Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

Hey, pixiecrack , someone borrowed your swan:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/7/5/butchers-bill-part-one  (NSFW: F-bomb)

And then they buffed it up a little:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/7/7/butchers-bill-part-two

Played D&D last night.  With some effort (and some uncertainty - those people were tough!), we have destroyed Gail the slaver and her coterie of leaders.  And found (and destroyed) a 7000-gp IOU that had somehow found its way from my hand to hers.  This means, for interested parties, that the ~3500 gold we got from the goblin caves is now Party Treasure.  Michael is figuring out how to divvy up treasure in some reasonable way.

Some stuff remains to be done in the slave compound - there are underground beasties guarding the slave pen, and automatic crossbows also guarding the slave pen, which Lady Karen will somehow not be around for (her player will almost undoubtedly not be around next session).  The palisade/compound effectively belongs to the party now if we want it, which is kind of cool.  And after some more information-gathering, we might be able to bring down slavery entirely in this part of the world.  Good session!

PS - Anyone out there with probably the Adventurers' Vault book willing to look up the description of an Opportunistic Longsword?

We've had a great last few days.  It started with my younger brother arriving Friday night after a work conference the previous few days in San Francisco.  We picked up nezumiko  and went for Japanese/sushi for dinner, then came back to our place and hung out for a while.  Kiddo spent the night on the futon with a couple of our indoor cats. 

Saturday was - amazingly - bright and sunny and fairly warm.  He took a look at our can't-be-turned-on lawnmower, replaced the spark plug, and exhorted me to get a new container of fuel plus some fuel stabilizer.  We went for a walk around the neighborhood so he could enjoy the lovely January sun and warmth, had lunch, and then went to see Sherlock Holmes with nezumiko , which was fun.  I found the plot kind of silly but pretty well constructed, and really enjoyed the interplay among Holmes, Watson, and Irene.  Any chemists out there who could tell me whether the science-ish explanation of How It Was All Done made sense?  (I do know that Holmes must have gotten his hands on a Rod of Lightning Bolt, 'cuz ain't no way you're getting three zaps out of a standard piece of metal after only one charge!)  We went back, chilled, had dinner, and I took Kiddo to the airport for his overnight flight.

Today I went to church in the morning, and then our D&D group met at our house.  The session was remarkably streamlined, as we had four (count 'em, four) combat encounters, where we've normally had two at best.  And boy, did we whup some goblin backside!  We've recovered the bulk of the gold that the goblins had, plus a handful more, and a handful of magic items.  Now we need someone short who can wear nice magicked chainmail (better than 'standard' +1 stuff), and someone who can use a nice magicked battleaxe (also nicer than +1).  And we killed a lot of goblins, including getting the goblin king to surrender (after whacking on him for a while) and the goblin high priest (whom the king was willing to trick into the room, allowing us to kill him, in exchange for his and his favorites' freedom). 

After the session, we went out to dinner with our GM cerebralpaladin , his wife orichalcum , and their two boys, which was also pleasant.  We are now, however, entirely ready to be quiet for a while and then head to bed.  Yay weekend!

Like ladybird97 , I haven't posted anything of substance in a while.  So, I post!

Work has been going along in a mixed-to-reasonable fashion.  We've got positive expression for enough of our genes to make it worthwhile to start on The Big Interactome Project.  One thing stands in our way: the ELISA that we're figuring on using to detect interactions isn't working.  Again.  We plan to work on the problem next week.  But meantime, just about everything else is ready for launch.

We had a fantastic time over the holiday weekend at the giant gaming party hosted by cerebralpaladin and orichalcum.  We saw a number of people that we hadn't seen in quite some time, and met some new - and of course cool - people.  I played two D&D games: one set in ancient Babylon, in which my thief character helped figure out why it was raining on the Jewish Quarter and nowhere else (everyone else in town was blaming the Jews for stealing their rain - turns out that basically, they were right!), and one in which all the PCs were members of a theatrical troupe.  The troupe put on plays of heroic adventures, and in this one-shot, we had to basically *become* adventurers to get our hands on a kidnapped playwright who'd promised he'd write us a play.  The last game that I played was in a system called "Dogs in the Vineyard," in which the PCs were essentially lawgivers of the One True Faith in something like mid-1800s Mormon Utah.  You can get a sense of the mechanics of conflict resolution from this Wikipedia article and the character creation and gameplay from this review.  It is significantly more freewheeling than any game system than I've ever played before (not that that's very many).  The traits and relationships that you use to define your character have essentially no limits on them in terms of their definitions: "sense truth", "skeptic", "healer", and "joyful celebration" were some of the traits in our group.  Having played a session, I can pretty definitely say that the more vague you can be in your traits and relationships, the better - it means that you can more easily bring the die values of those traits and relationships into conflicts.  It was fun, and I wouldn't at all mind playing in the system again.

We had our first choir rehearsal of the season a couple of nights ago.  We have two new people: a strong bass and a strong soprano.  Having two whole basses to our name makes a huge difference, as does having a soprano who can actually generate volume on Wednesday nights.  I'm really excited about choir this year - we're gonna be goooooooood...... :D

And next weekend we're going to see Spamalot and Yellow Face, both should be good pieces of theater.  I'll be interested in hearing what y'all think of the movie 9; it's on my 'hmm, could be interesting' list.

I'm very excited about this weekend: orichalcum  and cerebralpaladin  are hosting a gaming weekend, and Huz and I are going!  For one campaign, set in ancient Roman times, I've been putting together a character (D&D 3.5).  I've spent several days poring over the Player's Guide and the Dungeon Master's Guide, and I think I've finally finished the character creation process.  Long.  Kinda exhausting - I've probably spent 6 or more hours reading and stuff.  But lots of fun - my rogue is ready to go!

The huz and I just finished listening to two audiobooks available at Librivox, both by H.G. Wells, and both on a subject that I would not have expected him to write about: games.

Floor Games is a brief (45 minutes) essay about the games Mr. Wells played with his sons on a large cork floor.  They use boards, toy soldiers and animals, and common household objects to create islands, cities, parks, and other inhabited landscapes.  Then the imagination of the boys, both old and young, is let loose to create events and act them out.  It's a droll, well-written set of general instructions on how to have fun with your kids.

Little Wars is a slightly longer (1 hour 45 minutes) booklet which should be of interest to anyone who's ever played a turn-based tabletop-style combat strategy game.  While I haven't done the research to make sure, I rather think that Mr. Wells' 1913 publication may be the first time that someone had published rules for a game that would eventually evolve into the tabletop games we know today.  The writing is clear and often amusing.  The instructions themselves are fairly brief, and much of the work is a detailed description of a short campaign between himself and another middle-aged gentleman of his acquaintance.  Wells devotes a brief section at the end to thoughtfully commenting on the connections between Little Wars and what he terms Great War - the wars that humanity fights out in the real world.

Both works are narrated by one of my favorite readers on Librivox, Mark Smith.  He has a great sense for the text and for making the most out of the drama and humor in both works without overdoing either aspect.  I recommend both books to people who like to play games of every sort.  :)