( In no particular order )
And next year's DucKon Filk Guest is Seanan McGuire

Picked up from yttrai who got it from thespian

( Conventions )

Pardon me while I squee like a 10 year old girl at a Hanna Montana concert

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

chaoticgoodchic just got the Memberships & Hotel reservations today

I'm going to Gen Con! I'm going to Gen Con!

Why yes, this will be my first one, how could you tell?

After a train, a subway, and a shuttlebus I arrived at the hotel at about 7pm. At the door to greet me ( were )

Packing for Arisia

• Kilt^ Check


• Hawiian Shirt^ Check


• Leather Mask^ Check


• Towel^ Check


• Shipping Cylindars^ Check


• Cloak^ Check


• Choke Chain^ Check


• Belt^ Check


• Pi~Con T-shirt^ Check


• Bathing suit^ Check


• Sandles^ Check


• Socks^ Check


• Ear Cuff & Enhancer^ Check

Am I forgetting anything?

I had a very nice time the last week and a half

On the 22nd I arrived in Chicago to spend the holiday with chaoticgoodchic. We had a wonderful vacation filled with movies, and games and time together.

• We rented Stardust and went out to see P.S. I Love You. (both very good)


• We played Family Fluxx, Cosmic Wimpout, & Apples to Apples with her young cousins on Christmas Eve.


• We played Gloom(which I got her for Christmas), RA, & Settlers Cities & Knights at Games Plus.


• We played Settlers Cities & Knights, Porto Rico, & Gloom with her brother.


• And we played Zombie Fluxx, Settlers Card Game & San Juan just between the two of us.

I got back to Boston late Sunday night, and stayed at my brother's house. Went to work Monday, and then went to ultimatepsi's for New Year's Eve.

While there I learned a new game Race for the Galaxy, which is best described as "San Juan in Space".

I also got people to play my customized Zombie Fluxx set. I've added some of the Christian Fluxx cards, and created a custom card: Exorcism

Exorcism

For each Religious Symbol Keeper (Candles, Cross, Holy Bible or Torah) you have on the table, you may remove 1 of your Creeper cards from the game during your turn.

Unfortunately I did not get to see it come up in play.

I called CGC on my new cell phone (a gift from my parents, they were tired of me not having one) at Midnight (EST). If anyone thinks they might Need my cell phone number either comment here or send me an e-mail.

Tonight (Thursday)
My brother Brian is the featured poet at the "The Ship" (Vernon Hotel, Kelley Square, Worcester, Ma.) starting at 8pm.

Tomorow (Friday)
I will be once again visiting WPI for their Friday Night Open Gaming (Octawedge, WPI, Worcester) starts at aprox 7pm.

Sunday
I will possibly go to Poets Asylum (Java Hut, Webster Square, Worcester, Ma.) starts between 7pm and 8pm. This week's feature is Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz.


I also need to find time this weekend to do:

• Laundry


• Visit Bank


• Christmas Shopping


• Practice Habitrail Named Klein


• Watch Dungeon & Dragons cartoon, DVD boxed set that chaoticgoodchic got me as an early Christmas Gift (she insisted that I open it early).



What's everyone elses plans?

It started on Friday when The IT dept. had an event in Boston. We went on a Duck Tour of the city & the river, then a tour of Fenway Park. Because of the event I was able to get home early.

Then Friday night I went to Phonix Rising Games to pick up a new game I had pre-ordered Cutthroat Caverns, and then I took it to Friday Night Open Gaming at WPI. It is a hack & slash game using cards instead of dice. We got in one game of it (It took 2 hours including teaching the rules) I also got in a game of Settlers.

I got home about 1 am and slept till 5:30am, when I had to get up to do a couple of loads of laundry.

After laundry I headed to Medford to help xuth move. There were roughly a dozen people there who helped with the move at one point or another. Some I know, some I barely know, and some I have never met before (I’m not going to even try listing names).

Once there was a full load on the rental truck, we went over to his new address about 2 miles away in Cambridge. We ate lunch, and then started unloading. At about 3:30 I decided had reached my limit and went to the MASSFILC filk circle which was about 3 blocks away from Xath’s new address.

