Tag: gaming

I slept very incompetently, and then by the time I got up it was about 4000000 degrees out and not even really sunny, hazy and humid and terrible air. I guess I did the two things I really had to get done today (grocery shopping and Zoomwarts), but the day feels like it was completely wasted. I didn’t even manage to create a test user in WordPress, since it wants a unique email address for every user.

Played: Zoomwarts. Finally Bella and Baby Lizard paid off their debt to the mermaid by rescuing her from pirates and possibly murdering the pirates. Also Rosamund’s plan to get a national treasure to push back against the Ministry’s reframing of history went off swimmingly. Umbrellas for all!

Read (browsed?): Barbarous up to the beginning of chapter 6 (Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota): A surly magic school dropout gets a job offer she can’t refuse from a very mysterious landlady and ends up cleaning out haunted apartments, exterminating infestations of ghostly mushrooms, and bonding with her troubled coworker. Then things get weird.

Words: Check, although it seems like so little for an otherwise entirely wasted day.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. The PCs made it to Titan (not that far) and went drinking with grad students and postdocs, thus learning about the public parts of the project that went bad. Conlangs for the… weirdness.

Read: Fire in the Blood and The First Chill of Autumn (WR Gingell): Dragon x princess vs annoying prince, and then finally the shards of the sword promised in the subtitles are gathered, lives are forged into magic, tragedy ensues but more for the annoying faeries, and even after tragedy, there can be love. Even if it’s all het (I don’t think Gingell writes anything else?)

Words: FAIL.

Played: Lancer. This time we actually played! Skill rolls were made, dissent among the less-enlightened polity was exploited, and mechs slugged it out in the gravityless, low-pressure tunnels of a military base that should have been abandoned. Interrogating the prisoners from that got us information that fulfills our basic mission goal, but there’s a lot more slugging that needs to be done. Like every version of D&D, Lancer invents new terminology for the same concepts and randomly changes things around, but it’s still turn-based tactical combat on a grid. I didn’t find it as annoying as Gloomhaven, at least?

Words: Check.

The cleaner was efficient this time, so I managed to go grocery shopping and only then implode into a useless lump. There is still plague of all flavors all over everywhere and especially at Ayse and Ken’s, so no visiting. I was on call for the afternoon, but nothing happened.

Played: Zoomwarts. We were not very focused; I blame Jus’s new phone or maybe my old brain. We got some drama, but Dumbledore retconned it. Surely this will not come back to haunt anyone at all.

Watched: Fena, Pirate Princess 1-2: You’d think a show called “Pirate Princess” would be more kid-friendly, but the first episode has a brothel and rape threats and numerous murders. After that, it seems to mellow out.

Read: Broken Blade (JC Daniels): After being kidnapped and tortured in the previous book, the main character puts herself back together, partially with the help of friends but mostly because there’s a really big problem that needs her special murderizing.

Words: Check.

Coworker k is out sick, but fortunately the customers have calmed down after the past couple of day, so nobody died. Much.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Wrapup and XP and Sanity Rez and Lucidity, and now a new problem, this one coming from a distant branch of the glorious constellation that is Chi. But how much trouble can the study of philosophy and linguistics cause?

Read: I’ll Be The One (Lyla Lee): A Korean-American teenagers enters a K-pop reality show competition because fatphobes can DIAF. Sadly, this will take a lot of kindling even though she is very good at singing and dancing and has somewhat supportive friends. There is a ridiculously cute boy and delicious tacos, and also a horrible mother.

Words: FAIL.

On call all day, but the customers did not attack. Since I could not go grocery shopping, I was completely useless all day.

Stayed up too late reading: Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky): The elements are not new: immense alien forces that destroy planets, FTL travel that has bad effects on human minds, humans modified to deal with hyperspace, untranslatable aliens, ruins of lost civilizations, etc. But they are well done, and hang together, and the humans are stupid in exactly the ways humans are stupid, and the aliens aren’t random, they obviously have something that works for them, and the various plot elements are connected, and probably will turn out to be even more unified in later books. I stayed up until 3:00 reading it, anyway.

Played: Zoomwarts, still with zoom. Bella and Rosamund both have dates to the holiday party, although Bella might get murdered by Slytherins first.

Words: check.

