nihilisticmind

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
nihilisticmind goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Viking Businessman.
arden_ranger gives you 16 yellow pineapple-flavoured wafers.
bobarchmagus gives you 18 white peach-flavoured gumdrops.
deadboy2 gives you 18 white lemon-flavoured gummy worms.
djinnthespazz tricks you! You get a piece of paper.
mnight gives you 4 teal chocolate-flavoured gumdrops.
paintscribe gives you 1 mauve cherry-flavoured gumdrops.
sandrayln gives you 14 blue licorice-flavoured nuggets.
the_dragonmaste tricks you! You lose 15 pieces of candy!
wickedthought gives you 5 red-orange coconut-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
wunderworks gives you 3 brown passionfruit-flavoured nuggets.
nihilisticmind ends up with 64 pieces of candy, and a piece of paper.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

So I recently went through my video gaming stuff and found several items that I had not touched in a long time and probably wouldn't use again, even though I liked to think that I would... You know, that game you spent hours playing when you HAD the time to do it?

Well, time is scarce and I rarely play video games that I am more likely to play (never finished Super Mario Galaxy btw). I took all my stuff to Bookman's (used book and other stuff store). I got $59 in store credit! That's like getting free money for things that sit on my shelf and won't get used at all.

So now, I have three new things on my shelf that I hope I get to use: Star Wars Revised Core Rule Book (D20), BESM/Tri-Stat Demon City Shinjuku (it was three bucks!) and a little scenario for a game I've never heard of: ETHERSCOPE (fifty cents!)...

Now ETHERSCOPE is said to be cyberpunk victoriana, which in itself is rather appealing. I'll have to take a closer look, but in all likelihood I'll run it with the Ex Machina/Tri-Stat system.

As a side note, I'll be running Amber Diceless for a short time on Thursday night starting next week.

This Friday, either Luther will be running 7th Sea or I will be running L5R for the group.

Next Friday is... Wait for it... SORCERER!!! Yes, finally, we are starting the Sorcerer campaign. It has a ton of potential, but I don't get the feeling the whole group is into it. Time will tell and I look forward to be a player in it.

Speaking of which, Ben has been running his Living Shanri game and it's a blast! Houses of the Blooded is really neat when it comes to letting players build backgrounds for their characters. The Living Shanri campaign makes it even more interactive, though there is room for improvement. I think it could be more interactive if certain events would occur in this or that Region of Shanri (the Cabals are separated by Location, North, East, South, West)... There is also not that many Cabals out there as far as I can tell... Or they don't know about the forums.

Fires of Greymoor continues to be awesome and the players are all doing great! I keep throwing things at them and they keep dealing with things and hopefully feel that their characters are somewhat overwhelmed. That's the design goal behind this campaign... The big bad threat of the Black Road and the forces of Chaos. As secrets continue to be revealed, it'll get more dangerous, but also probably easier from a player perspective, since right now I'm having everyone run around doing their own thing, which is nice since it gives the characters a lot of one-on-one interactions with the setting.

Anyway... Still thinking about career focus and changes at this time.

My parents went back to France today. I missed them a lot, but our schedules didn't mash all that much while they were here so we only got to hang a little bit. But still, they adore Caitlyn (of course) and we had a lot of fun when we were together.

Work has begun to cut on hours (part of the reason behind the thoughts about career change, etc) so when I got home early today I took Caitlyn to the pool. She loves swimming!! She's really good but a bit skittish about jumping in the way the other kids did (which is normal). She can be a daredevil but usually she likes to master a skill before doing crazy things with it, which is just right... Problem is, she has mastered climbing... And wrestling... And other things that make her awesome.

Alright, it's getting late.
Cheers, kids. Catch you all next time.

So, this week-end, Steph and I celebrated our 6-year wedding anniversary!
We went out, relaxed and had a good time. Today I feel super sleepy... What is it about relaxing that makes me more tired than if I just go-go-go!?

Back on track this afternoon, with an espresso and the continuation of Ben's Houses of the Blooded game: the Wine Dark Sea.
If you haven't had a chance, you should try Houses of the Blooded. It's an incredible system, and then some!

Next week, I am running John Wick's Call of Cthulhu one-shot game and help playtest the adventure on a mixed group of players. Shane, Caitlin, Okami, Jessica, Bianca and Anthony, who have varying experience with Call of Cthulhu, RPGs, etc. It should be a nice GM challenge and I finally get to run Cthulhu for the first time.

As for Thursday nights, we may start an Amber game, bi-weekly.

So, as you may know, I work in a sign shop downtown... (FASTSIGNS ON CENTRAL)
Because times are tough, our boss has been supporting the AUTHORITY by letting the crowbots put up propaganda posters up on our sidewall, clearly visible from the lightrail... In fact you've probably seen it if you paid attention and were riding on it.