The filk circle started slow, but ended up one of the largest housefilks I had been to. I am sure part of the reason was this MASSFILC meeting was their election of officers. Joe Kesselman stepped down as president and victorthecook was elected by acclaim. Also announced at the meeting happyfunpaul is the Interfilk guest at Conchord 2008.

I brought 1 new song and 1 new poem to perform at the filk circle. I ended up doing both early before the crowd arrived. The poem did a bit better than the song. Later in the evening someone played a seasonal song, and I thought of the perfect follower, but I didn’t have it prepared; so I went online, looked up the words, plugged my headset into the PC and listened to the recording (I have all my filk CD’s backed up on my PC). I then performed the song and it was not bad. A couple of people even joined in. This brings me up 8 song/poems I feel comfortable performing in circle.

Sunday I crashed, I had hoped to make some progress on my paintings, but I had misplaced some of my tools (I spotted them this morning as I was leaving the house.)

In some ways I feel like this weekend was practice for Pythonacon next weekend.

Attention North East Enworlders & RPGers

I'm passing on a message from kahuna_burger
Quote
Kahunacon III in the scheduling phase

I'm looking at holding a gaming weekend in late may or early june. Scheduling thread is up at ENworld now, so happy gamer people should go post and vote!

While I was at Arisia in January There were 2 Live audio drama presentations, one by Post-Meridian Radio Players and the second by Second Shift. I enjoyed the show and looked forward to checking out the Second Shift podcasts.

A month and a half goes by, and gospog mentions he is looking for gaming oriented podcasts to listen to on the way to work. I remembered Second Shift and decided to check out their podcast. I am glad I did. The story itself is fairly traditional (3 college students from Boston, who end up being mysteriously summoned to the magical land of Lundi), but it still has some suprises.

The characters are believable and complex. The first season story arch is complete (13 episodes), although it has an end of season cliffhanger.

I can't wait till season two starts.

Back in 1999, Eric Noah decided to start a website to talk about Wizards of the Coast plans to change Dungeons & Dragons. "Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News"

He included a messageboard, with a few simple rules of courtesy: Keep it civil, keep it clean, and keep it on topic.

The Keep it clean rule was typically referred to as “The Eric’s Grandmother Rule".

When Russell Morrissey took over the site in 2001, the name was changed to ENWorld (for Eric Noah World) but “The Eric’s Grandmother Rule" remained the same.

While some members have found the rules restrictive, it was nice to talk about games without every conversation descending to vulgar language or personal attacks. This was my first real “internet community”, and many of my current friends I met through the ENworld Messageboards.

On Monday, 01/22/07 Eric Noah’s Grandmother passed away. She was preceded in death by her husband Merlin Hoguieson; and one of her daughters Marsha Hauge. She is survived by her other daughter Cheryl Noah, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

While I only knew of her in proxy, it is a sad loss.

Cons are an amazing experience for me. I have many diverse interests & hobbies, and most of them seem to intersect at a con.

( Friday; random socializing )

I was busy the last time this meme went around, so thanks to yttrai for reviving it.

In order to get 12 whole characters, I had to use some of the ones I got at Gamedays(1-shots). So if some of these characters seem extremely foolish or childish to you, you can blame my DM's (*coughcoughKevincough* ;)) Bolded characters are "real", in that I made them. The rest are all from Gamedays.

So enjoy:

Name 12 characters you have played in RPGs, before looking at the questions that follow. List your characters numbered 1 to 12, with the name of the RPG you played them in. Once you've picked your 12 characters, look at the questions and answer accordingly. (No peeking until you've picked your characters!) Put your answers behind a LJ-cut.

1. Thr’ill; T’skrang Swordmaster (Earthdawn/Earthdawn)
2. Tor; Changeling Cleric of the Traveler (Eberron/D&D 3.5)
3. Kontmor; Dwarf Bard (Homebrew/D&D 3E)
4. Nevy (envy); Human Fringer/Force User (Star Wars/SW D20)
5. Jared Dorf; Human Stealthy (Underoo Avengers/HERO system)
6. Cast; Human Hermetic Mage (Shadowrun/Shadowrun)
7. Finn Fisher; Human Expert (Aquerra/ D&D 3E)
8. Loophole; Human High-Tech Wonder (Mutants & Masterminds/MM)
9. Model; Warforger Artificer/Bard (Eberron/D&D 3.5)
10. Bat; Bat familiar (Missing Masters/Epic D20)
11. Lark; Human Gypsy Bard (Homebrew/ D&D 3.5)
12. Morol ‘Swiftwing’ Male Shifter, Monk (Eberron/D&D 3.5)

( No peeking till you choose your 12 )

There have been several player type polls based on Robin's Laws Of Good Game Mastering however this one was actually recomended by robin_d_laws ( I scored as )

After being in Chicago, IL 4 weekends ago; Columbus, OH 3 weekends ago; and Queens, NY halloween weekend; it was nice to stay home last weekend.

