summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2009-09-07 10:33 pm
summercomfort) wrote2009-09-07 10:33 pm
Labor Day Weekend
On Friday I left all of my school work at school, and told myself to enjoy the 3 day weekend.
Friday night, Eben and Isaac showed up around 10pm and after some late night bubble tea meal boxes, crashed in our living room.
Saturday, Eben and Isaac headed into San Francisco, while Jono and I had a quiet lunch and then played "In a Wicked Age" with Aaron, Dave, and Ewen. It was pretty cool. I really like the scenario and character generation method. We got (paraphrased from notes) "burglary of a storehouse of the robber-merchant", "birth of baby heralded by prophets and wise men", "warehouse of stolen silks", "demon of the lower air, full of trickery".
I played the merchant's son, Ashur-Ban, who was covertly trying to replace his father in running the family business of robber-merchantry, and is also trying to keep a relationship with a lower-class (re: former-prostitute) woman secret. Problem is, she is pregnant and just gave birth to Zakiti, the child of destiny. Jono played Ibn-Haboob, the djinn of the the lower air who wanted to bury the port city in sand and to stop Zakiti from growing up to found a new religion. Aaron played Adar, a freelance thief who discovers the warehouse, and wants to overthrow the robber-merchant and steal the talisman of illusions from Ibn-Haboob. Dave played a wild-eyed prophet, Shakham. Ewen GM-ed.
Overall, it was pretty fun. We started with the baby being born in the warehouse (I was like, "oh, I guess I was the one who stole the silks from my father's storehouse, then"). We ended with my father dead, me the new robber-merchant, the djinn sealed inside his own talisman (which Adar promptly pocketed), and my girl/baby safe and unharmed. There was a moment which was really powerful for me, where I was confronted by my father, who demanded me to hand over the baby so that he could kill her. I had to duel my own dad! :O I'm not a direct confrontations kinda guy, and on one side is my dad and on the other is my daughter. But I wasn't sure if keeping the baby safe was worth sacrificing the trust of my father. But he was really stabbing at the baby, so I had to take a stand. (Turns out I'm less selfish than I thought, especially when there's an actual life on the line.) I think this is the sort of thing I really enjoy in role-playing -- getting to make in-character character-building decisions that I wouldn't make in real life. Anyways, I told my thought process to Jono later, and he said I should explain my thought process more in-game.
I had trouble with the conflict dice-rolling system. On the one hand, it's pretty fun to roll numbers and try to beat other peoples' numbers, and describing action with each roll. On the other hand, I didn't like how each conflict automatically had 3 rounds, and once a conflict begins, it's hard to change it. It makes the pacing weird. For example, there were some conflicts between the djinn and the prophet that I would have liked to join in mid-conflict when I show up, but I couldn't figure out how. (I'm very much the stab-people-in-the-back kinda guy). There were also conflicts that could have benefited from a form-change in the middle of the conflict.
Jeremy showed up with yummy samosas for dinner, and we made 2 Indian curries, and things were full of yummy. Then we went to karaoke with Isaac and Eben who sang some pretty interesting songs. I took to opportunity to note down a bunch of random Chinese songs.
Eben left early Sunday morning, and then we went to the farmer's market. After a quick pho lunch, I went over to do some Chinese School work for about 3 hours. After that, Jeremy came over for dinner, and Jono made amazing Japanese food. I'm like "Jono, this is amazing. Can we get married?" Afterwards, we just hung out in the living room until late.
This morning, we made omlettes and sausages for breakfast, and then bid farewell to Isaac. Since Chinese School is starting soon and this was probably our last full day to spend time together for the next month or two, we decided to go to the California Academy of Sciences and then go see Ponyo. There were a ton of people there, so we didn't go to the rain forest and the planetarium, but we still got to see the living roof, the Aquarium, and the African wing. The Aquarium was pretty awesome, but I was kinda disappointed by the lack of traditional natural history museum stuff. I vaguely remember rocks and insects and suchlike in the previous incarnation. Am I mis-remembering?
Then we came back and had tuna melts, and then went over to watch Ponyo, which worked out very well thematically because it's all about underwater animals. I loved the animation -- it looked really traditional/hand-done, with these beautiful colored pencil backgrounds. I loved how the sea was brimming with life! After the disappointment of Howl's Moving Castle, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It had all the heart and small-town life and fantasy of Totoro, which is what I think Miyazaki does best. Plus ridiculous old ladies with crazy drooping faces. The main characters are 5, so that should give you a guide to the tone of the anime. And I'm glad that Miyazaki didn't rub in the "zomg environmentalism!" message in the way he sometimes does. Only one guy was "zomg environmentalism", and he was not the most sympathetic of characters.
