Posts Tagged ‘rich rogers’

It has finally happened. After over 20 years of roleplaying with friends, peers, acquaintances, and strangers, I have -for the FIRST time EVER – ofiicially been asked by my friends NOT to participate in an upcoming roleplaying campaign, simply because it is about vampires.

And as you can clearly see below, I am extremely well-qualified for the task:

In all seriousness, I am totally fine with not being in the game, as a cursory reading of the comments here on Daniel’s blog will attest – so nobody get your pants in a twist on my account. But I thought this would be a great opportunity to share the picture and get in a fun dig at my pals, too. <grin>

Wherin Daniel Perez provides a subjectively skewed but very wonderful AP of our latest Lady Blackbird session…

Highmoon’s Ponderings » [Lady Blackbird] A Meeting, a Pirate & a Bloody Nose.

Great stuff covering a really good session. I should write up my own report in detail at some point. But for now, just a couple of observations from my side of the table:

Personally, I don’t get why everyone else thought the last scene was so dark. Beating the snot out of a manipulative loudmouth prick who thinks he knows more than everyone else in the Blue is actually a very reasonable response. It’s not like Naomi actually killed Arkham.

I think it’s funny that everyone thinks Naomi lost control. No no. She KEPT control. The Owl still has its first mate, and the Blue still has its favorite manipulative loudmouth prick. Just with a broken jaw and a few cracked ribs.

Oh and the bit about Arkham having Naomi’s number? Heh. Don’t lay money on it, folks.

I’m back to do a MERP! Yay. I missed last Friday because I was actually socializing. See the “ENJOYING” paragraph below.

MAKING:

Obviously, I’m not blogging as much these days. Mostly this is due to the fact that I’m busy fairly actively searching for new freelance clients, along with trying to spend some time teaching myself some of the latest design techniques so that I’m more marketable. But I’m also happy to report that some of my non-blogging time is being spent doing something I haven’t done in years – preparing to run an rpg campaign. Specifically, I’m running Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. So in terms of “making”, I can share with you the following Website that I’ve added as a sub-site to Canon Puncture that will be a log and resource area for our S7S campaign: http://www.canonpuncture.com/swashbucklers

ENJOYING:

Last Friday I was in St. Louis for a family reunion that was capped off on Friday night by a Cardinals ball game at the new Busch Stadium. It was my first time in the new stadium and my first time ever in a “party box” – a half-inside/half-outside section with its own bar and snack counter all served up as part of the ticket price, which I did not have to pay. The Cardinals won, the nachos, hot dogs and BBQ chicken were quite good (I think I ate 7 cheese-dogs), and the beer was … well it’s Busch Stadium, so the beer was all Bud products i.e. watered-down American barley-piss, so I was having none of that. But still, it was a very nifty evening with about 12 members of Leah’s family and a night off from parental responsibilities (the kids were all back at the hotel supervised by Leah’s teenage nieces).

Not much going on TV-wise since many of the shows I enjoy are done for the summer. I’m very glad Chuck is coming back, I hope Castle does as well, and I’m looking forward to new Burn Notice episodes coming soon. Other than that, I think it’ll be a light summer for television viewing in our house.

I saw Wolverine while in St. Louis. I actually liked it better than the reviews of my peers led me to expect, but it was entirely on the performances of the actors and not because the action or story were all that compelling. I definitely would pay to see more of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Taylor Kitsch was awesome in the few minutes he clocked in as Gambit.

READING:

I’m waiting for my library to receive two books I’ve got on reserve – one of them being the new Dresden Files novel – so while I wait for that I decided to augment my S7S prep by re-reading one of my all-time favorites – Bard by Keith Taylor. It is semi-historical fantasy written in the 1980s that hews closer to R.E. Howard than J.R.R. Tolkien, and although I won’t claim it is stellar literature, it still clings to my story-loving heart even though this is now the fourth time I will have read it. It is not well known – Taylor is an Australian author and the series of five Bard novels apparently never really took off here in the States, but I really love books 1-4 and highly recommend them to anyone who might enjoy a sweeping series of yarns about an Irish Bard named Felemid mac Fal who starts off his adventures in post-Roman Britain and then ventures on to become the companion of a female Jutish pirate-queen for the next three books in the series. Yes, that’s right: an Irish bard and a woman pirate adventuring in a magic-is-real version of Northwest Europe in the 6th Century. The writing would have to be pure shit for me not to like that. But it is actually pretty good writing, in a pulpy-fantasy sort of way. Even after four readings, it holds up.

