weekend antics, anyone?

[mercurial]

do anything good with yourselves these last couple of days, netphoria? i had a fantastic time.

while friday was your more run-of-the-mill hit the pub after work, drink too much, tell the local union rep-wannabe politician arseholes that they're a bunch of motherfuckers and i'm my own government, get hit on by a super sleazy gay man, go home and polish off the remaining whisky sort of evening...

saturday was great, i felt like a teenager

5 of us filled our backpacks with beers (22 in mine at the start, none by the end)
got hold of bicycles
rode around the streets practically all night
drinking beers
listening to tunes on these ipod speaker things attached to my friends pannier rack
dropped in on three different parties
made friends with super-babe russian lesbian at one of them
she rolled the best joints ever for all of us
heard way too much MJ at every one of these house parties. bandwagon arseholes
on our knees in a some toilet, doing lines of speed off the backs of our hands. 5 people keepin it classy in the one toilet... no easy feat.
graffed the fridges
kept riding around
ended up back at my mates house at 4am
whisky night caps
lounge room disco till the sun was rising
fell asleep in her lounge ... woke up at 2pm sunday without even so much as a hangover.

so much damn fun.

... and so enough about me. what did you goons get up to? got a good story?

[samuel redman]

i met somebody specialllll

[Mooney]

i went skinny dipping for the first time at around 4a.m. saturday morning. the embarrassing part is that everyone else had bathing suits.

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by Mooney

i went skinny dipping for the first time at around 4a.m. saturday morning. the embarrassing part is that everyone else had bathing suits.

hah! brilliant. how on earth did that eventuate?

this is the sort of thing we're after. great contribution moon boy.

[Joe]

none

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by samuel redman

i met somebody specialllll

i ran into more than a few retards.

[Rickpat12]

I stayed at my college over the summer and had a best friend come visit. He brought some of his buddies. A little over 10 people, 1 keg, 4 cases, bottle of patron, and 8 pizzas later...I realized it was after 7am. Most fun I've had in a while.

[noyen]

Went to my buddy’s house for our weekly D&D gaming session. We decided, in honor of the holiday weekend and the fact he was starting a two week vacation and I’m still out of work, to celebrate before the game with the ancient ritual of applying meat to fire. Burgers, Hot Dogs & Brauts for everyone, as well as a ton of junk food to keep everyone stuffed. Started the game late as we all fell into food comas and then a friend outside of the gaming circle dropped by for a spell.

When we finally indulged in some gaming and dice rolling, we wound up RP’ing most of the time. Shel finally let the cat of the bag; err, the Dragon out of the egg, in my campaign plot. We had decided, looking over the new rules of in Arcane Power for familliars, that we could allow the egg to hatch a Dragonling for her wizard. Technically, it was implied the other eggs they handed off in an earlier session to possibly help forge a weapon to kill Tiamat were considered dormant…but since the Wizard kept casting magic and tending to this egg, I figured we could say something came of it to create a familial spirit.

Still, it was funny I when I delivered the message to the other players — in the form of an Animal Messenger — saying “I had the egg, it’s hatched in my room and I don’t know where the Dragon is…..”

When they finally handled the “Dragonling” situation, and the rest of the party was convinced that the creature she had was neither evil and possibly quite beneficial to the party, they finally made way to the keep. They managed to get in the door and kill off the initial goblin guards no problem. At that point though, it was decided to be a stopping point since we were all tired from the food earlier. Bummer.

Saturday, May 23rd

I shouldn’t have eaten all that meat the night before. I think the fact I had a Taco Salad drowning in salsa at lunch prior1_preperationh also didn’t help the case. Sparing gruesome details, I woke up at 5AM with my arse on fire and sat on a pillow for the rest of the day. Damn it! Am I getting old or something? Are we not able to just chow down on greasy, disgusting meat flavor junk food anymore and stay up all night gaming and wake up the next morning ready for more action? Gah, I miss ten years ago.

Here’s my paradox…..I want to find work, but there’s none to be found. I want to game all the time with my friends, but I really should be looking for another job. I’ve thrown my application and resume everywhere across this damn town; a lot of our big places are either on hiring freezes or laying people off. Yet every time I spend a day gaming, I feel like I’m slacking off.

Henry Miller once wrote “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I’m the happiest man alive.”

I usually stand by that statement, thinking the best times in my life were when I was working crap jobs and getting by. But then I have to remember that was back when I was couch dwelling in a house full of college people, granted some of my bestest friends in the world to this day, but I was able to get away not paying rent as long as I GM’d every night. I think I went out and found work because after a couple months of running Vampire I was out of ideas and needed some time to think up the next plot…..

Sunday, May 24th

The previous night, I stayed up watching Fringe on Hulu and feeling like I was coming down with the flu. I was cold and shaking and aching and generally just miserable. I almost cancelled the gaming session for tonight again because I still felt like shit. But then, I finally got better and all was well. Saw some old friends of mine who dropped in from out of town, and then we got the phone call: My buddy fried up some home made burritos and wanted us to come over.

