Golden Anvil

Ok, raise you're hand if you're reading this. I want to know who's out there, but I'm too cheap to offer swag like sareth...

I might try to get back in the habit of posting here again (I did so well for longer than I initially thought I'd last). The event that's triggering this is that I'm planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Is anyone else out there going to give it a shot this year? If so, let me know so I can set you as a friend on that account. I suspect I'll need plenty of encouragement. Anyway, I'm planning on recording my progress here on my blog. Hopefully the public nature of it will help encourage me to stick with it.

Man it's been a long time since you've read anything here. You shouldn't be so lazy...

Well, last time we played our Monday RPG, we finished up the adventure. The group managed to escape out the window of the Houses of Parliament (into the Thames) and swam down the river to the area where their ship was docked. There was some difficulties with drowning, but pretty much everyone made it. Not a whole lot else happened, and the group managed to leave without much uproar, the ship loaded with a cargo bound for Hong Kong.

Then gauntman (the player of the Professor), took over as GM for the rest of the evening. He'll be running the next adventure in Hong Kong. By the end of the evening, the group (minus me, as my character wasn't introduced yet) got into Hong Kong, and left the ship to do a little shopping for the ship's cook. After an encounter with some pick-pocketing kids, and some inscrutable merchants we finished up for the week.

Well, the fact that I missed posting last week doesn't actually mean that you missed out on a campaign update. No, it's been two weeks without playing our WWII supers campaign. Oops, wait... make that three weeks now. Tonight Brooky's player was out, and since his character was kind of central to the action, we decided to do something else instead.

So... we played Capes! This is a wonderful game that is kind of like a super-hero themed cross between a roleplaying game and a board game. This was totally a blast, and I highly recommend it. Go to the web site and pick up a free copy of their Lite rules and try it out next time you're wondering what to do with a couple friends.

Happy 4th (to those of you who actually live in the U.S. (although I'm pretty sure that's all of my vast readership (but still, as I've already read once so far, non-Americans can get pretty tired of "people" assuming that everyone on the internet lives in the U.S.))).

Guess what? It's a new month. That means a new project! Actually, I hate to say this, but last month I got tired of doing last month's project, so I started this month's project early. It turns out that I was interested in doing the layout for the Fangor book, but not as interested in doing the actual writing. Ah well. At least now I'm "legal" on my project. Anyway, I've already put in an estimated 26 hours on this project. Pretty good for *cough* only having worked a few days on it.

On Friday, Mrs. Kheldar and I celebrated our 11th anniversary. As you can see from the image, we went to Outback to get some steaks. I ordered a drink called "Wallaby Darned". I thought I should share the receipt with all of you. Either I'm weird, or it's funny.

Anyway, 11 years! Wow! The time sure goes by fast. I am so lucky to be married to Mrs. Kheldar. Sometimes I stop and think of where I might be if I hadn't gotten married right out of college. Ugh... It's a horrid thought. My wife brings out the best in me. She loves me, and she takes wonderful care of me. We make a great team. She is my best friend. I'm looking forward to many, many more years together with her.

We have no idea where we might be in 11 more years, but God willing we know that we'll be with each other.

Well, we played on Monday. The session was pretty much taken up by a fight. The Glass Man (from waaaaay back near the beginning) apparently found out they were around and attack while they were busy digging through papers looking for the stuff the Resistance wanted. Fortunately, Brooky was standing guard, and with Eva's ability to see through walls they were able to set up a nice ambush that threw the attacking soldiers back out of the room (props to Natasha for setting up a ring of illusionary soldiers right around the doorway to sow fear and confusion).

After the first wave of Nazis left the room, Brooky went charging out after them, gunned down one, then realized that the Glass Man was standing there. He went sprinting back in the room, warning everyone. General panic broke out (after all, they only beat him the first time because Brooky managed to use the jeep-mounted machine gun on him), and everyone started making for the windows that looked out over the Thames.

Our Friday night game went well. The party got the married couple to one of the nearby systems without too much difficulty (other than a short fist-fight that broke out between Gabby and a crew member of the ship they were on. Apparently Gabby can be a little... "snooty" over her status as Dame, and ended up provoking someone into taking a swing at her. She happens to be a pretty good brawler, but Melvin J. broke up the fight before it went too far.

Anyway, after dropping the couple off on a nearby system, the group convinced the pilot of the to let them take a working passage to a destination a couple systems down the line. He agreed, and next week (we'll be playing Wednesday instead of Friday due to scheduling problems) they'll make the trip and likely run into more adventures.

Nope, not this week. Two players couldn't make it, so we didn't play. Instead I ended up playing Dominions III (see the link of the day) until way later than I should have. That's why I didn't post last night. Too tired.

However, there is some interesting news about the WWII campaign. It looks like after I wrap up this adventure (as I said, likely just another couple sessions), one of the other players (gauntman, the player of Prof. Hayes) has agreed to run the group through an adventure. It'll be part of the same campaign, but I'll create a new character, and Hayes will temporarily be unavailable. Gauntman has never GM'd before, but he's got a good grasp (in my opinion) on the genre and on storytelling skills. I'll be able to help him out with any rules/technical issues.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm making an attempt to pick a single project each month and focus on that project. This serves two benefits. First, it forces me to actually pick a single one of my many projects and make significant progress on it. This is good for helping me learn how to make progress towards completing my projects and how to stick with something even when something else catches my imagination. Second, it gives me a chance to actually switch to other projects periodically. Really, a month isn't that long to wait to get to do something else that sounds interesting.

The nice thing is that I'm not giving myself the expectation of actually finishing a project in a month. Instead, at the end of the month it'll just go back in the big bucket o' projects, and I'll move on to something else. Some month down the road I'll get back to the project and do some more work on it.

Last night's roleplaying went well. We created characters and started a short introductory adventure. Everyone had fun, and everyone is looking forward to next week.