threadwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threadwalker) wrote2008-09-02 07:56 am
threadwalker) wrote2008-09-02 07:56 am
Gaming ... 20 yrs later..Pirates, Pirates, Pirates!
Wildcat Tuesday: No more early morning Wildcats. It was pitch black out, the stars were bright, and I spent my Wildcat climb wondering what kind of four-legged critter was making noises in the underbrush. Adreniline boosted me almost the entire way up the hill; the problem being that I can't go faster than I can see and I spent as much energy listening hard as I did pedaling.
Ya know, there's nothing like being far from help, alone, in the dark, and in an area that has a history of carnivores (can't recall what kind of cat-beast periodically eats joggers in the hills) to make you aware of how it feels to be at the mercy of big nocturnal animals that have sharp claws. And all those news clips about the joggers getting eaten suddenly pop into my fore-brain after I'm already climbing; why couldn't I remember that before I left the house?
'Nuff said. Wildcat mornings will become Grizzly Peak afternoons starting Thursday (it's the opposite climb into Moraga). To think that all I thought I needed to be worried about was sharks!
Wham, bam, cannon ball, ma'am!
The weekend went very well. Pacificon has become ConQuest and is now part of a franchise. This was our first visit to a con with the kids. And my first in 5 years.
It was weird. Nothing has changed except we all got older, the event is better organized, and the gamers start a lot younger. There was a "young persons" room and a lot of pre-teens playing games. Sign of the times. Though.. con stink was still present. One friend who was a first-timer and who is a nurse in a jail, commented that the smell is just like the one at work.
For me, 20 yrs ago it was all RPG all the time. This year it was all about chilling out mixed in with miniatures and fast-hit-'em-hard board games.
Best "ahhh!" moment: finishing my 5 mile run, changing into bikini, slipping into jacuzzi and ordering mojito from pool boy. THAT's the life!
My goal this weekend was to hang out, use the hotel jacuzzi as much as possible, and run on the treadmill. Yeah.. not super-gaming, eh? I have a race in 2 weeks and I haven't been to a con in at least 5 years. Plus, we had the kids, so my expectations were built around entertaining them and myself in parallel with the con environment. So "win" for me was about chillin' out, maybe fiddling with my website, working a bit on my opus piece if the opporunity happened, and maintaining a "no drama" zone.
However, "someone" scheduled me for a Pirates! game on Saturday and a 2nd one on Sunday. Left without a time-limit, those can take an hour to set up and can last up to 6 hrs if you don't get taken out early (I rarely get taken out early). I super-mom'd it and packed snacks, lunches, drinks, etc, so we had picnic fixin's in the open gaming room for the kids. The Mint Oreos were all "win" according to one-and-all. Also, Super N is big enough to want to play, so he was somewhat involved with running a ship during Saturday's game. With the food and such, we got a good way through Saturday's game (which "started" at 11 and didn't wrap up until 6pm-ish) before Miss E topped out. Miss E was bored out of her mind, but IMO, 4 hours of behaving fairly well in a con-environment makes her a Super Star. So the 2 of us left before the bitter end and went swimming, played make-believe and watched cartoons while an old-timer Gryphon ran my Skaven (rat) ship, Insidious Bite.
I didn't dress as a cabin boy, but on Sunday we played in Tom Foss's game and I pulled together a captain's outfit courtesy of a borrowed shirt with my own leggings, cool coat from Overstock, thigh-high boots, silk sash, and big hat. Yay! Of course, no one else dressed, but that was the first time I got to swagger around in those boots. Yay! Love boots! AND... drum roll... I got to be Calypso in the game. Tom ROCKS! Tom just asked me to "be me", gave me some background info, and then cut me loose. I immediately went after Admiral Stan, who bit his lip, "hmm'd", and started adjusting his schemes. I think Admiral S needed the extra dash of chaos in his game or he'd have just trounced everyone without straining a brain cell. So instead of waltzing across the seas, he got to contend with me while engaging with enemy ships: I killed Elizabeth Swan off his deck, injured the captain (who then went below decks) and had my monstrous pet Mako chomp holes in his hull (burned through half his hull points in 3 rounds... nom nom nom... crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside). Yay me! Chaos reigns! Then I got on board and started melee madness. Too bad we didn't have more time.... F ran the Skeleton Crew and got sucked into the whirl pool. It was hysterical to watch the Pirate-new comers flinch when the whirl pool grew, slid sideways due to storm conditions, and then suck them in and pull their ships under. Poor wittle gamers. Yay! Chaos!
