After so many months of preparation, it finally happened. I ran my first session of Heart: The City Beneath. As far as first sessions go, it was a bit rough at times, but considering this is the first time any of us played the game and was the first time our group was roleplaying together (since we never played our icebreaker game), I think it went pretty well. We may not have made it through the entire mission I sent them on in order to give them something to do as we all settled in to the game, but we made it through most of it. They killed a nasty beast, made it through their first delve, and started to repair a bit of magic integral to the Haven they were going to be passing through. We also learned about fallout, about stress rolls, about using the character sheet for Heart in Roll20, and about risky and dangerous actions. I’m hoping sessions will move a bit more quickly in the future, so I can attempt to stick to my goal of getting all five of my players through at least one beat per session (or one beat equivalent of progress since Major and Zenith beats take a bit more setup and work to be met than a Minor beat would). I know they’re all on track to get at least one met by the time the “session” has ended when they return from their mission, get paid, and rest up a bit, but I think it’s possible that my players might not bite at the opportunity for some of the less mechanically-oriented beats and I might need to help cajole them into it.
Continue readingSometimes, You Gotta Take A Little Risk
Galbret stepped up to the off-color wall panel and pressed a hand to it.
“Do you really think no one knows about this passage?”
“Yes.” Galbret tried to focus his hearing on the door, but Xendin’s pacing, heeled boots clicking on the stone floor, made it impossible to hear anything. “Just hush for a minute.”
Xendin stopped pacing and rolled their eyes at Alesi, but her back was turned as she watched the way they’d come.
Just as Xendin was about to speak again, Galbret laughed and stepped back from the opening wall panel. “Ha! I knew I could figure out the lock!”
As Alesi and Rogmaff started down the hallway, steps silent as they went, Xendrin paused next to Galbret. “How do you know this passageway is unknown to the Corpsedancer?”
“I don’t. But this place is so chock full of dust, I doubt anyone uses it. Plus, we only need it forgotten long enough for us to escape since we’ve got the Orbs of Zillamur. Once we’re out of the castle, it won’t matter.”
“Sure, and if there’s traps waiting for us on the other side? Or it leads to the Corpsedancer’s Hall of Bones?”
“Then we improvise.” Galbret ushered Xendrin inside and closed the wall panel. “Now hush. We’ve gotta catch up to the others.”
“How can you be so comfortable not knowing what awaits us?” Xendrin’s heeled boots clicked down the passage as they forgot silence in the face of their queries.
Galbret shrugged. “Sometimes you just gotta roll the dice.”
The entire table erupted in boos and hoots of derision as Thomas, a grin plastered across his face, waggled his eyebrows at Sam who sighed and covered their face with their hands.
“Sorry,” Thomas grinned even wider. “Was that too PUNishing for this group?”
The Wearing Down Continues
Every so often, I just have one of those days where I forget to take time for lunch and wind up clocking out, turning to grab my bag, and noticing my lunch is still sitting on my desk where I left it when I got into work that morning. Today was one of those days. When I got in to work, I went to my desk, unpacked my bag, and then left to go check on the test I’d left running overnight. Three hours later, at twelve thirty, I returned to my desk for the first time. I left seconds later and didn’t come back for another hour. After typing up a quick message, I left again and didn’t go back for another two hours. When I stepped away to go get some files off my testing laptop, I got swept up in a “let’s go have a meeting at the local ice cream parlor” event and didn’t get back to my desk until almost five. So all I had to eat today, before I came home and ate dinner, was my fiber supplement, a Nutri-Grain bar, my daily coffee, and a scoop of rainbow sherbet at the ice cream parlor. All despite running around so much that I felt like a disgusting, sweaty mess before I’d even gone on my daily walk, much less worked several more hours and gone on a 4-mile round trip bike ride to a nearby ice cream parlor. And I was so tired by the first time I realized I’d never eaten lunch at 3pm that I just wasn’t hungry anymore.
