Weekend Update

So, some of you may have noticed that I didn't post anything on Friday. I decided to play hooky and have an early three-day weekend. Want to hear about all the fun stuff I did?

Of course you do!

Friday
I discover a neat game called Heroscape. This is probably old news, since it came out in 2004, but it's still nifty for a variety of reasons:

1. It has constructible, interlocking hexagonal terrain that can be used for just about any game with miniatures, be it Battletech, Dungeons & Dragons, or any of the Clicky-base games.
   
2. It comes with 30 pre-painted miniatures of approximately the same scale as HeroClix / Mage Knight, and you can buy more in non-collectible expansion packs. If I want zombies, then I can go out and buy a goddamn zombie 6-pack. As a miniature-using Game Mistress, this is of critical importance to me.
   
3. Finally, it has the best miniature I have ever seen in all my life: an orc using a T-Rex as a cavalry mount.

This is so ridiculous that it becomes awesome. I never ever entertained the possibility that orcs might ride dinosaurs, but now that I have seen the result, the argument is so compelling that now I must introduce dino-cav orcs into my next game.


Saturday
This is harder than it sounds, however, because the game I'm currently running is not D&D, but rather Legend of the 5 Rings, the Samurai RPG where damn near everyone carries three-foot razor blades and therefore are excruciatingly polite to one another.

This is a game system where a decent katana hit will seriously fuck up a PC, if not kill him outright, which has the advantage of making the players seriously consider the ramifications of combat before trying to kill everything. Even so, I have had to seriously school my players for making foolish choices, and more than one game session has very nearly ended in a TPK. If you're a fan of RPGs with high Bothan ratings, this is the one for you.

Fortunately for my players, they have learned from their schooling and no further lessons are required today. In fact, they show a shocking degree of cooperation and adaptability. Since I want to encourage this kind of behavior, I refrain from dipping into my bag of dirty NPC tricks and let them succeed after only beating them nearly to death.

Afterwards, some of us decide to go out for a round of miniature golf. Naturally, I pick the black golf ball, which leads to comments about it actually being a goth ball, and thence to jokes about playing miniature goth: Each time I miss a putt, I put my hand to my forehead and aaaaaaangst about it. Complicated puns about Nietzschean philosphy abound, but I'll spare you that exquisite agony.

Afterwards, we adjourn to the Daytona Ale House for food and drinks.


Sunday
I sleep late, recover from my gaming hangover, and do domestic chores like laundry.

I play City of Heroes, do prep work for my next L5R game, and in a burst of insane creativity that actually woke me from sleep, I invent the most beautifully deranged motivation ever for the Big Bad in the story I'm currently writing. It's so twisted and brilliant I can't stop giggling.

Finally, as a sorbet to cleanse the Palette, I watch part 1 of The Company, a nice little miniseries about the early days of the CIA. It's brainy in all the ways a James Bond flick isn't, and makes a rather nice companion piece to last year's The Good Shepherd.

Suitably refreshed, cleansed, entertained, prepared, and creatively fulfilled, I retire to my lavender-scented coffin for sleepies.


Edit: Moved Chris Hepler's quote to a different post.