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August2005

Pewter Casting, 21st's, The Future is Dumplings

16 August 2005

Spent Saturday morning running errands (spent Outer Limits voucher to buy a Chinese card game called Gang of Four, thanks P and J, then acquired 21st present). Did pewter casting with Eckhard on Saturday afternoon (I'm working on a cloak clasp / brooch, Confluence is doing an Evenstar type pendant). The evening was Kate's 21st. Also managed to catch most of Wicked City's and some of The Sleepers' gigs at Cool Runnings in Obs. Followed by serious discussion of the fate of roleplaying in Cape Town.

Neil and Kevin came over on Sunday and we tried out Gang of Four as well as Munchkin Fu II which Neil bought for me in the US. The Munchkin Fu expansion is awesome - I haven't been this keen to play Munchkin since our first game of Epic. The Illuminati expansion Neil bought for himself wasn't quite as exciting but was still fun. Kevin brought along The Totally Renamed Spy Game in which I was ownzzorred by everyone else. :)

In other voucher spending, this time courtesy of J, we acquired dumpling (specifically pierogi) molds, a garlic crusher and a julienning tool. The latter items have already speeded up the cooking process immensely and we know from the previous experience that the molds are vital for any kind of mass dumpling production.

Dragonfire Carnival Round-up

8 August 2005

Dragonfire is done for another year. The roleplaying side was small but not much down from the last few years. I don't think any module had less than five teams and Unknown Armies had the most teams with about seven groups playing. CLAWmarks was shorter than in recent times but probably the most polished since the Mark era. Disappointly there were no mugs or other merchandising, apparently because of trouble with the mug printers. The big plus was the large number of first years about and involved with organising - I think CLAWs' future is safe for the next few years. Overall things ran smoothly and only about an hour behind schedule.

See the official website for module blurbs, etc.

Roleplaying

• The Carnival (Cthulhu): This was a five player module so Adrianna and split up and played with two established teams. I joined Sun-Shiney Happy Vampires (Dave, Mels, Hila, Roo) while Adrianna teamed-up with Castor Sugar (Dave, Lara, Laura, Alan). Four of the PCs are children. Thankfully I got to play the lone adult - I've developed a severe dislike for playing 'normal' children under the age of 12. The module had a relatively typical take on the demented carnival theme but with a number of nice touches and twists. Al was really cool as our keeper (he does mad zombie clowns well) and as a group we got in to things and played off each other nicely. Along with Mein Zombie, definitely the session I enjoyed most.
• Cirque des Enfants Oubliés (Unknown Armies): Definitely the tournaments weekest module, mostly because the character backgrounds were extremely sparse. In its defense, I've heard that the character sheets were lost the day before and had to be re-written from memory. The module also suffered from having a lot of shared elements with The Carnival which was still fresh in everyones minds (clowns, mirrors, masks, children). Adrianna and I were roped into DMing at the last second. I was given the group of first years (Beth, Chris, Charl, Warren) who turned out to all be really decent roleplayers and a lot of fun to DM (if I sound surprised it's only because I remember what I and many other CLAWmembers were like at that age :). As a DM I struggled to keep the party together and found the UA system a bit awkward (what do these stupid skill names mean!?). Attempting to fill in missing elements and edit the module details to be less like the previous one was also something of a strain. Not my best GMing ever, but mostly okay. As a side effect my voice was fucked for the rest of the weekend. :)
• Finishing a Sentence (GURPS): A fairly interesting organised crime module with a Noir feel. A lot of people seemed to feel it was the best of the CON, although my personal preference was for Mein Zombie. Adrianna and I teamed up with the overflow from Thurteem (Shelagh and Patrick). As a group we never really clicked into top gear. Partially I think we were just a bit tired (LARPs went on late) but the world also didn't really come alive for us (not sure if this was the module or the DM).
• Mein Zombie (All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Witchcraft): My vote for best module and along with the The Carnival the session I enjoyed most. Adrianna and I formed a team with Rolf and Anton and I felt the two of us played of each other quite nicely as the parents. Anton did a nice job of playing Claire, the teenage daughter, but Rolf didn't really seem to get in to his role as Paul, the son. Mike was awesome as our GM. I sometimes find his style a bit over the top, but in the case of a module with hordes of Scottish zombies dressed as Nazi's one can't really fault it. :)

LARPs, Card-gaming and Wargaming

Feather Fall, the LARP which I didn't play in, seemed to go off quite smoothly. The players I questioned afterwards generally had good things to say. The impression I got from Michelle was that the run revealed a few bugs but that overall it ran okay.

Adrianna and I played in Titanica 2, Tim's new LARP. I felt a number of characters could do with some tweaking (mostly tying outlying characters more firmly to others in the LARP and foreshadowing the big event with a lot). Most players seemed to enjoy themselves and I think overall its a fairly decent LARP.

Magic and wargaming were both contracted out this year.

Philip (and Jo) handled the Magic. Saturday was poorly attended, especially considering that first prize was an entire box of boosters. On Sunday the new pre-release tournament to some extent made up for it but there wasn't turnout for the weekend wasn't massive.

Wargaming was organised by a group from the southern suburbs (I'm not sure exactly who they were) but it seemed very well attended.

A Munchkin tournament ran on Friday night. Didn't here much about it although there was some talk of 'If only I'd equipped the Spikey Kneepads instead, I could have...', at the afterparty.

Prizegiving and Afterparty

Mike cleaned up winning Best GM for all the modules, except for Mein Zombie where he tied for first place with Garrick. Sun-shiny Happy Vampires and Castor Sugar split the awards for Best Team, taking two each. Thurteem can consider themselve unlucky to have taken close second in almost all the modules. I won best player for Cthulhu, Roo took best player in the GURPs module and Hendri won best player for All Flesh.

The somewhat traditional discussion of scoring systems yielded an interesting suggestion (apparently from Alex) of having a rank from one to ten with very high scores and very low scores only being accepted if justified by a comment. I think it'd be nice to test run it a Schpatcon this year (which will take place in early December or late November and be a small one day affair).

Two In a Row

4 August 2005

Still a little short on sleep after Dave and Kate came over and played Cavetroll (which we have on loan from Lucas) until 1:00. It plays much better when one uses the actual rules.

Today at work I've been hashing out more details of our alternative splicing project with Oliver. Lots of graph stuff! :)

Boing, Boing

3 August 2005

I've rediscovered Cory Doctorow's blog, Boing Boing and my coffee mug has returned from its adventures. CLAWmarks33 is done. I'm sleepy but handling it. Scheduled to talk on computational complexity in two hours. It is a good morning. ---- (:commentboxchrono:)