
Sunday, I was involved in the ritual at Gaia, and had not been able to take Saturday to prepare for that, so ended up putting together a lot of it on the fly, too. This was a fantastically complicated ritual about the Hero's Journey, with movement from one place to another, station work, and intricate timing. You'd go do a thing, you'd have a choice, and the choice you made sent you somewhere else, and so on. It worked out a lot like the ritualized form of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which meant that the middle section was complicated enough that we had to flowchart it. Crazy times. For extra added fun, one of the spaces we needed to use became unavailable at the last minute (literally - ritual starts at 4 p.m. and we discovered that the room we were planning on using was being used by some other group who had been bumped from where they were supposed to be meeting at 3:55.), and8elements, who was also leading ritual, got massively ill with some sort of fever/throat/laryngitis sort of sickness at about 3:30. Still, nobody screwed up anything major, as far as I am aware, and it seemed to go pretty well.
So after that, I was All Done with being clever, problem solving, creativity, and really, thinking in general. We figured that going to see Ghost Rider would be the perfect remedy. The film was as bad as we'd heard, but a lot more enjoyable than I expected. Nic Cage is wildly funny, in a deadpan Southerner sort of way. He seemed to be enjoying the part, which is always fun to watch. We hypothesize that Nic Cage is, in real life, a big dork. I also realized that I picked up the Ghost Rider comics at about the time that Marvel put out Rise of the Midnight Sons, which was a sort of mass crossover including Blade, Ghost Rider, Michael Morbius (the Living Vampire), Darkhold, Francis King, and a seeming ton of other 'occult' titles. So I had no idea what his origin story actually was, which probably made the film much easier to like for me. The story they told seemed to be as good a comic book origin as anything, so it worked. I don't hold movies based on comics to the same standards as other films; I mean, it's not like comic books are great literature, you know? The plot was weak to nonexistent, they blew all their effects budget on the fire and the elementals, the story was internally inconsistent, and the film had a multitude of other flaws, but it really doesn't matter. It's a lot of fun, and that's what I'm paying for.
That was my weekend, how about yours?
Friday night,
triadruid and I ran the first session of our Amnesia D&D game. We had painstakingly prepared a lot of things, and then cleverly left some of them at home, so some fairly significant chunks had to be made up off the cuff anyway. Normally, I like to write session reports of the games I run, so that I can remember where we're at later, so I might post one of those later. Best part of the game so far: a large number of folks who aren't in the game, but who saw our beginning character sheets in triadruid's post last week have said to me, "That's a clever idea, but I can pick out your cleric right away." I have asked them to tell me who the cleric is, and so far, they have all been wrong. There have been several different characters put forward, but all wrong. "Ha!", I say.Saturday turned out to be a session of the other game I'm in, one
erusnoctis is running based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'm just playing in this one, but erusnoctis' style makes it one of the more challenging and emotionally draining games I've played. Bonus point because I had forgotten that we were playing this week, and I totally wasn't prepared for it. We came home from that and gave kittenpants the session report on it, and she says, "You know, normally, I'm opposed to fanfiction, but you guys should write this stuff down. People would like to read it." I'm not sure. I have a vague feeling that a more literal translation of Jordan's word ta'veren into English is "Mary Sue". Sunday, I was involved in the ritual at Gaia, and had not been able to take Saturday to prepare for that, so ended up putting together a lot of it on the fly, too. This was a fantastically complicated ritual about the Hero's Journey, with movement from one place to another, station work, and intricate timing. You'd go do a thing, you'd have a choice, and the choice you made sent you somewhere else, and so on. It worked out a lot like the ritualized form of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which meant that the middle section was complicated enough that we had to flowchart it. Crazy times. For extra added fun, one of the spaces we needed to use became unavailable at the last minute (literally - ritual starts at 4 p.m. and we discovered that the room we were planning on using was being used by some other group who had been bumped from where they were supposed to be meeting at 3:55.), and
8elements, who was also leading ritual, got massively ill with some sort of fever/throat/laryngitis sort of sickness at about 3:30. Still, nobody screwed up anything major, as far as I am aware, and it seemed to go pretty well.So after that, I was All Done with being clever, problem solving, creativity, and really, thinking in general. We figured that going to see Ghost Rider would be the perfect remedy. The film was as bad as we'd heard, but a lot more enjoyable than I expected. Nic Cage is wildly funny, in a deadpan Southerner sort of way. He seemed to be enjoying the part, which is always fun to watch. We hypothesize that Nic Cage is, in real life, a big dork. I also realized that I picked up the Ghost Rider comics at about the time that Marvel put out Rise of the Midnight Sons, which was a sort of mass crossover including Blade, Ghost Rider, Michael Morbius (the Living Vampire), Darkhold, Francis King, and a seeming ton of other 'occult' titles. So I had no idea what his origin story actually was, which probably made the film much easier to like for me. The story they told seemed to be as good a comic book origin as anything, so it worked. I don't hold movies based on comics to the same standards as other films; I mean, it's not like comic books are great literature, you know? The plot was weak to nonexistent, they blew all their effects budget on the fire and the elementals, the story was internally inconsistent, and the film had a multitude of other flaws, but it really doesn't matter. It's a lot of fun, and that's what I'm paying for.
That was my weekend, how about yours?
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 04:35 pm (UTC)The "Mary Sue" thing cracks me up. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 04:51 pm (UTC)I mean, Jacinda is all of your trapped-in-role-I-don't-want movements,and conflict of what you want vs what you want other people to think you want. Leosin is all of
I think we weren't Mary Sue material, though, until he let slip that everybody in the party could either channel or be taught to channel. I know he random-rolled that, but still. Over the damned top. (Also, I'm delighted to find that I may yet have the opportunity to make Jaeren an Asha'man. I'm looking perversely forward to that.)
you've nailed it.
Date: 2007-02-26 04:56 pm (UTC)Looking forward to the continuing story...even though We're All Gonna Die (tm).
Re: you've nailed it.
Date: 2007-02-26 05:03 pm (UTC)Or not.
Re: you've nailed it.
Date: 2007-02-26 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 05:14 pm (UTC)*splorfle* Okay, that's funny.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 05:40 pm (UTC)Ghost Rider...
Date: 2007-02-26 05:25 pm (UTC)Re: Ghost Rider...
Date: 2007-02-26 05:29 pm (UTC)Nonetheless, the soundtrack was fairly solid, mostly instrumental with some well-placed southern rock and rockabilly, and features a very weird cover of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" as the credits track.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 08:59 pm (UTC)Sure, but if that's your only objection to writing Jordan fanfic, it must be pointed out that Jordan himself is just writing LOTR fanfic.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-26 09:23 pm (UTC)*ROFLCOPTERS*
re:the cleric
Date: 2007-02-26 09:00 pm (UTC)Re: the cleric
Date: 2007-02-26 09:24 pm (UTC)Re: the cleric
Date: 2007-02-27 08:42 pm (UTC)Re: the cleric
Date: 2007-02-28 03:46 am (UTC)