Category Archives: Gaming

Wisdom Teeth and D&D

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Beloved Wife is having all her wisdom teeth extracted this morning. She’s been pretty anxious, but she’s resigned to her fate. I’m off from work today to tend to her.

Of course, NatureBoy has his own designs on today and tomorrow. Since BW will be out of commission for a while, he’s been hard at work on a D&D campaign, complete with props. I expect we’ll be playing this afternoon, and probably some tomorrow.

We had a very subdued Lammas; we had some freshly-picked grape tomatoes with supper, and I played several hands of cards with NatureBoy. Lately, I just haven’t had the inspiration to do elaborate ritual.

Well, gotta get ready to go to the oral surgeon.

Vacation – Paddling, BG, and Settlers of Catan

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Yesterday, we packed-up the kayaks and headed to Waterbury Center State Park. It’s a bit of a chore, packing three kayaks on our Focus sedan, but we’re getting it down to a system. The three of us paddled out onto the very smooth water and it was gorgeous!

In fact, almost immediately we saw a Blue Heron in the brush along shore. Then we watched a loon as it dove under the surfaceand wated for it to reappear. They stay under for a long time. On the way back, we saw a dear in the distance come down to the water’s edge to drink and then scamper back to the forest.

We swam for a bit, then had a nice picnic lunch. Then BW and NatureBoy went to swim more, and I took a kayak out to explore a bit further. It was really beautiful.

During the hot weather we’ve been having, BW and I have been slipping in episodes of Battlestar Galactica Season 2. It was her birthday present to me, but she really loves the show, too. 😀 NatureBoy has been occupied with Mario Sunshine on the GameCube — in the air conditioned upstairs — during our viewings. It takes us a while to get through “grown-up shows,” though so we’ll be enjoying this for weeks. She got me (us) series 2.5, too!

Today, we were planning to have our usual Friday night beach cookout, but the thunderstorm warning and radar images changed our minds. Instead, I took NatureBoy to a local coffee shop where a friend and parent of GeekKids had offered to facilitate some games of Settlers of Cattan. We and one other boy showed up. We had never played before, and my friend and the other boy helped us get going. I found it quite enjoyable and full of possibilities. In the end, my friend offered to lend her game (and a copy of Start of Darkness!) to us. Thanks so much, C!

Sword tag

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This post is very overdue.

Several weeks ago, Beloved Wife headed off for a weekend of Grrrl Power, leaving NatureBoy and me to our own devices (buwa-ha-ha-ha!). We dropped into the friendly neighborbood gaming store to see what was going on for Free RPG Day. We were a little disappointed because no one was running any games. Of course, I didn’t step up and volunteer to run anything either. We did pick up some of the free modules and demo give-aways, however, and a friend ran a game of Munchkin for us. That was fun; thankers Tyler!

On the way home we decided that this was the weekend we would make Boffer Swords. Now, I have looked at boffer sword construction sites on and off for over a year, but I hadn’t found any that looked sturdy enough. Then we found the Sword Tag site on the list of links at the wikipedia boffer site. We had been studying these instructions for about a week, and I knew what materials we would need.

So we stopped at the friendly neighborhood hardware store and picked up 1/2-inch CPVC pipe, pipe insulation, fiberglass rods, duct tape (in several colors!), spray adhesive, and a couple other things. We then spent about four hours on Saturday afternoon and evening, and four or more on Sunday afternoon putting the swords together.

The most of the following pictures were taken with the crappy camera in my Treo 700w. But they serve to document the process…

We set up my laptop nearby for easy reference, and got to work. NB carefully measured his materials and cut the PVC himself.

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LoreCon 3

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This weekend, I had a good time at LoreCon, the local gaming convention. I decided that I was going to take the opportunity to play some stuff I haven’t tried before.

On Friday, I tried an AD&D Battlesystems miniatures game. My villagers were all but wiped out by the marauding orcs. I enjoy the miniatures games, but I’m not very good at them (yet). I played a little bit of Descent before exhaustion overwhelmed me and I bowed out.

On Saturday night, I played Mutants & Masterminds with Steve Kenson, who develops the game for Green Ronin. It was my first supers game, and I had a blast. I knew most of the other players, and Steve ran a good con scenario. My only regret is that we did so much through roleplaying that I didn’t get to do anything with the combat system, which is different from regular d20. I’ll keep this on my list of games to try again.

On Sunday, I took NatureBoy with me to play some Classic BattleTech. He discovered Classic BattleTech last weekend, and downloaded a set of simplified rules and counters. He then beat me soundly. Twice. It was a lot of fun to have a bunch of players on both sides of the table, and the GM did a great job. He had really nice minis (and gave very respectful, clear handling instructions) and did a really great job of explaining the game. It wasn’t hard at all to make the leap from the QuickStart rules to the full ruleset.

Then NatureBoy and I went out to lunch. 🙂

Thanks and kudos to the conference staff and the GMs. I look forward to next year.

Game on! Lunch Money and LoreCon

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I had a great time with my friend Ted on Wednesday. He introduced me to a little game called Lunch Money, the game of playground violence. It was a lot of fun in a mildly disturbing kind of way. Check out the website for some of the game’s imagery.

And the gaming fun continues this weekend at LoreCon, Burlington’s own gaming convention. I’m atttending much of the weekend, and I’m looking forward to trying out some games I haven’t played before. On Sunday, NatureBoy will attending with me to play some Classic BattleTech, which he discovered last weekend.

It will mean several late nights, but I’m really looking forward to it.