PLAYING:

Tonight Rich and I finish up Burning Wheel: Rome with Ogre Whiteside. Honestly, it is really a shame and a kinda big ball-drop for me not to have blogged about last week’s session already, because it was one of the best nights of roleplaying I’ve had in a long while. Rich wrote some stuff about it over on Canon Puncture but I really ought to have elaborated on it myself by now, I just haven’t taken the time.  Maybe a big overall wrap-up post is in order after tonight’s game brings the series to it’s conclusion. I’ll try. I’ve got lots to share about it.

Next Wednesday, we begin Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, our long-awaited and much-anticipated campaign. As I mentioned above, I’ve added a swashbuckling sub-site to Canon Puncture to act as a campaign log and you are all invited to follow along as we move through pre-play planni ng and into actual play over the next several days.

I’m also playing in a Spirit of the Century game with Mark Kinney, Clay Karwan, and Andrew Black. We had one meeting and it went really well. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the Thursday night game this week but we’re planning on getting back to it next week.

In the comments on my latest MERP post Darren Brewster asked for more details on the Burning Wheel: Rome mini-campaign that Rich and I are playing with Ogre Whiteside, and in responding to that request I realized it would be nice to go ahead and share that as its own post, along with info on the characters we’ve burned up. So, here’s the premise of the saga:

It is a couple of years after the Ides of March in 44 B.C., after a failed assassination attempt on consul-for-life Gaius Julius Caesar on the floor of the Senate. Caesar now rules in Rome even more securely than before. His two most trusted lieutenants are Gaius Octavian, Caesar’s nephew, who is Governor General of Palestinia in the East, and Marcus Antonius, Governor General of Britannia in the West.

We have established that our two protagonists, the African warrior Juba [Rich] and the city-born street performer/messenger/scout Sapius [Me] are both in Britannia working for Marc Antony. We’ve been sent on a mission of intrigue to try to unseat the current chieftain of the Iceni tribe and replace him with his brother, who is more amenable to Antony’s regime.

That’s all we’ve got so far. The rest we are pretty much winging as we go along. The meat of the saga will commence tonight. And here, as promised, are our characters: Read the rest of this entry »

I skipped MERP last week because I was playing catch-up from my trip to Chicago. Also, I’ve been a busy juggling bee, I’ve had several family/school/life issues jump up to the forefront of my deal-with list, and I’ve found my creativity quelled a bit. I knew there was no way I’d be able to keep up the blogging pace I had going a few weeks ago, but I didn’t expect I’d go completely dark, either.

Hey, it’s the same story we often hear from many of the blog/podcast personalities we follow. Life happens.

But hey, I’m going to try to get in a MERP entry before I go run errands… Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s my Making, Enjoying, Reading, Playing entry for the week ending May 1st, 2009. Use the comments to share your own MERP, if you’re of a mind.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been working hard to try to get a consistent pace going here on the Monkey, and I plan to continue that effort. But I also have a Vegas After Midnight writing goal to achieve this week and I’m going to focus my hobby/creativity time on that for the next 3 to 4 days, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to do my Monkey journaling until that’s done. I’ve got about 4 half-finished draft posts in my draft hopper, and who knows what else I’ll run across that might inspire me to want to share something, so who knows? But this week, in the creative writing department, VAM takes precedence.

In the mean time, Canon Puncture #64 was released earlier today, so if you’re inclined, you can get a little Mick-fix (and a Rich-fix, and a Judd-fix) listening to that. Whatever you feel about Canon Puncture’s recent episodes, I’d like to encourage you to listen to #64. We really had fun recording it and I think that it comes pretty close to what we want to do with the show’s main segment – which is to talk about our gaming experiences as inspired by some cool and interesting blog or forum posts that we run across. In my opinion, we’ve hit on a formula here that will be entertaining, informative, and generally positive for listeners while still being natural and fun for the Canoneers.

So, there’s the Canon Puncture sales pitch. Other than that, I’ll catch ya around later this week, probably.