Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

kittenpants was away at dance camp (this one time, at dance camp??) for the weekend, so triadruid and I consoled ourselves by playing D&D, going to the movies, eating stuff she doesn't like, shopping, and generally fucking around. And it was good!

The D&D group met on Friday, and finished Chapter 1 of their great adventure. Next time, they'll meet their new traveling companions (mwa ha ha) and head outside the boundaries of the Vitraen Empire to aid some of the Empire's allies. That means triadruid and I get to build a bunch of encounters that are much weirder than anything we've done so far, and we'll also be building the town of Freeport, which is controlled by a coalition that includes (among other interests) religious leaders, the military, and the mafia. Good times. I'm thinking that I'd like to build an LJ-filter for the campaign that will not include any of the players, and post some of the world-building and character-building stuff on it. For one thing, we've been writing little micro-fics about the PC's lives before the game, and handing them out to the players, and I'm pretty proud of some of the writing. I want people to appreciate our twisted genius, you know?

Saturday, we went shopping with the goal of buying triadruid some pants. This failed, but he did find a nice belt, and I picked up some pirate pajamas (size medium -- who knew?) and a nice red and grey wrap (I'm officially an old woman now, I've bought my first shawl). We also saw Shoot 'Em Up, which was simultaneously hilariously funny, wildly stupid, and amazingly well-choreographed. It also somehow managed to have a gun-control message mixed up in its hash of plot, which was like an extra layer of funny. Clive Owen was deadpan and bad ass, Paul Giamatti was creepy and pussy-whipped, and Monica Belluci was somehow creepy and warm-fuzzy at the same time, so that was all good.

Somewhere during the course of the weekend, I remembered that I can cook if I have to. I made fried catfish on Saturday, with these wildly interesting zucchini 'fries', and then on Sunday made chicken in a vinegar and herb pan sauce with crimini mushrooms, and served the rest of the zucchini (I always overbuy zucchini, for no good reason) in an Alfredo sauce. All of it was surprisingly tasty.

The rest of the weekend would more or less have to go on my TMI filter, if I had one. But I don't. :) Let's just say I'm extremely tired this morning.

Unfortunately, all the weekend goodness was marred by logging on to LJ last night and discovering that Robert Jordan had died, and that some folks that I thought were doing really quite well were actually not doing so well. Ah, life. But the story goes on, in both cases. Mr. Jordan allegedly had told the end of the Wheel of Time series to his wife and other family members, who were sworn to finish the project should he be unable to do so. So that continues (thank the gods - I've only been reading those things for ten years now, and the end is so, so close!). And for the rest of us, as long as we live the story's not over either. Somebody quoted something at me the other week which I find terribly appropriate, even though I can't remember who originally said it now (and I'm paraphrasing anyway) -- "Everything always turns out all right in the end, and if it's not all right, it's not the end." So I'm sending that kind of energy out to everybody today. If it's not all right, it's not the end.

Have a fine sort of Monday, everybody. :)

Friday night we ran a session of the Amnesia Game, which is triadruid's and my wretched little D&D campaign. We've got seven player characters. Some time ago (about a week and a half, maybe two weeks in game time), they woke up on the floor of an evil temple, dressed in black robes, surrounded by corpses. They have no memory of their lives, of how they got to that temple, what they were doing, who they were, or (most importantly in game terms) what their skills were. As the game progresses, they get memories; sometimes these are memories of something which is useful for game mechanics purposes, sometimes they are bits of backstory, sometimes they are mere flashes of sensory impression that have to be sorted out later.
( The story so far... )

I'd just like to take a moment to reflect on how excellent things have been lately. Last night, we went out for dinner at Waldo "Corporate Pizza Sucks" Pizza, and had the best pizza in the history of the world, super-thin crispy crust with lots of cheese, pepperoni, mushroom, bacon and spinach. I know that some of the 'best pizza in the world' thing stems from the fact that we haven't had pizza, or indeed anything based in bread for about 6 weeks, but I'm thinking that even had that not been true, it would have still been pretty fucking good.

