Showing posts with label roleplaying games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roleplaying games. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Freeze Warning...and now it's over

We actually had low temps in the 20s (Fahrenheit) this past weekend. And today the high was in the low to mid 60s. Yep, that's autumn in NC.

I'm still trying to get the photos off my iPad. I took some pictures for my Indie+ game jam entry and resorted to posting them to a private G+ list and pulling them from there. I wrote a game based on barbecue and kind of anime battle shojo. Sort of. It's a cross between a tabletop rpg and a dice game. The materials are easy, scrap paper or index cards, dice, writing implement, and imagination. I've posted the game and game contest rules at the end, so you don't have to read them unless you make an effort.

There's been a problem with a leak outside my office for more than a year. They patch it, they work on it, they patch the wall, and the leak reappears. The leak got really bad recently, to the point another office was flooded. Monday, they took a jackhammer to the hall floor. And I started the day with a migraine. The jackhammer and drill noises did not help. But migraine meds however, did.

Our Saturday Mermaids game got canceled. So C and I went to see Doctor Strange (not Dr. Strange) in 3D. We hit the matinee so it was a scoche cheaper. 

I've had my 1st follow-up physical therapy appointment. My next one is tomorrow. The 1st PT appointment is to set a baseline and course of treatment, so in some ways it doesn't count. I've been doing the stretches and exercises and ooof, my knee hurts.



Your Vinegar is no match for My Organic Vine-Ripened Heritage Tomato!

A game of battling barbecue chefs in a manga-style cooking contest, using a set of polyhedral dice, a minimum of three players, a pen, and an index card for each player. The number of dice will govern the number of rounds of play. Sample barbecue cuisines: Western NC, Eastern NC, Memphis, Kansas City, Texas, Vietnamese, Korean.

Each player writes what order they plan to roll their dice along one side of the index card and the other player names across the top. They can also write the name of their barbecue sauce on the back of the index card.

Example: Mary, John, Rich, and Joyce are playing and they decide to use the set of 6 polyhedral dice.

Mary's card has the name of her barbecue on the back and on the front she writes d4, d10, d8, d20, d12, and d6 down the left of the card. Across the top she writes John, Rich, and Joyce.
Photo:

John's card – different die order
Photo:

Each player chooses a barbecue variant and the challenge begins. The players can select who goes first is or they can roll for it. The players go in order of roll; highest goes first and lowest goes last.

The player opens with some aspect of their chosen barbecue (heat, sweetness, tartness, etc) and the other chef(s) counter with an aspect of their own.
Example; Mary: “Your sauce is no match for the heat of my Texas Swagger Barbecue!”
Rich: “Ha, your heat is no match for the sweet of my Memphis Morass Molasses.”
Joyce: Neither of you can possibly defeat my tart Vietnamese Phi Pho Phum!”
John: “And none of you can equal my savory Brazilian Bangkok Bites!”

This establishes the key notes and theme of each barbecue (which may or may not bear a resemblance to real barbecue recipes/cuisines). The players counter each others' ingredients, complete with grandiose titles. Recommended, each player has a maximum of two minutes to describe their ingredient. Other players make a note under the round's row and the player's name for the description they liked the best or they thought best fit the sauce's theme.

Example: Mary is making Texas Swagger Barbecue so she has that written on the back of her card. Her first ingredient is Ghost Town Ghost Peppers. John likes that description and think it fits both the heat aspect and the Texas theme.
Photo:
They each roll a die. Each player writes down their result. They continue in rounds until every die size is used. Each vote for an ingredient gives a bonus to the die roll for that round.

Example: On the third round Joyce uses the ingredient Transparent Vietnamese Pho Noodles Cooked in Lemon Juice. John thinks it's a boring name but it fits the theme better than the others that round.
Photo:
The one who wins the most rounds wins the game.

If there is tie, then have a tie-breaker: the secret ingredient round. Each tied player should take a few minutes to create and pitch their sauce's secret ingredient. The other player(s) vote on the best description

Variant: die size governs how long the player has to describe their ingredient, with the longer die giving the player more time.

