#RPGaDay Day one - First Game

#RPGaDay

I’ve come a bit late to the game (various pathetic excuses), but now going to start on the rather lovely RPGaDAY. I did consider waiting to September, but that only has 30 days and I’ll be too busy come October, so I’m starting mid-month instead. To be fair, some of my responses are going to be so short that they’ll be joined together in blog posts. Others will require one all of their own.

Day One – First Game Played

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve mentioned this briefly before, but will go into a bit more detail now.

I was a gangly, spotty, 16 or 17 year old and the only girl regular at my local Games Workshop. I’d been going down for 2 or 3 years, since my little brother had got into the hobby because Dad wanted someone to accompany him to the store. Through this, I became close friends with the staff and other regulars and when my brother lost interest I didn’t.

One day, one of the full-time staff members, Andy, asked if I wanted to stay behind and join their Buffy game. I was a huge fan of the show (still am, actually. It got me through my teenage years) and he thought I might like roleplay. It sounded like fun and it was a massive confidence boost (something I badly needed) to be invited to something outside of GW. My Dad was a little wary: he’d known students (he claimed) who’d become so involved in roleplay games that they missed exams. I’m not certain I believe him now, although I absolutely did at the time and that may have been the point of the lie – to appeal to my need to achieve academically to keep me from taking a game too seriously.

Anyway, however it ended up, one evening after the shop was closed I helped tidy up (a few of us most trusted regulars would from time to time, in return for lifts home or just cos it meant we could carry on chatting. The staff would probably have been in serious trouble if Head Office ever knew, but it was one of many ways the staff made us feel important and helped us through the hell’s highway that is puberty) and we went upstairs to the stockroom.

Andy sat me down and we created a character based on me – with a few alterations. Oz was my favourite character (I still secretly imagine he and Willow get together again. Willow and Tara are probably my other favourite characters. But it's close), so I wanted to take the werewolf flaw, and Andy said that would work as a way to bring me into the game (but ultimately we never used the flaw and it was more like I got free character gen points. A bit of a shame, but never mind). And I wanted to have magic because, well, magic is cool! So a few points there. But otherwise, I was playing me, living in my home town with my friends and my family.

The other players joined us and the game began with their Watcher introducing me and saying he was going to be keeping an eye on me (what I knew but the others didn’t was that he’d saved me from a werewolf attack). They were surprised to see me but quickly caught me up on what they’d been doing and the ways the world was ending (which was why the Watcher was in town even though there was no Slayer locally).

It was fun! Andy played himself in the game from time to time, but his character knew nothing of the supernatural world so it could be interesting to try to keep him innocent, as it were (Andy as GM was keen that Andy as NPC didn’t get too involved because it would be complicated for him). I learned more about the neighbouring town (the one with the nightclubs and, actually, where I now live) from the game than from going in real life – and my first clubbing experience was so that I would know what they were talking about because the local metal nightclub – The Villa – was the venue for a lot of the action. (It’s probably part of why I ended up working there, actually. It was a brilliant job, so I’m pleased.)

Playing ourselves meant I didn’t have to get into character, but using lateral thinking and working inside the game lead one of the other players, Tom, to invite me to his ShadowRun game “for something a bit more serious – I think you’ll enjoy it” and the rest, as they say, is history.

 With thanks to Autocratik for the idea. You can check out his response to Day One here.

Pathfinder - The Crusade part 7

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

With Jerribeth defeated, we quickly ransacked her room to find some codes and secret signs the Templars use (should help the efforts of the Crusade) and some other oddities, including a necklace that screamed of magic but I couldn’t figure out its purpose. Pocketed for the future because I’m not sure it’s safe.

Checked the rest of this side and found, beyond the cells, an icky room with two humanoid-corpses and writings carved into the back wall. Those with better knowledge of anatomy than I realised the bodies had been alive when their organs were removed. Made me feel sad and ill together. Evander looked at the writing and something in him snapped – it was wrong, all wrong; unfinished; didn’t make sense; not right. Alexei used stone shape to destroy the wall: as best we could tell from Evander’s expletive-laden rant, it was the beginnings of a spell to loosen all natives of Golarion from this plane – to make it easier to teleport us to other planes.* That didn’t seem like a good thing to leave half-finished in a demon stronghold.