More customer calls, also my apartment is too sweaty. But at least I don’t have to commute to get here!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. We successfully retrieved the Maltese Ansible from Goopy the Nope, at the loss of only fork of Njall, and it was a pretty metal way to die. Next session, denouement, and then we have to figure out what to do next.

Read: Between Cases and Between Decisions (WR Gingell): I’m sure everyone except me saw all of that coming, but at least now Pet knows where she stands with regards to a bunch of people, including Past Pet. The next book isn’t out for weeks, though!

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom vol 4 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): The end of the game, but apparently not the end of the manga!

Words: FAIL.

I was on call all day, so I couldn’t do things like ride the bus to go shopping or visit Ayse and Ken (I mean, technically I could, I have a phone, but it would be superannoying to get called while on the bus). I guess it builds character? That would explain why I managed to make a Lancer character. I couldn’t find a good picture on Pinterest, though. My ability to find things on the Internets is not very great.

Played: Zoomwarts, with actual Zoom. There was lots of drama, but Bella still doesn’t have a date for the party, because she missed her chance! Well, maybe she can convince a boy who already has a date to dump her in favor of Bella.

Words: Check.

Meeting with the new boss3 where I got to give my opinions, meaningless as they are in the face of capitalism. (I mean, she seems perfectly nice, but her job title is three letters beginning with C, so as good labor, I must be skeptical.)

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Even more body horror plus nanoplagues and unrecoverable victims. The inorganic members of the party have gone back in to try to accomplish the remaining mission objectives, but everything is doomed.

Read: The Witch and the Beast vol 5-6 (Kousuke Satake): A flashback to when Ashaf and Gideau first met (yes, Gideau was worse, impossible as that may be to believe), and then back in the main plotline, they take the elevator to Vampiretown. Sexualized as these vampires may be, Gideau is not impressed.

Read: The Archived (Victoria Schwab): A girl who has spent most of her life training to live a secret life as a ghost hunter in an afterlife of extremely unclear origin, purpose, and functioning discovers that this may not be the best way to live her actual life or solve the mystery or get any of the cute boys to like her.

Words: FAIL.

Jeremy and Rachel have a new small curly dog, who was initially very mistrustful but I won him over by a combination of not eating him and also giving him scritches. Doge victory!

Played: Grand finale of Edie’s D&D game before she and Hazel go off to college and find newer, better gamers instead of ones that tell the same jokes. We defeated the big enemy, did not set the entire world on fire (sorry Tobinel!), and ended on what I’m told is an Agents of SHIELD reference. Maybe we’ll pick back up next summer, but apparently now Dave is going to run Lancer.

Read: Crush (Svetlana Chmakova): Sequel to Awkward and Brave, following the tribulations of yet another 8th-grader seen in previous volumes. This is the one about crushes and romance and dating, but also mostly about friends and jerks and bullying and internet security and not knowing what to do about life.

Words: Check.

I made it home in plenty of time to game because the bus was just late enough that I could catch it instead of sadly watching it pull away, but I would have been in time even without.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Well, at least we found out what happened to the crew? That’s something, right?

Read: Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir): It was very much what it was, which I guess it not a surprise to anyone who’s heard of The Martian, but I liked where it went with the fundamental idea.

Read: Devil’s Candy vol 1 (Rem, Bikkuri): Many magic high-school manga leave me meh, but I liked this one. Possibly because although the characters are mostly doofuses, they’re sincere doofuses, or because the world-building notes are pro-knowledge/anti-superstition, or because eldritch horrors are definitely the best judges for a fashion show. Apparently it’s a webcomic, so I can read more without waiting for paper to happen.

Words: FAIL.

Good thing I’m working from home again, because there was an even larger all-hands meeting early this morning. As usual, little information was conveyed. Then the customers attacked, but I cruelly abandoned my coworkers to go have cells sucked out of my neck. It was not particularly painful, except the part where I have to wait a week to find out if my thyroid is trying to kill me.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Yep, Iapetus is full of Nopes. One of them shot the Chi in the good body, but he survived. Njall and GML found some creepy stuff in the ship, and are going to poke it with a stick next time.

Read: The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious vol 1 (Wakame Konbu): The maid is hot and good at her job and works for only room and board, so the orphaned young master is certain she’s up to something. Embarrassment ensues. The maid probably is mysterious, since her eyes and a select few of her emoting effects are printed in reddish-purple instead of black and white.