Optional: write the down the ingredients, complete with grandiose descriptions and look at the resulting recipes.



Announcing

Indie+ Game Jam - Let’s Get Cooking!

This is a game Jam where the purpose is to make an RPG about Cooking.

Theme: You have to involve cooking in some fashion. Whether it’s a short game where you describe sumptuous feasts from prompts, a game where you pass recipes down generations, or an adventure game where you’re hunting down a rare ingredient for a dish in a dangerous locale - as long as it involves cooking in some fashion it’s good.

Specifications: You should have a complete game, aiming to be short (around 2 pages) but no longer than 4 pages in length.

Time: You will have 60 days to complete your project (final submissions are due midnight 11/13/2016 EST). If you are interested comment in the post below, and post in the Indie+ Community if you need help, ideas, or someone to try out your game!

How to submit: Post your entry in the Game Jam Entries category in the Indie+ community!

Purpose: Whatever you submit will be collected, and shared among all the creators, and put up as PWYW on DriveThruRPG with all profits being put forward to the IGDN scholarship fund.

Monday, August 01, 2016

#RPGaDay, a month-long interjection into my regular blog

From http://www.brigadecon.org/rpgaday2016


Inspired by http://scmusing.blogspot.com/2016/08/rpgaday-dice-dice-baby.html

As any of my readers can tell, I play tabletop RPGs. And I have done since (dramatic pause) last century!

1st question: August 1: Do you prefer to use real dice, a dice application or program, or use a diceless system? 

I'd have to go real dice. I have gotten dice to 'match' a particular character, like green and brown ones for the earth cleric. Plus, I've played West End Star Wars, Shadowrun and Champions, all of which require literal bricks of d6s; not to mention White Wolf and Legend of the 5 Rings which both needed at least 10 d10s. When I was running Ironclaw at cons, I had a bag of dice to share with players. Each die type (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, no d20) was a different color, to make instruction easier ('you need to roll the blue and the red dice'). Not to mention, I have Fate Dice, too.

I currently have multiple bags of dice. There are several pretty dice, dice I bought because I just felt I needed new dice, specialized dice (see FATE games) and 'emergency dice' because I forgot my dice bag. In addition, some cons and stores have dice made with their logo on one of the faces.

Dice applications or programs don't give the same sensory input. And since I don't usually know the programmers, I don't know whether I can trust their work to be truly random.

I have very rarely played diceless systems, so I don't have a good feel for them. I have played games that used cards to supplement the dice. 

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Out to supper last night (with update)

So I didn't get my blog written. I spent this past weekend with Mom (and I did find 6 garments to cull from my wardrobe).

The presentation went pretty well. I skipped a few things but I think I retained enough interest. And the director wants information from it to be in the quarterly department newsletter. I gave the 3-page presentation, including the parts I didn't cover, to the communication director.

I also went to an extended lunch and learn, sponsored by the Women's Center. The topic was navigating gender bias in the workplace. It was part II. I haven't taken part I but I'm informed enough it didn't matter (thankfully).

But here's the game I'm playing via Google Hangouts on Sunday evenings (link goes to description). It's not published yet, so I guess I'm part of the play test. I'm playing a master weaver, and grandmother. Most of her family was killed but she has one granddaughter, from another village, who has come to live with her. Sulveig, my character, is very focused on the future of her family and the secrets of weaving she has to share. I missed this past Sunday's game, for reasons.

Coming home from visiting mom was, I was going to say interesting, but that's wrong. It was boring. Boring. Boring. Which is better than being interesting. My hour plus drive took three hours because of multiple accidents. Last I heard, there were 130+ cars involved, at least 9 separate accidents, 21 people taken for medical treatment, and about 6 miles of highway closed to incoming traffic. At one point, I rolled down the shoulder-side windows, turned off my car, and read a book. Some bad storms moved through but I never got hit, while I was in the car.
See the rainbow? We were still moving occasionally at this point

We had stopped moving by this point
I think it was soon after this, I turned off my car
There were also two guys who ran past me on the shoulder; no idea where they went or what they were doing. I only saw one non-emergency vehicle on the shoulder, and that car was backing up to get to the exit ramp.