After that, we headed back to sneak to the other – but the demons guarding the cathedral in the centre spotted us as we tried to figure a way to sneak past and charged. Didn’t take long to deal with them.

The cathedral was impressive – pillars lining the way to a large altar with another statue to the demon lord Baphomet. The high, vaulted ceiling was painted with stars. Two small rooms lead off from either side – one, strangely enough, seemed to be marked with a magic circle against evil… The other, a meditation room of sorts, with cat-o’-nine-tails and other creepy things, most notably, a creepy book written in Abyssal – pocketed with the necklace because I could hear discussion outside in the cathedral itself about removing the Baphomet statue. And the next moment, a deafening, shattering crash as Evander took his flail to the statue’s leg and managed to topple it.

As the sound died away and our hearing began to return to normal, we knew the noise would have drawn the attention of every remaining accursed demon in the place. We took up defensive positions and waited for the onslaught. It was not long in coming.

I started by setting up a mind fog on the stairs to the room. It was swiftly dispelled and I hid** as the mages in the first wave stone-shaped away a section of the wall… the fighters – Kieran, Aaron and Evander – quickly dispatched the Templars who rushed through. Some kind of noxious magical smell left Aaron vomiting in the corner and nearly took out Alexei as well – in defence, he threw up a blade barrier, circling the stairs. Demons rushed through it, several falling as the blades sliced through them. Those that made it were quickly taken out and Kieran ran through the blades – fending them off and letting his shiny, shiny adamantine armour deal with the worst of it – to take out the few demons remaining. I used my shiny new Sceptre of Heaven to Holy Smite the group, and Alexei summoned a demon of his own to help.

It was hard, with Aaron nearly being killed by a barrage of magic missiles, but at the end we were victorious and no wounds we couldn’t patch up. This should make the rest of our explorations a bit easier, at least! But it’s a shame we didn’t manage to take any alive for questioning.

 *I may have misunderstood – Evander is controlled by Husbit as Alexei’s cohort but he was voiced by the GM with the instruction from Husbit (who’d been sercret-noted what Evander learned) to “relay that info but as if you have tourrettes”. And I was tired and neither I nor Svetlana has much knowledge of the planes and I had several people trying to explain so got a bit muddled. I *think* the spell would turn all natives into outsiders, but that’s a bit of a guess.

** Svetlana is not very good in combat – particularly in comparison to Kieran and Evander. It did bother me for a while and everyone blamed the fact she’s multi-class, but I’ve realised she’s very good outside of combat and I’m focussing on that. It can mean that combat-heavy sessions (like this one descended into) can risk being a little dull, but I got Husbit to let me roll some of the damage for his blade barrier shield so at least I felt a bit involved. I’m sure there are other ways I can continue to do that whilst keeping Svetlana safe (and in reserve if the party need that sneak attack surprise!)

Circus - Videos and Photos

This is not a real post. It's just an update from this post. I've got some footage of me on the silks but for some reason even though the footage of me on the hoop mentioned in the other post is in the same place as these videos, I still can't get it to link. So there are a few more photos instead.

Update: *Finally* found a way to get this video to post! Was so proud of how well I did when it was taken and now makes me feel really good about how far I've come in what is actually a fairly short space of time. Makes me feel confident for the future - especially seeing as I managed a superman mount by myself for the first time last week. It was messy as hell, but I did it (the mount takes you into front balance rather than hocking on and I really like front balance so I'm determined to be able to do the mount neatly).

Editing part 2

I haven’t done nearly as much on my picture and poem as I’d hoped because I’ve been a lot busier than I anticipated (which has been lovely – spending time with my younger brother and our friends and gaming and geekery).