All in all a great weekend!
Friday night, Eben and Isaac showed up around 10pm and after some late night bubble tea meal boxes, crashed in our living room.
Saturday, Eben and Isaac headed into San Francisco, while Jono and I had a quiet lunch and then played "In a Wicked Age" with Aaron, Dave, and Ewen. It was pretty cool. I really like the scenario and character generation method. We got (paraphrased from notes) "burglary of a storehouse of the robber-merchant", "birth of baby heralded by prophets and wise men", "warehouse of stolen silks", "demon of the lower air, full of trickery".
I played the merchant's son, Ashur-Ban, who was covertly trying to replace his father in running the family business of robber-merchantry, and is also trying to keep a relationship with a lower-class (re: former-prostitute) woman secret. Problem is, she is pregnant and just gave birth to Zakiti, the child of destiny. Jono played Ibn-Haboob, the djinn of the the lower air who wanted to bury the port city in sand and to stop Zakiti from growing up to found a new religion. Aaron played Adar, a freelance thief who discovers the warehouse, and wants to overthrow the robber-merchant and steal the talisman of illusions from Ibn-Haboob. Dave played a wild-eyed prophet, Shakham. Ewen GM-ed.
Overall, it was pretty fun. We started with the baby being born in the warehouse (I was like, "oh, I guess I was the one who stole the silks from my father's storehouse, then"). We ended with my father dead, me the new robber-merchant, the djinn sealed inside his own talisman (which Adar promptly pocketed), and my girl/baby safe and unharmed. There was a moment which was really powerful for me, where I was confronted by my father, who demanded me to hand over the baby so that he could kill her. I had to duel my own dad! :O I'm not a direct confrontations kinda guy, and on one side is my dad and on the other is my daughter. But I wasn't sure if keeping the baby safe was worth sacrificing the trust of my father. But he was really stabbing at the baby, so I had to take a stand. (Turns out I'm less selfish than I thought, especially when there's an actual life on the line.) I think this is the sort of thing I really enjoy in role-playing -- getting to make in-character character-building decisions that I wouldn't make in real life. Anyways, I told my thought process to Jono later, and he said I should explain my thought process more in-game.
I had trouble with the conflict dice-rolling system. On the one hand, it's pretty fun to roll numbers and try to beat other peoples' numbers, and describing action with each roll. On the other hand, I didn't like how each conflict automatically had 3 rounds, and once a conflict begins, it's hard to change it. It makes the pacing weird. For example, there were some conflicts between the djinn and the prophet that I would have liked to join in mid-conflict when I show up, but I couldn't figure out how. (I'm very much the stab-people-in-the-back kinda guy). There were also conflicts that could have benefited from a form-change in the middle of the conflict.
Jeremy showed up with yummy samosas for dinner, and we made 2 Indian curries, and things were full of yummy. Then we went to karaoke with Isaac and Eben who sang some pretty interesting songs. I took to opportunity to note down a bunch of random Chinese songs.
Eben left early Sunday morning, and then we went to the farmer's market. After a quick pho lunch, I went over to do some Chinese School work for about 3 hours. After that, Jeremy came over for dinner, and Jono made amazing Japanese food. I'm like "Jono, this is amazing. Can we get married?" Afterwards, we just hung out in the living room until late.
This morning, we made omlettes and sausages for breakfast, and then bid farewell to Isaac. Since Chinese School is starting soon and this was probably our last full day to spend time together for the next month or two, we decided to go to the California Academy of Sciences and then go see Ponyo. There were a ton of people there, so we didn't go to the rain forest and the planetarium, but we still got to see the living roof, the Aquarium, and the African wing. The Aquarium was pretty awesome, but I was kinda disappointed by the lack of traditional natural history museum stuff. I vaguely remember rocks and insects and suchlike in the previous incarnation. Am I mis-remembering?
Then we came back and had tuna melts, and then went over to watch Ponyo, which worked out very well thematically because it's all about underwater animals. I loved the animation -- it looked really traditional/hand-done, with these beautiful colored pencil backgrounds. I loved how the sea was brimming with life! After the disappointment of Howl's Moving Castle, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It had all the heart and small-town life and fantasy of Totoro, which is what I think Miyazaki does best. Plus ridiculous old ladies with crazy drooping faces. The main characters are 5, so that should give you a guide to the tone of the anime. And I'm glad that Miyazaki didn't rub in the "zomg environmentalism!" message in the way he sometimes does. Only one guy was "zomg environmentalism", and he was not the most sympathetic of characters.
All in all a great weekend!
no subject
On the plus side, I appear to be over the food poisoning. On the minus side, it lasted exactly the duration of Labor Day Weekend. Vacation FAIL!
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