Read: Bec and Blood Beast (Darren Shan): More backstory, then more modern consequences involving madness, body horror, violence, and death.

Words: FAIL

It is too hot out.

Played: Edie’s D&D game, in Edie’s new house. The new place is about 900% less annoying to get to, and probably also about 900% larger. It has the same combined living room-dining room-kitchen with island as the Petterson’s new place, so it has a very familiar vibe despite being full of boxes. Also it was full of gaming munchies and ridiculous refrigerators and gamers (but not Rue, they were at camp). After a lot of house talk from the grownups, we played what turns out to be the penultimate episode of Edie’s game, in which our attempts to learn the gnolls’ side of the story are in vain and we just have to murder them. We did find a larger camp, with what looks like a gang boss of gang bosses of gnolls, so probably that will be the climactic fight of the campaign.

Words: Check, although the way I’m counting words for editing is not very rigorous.

I really do mean to walk to grocery shopping, but maybe not until fall.

Played: Zoomwarts! This time it was NPCs dueling over Harry and Bella got to be mature. But she still owes the mermaid two arms or a huge pile of jewels, and the new potions professor is still up to something, and the Holiday Party is still impending!

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 19-20: Yona’s primary stat is definitely Bravery, or maybe Loyalty.

Eaten: Thai food! Ken is not here to cook, he is off hiking somewhere, so we ordered in.

Played: Super Mario Party, or at least like six of the zillion minigames. I was terrible at them, which is only to be expected from an old person who rarely plays video games, but it was fun.

Read: Over the Woodward Wall (A Deborah Baker): It’s a little like Oz, only more Seanan McGuire and philosophical and faerie bargains, and also it pretty much ends halfway through the story and the next book won’t be out until this fall!

Words: FAIL.

I successfully went shopping, although I did not walk there, so that was like an accomplishment but not really? Also I ate a lunch that was not horrifying.

Played: Zoomwarts. A new love interest for Bella! A new reason to skulk about the secret passages of Hogwarts! Catalog shopping! Lizard drama!

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 17-18: You know, he has a point. And his boss is awesome.

Watched (by somebody, not me): Kaleido Star 5. I had to play Bloons TD 6 with Nonny and his parents.

Read: Dear Noman vol 2 (Neji): The end! It was fundamentally a ghost story, so the ending was always going to be sad, but it was hopeful too.

Words: Check, ish.

I can’t complain too much about work with a two-day work week, but I can be completely useless! Surprise: it’s new coworker S’s last day, she has to be a SAHM. Less surprise: boss A is on maternity leave after today, more or less.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. EP is really about 80% careful preparation by weight, but we managed to recover some of the casualties of the group the person we’re looking for was with, and got a little information out of them. Also, we avoided getting eaten by the horrible Exsurgent monster, so yay us.

Read: I Swear I Won’t Bother You Again! vol 1 (Reina Soratani, Haru Harukawa): Kind of like My Life as a Villainess but without isekai elements. While rotting in prison for the attempted murder of her illegitimate half-sister, a noblewoman wishes she had it all to do over again, and finds herself a year in the past. Her plan to help, rather than hinder, her half-sister and the prince getting together so she can retreat to a convent to do no more harm is definitely getting derailed by the fact that social interactions are a chaotic system.

Read: Gearbreakers (Zoe Hana Mikuta): Cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic mecha story of love, revenge, betrayal, murder, and other fun stuff. The technical bits are pretty ridiculous (because mecha) but it is very dramatic. If there were less torture, I might recommend it to Jus.

Words: FAIL.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Because this is a game that does not have mechanics for flashbacks (and because Kelsey had been drinking all day), we spent most of the session discussing preparations for Iapetus, but did get there and see what we’re going in to by the end.

Read: Tunnel of Bones (Victoria Schwab): Our main character and her ghost go to Paris, which is also extremely haunted, and find even more terrible ghosts there, but at least they have someone to phone for advice. Pity about the reception in the catacombs.

Read: Drugstore in Another World vol 2 (Kennoji, Eri Haruno): Unnecessary drama, some mod-cons. Probably not worth continuing.

Words: FAIL.