SOMEONE has defaced the posters earlier today and here's the picture our boss took before taking the posters down. (Obviously, we're in trouble with the AUTHORITY now... Oh well.)



Click it for a larger version of the picture.

This SOMEONE else also told me to tell you where to go to find out more about the movement that is -and I quote - "about to take the AUTHORITY by storm!!!"

But don't worry... Like many scared citizens, I won't tell you to fight the AUTHORITY... Whatever you do, DO NOT GO TO HTTP://MONSTERCOMMUTE.COM!

That would be very bad... So you wouldn't do it. Promise?

(register games or register for games already announced!)

Random Con is a new gaming convention coming to Phoenix, AZ.

It runs from Thursday, May 7th at 6pm to Sunday, May 10th 2009 at about the same time.

Come enjoy RPGs, Boardgames, Miniatures, Card Games and LARPs!!! We also have a Video Game Room with contests and tournaments and an Open Play Area ran by SAGA gamers!

If you'd like to join us and play some games, visit us at http://randomcon.org

Happy Gaming!

http://bonescroll.net/node/214

Interview at Bone Scroll pertaining to Random Con 2009.

Yeah, if you're looking for a Gaming Con in Arizona, check out http://randomcon.org

The game continues and so does my report.

So Darwin carries around a vial with Julian's blood. Part of a ritual he designed to follow Julian's murderer through Shadow. It works rather well and soon enough he finds himself in a desolate shadow with towers of the same black material used for the undeadish soldiers found around the Stonehenge area. In fact, there are factions of the undeadish things there too, and Darwin knows he's found the right place.

In the meantime, Lady Audrey is carrying Julian's head around in a sack and she makes her own way to the same Shadow. The head begins humming, the spell confirming their arrival in the proper Shadow.

Aaron is with them and he has donned one of the black armors the enemy wears in order to blend in when necessary. They gather and a small detachment of troops approaches them and blocks their way, not attacking. The amberites begin walking around and the soldiers get in the way, at which point Aaron gets impatient and all hell breaks loose. Thankfully, Darwin is able to release a prepared spell of his to control the undead soldiers. He feels a psychic contact with the sorcerer currently controlling them and feels him relinquishing control without psychic conflict. Out of the fifty there, only five are truly dead.

They scan the minds of some of the soldiers and find disturbing thoughts. They are able to glean information about the towers. They send one of the soldiers to offer the host of this Shadow a chance to parlay. The messenger returns with an invitation into the third tower. As they are about to enter, they are warned to leave their newly controlled soldiers outside, which they do. Aaron is revealed for who he is, no longer able to blend in with the soldiers if he wishes to go into the tower.

They make their way up the stairwell all the way to the top. There, they see the man in the bone mask, skull faced and wearing a large black overcoat/cape and a hat. He sits on a throne and his room is in such disarray that they are reminded of Fiona's own tower top room, when she was old-looking and mad as all hell. Julian's head screams and is quickly muffled.

The masked figure ask what they can offer in exchange for their lives intact.

Darwin offers the undeadish soldiers back. The masked man points out the five missing soldiers.

... I have more to tell, but again, I must stop here. (Lots happened last time!)

Really quickly, I'll announce that we have moved from our hellish condo situation into an apartment and while things are tense, in disarray and that I still have tons to move (Books! Couch! Shelves! :P ), it feels really nice not to have to worry about my things being set on fire, for one thing...

Anyway... Onto the good stuff now:


I should have added this Sunday, after our Saturday game but didn't, so here it is: Dark Amber continued.

Last session, we had established that Lincoln had walked the repaired Pattern and that now none of the players had any control over dead things without using necromantic sorcery and dark rituals, etc. 'Icky Stuff' as Lady Audrey would say.

Bill (who plays Aaron) had to leave for work early and was not involved in the whole 'Oberon's ghost!' thing. I started with him and found out what Aaron was up to during the party and subsequent Oberon scare tactics.

It turns out that he had returned to the rangers posted around Arden, specifically at the Keep they had had built there. Soon after going to bed, he was awoken by a messenger with tragic news: the outpost overseeing the Stonehenge structure was under attack. The messenger left to alert the rangers and soldiers at the Keep before the battle was over, hoping to turn the battle around.

Aaron begins heading there and in doing so, he contacts the others (who are ready to head to bed while Lincoln walks the Pattern). They want to help, of course (Players and Amberites LOOOVE conflict! :D ).

Darwin contacts his mother, Fiona, who had had the structure erected in order to hold Julian in a Shadow Pocket (as explained last time). She is upset at the situation and assumes the group of young Amberites is trying to force her hand at freeing Julian sooner rather than later. She agrees to come with them and off they are, on their merry way to...

A quiet, misty battlefield, crows already picking at the fresh corpses of Amber soldiers, and strange undead soldiers, clad in black metallic armor, their rotten parts melded with clay, part-golem, part-ghoul. Two dead amberites to one downed undead. (dead undead sounds funny, so...)

