Notes

Perhaps the Weirdness Resurfaces?

This week I was off working. This was the longest period I've been off since July. It was great to have a break.



My financial dependence on my employer has made me very sad.



Books



This week, there were no books. I'm thinking I should get some new reading material again Most of the unread books I've got left are RPG rulebooks and nonfiction and I go through them when I'm feeling inspired.



Gaming



Ars Magica



I ran the first session of my new Ars Magica campaign this week. The participants were asked to help in the search for the missing children of the village. They had not seen them in hours. It was the time of the vernal hour, a night of magic and folklore. The children had fallen in love with the charm of a kelpie determined to tell their story of drowning innocent victims.



There was nothing much to do, the characters had to (1) find the way to fairyland, (2) walk in a straight line through a forest of fairy tales that would try to confuse their sense of direction, and (3) get rid of the kelpie in some way. It was a breeze to follow, and not any choice for the players. To help us to get started with the system, I created a basic plot. It worked well as even so we needed to study the rules of creating spells quite often (which was exactly what I had expected). What I didn't anticipate was that, at first, they saw this huge faerie horse beast and thought "well, we don't have any magic to stop the fey, so we'll have to physically fight it". However, after one of them nearly dying (doing the Ars Magica equivalent of making death saves) and another recognizing there was a solution that was magical I hope they'll be more likely to try magic first next time around.



While I wasn't sure how it would take, I had another adventure (visiting and making impressions on the abbot at a nearby monastery) that I planned but didn't have the time.



Inscryption



This week I played Inscryption. It's a bizarre deck-building/escape-room game that makes you feel like you're in the cave of a mad game master who is making up rules as he goes.



The first part is. Based on what I've seen, there is an additional part that is very different. I'm not sure if I'll give it much of my time, but it was the odd atmosphere that attracted me to it initially. Maybe the weirdness returns? I'm not sure if want to spend the time to find out.



We've received a release date set for Minecraft 1.18, the 30th!



I'm not a huge Minecraft player these days, I'm usually bored once I've got a self-sufficient base up and running (which isn't a long time at all) since building huge things isn't my thing that much. I am not the type of player that the game is designed for.



However, I do enjoy trying it out every now and then and playing with friends, and 1.18 brings some very fundamental changes to world generation that I'm excited about playing with.



Miscellaneous



I was in a position to catch some the TV this week, catching up on Foundation and The Mandalorian. Both were fantastic, many very cool visuals (like this FTL jump from episode 1 of Foundation00). In fact I believe this is the single coolest rendition of FTL jumps I've come across. I was tempted to re-do the ship deckplans in the event that this series was available before I started my Traveller game.



). I am looking forward to more.



If I had to criticize it, it would be because I find the Empire storyline from Foundation more compelling than the Foundation storyline. This is a reflection of the stories I enjoy. The Empire storyline is about massive cosmic events, as well as the demise of a dynasty. It's more about events than people. The Foundation storyline is more about the people however, the events themselves are smaller in size. But I much prefer large-scale events!
what a waste

Homepage: https://socialsecuritywaste.org/