Despite a very interrupted nights sleep I'm feeling remarkably alert this morning and the lurge is starting to recede (starting).

Yesterday was solid work/chores with little in the way of breaks and definitely not the nap I wanted by late afternoon. At the end of the day gaming was great and I'm glad I made the effort of turning up rather than flagging.

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Enough people turned up to boardgames on Monday for critical mass. We played a couple of games of Dominion before dinner and broke out the Good, the Bad and the Munchkin after. jomas_45, your coat is still hanging in my laundry.

For those who are willing to brave the [hack, cough]. Comment/message if you need the address.

Edit: any time after lunch is fine

I may have succumbed to temptation and decided to make a purchase at Comics while I was in town collecting a new laptop battery...
Also thinking about hosting board games here on Monday (public holiday) if people are interested.

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We played the first couple of scenarios from Traders and Barbarians at SAGA last night, they do add variety and a slightly different feel/tactics to Settlers.

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... I may now be poor enough to stop spending money again.

- went up the hill to C,J & Z's house & baby warming.
- played Dominion, which is a nice fast-moving game except when one of the players has been struck by decision paralysis
- waiting on dinner to reheat
- planning to catch that Batman movie on 'Sky' tonight.

A substantial invoice came in so I decided 'blow it, I'm going to blow some of it'.

Cutwells was actually the least expensive place I visited today, picking up 25ish metres of black fabric from the 99c/m bin. The velcro dots I hope will suffice to hang it were $42 from Warehouse Stationary. I'll have to have a trial run or do the hanging early in the week so I can go back in if that's not enough.

I dropped $200 at Timeless Trinkets - $100 on a picture that caught my eye back at Xmas time, and $100 on assorted other posters to hang at the Vampire Gothic.

A visit to Comics was a bit disappointing - the selection wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Pandemic was tempting but I eventually found myself deciding between 'The Good, The Bad and the Munchkin' and the Traders and Barbarians expansion for Settlers of Catan, eventually settling on the latter ($80 after discount). It has 22 wooden camels, apparently.

Vaguely getting thing done at home.
A couple of phone calls.
Vaguely getting things done, a ponderous game of Hunters & Gatherers, and pizza at Creative Space
Blowing stuff up in Privateer, because the joystick is behaving itself at the moment.

Warning for the bandwidth challenged - there are over 300 photos in this set which includes pictures from slothphil to pad out events/people I missed. If you'd like to peruse/raid the complete set (750-odd images) drop me a line (or wait until I've given copies of mine to slothphil)

I've included shortcuts to each significant break (note thumbnails are representative of events, not link targets).

Friday Night


The Battle


Saturday Night


Sunday


x-posted, kaosians, my journal

Neverwinter last night was mostly 'hang on to the locomotive while the GM narrates', but we've missed two sessions and I decided to do away with the trap-laden dungeon crawl. The Word of Protection (now in the PCs possession, where it more or less wants to be) has both more direct and more subtle methods anyway.

The PCs received their rewards for this arc, and the players will be happy shopping over the coming week. I've decided to let them have a significant power boost so they can start facing off with some big opponents over the last few months of the campaign.

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This afternoon was the SAGA board games afternoon, which was well attended. I played one game of Ticket to Ride, one of Hunters & Gatherers and two of Pandemic (1 overrun by the black plague, 1 win). I was so engrossed in the games I forgot to take any photos despite deliberately taking my camera along.

This has left me a little peopled out.

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Finally located a photo of myself from the SteamPunk party in March, yay Jen.

( snip )

I've managed to join a D&D4e game on Tuesdays. Dillo (I'm-a Dillo!) is a halfling fighter who wields a flail and whose default tactic whenever the game gets bogged down is to charge into the middle of things and start mixing it up rather than wait for the other PCs to eventually come to a consensus.

I think he'll be fun to play.

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A last-minute lack of players led to NeverWinter being cancelled for the second week in a row, so instead we played Pandemic. I liked it - it requires very tight strategic teamwork on the part of the players to stand a chance against a fairly vicious outbreak mechanic. The randomisation of the initial setup and which character (therefore useful special ability) isn't in play for any given game provide good elements of replayability. The chance to clean up a virus entirely can buy you some valuable time, but can equally waste time which could have been better spent getting into position to share cards and find the next cure. The temptation to eradicate cost us the first game, but managing to do so took a lot of pressure off in the second.

It was a beautiful day yesterday to combine a work and family trip to Ashburton. It still feels strange, interacting with my parent's generation of relatives as a equal adult.

I have got to figure out my limits and learn to pace myself more. For all I've done this 'week' the flake was starting to show on Wednesday, but yesterday afternoon my brain pretty much gave out.

Feeling only 1/4 of an effective DM and down one player I made the decision not to run NeverWinter. Instead there was a little administration and shopping, and then we played a shortened but fun game of Puerto Rico which I scraped a win from by one point.

I really appreciate the players I have at the moment. They make it easy to have fun.

I'm having trouble remembering it's Friday and planning accordingly, keeps feeling like Saturday. Trying for a low-impact day - of course this means already done the laundry, caught up on yesterday's reading (but avoiding a couple of substantive articles) and currently making multiple copies of the next compilation CD.