I did laundry
Picked up more bins of books from storage
Went grocery shopping
The local art suply store was having a sale on Canvas and Oil Paint.
All without leaving Worcester.

This coming weekend I am gaming in Providence, RI on Saturday; Hartford, CT on Sunday; and Marlboro, MA on monday.

Last night I decided to go once again to the WPI Science Fiction Society, Friday Gamenight

I gamed with some of the same people as last week, and some I hadn’t met before.

We started with a game called blocker or blockem (I think) where we place pieces made of triangles on a board till we run out of room (or pieces)

Next I played Robo Rally. For those who don’t know, it is a puzzle game, to see who can move the robot to its assigned place in the fewest moves. We started with 2 people, went up to 5, then ended with 2.

After that someone wanted to play Citadels. I think this was my favorite game of the night. It is a relatively quick game, where each round you collect gold and/or draw cards. The cards have city districts which you can “build” with your gold. The real strategy comes with the “Character Role” cards, each card has a different benefit, and you get to choose “Character Role” each turn. The roles we used were Assassin, Thief, Magician, King, Bishop, Merchant, Architect, & Warlord.

Then for the last game we played Game of Life: A Jedi's Path. As Kate likes to say, “It’s a fun game, although it’s a bit random”.

After that I stayed a bit longer to watch a couple of hands of Bridge. All in all it was a very fun evening.

Apparently chaoticgoodchic felt my journal was getting too boring, so on friday she challenged me to ( go out and do something with people. )

On friday I completed a SQL Server training course. I did learn some things, but at times it was very difficult to stay awake. The class was over at 4pm, but my ride would not be able to meet me till 7pm. ( The training center was next door to the Burlington Mall, ) I finished the book I was reading (A Year and a Day by Sara M. Harvey, good book, I highly recommend it) ( by 5pm )

One of the sites I frequent (as some of you know) is EN World. It is an RPG site, focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on D20 games. They have existed in one form or another for 7 years now. (and I have been visiting it for 7 years now.) Their current "claim to fame" is that they are the organizers of the Official GEN CON Award ceremony ("The ENnies", by the way voting for this year's "ENnies" is currently open, and will be open until July 30th).

However that's not my topic for the day. Another great part of EN World is the Gamedays. Gamdays are "mini-cons" for ENWorlders (and friends) to get together for several 1-shot games. There have been gamedays in Chicago, Ohio, North Carolina, New York, Maryland, and luckily for me Massachusetts. We have roughly 50 ENWorlders who make up the regular Boston Area Gameday (usually only about half that number are available for a given event).

Somehow EN World Gamedays has attracted many really great DM's. I have played in some of the most memorable sessions at gamedays. In fact I am only aware of 1 time where a lame DM ran a game at a gameday (and I promise to do better next time).

The reason I am going on about this, is that the next EN World Boston Area Gameday is LESS THAN 20 HOURS AWAY.

I'll be playing:
"Neptune Adventure" (System : Alternity)
"Underoo Avengers" a team of 8 year old superheros (System: BASH)
A Serenity 'verse adventure (System: Cinematic Unisystem)
And a yet to be named D&D 3.5 game

Some of the other games going on are:
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Discworld Game (System: Gurps)
Feng Shui (no not interior decorating)
End of the World Timeshare (System: Fudge)
Paranoia
Robotech
Shadowrun

It is a two day event, so don't expect to hear much from me till Monday

This (past) week my youngest brother paid me a visit on Tuesday, and spent the night. I took the morning off wednesday so we could sit up late talking. It was good to see him.

I then took ( thursday off )

Friday was back to work, ( and seemed a normal day till )