And if anyone has an empty bead tube like this, I'd like them. My mom wants them. I'll be emptying these beds into another container so I can give her this tube. I went and bought this tube at JoAnne's after doing early voting on Friday.

Employee Forum meeting was yesterday. I took these pictures on the way back.
Last night I drove to Raleigh to meet friends for supper. A friend who moved out of the area and I've only seen her a couple times since came back for a week. This is what I saw in the drive.
Note the line of cars
A 40 minute drive in rush hour took over an hour. It was more slow and go than full stops though.

And this picture I took today. This is one of the pollen culprits.

Friday, January 03, 2014

Happy New Year (Gregorian reckoning)

It's a new (Gregorian) year and what has changed? Not really much. I'm still tatting, and gaming, and occasionally loom knitting. My niece will be going off to college in the fall and my namesake is a provisional black belt in tai kwon do.

R is running Dragon's Demand, a Pathfinder module, when all the players can't make her Forgotten Realms, DandD 3.5 home game. When her home game is done, I'll run the Pathfinder Adventure Path Skull and Shackles.

Interesting links I've come across recently:
Netflix micro-genres (pay attention to the block at the top)
Body Atlas reveals emotions

I've gotten more involved in Pinterest and in the Google+ community. My mom has recovered, about as much as she's going to, after her broken elbow last year. She just had cataract surgery before Thanksgiving and she says she no longer needs glasses, except to read. Which is disconcerting because she's been wearing glasses for decades.

If I remember, I'll come back and add some pictures from my new iPad. My camera died. Then so did the replacement camera I picked up used. Now my iPad is my only camera. It takes pretty good pictures, but it's a little awkward.


Friday, September 24, 2010

Siteseeing, Family Matters, and Games I Play

Do you sometimes feel awkward about people in wheelchairs or with service animals? Here's a serious, albeit sarcastic, etiquette guide.

Time to hit the local farmer's market this weekend. They're gathering food for the local food banks.


 I'm still looking for a frame/mat/something to display my heart doily. So far, no luck. I have Saturday, and that's about it. Cross your fingers that I'll find something suitable. Next weekend I'll be busy (no time for craft/etc shopping) and weekend after that the birthday and; State Fair preparations start (and oh, the entry is DUE).

I'm almost finished the cross bookmark that I'm taking to the family reunion on Sunday. There are door prizes and I try to tat something every time that I go. I will be the only representative of my granddaddy's line who'll be there (unless one of my cousins surprises me). My mom is with her older sisters celebrating the 80th birthday of the younger one this weekend. Of course, those cousins will be at their mom's party. My other cousins are out of state.

I volunteered a snowflake for a charity auction. I need to finish that, too. I swear, I didn't think about the deadlines or over extending myself.

The Dresden Files games were so much fun. We entertained ourselves, the Storyteller (or whatever the GM is called in that game) and the other players. There were 2 tables and the players mixed up some, so we didn't play with the same people all three games. In one game, our (C, R & I) sailors made friends with another PC who was very, very rich. He had an aspect (game-relevant descriptor) about 'wants to believe, but doesn't'. It was our PCs who 'broke' that aspect. I don't remember what we did, but I think it was when C's character put a glamour up to hide us as we broke into a house (to look for clues, nothing nefarious). Suddenly, Wayne (the character) couldn't see the other characters. Player sighed, picked up an eraser & started erasing and re-writing. Anyway, while riding in his limo, we suggested that he get a cannon. In the next game (though he was at a different table), he did! Our characters have a small cannon, complete with stone shot. No powder, though.

Oh, our characters? They're all sailors from the Flying Dutchman, stranded on shore leave. My character is the oldest; she's 250+. Yes, she remembers the political upheaval of the 1770's. I could go on, but there's a reason 'No, I don't want to hear about your character' is such a popular button.

I volunteered to run 3 games at Mace. I'm running one Ironclaw (either 1st or 2nd ed), 1 Spirit of the Century and 1 Pathfinder Society. But I'm being mightily tempted to run a 4th game; Hellcats & Hockeysticks. I blame the game's author.