As they approach, they see the fallen structure of Stonehenge and in the center, planted in the ground, is a rusty iron spike, Julian's head planted on it, his body is nowhere to be found.

The PCs AND players are shocked. But they throw in a twist... Darwin started out as a necromantic sorcerer and continues to use foul magics. He resurrects Julian's head, (Fiona leaves before it begins, not wanting any part of it), sacrificing crows and such to power his dark ritual. The head speaks. Julian wants his body back and he wants to be free. He is mad: having been bound in the Shadow Pocket for thousands of years, and for having been killed.

He reveals who his killer is: a masked and caped gentleman who cackles madly as he orders the death of Julian. He calls him, the 'mad brother'. The players assume Random, but when they share their suspicion, he corrects them: not the trickster... The 'mad one'.

Lady Audrey observes closely the necromantic ritual in order to reproduce it later, but finds it icky.

She and Darwin create a spell that will force Julian's head to reveal if it finds itself in the presence of the Mad Brother or of his own body.

...

A lot more happened, but I will post a bit later.
Till then! TTFN.

Friday night was a big gathering of gaming friends for us: Shane is moving to Texas soon and we wanted to do a big gaming night. We decided to play Houses of the Blooded... We were ten in total and it was honestly too much for this system. A GM in a Houses of the Blooded game can have as much power as another player if things are going well. With nine players having 'privilege' over the story often, the game derailed from the original intent, but great fun was had nonetheless.
I also found that clever players shine brighter while 'backseat players' get bored faster.
Jay, Aerik and Ookami re-used their character from the first one-shot I ran a couple of months back and we moved the storyline forward in time (Ookami's character had secretly married Jay's character's sister during the one-shot, only to find out that she was already pregnant. He had three children by the beginning of yesterday's game, one of them being someone else's child).
Shane played his past character's daughter.
It was very tragic and dramatic, and I think that Houses of the Blooded will be a regular monday night game starting in november for the 'Living Shanri' campaign (housesoftheblooded.net).

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Friday night was also the first official Random Con meeting. There will soon be proper announcements, but in the meantime, know that there will be Amber gaming, indie rpgs, the RPGA and LARPs... Mother's day week-end, randomcon.org... More coming soon, I promise.
Oh, and it'll be cheap too. :)

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So I went to Bookman's with Caitlyn for Daniel's spooky afternoon event and it was really fun 'for the whole family' like it said on the flyer ;) He read from his books, had raffle giveaways, a short costume contest (Caitlyn won a $10 giftcard for her penguin outfit; so very cute!)

On my way there I find out that Tom needs me to run Amber this week (we started alternating last time) and it went very well.

To continue in that new tradition, here's what happened in the game:

The four PCs were heading down into the dungeons to get one of the noblemen they had wrongly accused of the regent's death... To question him and free him if he behaved (how kind are Amberites? ;) )
They find water spots in front of his cell and realize someone has just dragged him out of his cell and into a dark passage. Lincoln (John) goes in first, then Lady Audrey (Tom), then Aaron (Bill) while Darwin hangs back, in a trump contact with Aaron.
They enter a room with pooling and cascading water (inspired by the Fires of Greymoor campaign here, but the set-up was not theatrical, more spooky due to the unknown nature of the beast they are following).

They see the creature, long green hair covering most of its features. Lady Audrey has good instincts and picks up Llewella's card. She, like many of the elders, has changed too over the millenia. She is found whispering into the noblemen's ear.
She answers the trump in spite of herself and with her identity confirmed, Lady Audrey drops the contact and talks to her.

Llewella is a bit mad (like many other elders) and she is upset at being interrupted. She plans to sacrifice the man she took away to 'keep the Dark Gods of Rebma away'. This sort of puzzles the group for a while and they take some time asking the right questions. She also suggests that Rebma is no longer a true reflection of Amber. Something to do with the mirrors. It becomes apparent to the group that she's been doing that for a very long time and that she may be the only one working against the things in Rebma.

The players assume it is the tainted Pattern that influenced her to be so monstrous. Aaron knocks her out and he and Darwin force her to walk the Pattern, helping her along. Things change, she's upset and leaves, suggesting a strange infatuation for Aaron.

After that, the group gets to work on physically improving Amber and clean up the mess of undead wandering around aimlessly.
They do a good job and a week passes, Lincoln using his Pattern to gather the undead away from Amber, except for a group that is sent to plant trees in Arden. The undead come across a stonehenge structure. The group goes to investigate and discover it is a sort of trap. The person trapped, Julian, who asks to be freed. He claims that Fiona has put him there.

When confronted she admits it, claiming personal reasons... More on that next time, when they decide what to do about it...

They return to Amber, Aaron is approached by Dworkin who demands that he begins working towards his freedom, revealing that Benedict, not Oberon, killed Finndo, Aaron's father.

