thebitterguy

Just a note that I'm currently planning to attend TABSCon XX on September 12. There's a few fun and relatively easy games on the schedule I plan to attend. Currently on my schedule is BSG, Pulp City & Fantastic Worlds.

They're making a sequel to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. But they're setting it in Civil War.

Feh. Thanks for fucking that up.

Busy weekend, it was. Loads of yard work was completed, and the vegetagle garden was tilled and planted.

Only, however, with greenhouse bought seedlings. At this time my own seedlings are still sprouting in the back room (and the naming sticks are getting fuzzy, which is ick). When will I learn, six weeks before the last frost! It's not just a good idea! We also took some rocks, put them in our new wheelbarrow, and moved them from one side of the yard to the other.

Cynra & I did not go see Up! on the weekend, but may do so tonight. That would be fun.

Saturday night we welcomed mr_weasel and his wife over to Casa Bitter. We had some curry & naan for dinner (which turned out awesome) and played a couple games of Pandemic. I'd purchased Pandemic several weeks ago, but hadn't gotten to play it yet, so it was nice to put it through its paces. We won the first game thanks to a very lucky first draw that eliminated the blue disease, but lost the second game even though we'd gotten more of the game's play down. The dispatcher is still a bit of a challenge to play, though.

Sunday was more yard work, and then off to pyat and velvetpage's for fondue and more disesase fighting. You can see photos here. Unfortunately, we only got to play one game of Pandemic this time which, once again, led to the collapse of society as we known it.

I'm wondering how hard the game will be once we start trying it at the normal level, where you keep your cards hidden and there's another epidemic card scattered in the deck. The second game played, which was the second one lost, was lost after a massive series of outbreaks in Europe that sort of cascaded until we ran out of blue disesase blocks. Last night's game was very close, but we ended up losing after the player card deck ran out.

Since gas has snuck up to about a buck a litre again, Cynra & I are carpooling to work in Supercar, at least for the rest of the school year. Huzzah!

Darn funny stuff, kids.

So, yeah. Weekend was spent on the road, mostly. This past weekend was CanGames, which is at this point the oldest gaming con in Canada.

I drove up to Ottawa on Friday. I left later than I'd planned because I was arguing for a while with UPS about getting Cynra's replacement phone delivered. Some of the quirks of the delivery: They could not deliver it to my work location in Mississauga. They could not leave it if I signed the form. It could be picked up (by me only) from the Hamilton depot.

Thankfully, one of our neighbours would be home in the afternoon, so UPS was directed to leave it there. I'm gonna be writing a letter about this.

So. Friday was my Buffy game, set in 17th Century France. I was the watcher. We fought demons. Or Hessians. It kind of blurred after that.

Saturday was a game of Savage Worlds with the same GM. He was a very good GM, in spite of being occasionally somewhat under-prepared. And we didn't use minis in the Savage Worlds game, which felt strange since I'd always viewed it as a minis heavy game.

Game three was Desolation with jkahane. It ended in a total TPK because of a riddle misinterpretation, which is a bit more Play Dirty than I'm used to.

After con I met up with Gabe and his gf for Shwarma dinner. I had no idea about how Bank Street was completely torn up for repairs. We made our way down to Shwarma King, and I got the platter, which turned out to be a wee bit beefier than I thought it would be.

I'd done some shopping that day, and had picked up a bottle of the Life Potion energy drink. Since I didn't have lunch (but did have a delicious breakfast of huevos rancheros) I thought I'd try it. Bad idea. Kept me up until almost two.

Got up and checked out of teh hotel, but got to the con a little late, and found out that the GM (who I will go on record as saying is a douchebag) had given my spot away. Sure, as is his choice, but Mother Fucker, it's Sunday morning 9 a.m. Some of us gotta check out of our hotels and were up a little late the previous evening. Even if it wasn't doing anything fun.

I spent the rest of the day kibbitzing with some dealers and some possible guests. One of the dealers told me the story of how he'd gotten a box of used D&D modules that included a copy of the mythical "Up the Garden Path".

Also got Final Flight of the Santiago from Mongoose. Been looking for that for a while.

Back to work tomorrow. Actually looking forward to it for a change.

So yesterday Matt Forbeck posted a link on his Twitter to a video game called Today I die.

I'll admit I'm not familiar with the division of video games with artistic ambitions, being a vapid consumer of callow shoot em ups. Admittedly, this probably applies as much to my tastes in tabletop games as in video games.

But Today I Die was a really neat experience; Matt described it as poetic, which I think is a very interesting way to put it.

Apparently there are multiple endings, but unlike the Wolverine movie you can see them all without having to pay for admission three times.

Over on his LJ, robin_d_laws has posted his variant Skill Challenge rules.

I think some of the wilder variants would come up when the group was in a really, really bad situation and started to get desperate. "Can we spend an action point and discard one of their cards?" "If I roll for a 40 target number, can I pick a card from the deck?" "If I take your trash out for the next six months, can I use Stealth again?"

And how Canadian a group are we, with a Tim Horton's cup on the table?

Feeling very worn down today. Have been for a while. Hopefully when we hit spring (in the practical sense instead of the technical sense) it'll pick me up.

Got a call from Gearhead yesterday, so I assume the bike is ready for pickup.

Contemplating picking up a cheap laptop w/ an external drive. Anyone got a good source they'd recommend?

Tonight is Cynra's last(?) bellydance class of the current session. She's planning on signing up for another one, or possibly two.

Game night tomorrow. Not looking forward to it as two characters have come to blows and I want to just slap the players for it, one for taking a dumb action and the other for reacting to it in a way that seems pointless. I just really don't like inter-party conflict. I may end up backstabbing both of them.

When I was at Gryphcon this weekend, I picked up a few contacts for people who might be interested in GX. One of the cards was for a nascent local gaming con Hammercon.

It's scheduled (at least according to the card) for October 17, and is being organized by Hammer Games, a gaming portal for Hamiltonians.