Dungeons Anonymous

I have a problem. The Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG has all sorts of fun tables and charts and weird gameplay going on, so it's not like I had much of a choice. Also for page count the cost was pretty reasonable. And all the pictures of bell–bottomed wizards with sick belt buckles just added to the pot. My rationalization knows no bounds. I think I got a total of 10 pages into the PDF before I ordered the damn thing.

Ye Olde Gayme

The LotFP turned ACKS game died a swift death last Friday night, culminating in a total party kill. A couple things likely promoted us deciding not to continue on with new characters. One was a disconnect between my desire to focus on running a strictly old school game and what the players likely were interested in playing. The other was me not having the time outside of play to learn the rules to the degree that my desire for rules accuracy necessitated. We had a good time when we focused on the game, I think, but the frequent moments when I turned to the book to make sure we got the rules right got in the way of the overall enjoyment. For me, and I assume for everyone else. I still want to do some old school stuff but I think me running it, beyond a one-shot maybe, will have to wait until I have the free time to get after it the way I want to.

Impending travel to Carl-Bad caused me to write up some quick rules for a Halo game. And before the comments about free time pop up, it was generally done during downtime at work. The rules feel like a mashup, maybe, of Lady Blackbird and Dungeon Squad. We'll see if Ross and I can fit in some time to try them out.

Man Date Movie Night

Alex and I; Cabin in the Woods. One probable gauge of our enjoyment of this move was the amount of snarky comments made during the show. These were considerably less than with
WotT. Pretty good movie overall. And the unicorn cracked me up. Sharing the theater with only a couple of other dudes, just the way I like it.

6 Years

Yesterday was Carrie and I's six year anniversary. We celebrated by leaving Owen and Paige with Mom and heading up to a spa in T or C. A night (and maybe more importantly the next morning) of quiet was great. We soaked in hot mineral pools, had a nice dinner out, and just all around relaxed. Stopped by Sparky's in Hatch on the way back for some delicious BBQ. Carrie planned us a nice break from the constant go-go-go of parenthood.

A/C Nostalgia

Summer time in Mississippi can be miserable. As a kids, spending summers there visiting family, I tended not to notice it as much. One vivid memory from those days is running in from playing out in the sweltering heat and thrusting my face right up to the A/C vent. Whether kneeling in front of Mo Waldon's window unit, or laying down on the floor of Mo Raybelle's trailer, cool washes of conditioned air across my face always take me back to those days. The A/C we had installed this winter has kicked in in a big way of late. Those memories have been ever present of late.

ACKS & ack!

Last Friday we switched from Lamentations of the Flame Princess to Adventurer Conqueror King, keeping the same characters. Ben swapped from an expert to an explorer, Amy from an elf to an elven spellsword. Most of what like about LotFP lies in the setting it evokes, no necessarily the rules. ACKS seems more focused on the potential economics at work in a traditional D&D setting. We'll see how that works out, but given the focus in old school games on $=XP… Part of me, though, feels bad that we're not playing Dungeon World. Add to that D&D Next open playtesting starts up in less than a month. Gaming! There's always something new to play with.

Barleycorms

Carrie, at some distant point in our past, was partial only to sweet (often cloyingly so) wines. Unfortunately while partial to them she didn't want to drink them very often. And so we found our wine rack and pantry filling up with Rieslings, Gewurtztraminers, and the like. I, being partial to not looking at the same wine bottles forever, decided to take it upon myself to slowly devour these overly sweet beverages. I made it through two bottles before neglecting my duty. I decided this weekend to get back after it. Made it through half a bottle of Relax Riesling before dumping the rest down the drain. Some wines are just worth it, apparently. This was the same wine Jon and Carrie slammed one New Years because they couldn't stand to drink it any other way. Not as bad as all that, I think, but not good for much beyond a headache either.

In other boozy news, I finally got around to starting my second batch of homebrew. Hopefully this one will taste better than the first.