Lincoln contacts Benedict and he scares the crap out of the players while asking Aaron for forgiveness. Aaron agrees to forgiving him if he walks the repaired Pattern. He eventually does.

(I'm skipping through some really cool details, but you'll forgive me because it's late.)

They go to bed, minus Aaron who goes to work, training with his new soldiers. They are awoken by the sounds of chains in the hallway. It is Oberon's ghost. He looks at Lincoln and wants his blood (or at least asks for it not so nicely).

Lincoln is driven away by fear and runs to the Pattern. As he begins to walk it the ghost catches up and Lady Audrey is able to disrupt it with energy from the Jewel of Judgment.
Now Lincoln has lost his tainted Pattern and he can no longer control the undead as he had... Mwahahaha!

Hey, this event was awesome!

I was sweating bullets under our nice 92-95 F Arizona sun, but it was totally worth it. I had a 6' x 6' square to work with and worked on it six hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday.

The event was well organized and though the spaces were cramped, I got to meet a lot of artists and a lot of people liked what I was doing, which is always nice to hear. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Hope you like it!




Squared up with Photshop crop options:

http://viacolori.com

That's what I'll be doing today and tomorrow. If you're in the downtown Scottsdale area, come find me! :D
I'll also take some pictures for those who can't make it.

Later!

Saturday's Amber game went very well.

This was a continuation of the game I ran at Phoenix Con Games with three of the 6 original players. The setting was a dark Amber setting and the premise of the game at the con was that an amberite had made a deal with Death as she was about to be destroyed by the Pattern. The amberite in question turned out to be Random's sister, Mirelle (an NPC I also used as a protagonist in the Blasphemy game I ran at AmberCon AZ, though a different take on the character).

In any case, the Pattern was under Death's influence (Death residing in UnderShadow, of course) and all of Shadow was ending, not in the sense that it was being destroyed. Instead, the end of days version of each Shadow was coming true. A lot of Armageddon/Dead worlds/Undead worlds/dark depressing things.
Amber itself had been under the command of High Lord Chantris, Archduke and Regent of Amber. The Golden Circle had fallen apart. Necropoli everywhere, low population levels, people holed up in Amber City and it has been going on for centuries, progressing into what it was at the beginning of the Con game.

Long story, big game at the Con, etc, the PCs figure out what is happening, fix it (several PCs die), they ride out into the sunset, towards Amber, intent on fixing things.

Also, the elder Amberites had all gone mad or dead or very unreasonable (by that I mean that they kill other Amberites on sight, another version of mad, I suppose).

---

Then we begin the new game:

They are recovering from having walked the repaired Primal Pattern and return to Amber. Audrey (played by Tom) hopes to recover to attune to the Jewel at some point (she has a fairly high endurance so I'm not too worried). Aaron (played by Bill) heads out into Shadow where he can get rid of Mirelle's body so that she does not come back as an undead. Darwin (played by Carlo) heads to his mother Fiona's Tower out in Shadow (via trump) where he tries to piss her off to get her out of her dark creepy Shadow. She's one of the Amberites who has aged unnaturally and gone mad and dangerous, but not murderous. He hopes that with the fixed Primal Pattern things will go back to normal... Hmm, maybe, I'm having fun with the crazy Amberite gang.

Lincoln (played by John, who had not played in the game at Phoenix Con Games) arrives in Amber. He has a grudge against Benedict. I might tell his backstory when I have time to extrapolate on each character.

Lincoln spies on the Regent, intent on bringing a new world Order in Amber, with a descendant of Oberon on the throne. The Regent is of course disturbed by the arrival of the members of the Royal bloodline and his meeting involves a bit of conspiring to keep the power between the noble families of Amber and the surrounding regions. Lincoln kills him for being insulting, using his twisted version of the Pattern via a Pattern lens (his blood still bears the 'Dark Pattern' which nobody experimented with at the con, which was a shame, but now Lincoln gets to play with it, which is fun for me :) ).

This makes things difficult for the other Amberite PCs since the three of them planned on simply manipulating him into submission as figurehead of the state while they get things settled and fixed the way they want.

They come to an agreement after a brief confrontation: they replace the Regent with a fake, claiming the dead regent was a decoy, murdered by a treasonous lord. The lords of Amber present at the meeting are of course suspected of treason and imprisoned.

One of them, a Lord Feldane, has a trump on him, enclosed in a silk cloth which has been sewn closed. This completely puzzles the players and even his explanation for the peculiar find (a family heirloom that dates back from the heyday of Amber when such an item was rather rare, especially given to a noble family... A great mark of trust, as far as I, the GM, am concerned) rings untrue to their ear and is met with suspicion.

Another Lord of Amber 'suspected' of treason and imprisoned is Lincoln's father-in-law, whom he gets under house arrest for cooperating.