Continue readingSoul-Grinding Exhaustion And Emotional Moderation
I have come out the other side of my flu shot. I had an incredibly awful pair of days where I felt like all my joints were solidifying (the usual stiffness and body aches I expected from my flu shot were made much worse by the low-pressure front that decided to hang over the area for the entire time I was recovering). I did not have much opportunity to rest since I had to be in the office to at least set up the tests that were on my to-do list for this week. While I was able to go home on Tuesday after I’d set everything up since my coworkers were willing to keep an eye on it for me, I had to be in the office all day on Wednesday to monitor the next test myself and set up the subsequent run when that test inevitably failed. At least I was able to get enough data for the developers to figure out the problem and fix it. Now I just need to keep the test running and hope no new problem crop up, which is pretty easy work since it requires enough of my attention that I can’t really do a whole lot else but not so much that I have to look at it constantly. I can read stuff, do some research, write a blog post, or try to figure out if the last email I got was an actual scam (or a test scam by my employer’s IT department to help train employees on how to identify email scams) while I occasionally glance over at the readout I’ve set up. Every so often, I have to walk over to do a few things, but it’s really easy to divide my attention outside of those more active moments.
Continue readingPokémon Going, Going, Gone… Well, Eventually Gone.
One of the oddest parts of being an ex-Pokémon Go player is that I still have the app installed on my phone. Despite not having actively played it in years and frequently running into space issues on my phone, I have not yet removed the app. As it turns out, moving Pokémon from Pokémon Go to Pokémon Home is an incredibly slow, arduous process given that I’d collected over a thousand Pokémon by the time I stopped playing, many of them shiny, legendary, or incredibly powerful. In order to transfer Pokémon between the two apps, I have to use a limited resource in Pokémon Go, which burns up extra quickly if the Pokémon being moved are legendary, incredibly rare, or shiny. You can, of course, buy more energy to transfer Pokémon if that’s something you really want, but you could also just wait a week for your energy bar to be refilled again. Or just transfer a few every day. Whatever you prefer. After all, they wouldn’t just prevent you from using a long-advertised feature of the app, would they? They’d just put any means of it being made convenient behind a money wall.
Continue readingPathfinder 2e Finally Clicked For Me, Thanks To A Friend’s Game
After many months of discussion via the comments on Facebook posts and, eventually, in Facebook chat itself, I got to play a game with the person who convinced me to give Pathfinder 2nd Edition a shot beyond the unfortunate group I’d begun playing it with. Which isn’t to minimize the work another friend did, but they just fell short of a fully compelling argument. The other friend, though, managed to convince me that I should keep trying by absolutely nailing why I was struggling to understand the game system without me even knowing that I was having one specific problem (well, one problem that functioned as the root of all my other problems). So, when she offered to run a game for me, to help show me why she loved Pathfinder 2e as much as she did, I made a promise to myself that I’d find a way to make the scheduling side of it work. Plus, I’d never gotten to play a game with her before this and tabletop games was most of what we talked about online. I wanted to meet some new people, play some new games, and try to expand my horizons a bit.
Continue readingThe First Step Is Sleeping. After That, Everything’s Doable.
It finally happened. I finally had people over to just hang out. Took three and a half months, but it finally happened. They weren’t my first house guests, since I’ve hosted an in-person tabletop game day for a Pathfinder 2e one-shot (that became at least a two-shot) and had a friend stay the night just a couple weeks ago, but they were the first people I had over with the express purpose of just occupying my space with me. It was really nice. We didn’t do much, other than hang out, go pick up pizza, and then idly watch the first two thirds of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring while we made idle chitchat, ate our food, and did stuff on our phones. Exactly the kind of chill, no expectations, no greater purpose type of hanging out I’ve been wanting. Now all I gotta do is make it happen again! Hopefully in less than three and a half months. It’ll probably be easier, what with the impending winter, but you can never know for certain. Some winters, people will just hole up in their homes and avoid leaving it for anything other than necessity. Some winters, people can’t wait to escape their homes for any reason at all. You never know until it’s happening.
Continue readingFlash Fiction Rerun: The Power of Plastic
Jordan swiped their card and stared at the terminal until they remembered swiping didn’t work anymore. “Sorry.”