Later, I got to run a sort of mini-session of our Amnesia Game with kittenpants. I am a vast geek, and I enjoy role-playing in most of its forms, but every now and again I have a session where I'm really on, and it's a kind of possession by story. I was all over that last night and got to spend 15 or 20 minutes in the head of a character living a life somewhere in between that of a rock star and that of a special forces soldier. I love the world triadruid and I have built, even though some of it is deeply wretched and will work out to be extremely traumatic for the players. I don't want to give too much away, since some of the players are on my list. We've had some in-game downtime, and some of the players have learned a lot by themselves, so I'm looking forward to Friday's full-group session, just to see what they're willing to share and what they aren't. Also, I'm looking forward to giving the players more control over their stats and dice-rolls. So far, triadruid and I have been managing all the calculations, which is going to be overpowering if we continue.

Also, I'm wearing a new pair of pants today. I had to do some emergency clothing buying over the weekend because I've gotten back down to my college weight, and very little that I own fits me anymore. I still can't buy women's pants, though, apparently. That's not about being too fat, it's about being too long in the crotch. I never consider myself long-crotched, but there you are. The next big clothing question is: If I'm at my college weight, can I wear my old PVC dress? Not that I have anywhere I can wear it to in Kansas City, but DragonCon is on the horizon. Also, if I can hit my goal weight, I will be buying myself some new fetishwear. Again, there's nowhere to wear it to in this town, and nobody will be impressed but me, but that's okay. I am prepared to be impressed enough for everybody.

Friday night, we ran another session of the Amnesia game. In this session, the PCs beat up on each other at random, nearly killed each other trying to see if they could dodge arrows like a monk, had some issues with discretion, and finally made it to a civilized part of the world, which only means that they are now poised for some *real* trouble. triadruid is a much more adept DM than he gives himself credit for, and invented a number of things on the fly this time. Part of what is making this game interesting for me is having to react to what he throws out as if it was all totally planned and we both completely know what the other is thinking. I'm sure it's equally challenging for him. Luckily, we work well together as a rule.
Next month: Shocking Secrets about a PC's Past Will Be Revealed. Stay Tuned.

Saturday, we did Blue River Rescue, which, for non-natives, is a vast annual effort to clean trash off of the riverbanks. Following last year's discovery of a body on the banks, this year's event was pretty subdued, both in number of participants and in quality of discoveries. I think the most alarming thing we found was a pair of busted brake shoes and a couple of hypos. Some of the other folks on our site were talking about finding guns in the river in previous years, but our site was pretty quiet. We did recover a veritable mountain of styrofoam, gatorade bottles, and catfood cans, though.

Sunday, I spent an hour making rope-and-tape floggers in a public place, which is always exciting. The ritual team wanted them for part of the April Fools' ritual, and kittenpants and I had made a ton of them at some point in the past, but apparently we gave them away. Since I didn't remember that we no longer had them, I felt somewhat obligated to help make more. So there we were, in the Applebee's at lunchtime, working on the upcoming Earth Day ritual and making eleventy billion floggers. I always wonder what people think when we're out doing this stuff in restaurants and coffee shops, but nobody ever asks, so it's hard to tell.

Forgive me for a moment, I'm going to descend into some role-playing geeking. ( Cut to preserve the ignorance of anyone who might accidentally think I am cool. )
The point is that I have come to love this set of characters in the process. Their little portraits begin to look like the faces of old friends. This means considerable trouble for the players. It is a well-known fact that I can't love people without having first discovered the ways in which they are troubled or damaged. In fact, I seem to love them for their flaws as much as for anything else. In this group, there was enough trouble and damage to go around to ensure that I could love each and every one of them. Players: agrnmn, capriciouslass, kittenpants, liquidfun and orcjohn, you can consider this your warning shot. :)