So the players have fun manipulating Amber politics without completely involving themselves. Wonderful. Assassination attempts are therefore pending :)

They find peculiar water spots in the Royal Hall, commencing a few away from Deirdre's chambers and ending in front of a wall, which holds a quickly found secret passage. The passage leads to an underground passage.

Lincoln thinks to inspect Rebma using his Pattern Lens. He sees the horror that Rebma has become. A titanesque necropolis of sleeping underwater antediluvian forces, worshiped by small groups of humanoid sea creatures. This disturbs him greatly and he leaves for Shadow to conduct an experiment. A simple construct that will use the potential of his twisted Pattern, draining life from one area to give life elsewhere. He believes this will negate the effect that Pattern has had over Rebma and fix things faster.

Meanwhile, Aaron reads up on Oberon and the history of Amber in the Royal Library. Dworkin appears behind him. He is less crazy than usual, still very weird. They talk about Oberon a lot, since Aaron is researching him. Dworkin admits he cannot leave the castle and suggests that the Amber Castle may not be much more than an elaborate prison for him, as designed by Oberon. This leaves Aaron suspicious and disturbed, though he convinces Dworkin to try Oberon's trump: Aaron suspects Oberon faked his death.
Dworkin fakes his attempt, but Aaron notices, so he convinces him to try, and Dworkin seems genuinely afraid of Oberon. He explains that Oberon was clever and in his curse of imprisonment, he stipulated that Dworkin would forever be afraid to disobey or confront Oberon. Clever bastard!
Finally, Dworkin tries for real. Nothing happens. Oberon is dead, he says. Unless... Then he goes and theorizes that if Oberon could somehow be undead, it would still make him unreachable by trump, etc, etc.
Aaron gets worried.

In the morning, Darwin and Lady Audrey refresh their spells. Lady Audrey gets the captain of the castle guard to watch over while she attempts to attune to the Jewel.

Lady Audrey's warning system, her violin, begins playing madly. Impending doom, Lincoln's theme, Dworkin and even Oberon. This messes with the players so much. The PCs are truly afraid of what that may imply and the other three gang up on Lincoln and stop his attempts halfway through.

Lincoln came close to dying as the players argued their not wanting to spoil each others' fun while remaining true to their characters. Finally, they decided to be reasonable and give Lincoln the chance to be part of a group, part of a team that would work together for Amber and Order.

In the end, I left the players on their own a lot, theorizing as to what the threats could be, got them to ponder and be paranoid, suspecting anyone could be Oberon in disguise (they even tested the captain of the castle guard for Amber blood, just in case, because I seemed to have made him too efficient).

It was fun, they gave me tons of nasty ideas to expand upon and this campaign is going to be goooood... There's so much potential and they will soon be afraid of any returning Amberites. In fact, I'll make sure they are extremely suspicious of all returning Amberites... Maybe I'll make the PCs paranoid enough that I'll make them the murderous, 'kill on sight' Amberites. Hmm, that's a good goal, I think. :D

Phoenix has finally cooled down and I love to sit down, relax and let the breeze through my windows. It's really pleasant. Plus Caitlyn is napping (poor girl was cranky due to more teething) so it's very quiet.

*sigh*

Tonight my sister was coming over for dinner and we noticed that she was rather late. When she finally arrived, out of her car came my mother (yay!) that we didn't expect to see until Christmas time.

She brought lots of goodies and two books for the little one (en francais, of course) and when Caitlyn finally went to bed, she shared the strangest puzzle of family gossip I had ever heard.

My Stepfather has an older brother who was given by my grandmother for adoption. There's a lot more very convoluted history that's extremely hard to dig up (Happened in 1938 or around then), but my mom had lots of interesting clues as to what may have happened back then etc.

The poor old woman is very senile and her memory failed her, but yes, there were heartfelt reunions (I got very teary-eyed, just listening to the description), and no, my Stepdad's mother did not say anything about it other than that it was in fact her son. The man's father remains a mystery but my mother has her theories.

Anyways... Maybe it's family tree time, huh? If only divorces and such did not make things so complicated when it comes to mapping out family...

And I thought Amberites had a complicated family tree and genealogy, but not really.

-----

Tomorrow, I am running the continuation of the Amber game I ran at Phoenix Con Games for my Amber Saturday group.
They saved the Amberverse, now what?

It wasn't an epic event, but it was very cataclysmic. Dead worlds, grey lined Pattern, Death's domain and dead or mad elder Amberites, and of course, Random's long lost sister.

I think Dworkin might make a terrific villain for this one... We'll see what happens after the first session. Either way, they must rebuild Amber and the Golden Circle (practically from scratch) so that should give them a lot of input as to what the campaign will be like.

-----

Living Shanri.

I'm still assimilating Houses of the Blooded (John Wick's BIG RPG), which you should check out and/or buy (the PDF is a whopping $5, worth a hundred). In any case, I am really excited about playing and running it on a regular basis.