Off for a sunny walk down to the bakery for supplies next.

Arrived promptly as the first game was starting.

Family Business - picked on viciously* and without a red card to my name the whole game I was rapidly eliminated
Attika - made a bit of a hash of reading/explaining the rules and a slow game, then managed to snatch an unlikely victory
Citadels - have become much more familiar with the game. A fair 3rd equal out of 7
Betrayal at the House on the Hill - managed to beat the scenario on pretty much the last die roll.

Brain coped better than I thought it might with the day. Getting an early night.

* which is what is supposed to happen to the weak in Family Business

But still feeling like I could plummet at any time.

Had a good time this afternoon at lemurkat and xyphoid's flatwarming. Played fun board games (even won a couple), was the beneficiary of a very tasty bbq dinner.

There was a very nice meal at the BBQ last night as well, it's just a shame the fireworks didn't live up to expectation.

Big thank you to those who have been in touch with offers of support, it means a great deal to me. Especially [you know who you are] :)

I spent the after noon and early evening playing the Order of the Stick board game with morag_windstar and co. I was (randomly) playing Belkar, the psychotic little bastard.

OOTS is definately a game you need to play once just to get the hang of. Had I realised how much Belkar's success is aided by attacking the other players I think the game would have gone differently - ie I may not have come last :D. Instead we all played nice and concentrated on killing the monsters and taking their stuff while we learnt the rules, with practically no PVP action.

It'sa long running game - even with only 4 and then 3 of us it must have lasted 4+ hours. The book suggests 7-8 hours for a 6 player game. It speeds up some as you learn how things work, but not necessarily a lot.

I look forward to playing it again with this experience under my belt.

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Of course this meant that I didn't achieve several other things today.....

Thermo in the car claims 34 deg, moving. That's screw the petrol efficiency, full aircon territory.

(I stood outside my car with the aircon going for the first time. Electric generator working away at full power - made something of a whining noise).

Recent board/card games in place of roleplaying - on Thursday we palyed a slow-starting but even-finishing game of Munchkin and a couple of hilarious games of Give Me the Brain. Today we played a similar game of Munchkin Impossible and one of the plethora of LOTR board games.

Quote from the painter came today. The windows are less than I expected and with the extra I asked for (like the garage roof) it totals to about what I was expecting for the windows. This is good.

I have a couple of hours up my sleeve in which to do, hmmmm, vacumning and prep for tomorrows game.

So apart from being productive in the garden this morning, and even earlier going for a walk before breakfast, I also volunteered space for board games.

Expected maybe 8-10 people to show - didn't do a head count but I estimate we actually got 20-30 (possibly including the regular Shadowrun game) . (Will calculate when I process photos). Capacity, essentially although we didn't quite end up expanding into the computer room and bedrooms.

Played a couple of games of H&G, a couple of games of something with (genuine) lasers, a game of Amun-Re [sp?] around keeping track of todays unexpected uber thread on kaosians.

Enjoyed the people. Congrats to niennahirilfea for organising.

I didn't even dance very much last night :( OTOH I didn't get homeuntil after 3am (and three sets of passengers to various parts of town). Also dehydrated. Science experiments were funky. Photos & video when I get around to it.

So my sleeping pattern is probably W&TS for the next little while. Probably come right just in time to mess it up again tripping down and up and down the island weekend after next.

Very grateful that afternoon gaming was moved to yesterday, even though the one person who remembered that it had been moved (resulting in several hurried phone calls) wound up not being able to make it after all and we opted to board game. Decent game of H&G, good game of Settlers.

Neverwinter group spent last session pursuing a side-plot, coming away with more questions than resolution I think. Next session I will push the main plot along, as we want to wrap up before one of the players heads home overseas for the holidays.

Work this week has been a series of peaks and precipices. One job great, other jobs more trouble than they're really worth.

Now to struggle through the chores.

Munchkin Impossible ....

And a little something else for all those D&D games I'm involved in at the moment [smirk].

I seriously pondered getting the new edition of Talisman, but decided that it wasn't likely to see enough playtime to be worth it. Maybe next time.

It's been a quiet day....

Thought for... erm .. several days ago - By my own standards, I am not a perfectionist.

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Neverwinter didn't happen last night. One player is in Ireland (fair excuse :D ), one let me know he had another engagement barely hours before the game, and another just didn't show.

Short-to-no-notice drop-outs make me grouchy.

Instead we dragged out the old SAGA copy of Talisman and played that for a few hours. I -almost- won, but uaekiwi's Troll beat the last life token out of my Gladiator atop the Crown of Command.

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Guido's Treasure wrapped up a short arc and now begins a Dragon hunt.

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shenya's game is starting what will hopefully be a relatively simple dungeon crawl. Starting with a dragon.

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Work week was OK.

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My little niece (2? 3? yrs) was airlifted to hospital yesterday afternoon with a diabetes complication "ketosis" or some such. Was thisclose to being rushed up to Starship yesterday evening,but has apparently improved.

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I am sitting alone in front of the computer picking at little computer/internet related tasks like the edges of a scab and slowly going stir-crazy. The edges of sanity-threating dvds curl out from the direction of the lounge to assault my senses when I pass by. Lacking any true blobbing-out options I may have to return to Civ II.