Starting with the poem… I’ve done almost nothing. I’ve removed the stanzas that were most awkward and have changed a couple of words to ‘smooth’ the flow, sort of thing. I’m tempted to change the gender of one of my friends so there would be a ‘he’, a ‘she’ and an ‘I’.

I also noticed that the stanzas are probably in the wrong order – I thought it went 1 – 2 – 3 – 3 – 2 – 1 but it isn’t: it’s 1 – 2 – 3 – 3 – 1 – 2. The problem is that having 3 – 3 works less well now I’ve taken out the bridging stanza I didn’t like.

At school we once had a class on how to edit a poem. The teacher gave us a poem he’d written – a copy of the initial poem as he’d written it and a copy of it once he’d finished editing it. A good idea, because he could talk us through the changes he’d made and why (there may have been a third that was part way through the process; I can’t remember). The problem was that the end poem didn’t seem any ‘better’ to me than the first draft – just different.

One thing he did, however, was remove a few lines that were where the poem had grown from because they didn’t fit his final vision. I didn’t understand why he did that – those lines, to me, seemed to be the best part of the poem – but I think I understand it now. Part of what I have removed are the ballad-style lines “Dressed in red and black, my friends, dressed in red and black…”, which were the heart of the poem and something, when I wrote it, I really didn’t want to lose but returning to it now I really don’t think they fit.

Onto the picture: I’m happier with the eyes, ears, mouth, crown and eyebrows but, actually, less happy with the nose. I decided I want to draw her in her armour but haven’t found fantasy armour I’m confident to draw her in (it seems particularly difficult to find necklines, with a lot of images having these obscured by arms pulling bows etc). Instead, I think I’ll put her into a dress so she can be in a queening moment – hopefully, it’ll be easier to find something suitably inspiring.

I spoke to my Dad, who’s good at drawing. He was thrilled I’m giving it another go and was able to give me advice on proportion with some of my other sketches of full bodies. He’s done less portraiture-style paintings and drawings, but it was nice to see his enthusiasm in helping me and it made me feel positive about improving.

Because I'm doing this using pencil and paper, I'm having to scan it or take a photo, and then use photoshop to try and make it more visible, with varying degrees of success. This is why the second is paler than the first.

Initial Sketch

With a bit of fiddling

Learning to Learn (or, why I hate editing)

I recently came across a poem I’d written at university. I remembered the poem, because I remembered what had inspired it (a night out where I and several friends expressed various sorrows and I noticed we were all wearing the same colours), but re-reading it I was surprised. The first couple of stanzas struck me as pretty good – better than my usual angsty attempts; good enough, even, that I thought maybe someone else had written it. But then I read on and knew it was mine: I recognised the mistakes I make over and over again.

Queen Svetlana Surtova - initial outline

I was trying to sketch Svetlana the other day and something clicked in my mind. I was struggling to get the look I wanted and eventually reached a point where I thought “ah well, that’s good enough. I’ll leave it there” and I realised that’s what I do. I never edit anything I’ve created – I take it to a point it’s about alright, and don’t try any harder.

I think it’s a large part my fear of failure, in that if I don’t edit I didn’t really try so if it’s rubbish it doesn’t matter. But if I try and it’s still no good… well, that means I’m no good.

I was talking to Mazza (my friend who introduced me to circus) along these lines the other day. He was explaining how learning circus has helped him be more forgiving of his mistakes and keep trying even if something isn’t easy the first time round. It’s a good skill to have and one we were both lacking because we were smart and did well at school without needing to try so never learnt how to. He’s disciplining himself to get past this in all areas of his life, and I want to do the same.

One of the reasons I don’t illustrate my blog is the time it takes. But that’s really just an excuse, and the real reason goes back to this fear of failure: I’m afraid people will see what I have drawn and mock it. But you know what? The only way to learn is to practice.

I’m no good at editing because I’ve never practiced it. My excuse has always been that I don’t know where to begin or what to do, and there’s a truth to that, but if I don’t try I’ll never learn. So here it is: a poem and a picture that I will edit (albeit slowly and painfully) until I am happy with them. And you lucky lot will get to see the process (and any advice you can impart is appreciated!)