Living Shanri is a living campaign for the game, where gaming groups around the world (known as cabals) will share their provinces, each cabal forming an archipelago, and interacting with each other in specific ways.
Eventually, this amounts to one PC being named Emperor-King and being honored in some tragic fashion as well as being able to build another character in the Living Shanri world with additional freebie points.

It seems super cool and it begins in November, which sort of pushes me to get a game going, or to find a nearby gaming group running HotB.

-----

I only game one to two times a week now, which is pretty nice and doesn't make me feel like I'm overly busy all the time.
Plus it gives me time to spend with Stephie and Caitlyn, and run the Fires of Greymoor (which is still a blast).

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Work review is monday... I hope I get a raise. I work hard and I deserve one.

So it's been about a month since my last update and tonight we played D&D 4th once more.

Out of three player characters, two died while the third had to finally escape. They managed their resources well and kicked ass in this major encounter... But they got unlucky and died. And I've got no problems leaving the characters dead if the system makes it that way. Now they get to make new characters and we continue the campaign. This experience, for me, validates D&D on many levels. First of all, people complained to me that unless the GM is a douche, PCs can't die.

The healer died first due to bad luck and idealized views of the D&D heroic system. He bled to death while the other two were finishing the two protagonists left... Bad rolls all around (good rolls for me for the most part, and I'm against fudging dice). Boom. Wizard dies. Last we have the Gnome Warlock at 2HP left and he wisely decides to leave the Goblin Hexer alive.

The campaign is off tracks, the table was still very satisfied all around. Playing with minis was fun (even though we keep using my old WH40K chaos army figurines).

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The Amber Diceless campaign finally continued last Saturday after two sessions I could not attend. The plotline is confusing since my character is being thrown in a new timeline. He freed his true love and now deals with past mistakes and the obligations of the one he shares a life with. Yeah... I guess I didn't realize that freeing her from a tree called eternity would mean they literally share a life. She dies, he dies. He dies, she dies... He has in mind to lock her up somewhere maybe... I'm thinking about it. Still, it was a lot of work bringing her back, so we'll see. :)

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I will soon find out where we stand with the indie gaming con I am helping run next year. There will still be an AmberConAZ and it will be small, probably with a little bit more players and GMs than this past august. Honestly, I can't wait :)

And yeah, the other gaming con will still be Amber-related (somewhat since that's what the organizers want), but it will also comprise many other role-playing systems, to accommodate the loss of Phoenix Con Games, a very impressively organized convention in Mesa, which I attended earlier this year.

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Anthony's session of Sorcerer was great. I built Dr. Xander Crowe using the Sorcerer mechanics, and worked the hand as a symbiotic demon type thing. It was a fun one-shot. I'd definitely play again and it made me want to run horror games again.

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I've been gaming a lot in august to mid-september (mondays and fridays, plus the occasional saturday), but I'm switching to every 2 weeks for each game to spend more time with Caitlyn and Stephie. Working full time just takes a lot of my family time and I'd rather be a good daddy and husband than a 'forever gamer' like some people I know.

---

Housing stuff still iffy... Too bummed out to talk about it at the moment. Ask again later.

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Art stuff: So the two things I was really looking forward to being a part of are on the same week-end.

For three years now I've been wanting to do the 24HR comic thing and this year, I found the Tiny Army illustrator group and I have a spot reserved at Spazdog comics to sit my butt and draw draw draw on October 18th!

But the ViaColori street painting festival, which is two days of fun is also the 18th and 19th. I went to the demo seminar last saturday morning and I think I'm gonna have to go with ViaColori, and only spend a few hours (rather than an entire 24 hours) drawing comics with other awesome illustrators.

I'll try to take lots of pictures of the ViaColori thing (www.viacolori.com) and do a report on it. If I don't get totally into it and forget, or if I'm too tired to bother. I mean, I know I should.

But if you're gonna be in the area or doing nothing that week-end, come by! (especially on sunday when I'm almost done with the chalk painting).

I had a blast and I believe most other players/GMs did as well. :D

First and foremost, I want to thank Simone Cooper, Murray Writtle, Emma Sansone and Glen Seymour for running games and for their tremendous help and support.

We ended up running less games than originally planned since we ended up with less players than we intended.

Thursday, for instance, we did not see any players for the game slotted then. The convention itself did not have any other programming than movie previews and giveaways, as well as a very loud video game room.
Thankfully, it gave me and Anthony a chance to meet Murray and complain politely to the video game room staff: I thought the whole con was going to be a nightmare since we were supposed to be located in the same room as the video game room and Rock Band and Guitar Hero being the popular games right now, we knew then and there that it was simply not going to work.
We spent quite a bit of time getting in touch the appropriate authority to find out where we could move the games to.

Finally, it was arranged that we would take over half of open gaming, which was preferable in many ways: better tables, better placement at the con, less noise (for the most part ;) )...