Despite the pain of the previous day, lo and beholdeth we went for it. Burritos were damn good. But the real fun was the ice cream sundaes we made. Mine was attrocious; apparently Dr. Pepper Cherry flavored syrup toppings with Whoppers flavored Hershey Syrup, when combined, emulates the flavor of a strong molasses. I felt like pouring my desert over a bowl of oatmeal. Instead though, we added a couple shots of Rum, and amazingly it made it bearable.

The game was a hoot. I decided a few things after a couple combat encounters, however:

1. As much as I love having a laptop and some PDF’s on hand so I don’t have to lug my books around, I think I actually am not a fan of running published adventures via PDF. I would rather have them in book form, because navigating a PDF and managing combat became cumbersome to me. An easy solution, of course, could be using some kind of software to keep track of combat, but I dunno….it just felt unnecessarily clunky.
2. At least for this gaming group, I don’t think we have time to run D&D modules the “hardcore” way. IE, keeping tracks of maps, rolling random encounters every x number of squares, setting up the play grid to scale with the maps provided in the adventure. My weekly group, due to jobs and kids, only has so much time on a weekly basis for us to play D&D. If I run it in standard form, oh my god we hardly get anything accomplished. I’ve decided from henceforth….I’m running in the “series of encounters” method. Instead of mapping out entire dungeons, which is time consuming enough, I’d rather stick with a program like The Masterplan and plot out flow charts and keep everything moving on a narration. No pre-set maps either; I’ll either toss random tile setups or draw something quick on our grid play mat. I’m considering cutting assorted shapes of construction paper to slap down to quickly represent obstacles like walls of the room, elevated/rough terrain etc. Something simple where I’m not going to slow the session down copying the contents of a map.
3. I’ve also decided that I enjoy my method of XP rewards. Simply put: I don’t divy the XP up between group members. Yeah, I know, that’s insanity. But again: We’ve gone through a dry spell of gaming that was counted in months and, in some cases, years. We’ve had quite a few weekly sessions and they just now hit level 7; but going into the dungeon they were level 4 and I kept them there (even when so close to leveling going in!) just to maintain the challenge of the crawl. Keep on the Shadowfell was still tough at the end for them, and it was VERY rewarding to my players. It tied in nicely with the plot of my campaign, and when after all the encounter XP plus the quest rewards they found out the session ended with them leveling twice…..it was awesome. It kinda let them know that they’ve come so far from when they started out as small time adventurers. Now they feel like heroes, they’ve earned a reputation in my campaign as such, and now they see Paragon Paths starting to creep up on the horizon. Now, I get to pull out the big guns….

Monday, May 25th:

Fairly quiet day, but awesome. Got my neighbor set up on vent and introduced him to my guild and allies in Guild Wars. The other awesome event was he went out and purchased the Martial Power book for D&D. I guess now that other players than me are investing in the game, we found something new to be playing for a while…..

Tuesday, May 26th:

Ran 4E for some very good, and very close friends of mine. If ya look over at the Blogroll, check out Chewing the Fat. Joey was, actually, the hombre who let me pay rent in his house by running a game every night. This was their first 4E game, and I ran them through the encounters in the D&D Quickstart Kit. I had a blast, Shel loved going over it again with a different character and a new party to see how things played out differently. I’m under the impression they had fun. Again, more awesome grub as well. Melanie, Joey’s wife, has always been one of my favorite people to dine under and the salad she threw together last night was divine. I think I chowed all that stuff down well before the burgers.

It was also interesting after the gaming session wrapped up as we talked about the pros and cons of 4E. Melanie is definitely an old school gamer, in the sense that she’s been playing since Gygaxian editions and generally sticks with her preferred system (which, in this case, has been 3.0) I’m hoping to get her reviews and thoughts of 4E, along with her husband’s, to possibly post up here to offer some variety of opinion so my blog doesn’t just become a “4E fansite” which honestly, I don’t intend it to. Just, this seems to be the game my regular group plays. And now it seems I’m picking up another Tuesday night next week…..

[pale_princess]

love living vicariously through you fucks!
friday i worked til 9, ate some nachos and watched 1/2 of 'the house bunny' then went to bed.

saturday i worked, surfed the web, ate some nachos, watched the rest of 'the house bunny' and watched 'nick & norah's blablabla' then went to bed

today i slept in, ran a bunch of errands for the wedding, talked on the phone with my mom & my mom-in-law, watched some of the bet awards, surfed the web & watched true blood.

[Mooney]

Originally Posted by mercurial

hah! brilliant. how on earth did that eventuate?

this is the sort of thing we're after. great contribution moon boy.

well, we stayed the night at a friends cottage. i didn't bother bringing trunks since i knew the tide was only in at 4a.m. we were all still up after many a drink, so we went in for a dip. we had to climb down some rocks, so that probably would have been a sight to see, me trying to scale rocks drunk while trying to cover my package with my hands. i fell a couple of times. and also got stung by a jellyfish.

[Caine Walker]

had an amazing time at home. so many good things.

except for the sunburn.

reapply your sunblock, people. these are words to live by.

[pale_princess]

oh yeah i almost forgot, i dyed my hair super dark brown before true blood.