Played: Edie’s D&D game. Jeremy and Rachel were doing something non-gaming-related, but Edie is perfectly capable of feeding gamers on her own and also sending creepy-crawlies to ambush PCs just because they’re completely incapable of remaining quiet when interesting mushrooms and flammable deadwood are around. We also found the gnolls that are oppressing our new friends the thri-kreen, and they don’t seem to have their own side of the story to tell unless you count grunting and howling, so I guess we need to deal harshly with them. We did get a prisoner, at least, so we can interrogate it next session, which will be at the new Gollub place much closer to Dave and I. In fact, after going to Palo Alto for gaming for like twenty years, I think this was the last time we will make that trek. The end of an era!

Read: The Tale of the Outcasts vol 1 (Makoto Hoshino): A mostly-invisible demon and an exploited urchin girl become friends in Victorian England.

Words: FAIL. What kind of excuse is “used up all energy going to gaming in Palo Alto” anyway?

The cleaners came and cleaned Marith’s old room. Now I could use it for something, if I were competent and energetic. But I’m not, so I went grocery shopping and ate some lunch and gave Marith her swamp cooler, and eventually went to Ken and Ayse’s. I had not realized it before, but Truffle has sporadic white hairs in her black coat to go with the white spot on her tummy, so she is a Night Sky Kitten!

Played: Zoomwarts. I should probably have sent in a Death Eater with a wand to focus things, but Bella was sufficiently oppressed, I think. The lizards got some leads on how to get arms for the mermaid, at least.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 15-16: Uh oh, the new king is surprisingly competent!

Played: Squirt gun battle! Nonny finished me off by emptying the magazine of one of the large squirt guns over me, so I was pretty much the soggiest. I had to borrow a towel to sit on before Marith would let me ride in her car again.

Not watched by me: Kaleido Star 4. Jus and Marith and maybe Dave watched it, though, so that’s fine.

Words: check, somehow.

Felt reasonably productive at work, although probably it’s not true. And then in a feat of unrivaled dexterity, I yanked my arm robot right off, even though it had like four days left. Sigh.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Gaming is on Thursday now! We finished deciding what to do with the treasure monster from the current adventure, now that Kelsey is here, and immediately moved on to visiting the TITAN-haunted ruins of Iapetus to look for a missing coconspirator, because that is guaranteed to end well.

Words: FAIL.

The water to the building exploded in the middle of the night, so there was no washing of any kind until the end of the work day. I used this excuse to get lunch out, because why not? Apparently the water will also be out for part of tomorrow to install a more permanent fix, but at least we have warning this time.

I did not succeed in doing more than the most trivial amount of work, because my brain is too small.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Apparently we can argue forever about the most ethical and practical course of action, but in the interests of fun, we decided to foist the AI off on some other Firewall people. (Maybe we could have come up with a better solution if we had been able to make Research rolls, but Kelsey was busy being oppressed by hierarchical capitalism.) Next week: maybe something else!

Read: Lagoonfire (Francesca Forrest): The decomissioner from “The Inconvenient God” gets into another mess, and we see that her government is every bit as horrible as hinted at, and also she has a Backstory.

Words: FAIL.

Today was full of walking in the excessive heat, but at least I got to play D&D? This was the second session of Edie’s summer campaign, and we finally met the local sophonts, who want to get us involved in their war against the other local sophonts. This is bound to go well. Also we fought some ugly monsters, which would have worked better if I had remembered my character takes only half damage from being clobbered/stabbed/sliced while hopped up on combat drugs.New theory: I don’t like D&D not because of the binary resolution or stat-centricness, but because I’m not smart enough to play it. Anyway, after walking back in the heat, I walked around some more trying to grocery shop and get chicken strips for dinner, and then was a useless melted lump for the entire evening.

Words: check.

I think I made a customer happy today, although I did not exactly fix their problem. I’ll call it a victory, anyway. Decided not to join From Written To Recommended because I no longer have any delusions that I could someday write something worth publishing. Ordered a new toaster oven so I can give the old one to Marith for her new apartment.

Read: Eniale & Dewiela vol 3 (Kamome Shirahama): More hijinks, Eniale defends her love of fashion, Dewiela almost gets away with something, they’re still friends (somehow), the end!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2: I think we’re about done here, as we have found a suitable disposition for the alarming artifact we discovered, which should protect transhumanity without infringing on any person’s rights. Next session: we go somewhere creepy! Gaming might be moving to Thursday nights. We talked about in-person, but we’re so spread-out and carless that it might not be feasible.

Words: FAIL.