Overall, the Pirate-players had a blast, the insults were fast and furious, it was fun to reconnect with friends... (Martin d'Costa and some gamer-gryphs wandered through at various points, so I got to play catch-up with a ton of folks). And apparently Tom won a bet about getting me to dance on top of his table; as I was crawling across the table to move my piece, he yelled to F that he'd won, whipped out a camera and snapped shots! (roll eyes) Oh, the joys of being one of the only women at a gaming convention! Too bad I don't really know how to ham it up for the camera. Oh yes... I can't wait for the pictures... I know someone snapped a picture of me exchanging insults and using the "mommy finger" in someone's face. Ugh. ... I'm an action-hero, not suited for being captured by camera.
There was also that running and jacuzzi I was hoping for. I think I ran 14+ miles over the course of the weekend, but I could have "suffered" through more jacuzzi. That said, I felt spoiled to be able to hop off treadmill, change and slide into jacuzzi... bliss. The hotel mojito was kind of weak; I'm going to have to learn how to make those myself and self-stock in our room next time. Encouraging, the opus anglicanum embroidery is chugging along nicely; I could play Pirates! and do embroidery - yay for multi-tasking. There is a mirage that the end is in sight, but I think it's really 15-20 hrs from being done. But close enough to taste. (just need to set aside to work on something else for a few weeks).
Sadly, Sunday night ended on a sour note between 2 peeps I care about. Bah. It's all about communication and respect, people! Let's try to take a deep breath before getting in someone's face and vomitting emotion all over the place. We are the adult children of our childhood when under stress.
However, looking forward... Pirate game at our place in December. Rum, Pirates and Jump House... it's an all "win" situation. Just need to find a date...
Arrrrr!
Ya know, there's nothing like being far from help, alone, in the dark, and in an area that has a history of carnivores (can't recall what kind of cat-beast periodically eats joggers in the hills) to make you aware of how it feels to be at the mercy of big nocturnal animals that have sharp claws. And all those news clips about the joggers getting eaten suddenly pop into my fore-brain after I'm already climbing; why couldn't I remember that before I left the house?
'Nuff said. Wildcat mornings will become Grizzly Peak afternoons starting Thursday (it's the opposite climb into Moraga). To think that all I thought I needed to be worried about was sharks!
Wham, bam, cannon ball, ma'am!
The weekend went very well. Pacificon has become ConQuest and is now part of a franchise. This was our first visit to a con with the kids. And my first in 5 years.
It was weird. Nothing has changed except we all got older, the event is better organized, and the gamers start a lot younger. There was a "young persons" room and a lot of pre-teens playing games. Sign of the times. Though.. con stink was still present. One friend who was a first-timer and who is a nurse in a jail, commented that the smell is just like the one at work.
For me, 20 yrs ago it was all RPG all the time. This year it was all about chilling out mixed in with miniatures and fast-hit-'em-hard board games.
Best "ahhh!" moment: finishing my 5 mile run, changing into bikini, slipping into jacuzzi and ordering mojito from pool boy. THAT's the life!
My goal this weekend was to hang out, use the hotel jacuzzi as much as possible, and run on the treadmill. Yeah.. not super-gaming, eh? I have a race in 2 weeks and I haven't been to a con in at least 5 years. Plus, we had the kids, so my expectations were built around entertaining them and myself in parallel with the con environment. So "win" for me was about chillin' out, maybe fiddling with my website, working a bit on my opus piece if the opporunity happened, and maintaining a "no drama" zone.