“I forget all the time.” The teller shrugged. “Just tap it on the screen.”
Jordan did and the payment terminal beeped, finally taking their payment.
As their receipt printed, Jordan jerked their head toward the rest of the store. “Amazing this place still runs.”
“Sure.” The teller shrugged again. “Stock’s different, but we still sell stuff. Helps people focus, you know?”
Jordan nodded, taking their receipt.
“Still.” The teller sighed, staring at the doors out of the store, “beats slaving away out there.”
“Yeah.”
“You good with all that?”
“I think so.”
“I could call someone…”
“No, I’ve got it.” Jordan gave a half-hearted smile, shifted their bags around, and started walking toward the exit. “Have a nice day.”
“You too.”
Jordan slowed, carefully peering out the door. The blasted ruins of cars, melted asphalt, and red haze in the air were still present. Nothing moved but plants swaying in the breeze.
Confident they were safe, Jordan hitched their mask over their face and exited the airlock. They glanced around as they walked, watching for danger and a ride away from the burned-out husk of the city. When they spotted a buggy pulled by a balding donkey, they waved it down. The elderly driver stowed Jordan’s bags and patiently waited while they fumbled with the payment terminal.
As the machine beeped to denote a payment received, the old driver chuckled. “I always figured capitalism would fail when civilization did. Thought we’d be bartering by now.”
Jordan chuckled as they climbed into their seat, brushing their iron grey hair away from their mask. “Guess it just goes to show. Peace, health, and safety are things money can’t buy. For the everything left, there’s MasterCard.”
Trying To Break Free From Identity Defined In Opposition To The World I Live In
While I was mulling over my identity and coming to reflect on the decision I’d made years ago (largely out of self-defense, given how absolutely locked-in I was to my parents’ vision of who they wanted me to be), I was listening to a lot of Friends at the Table. A lot of stuff they said there informed the way I think about my place in contemporary society and the way my identity fits into the world I inhabt. Not because I was entirely unfamiliar with those ideas, but because the thinking they explored as a part of their science-fiction themed seasons (especially Twilight Mirage, their fourth season) helped build on what I’d learned in some of the classes I took in college, in the research I’d done on my own, and the helpful things I’d coincidentally read along the way. One the things that stuck with me the most was the GM, Austin Walker, talking about how he wanted to push the boundaries with their fourth season. I don’t remember the exact quote, but he said something along the lines of “we need to imagine the most radical thing we can and then take it one step further.” The idea being, he explained, that all of us are limited by the world we live in, by the society we’re used to, and that a civilization that had progressed to the very edges of what we could conceptualize would be able to imagine modes of being/ways of life/etc that we couldn’t even conceive of because we are so anchored by the world we know, and that the society he wanted the group to attempt to represent in this season should have progressed beyond even that.
Continue readingThe End Of A Game Is An Opportunity To Start A New One
After multiple months, my saga with the unfortunate sunday gaming group has come to an end. My time with the people who were part of my introduction to Pathfinder 2nd Edition has concluded. Despite my plans to give the group six full sessions to see if we could salvage the group, we only ever played five. Which probably sounds funny because I started talking about this group back in June, but we only got two more sessions in July and then one in late August due to scheduling issues, the GM catching Covid, and my grandmother’s passing. We skipped a lot of weeks, as it turns out, and apparently I wasn’t the only one who was on the verge of withdrawing for a while since I found out today, two days after I withdrew, that the whole campaign was shuttered (which saves my friend the trouble of figuring out how to gently break it to the group that they also weren’t interested in continuing to play). The GM has had some on-going health issues (which contributed to us skipping sessions) and one of the other players apparently also has some scheduling conflicts, so the GM sent my friend a message that he was shutting the whole thing down. I wish the group had been able to continue (since I know how much it sucks to lose a game because a group falls apart), but I got the strong sense that only a couple of the players were really enjoying themselves and since I’m pretty sure the GM is struggling with Long Covid, I really don’t think things could have ended any other way.
Continue reading