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by pale_princess

love living vicariously through you fucks!
friday i worked til 9, ate some nachos and watched 1/2 of 'the house bunny' then went to bed.

saturday i worked, surfed the web, ate some nachos, watched the rest of 'the house bunny' and watched 'nick & norah's blablabla' then went to bed

today i slept in, ran a bunch of errands for the wedding, talked on the phone with my mom & my mom-in-law, watched some of the bet awards, surfed the web & watched true blood.

work on the weekend is a bit shit!

you live in toronto eh? i have a couple of mates there and from the sounds of things, it's too easy to have a good time in that city (when the weather is conducive?). one of them throws japanese dancehall parties in warehouses, gets asahi and whatnot to sponsor the drinks. basically a massive party that pays for itself, all he needs to do is organise the venue and the entertainment. not a bad way to make some dollars.

both of them seem to be having the greatest time in toronto. i've wanted to go check it out for so, so long now. one of these days!

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by noyen

…..

dont even try and pretend this isn't you
hope the piles get better

[pale_princess]

yeah there's all sorts of shit happening at abandoned warehouses, on the island and in the park, and even moreso in the summertime. mine's a bit boring cuz i'm trying to stay on the straight & narrow, but it's paid off. i've lost at least 10 lbs just by biking at least 1/2 hr a day and not drinking.

[noyen]

Originally Posted by mercurial

dont even try and pretend this isn't you
hope the piles get better

sorry, i had nothin. i could've used an epic joint. i was sick.

*dice roll*

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by noyen

sorry, i had nothin. i could've used an epic joint. i was sick.

*dice roll*

get on your bike, son!

a perfectly formed j from the fingertips of a superbabe no less. all leopard print tights and coy, pouty red lipstick. eyes that can see through the back of your head. had i not known she's a ladykiller i'd have almost been too intimidated to smoke with her. it was fucking excellent.

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by pale_princess

yeah there's all sorts of shit happening at abandoned warehouses, on the island and in the park, and even moreso in the summertime. mine's a bit boring cuz i'm trying to stay on the straight & narrow, but it's paid off. i've lost at least 10 lbs just by biking at least 1/2 hr a day and not drinking.

warehouses is how we throw down in melbourne. the best.
mark my words i'm going to get to toronto one way or the other. my people over there are some of the best you'll ever meet.

congrats on the weight loss, that's great. you're worried about boozing weight? vodka-soda or just straight vodka... zero calories/major hilarity. or biking and drinking, also a solid option.

[Caine Walker]

straight vodka does not sound like a viable option, imo. you would need to be pretty hard up to go that route.

[pale_princess]

Originally Posted by mercurial

warehouses is how we throw down in melbourne. the best.
mark my words i'm going to get to toronto one way or the other. my people over there are some of the best you'll ever meet.

congrats on the weight loss, that's great. you're worried about boozing weight? vodka-soda or just straight vodka... zero calories/major hilarity. or biking and drinking, also a solid option.

yah last time i tried losing weight via drinking less-caloric thigs, i did gin and club soda.
vodka and crystal light might be a good option...

[Caine Walker]

that could work.

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by Caine Walker

straight vodka does not sound like a viable option, imo. you would need to be pretty hard up to go that route.

nah not at all! see i don't mind the flavour of not-shitty voddie. acquired taste probably. i like it cold if i'm gonna hit it straight but even then i'm not above drinking it warm.

never leave home without a hip flask of something tasty.

[Caine Walker]

you are a better drinker than i, mercurial.

[mercurial]

hah!

probably true.

a sign of a misspent youth ... and adulthood

[pale_princess]

grey goose is delicious.
grey goose caesars, even more delicious.
i could drink a caesar, as it's more of an appetizer than a "drinking" drink.

[mercurial]

Originally Posted by pale_princess

grey goose is delicious.
grey goose caesars, even more delicious.
i could drink a caesar, as it's more of an appetizer than a "drinking" drink.

sundays are ALL about bloody marys and/or really cold ciders down the local pub, playing cards and speed scrabble. fight fire with fire. no better day to do it.

lately i've been getting a dash of horseradish cream into the mix. the results are exhilarating.

[Mo]

I spent most of my days in bed, because I'm still not feeling to good.

Oh yeah, and I slept with an old friend who is currently in a relationship. And she started it, so I don't even have to feel bad.

[Starla]

Originally Posted by pale_princess

oh yeah i almost forgot, i dyed my hair super dark brown before true blood.

I dyed mine red. It's a very deep reddish brown and I hope it stays this time.

[sppunk]

Went to NYC for the weekend and saw probably the best comedic play ever, God of Carnage, and ate one of the best meals I've eaten in my entire life.

Sunday we ambled around and went to the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, hit up Chelsea Market and saw a friend for brunch.

[pale_princess]

Originally Posted by mercurial

sundays are ALL about bloody marys and/or really cold ciders down the local pub, playing cards and speed scrabble. fight fire with fire. no better day to do it.

lately i've been getting a dash of horseradish cream into the mix. the results are exhilarating.

horseradish in caesars = YES!