However, "someone" scheduled me for a Pirates! game on Saturday and a 2nd one on Sunday. Left without a time-limit, those can take an hour to set up and can last up to 6 hrs if you don't get taken out early (I rarely get taken out early). I super-mom'd it and packed snacks, lunches, drinks, etc, so we had picnic fixin's in the open gaming room for the kids. The Mint Oreos were all "win" according to one-and-all. Also, Super N is big enough to want to play, so he was somewhat involved with running a ship during Saturday's game. With the food and such, we got a good way through Saturday's game (which "started" at 11 and didn't wrap up until 6pm-ish) before Miss E topped out. Miss E was bored out of her mind, but IMO, 4 hours of behaving fairly well in a con-environment makes her a Super Star. So the 2 of us left before the bitter end and went swimming, played make-believe and watched cartoons while an old-timer Gryphon ran my Skaven (rat) ship, Insidious Bite.
I didn't dress as a cabin boy, but on Sunday we played in Tom Foss's game and I pulled together a captain's outfit courtesy of a borrowed shirt with my own leggings, cool coat from Overstock, thigh-high boots, silk sash, and big hat. Yay! Of course, no one else dressed, but that was the first time I got to swagger around in those boots. Yay! Love boots! AND... drum roll... I got to be Calypso in the game. Tom ROCKS! Tom just asked me to "be me", gave me some background info, and then cut me loose. I immediately went after Admiral Stan, who bit his lip, "hmm'd", and started adjusting his schemes. I think Admiral S needed the extra dash of chaos in his game or he'd have just trounced everyone without straining a brain cell. So instead of waltzing across the seas, he got to contend with me while engaging with enemy ships: I killed Elizabeth Swan off his deck, injured the captain (who then went below decks) and had my monstrous pet Mako chomp holes in his hull (burned through half his hull points in 3 rounds... nom nom nom... crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside). Yay me! Chaos reigns! Then I got on board and started melee madness. Too bad we didn't have more time.... F ran the Skeleton Crew and got sucked into the whirl pool. It was hysterical to watch the Pirate-new comers flinch when the whirl pool grew, slid sideways due to storm conditions, and then suck them in and pull their ships under. Poor wittle gamers. Yay! Chaos!
Overall, the Pirate-players had a blast, the insults were fast and furious, it was fun to reconnect with friends... (Martin d'Costa and some gamer-gryphs wandered through at various points, so I got to play catch-up with a ton of folks). And apparently Tom won a bet about getting me to dance on top of his table; as I was crawling across the table to move my piece, he yelled to F that he'd won, whipped out a camera and snapped shots! (roll eyes) Oh, the joys of being one of the only women at a gaming convention! Too bad I don't really know how to ham it up for the camera. Oh yes... I can't wait for the pictures... I know someone snapped a picture of me exchanging insults and using the "mommy finger" in someone's face. Ugh. ... I'm an action-hero, not suited for being captured by camera.
There was also that running and jacuzzi I was hoping for. I think I ran 14+ miles over the course of the weekend, but I could have "suffered" through more jacuzzi. That said, I felt spoiled to be able to hop off treadmill, change and slide into jacuzzi... bliss. The hotel mojito was kind of weak; I'm going to have to learn how to make those myself and self-stock in our room next time. Encouraging, the opus anglicanum embroidery is chugging along nicely; I could play Pirates! and do embroidery - yay for multi-tasking. There is a mirage that the end is in sight, but I think it's really 15-20 hrs from being done. But close enough to taste. (just need to set aside to work on something else for a few weeks).
Sadly, Sunday night ended on a sour note between 2 peeps I care about. Bah. It's all about communication and respect, people! Let's try to take a deep breath before getting in someone's face and vomitting emotion all over the place. We are the adult children of our childhood when under stress.
However, looking forward... Pirate game at our place in December. Rum, Pirates and Jump House... it's an all "win" situation. Just need to find a date...
Arrrrr!
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I know the feeling. I started my weekend walking an hour later because it is getting too creepy walking in full dark for 1.5 hours before the sun starts coming up. At least you had a bike -- I doubt I could outrun any carnivore critters!
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