The games went very well and were, of course, tons of fun :D I especially enjoyed the free-form evening games and wouldn't mind organizing one of those type of games on a regular basis with Amber players around the Phoenix valley.

I've found out that CopperCon will not be returning until 2010, but be assured that AmberCon Arizona (ACAZ) will return next year in full force, taking advantage of suite gaming for the pleasure of local and out of state players.

If you have any suggestions for next year, please feel free to share them! :D

Alright, so I started a new job on the 13th and Saturday has been my only day off so far. I have to say: it's nice to get out of the house for work. I do graphic design and production work for Fast Signs on Central. It's fun, fast-paced, I'm learning a ton of stuff incredibly fast, I love it! Pay could be better, but the overtime is sweet. My boss is great, extremely honest and works as hard, if not harder than the rest of us, which I really appreciate.

The Fires of Greymoor is going strong and we have lots of interesting and dramatic play going on, between Broken Patterns, Shadow traps, mysterious illnesses and pan-Shadow threats.
Yet, the interactions with the elder Amberites have been kept to a minimum, but the campaign has a definite Amber feel, which I thoroughly enjoy. :D

AmberCon Arizona/CopperCon 28 begins Thursday evening and we have a full roster of games, except for "overnight" gaming. There are no games between 1am to about 9:30am, which means I get to sleep, so I'm totally cool with that. We even have one last minute game for friday.
Anthony and Adam will be helping me run the rooms when they can, but I'll likely be at the con for 16+ hours each day. I'm excited, but I know it's gonna be rough... Still... Can't wait! :D

The bi-weekly Saturday Amber game ended and we returned to the old Amber campaign the group was playing prior to my arrival. Since it occurs on a similar timeline, in the future, I continue to play the same character, which I've really grown to like.
The game itself is power heavy and we're up against very powerful, end of the world as we know it type stuff. I enjoy low-key stuff and Tyv (my character) is the same, for the most part. I play him a little bit differently now since it's been somewhere around 2000 years later, Amber time, for him. The only people alive that he knew then? Benedict and Dworkin. Oberon, Tyv's brother, died repairing the Pattern, like in the novels.
The GM is very good, knows the rules extremely well and uses music in pretty much every scene.
The players are very good at thinking quickly and I can tell they are used to the GM's style (they've been playing together for years, I'm the new guy) and I'm the curve-ball of the group, I guess. They seem happy to have "New Blood in the group". Fun stuff!

WebComic and other creative things have taken a back seat since I've been busy with AmberCon Arizona stuff and work.

I'm meeting with Mike at the Phoenix Art Museum after work tomorrow (free on Tuesday evenings). I saw him for the first time in a month on saturday.

~~~

Friday night gaming (names have been changed to protect the guilty):
Ugh... A frustrating session. Our first attempt at D&D 4th edition... The campaign centers on the "Heroes of Evil". The PCs start out as Good heroes (It's my first time playing in a system that uses alignment so what the hell, right?) and through events in and out of their control, become evil-aligned.
The premise is good, the party members are fine (a dwarf wizard, a gnome warlock and a dragonborn paladin), but I made the mistake of inviting BOB.
BOB has turned out to be a better GM than a player. He has tendencies to be loud, disrespectful, obnoxious, and fudges dice (which I can't stand...).
I called him on one of his dice fudges and he got mad at me... He was very offended (that I caught him, I guess).
I was pretty pissed and I've decided not to invite him back.
It wouldn't have been so bad (he's not all that bad, I'm just pointing out what irked me Friday) if it hadn't been for his constant complaints on the differences of the 4th and 3.5 editions of D&D. This is the first D&D game I've ever owned and BOB's games are the only D&D games I've played in.
It just made the game less fun than it could have been.
:P

I've now another project that needs to be completed by CopperCon/AmberConArizona since I plan on running it there:

Amber roleplaying using the Houses of the Blooded rule-system.


Shane suggested I run a Houses of the Blooded at CopperCon and I said reluctantly said that I would except that I wanted to emphasize Amber DRPG.
That's when it hit us both at the same time: the loose rule-system of Houses of the Blooded where players have a lot of 'privilege' when it comes to success and failure of their characters' actions could be adapted to the Amber Setting.

That's right folks... Amber with dice.


Oh, and saturday night was a blast. Thomas did an awesome job incorporating the backgrounds of our characters directly into the campaign, which I found very refreshing.
Tyvaniel has found his voice and I like the character a lot after a few hours of playing... Can't wait for the next session!
(But damn I wish I didn't have to drive so far... Gas prices and all that... :P )

Monday was the Houses of the Blooded playtest and it went very, very well. Preston couldn't make it but we (myself, Jay and Aerik) were joined by Ookami and Shane. So there I was sharing the very minimal amount of knowledge I have about the game, sharing what the world was like or 'could be' like, since Shan'ri is very much undefined (you have to keep in mind that I'm using the PDF preview book).
I explain to them the concept of the game and we begin character creation, which turned out to be a bit difficult because the players are not limited to feats or advantages found in a big tome of rules. Instead I let them choose one aspect from the preview book and one that they would have to make up on their own. After creating characters and explaining the game mechanics (that's where playing in John Wick's game at Phoenix Con Games really helped!) I explained that I would be sharing three things that were true about the story and that the players would be filling in the rest.
The players very quickly understood the amount of power they were just handed when it came to the story and took tremendous advantage over it.
We went through describing a few people at the party (hosted by Shane's delightfully entertaining character): I would share three things established in the preview book and the players would in turn use contested wisdom rolls to add quirks and truths about the characters.

The story turned out really well and although a lot of the players were confused as to how it would work, the hesitation quickly gave way to gleeful addition of details and plot on the part of the players!
At the end of the session, we decided that we will probably make this a recurring game, once I get my hands on the book.
Aerik also suggested that the system could easily accommodate for a complete lack of GM, if players are using a sort of story consensus system, or contested wisdom when there is no consensus. I think we will try it out next time we use Houses of the Blooded.


My friday game continues with Exalted 1st edition. We now have enough players that when one cannot make it, we are not stuck doing something else than gaming. This was a recurring problem when it was just me, Adam and Dom. If either of us couldn't make it, there was no gaming, which was fine, but it would happen often. This has been remedied and I'm excited about that! :)


Tonight, for the first time in over ten years, I will be playing in an Amber DRPG face-to-face game.
It's a big deal, you guys!
The game takes place in Amber during the earlier years of the realm (from what I can tell), and Oberon has three kids: Osric, Finndo and Benedict. Benedict is a teenager. My character is a son of Dworkin and a lady of the Courts of Chaos. He was raised by his mother during his early childhood. Dworkin comes to visit, realize that Lady Azura is batshit crazy and takes it upon himself to have Tyvaniel raised in Amber.
Tyv is about 50 y-o at game start, a psyche buff who is curious about all things arcane, though not studious enough to have taken on that many powers. He has Pattern Imprint, Shapeshifting and Sorcery. He knows the theory behind some of the other powers but not the practical end of things. He also has no contact with the Courts of Chaos.

I want Tyv to be vulnerable so I gave him poor stats in everything but Psyche. I'm secretly curious what it will take to get an Amberite killed with this GM. I've not GMed with him yet, so I'll post my impressions of that after the first session. We'll be playing about every other week and to me it looks like the GM is in the same boat as I've been for many years, always the GM, never the player... Well for Amber, anyway.


Fires of Greymoor play-by-post Amber game is still going strong and it's about to get very interesting... on all fronts! :)

Alright, so I haven't updated in a while. I've been busy, either working my butt off at work or looking for the next project/work. It's getting to the point where I need to get myself a full-time job because this freelance thing is slowing down way too much lately. Actually, it didn't slow down as much as it abruptly stopped...

It's been frustrating and honestly a bit depressing too. But, meh... :P

Lately working on less projects:

Forgetful Android Webcomic: Still working on the look and I've been writing and planning a few scripts and I was very surprised that it writes itself (Dom was supposed to write it while I was supposed to illustrate but things didn't turn out that way after all... He wasn't passionate about it and felt pretty uninspired, which of course I'm happy came up now than halfway through the first installment). This is likely to be one of the major projects I work on. I'm nowhere near ready to launch it, since I still have a ton of research to do before I make a serious commitment like that. In the meantime, I keep at it and I can't wait to see the launch of Daniel's webcomic, "Steam Crow Monster Commute." This guy is so freakin' talented... and ultra nice too!

Final Vinyl Website: So, to improve my skills and update my knowledge, I'm working on the Final Vinyl website. It's a musical, but now also a comic book and soon to be much much more! It's exciting to see a lot of energy in people like Kevin. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but it's gonna be next week's evening focus.

AmberCon Arizona: I've had promises of GMs but no one has submitted any games yet... I'm afraid I'll end up having a lot of last minute work for this event, and I'm afraid it will be much smaller than I wanted... we shall see.

AniZona Art Show: as far as I can tell, they don't have the room or money to put on an Art Show... Less for me to do.

Fires of Greymoor: I'm really enjoying it and the players are awesome and great writers. We had a hiccup or two about posting rate but it's a valuable experience and nobody's made it to Greymoor yet! They're all being distracted and making their way there, but a ton of fun is being had.

Houses of the Blooded RPG: I'm running a sort of playtest for my friends and I think it's gonna be awesome. I had the privilege to play it at Phoenix Con Games and meet John Wick (the author and our GM at the con) and I really enjoyed it. We'll see how it fits with the monday night group.

That's it for now. I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking of right now but these are the major ones...