Pirates and Castles
Jun. 19th, 2005 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aAn eventful yesterday.
Kimberly was doing the insomnia shuffle during the morning. She was up at about 5.30, then came back to bed at about 7.30. She was very cold, which she has been lately, and thus wanted to cuddle. This was actually nice, because Kimberly's rarely wants to stay in bed when she's anxious or headachey or having problems swallowing, and that's been much of the time recently. So we dozed and cuddled on and off until I decided to drag my lazy butt out of bed a couple of hours lately.
Went to gaming a couple of hours after that. We were a bit low in the people department because Kevin and Chris W. weren't coming and for a while it looked like Eric F. wasn't going to show up either. (He eventually did.)
It's been a bit odd having Chris about because Kevin insists that he's a part of the group, but he's only shown up to about two sessions since the start of April. Chris is Kevin's brother, and started living which Kevin at the start of April. So for Kevin it became obvious that he'd be a part of our gaming group, but for Chris, apparently less so. He's been perfectly happy to play, and seemed to enjoy himself the couple of times that he was here, but he really isn't making any effort to be here. (He's in Davis most of the time, with his girlfriends, which raises the whole question of what he's doing "living" in the Bay Area, but that's a problem for him and Kevin to figure out.)
Overall we're down mucho members of the gaming group at this point. Dave S. continues to work screwed hours that keep him from gaming, as he has since he moved back to the Bay Area. Eric R. of course moved away at the end of March. Bill and Matt are many years gone. Chris V. slowly phased himself out of the group over a couple of years, and is definitely gone now. So we're down to a core group of me, Donald, Dave P., Eric F. (our only true addition since college), Dave W., Kevin, and (theoretically) Chris W. Admittedly 5 or 6 players is more comfortable than the 7 or 9 we had for many years. On the other hand if I ran into someone who'd be interested in playing I'd feel perfectly comfortable inviting them, which wouldn't have been the case before.
Anyway, Dave P.'s pirate campaign finally got off the ground this week, with characters firmly created and a defined system (RMSS) in place. We roleplayed for about four hours, just long enough to get a handle on the static maneuver system and even make a half-dozen combat rolls. A few shots at a deer, and Eric F. punching out another pirate to try and get off the boat first. We ended up in jail, which is where Dave had tried to start the campaign a month and a half ago, before we figured out we were using two versions of the RoleMaster rules.
I still suspect that no one has actually read the rulebook, and I'm tempted to bring it home one week to do so. (The books we're using are all mine, since the RMSS collection was one of the last major RPG purchases I made, but they're hanging out at Donald's apartment so that we can all use them.)
It was enjoyable. A few laugh out loud moments and a real story starting to be told.
A few hours after I got home, after dinner and all that jazz, I was talking to Kimberly, and she was talking about wanting to go out to a cafe or something, just to get out of the house. So, I said, why don't we go see Howl's Moving Castle, the new Miyazaki film which we'd been planning to see anyway this weekend.
So, we did. There was fortunately a 9:35 showing, about 25 minutes after we made our decision, and the theatre is just 15 minutes brisk walk away.
It's a good film, definitely one of Miyazaki's better ones. It doesn't have quite the sense of strangeness and wonder that you find in Spirited Away or Totoro, but like Spirited Away it has a great sense of adventurous storytelling. I liked it quite a bit, and it made me want to see some of his other films again. (There's very few pure Miyazaki films I haven't seen. Porco Rosso and maybe one more. We have a collection of them on a set of Ghibli films I got for Kimberly a few years ago, but most of what's left unwatched there are the other Ghibli offering.)
We got home right around midnight.
A busy day.
Kimberly was doing the insomnia shuffle during the morning. She was up at about 5.30, then came back to bed at about 7.30. She was very cold, which she has been lately, and thus wanted to cuddle. This was actually nice, because Kimberly's rarely wants to stay in bed when she's anxious or headachey or having problems swallowing, and that's been much of the time recently. So we dozed and cuddled on and off until I decided to drag my lazy butt out of bed a couple of hours lately.
Went to gaming a couple of hours after that. We were a bit low in the people department because Kevin and Chris W. weren't coming and for a while it looked like Eric F. wasn't going to show up either. (He eventually did.)
It's been a bit odd having Chris about because Kevin insists that he's a part of the group, but he's only shown up to about two sessions since the start of April. Chris is Kevin's brother, and started living which Kevin at the start of April. So for Kevin it became obvious that he'd be a part of our gaming group, but for Chris, apparently less so. He's been perfectly happy to play, and seemed to enjoy himself the couple of times that he was here, but he really isn't making any effort to be here. (He's in Davis most of the time, with his girlfriends, which raises the whole question of what he's doing "living" in the Bay Area, but that's a problem for him and Kevin to figure out.)
Overall we're down mucho members of the gaming group at this point. Dave S. continues to work screwed hours that keep him from gaming, as he has since he moved back to the Bay Area. Eric R. of course moved away at the end of March. Bill and Matt are many years gone. Chris V. slowly phased himself out of the group over a couple of years, and is definitely gone now. So we're down to a core group of me, Donald, Dave P., Eric F. (our only true addition since college), Dave W., Kevin, and (theoretically) Chris W. Admittedly 5 or 6 players is more comfortable than the 7 or 9 we had for many years. On the other hand if I ran into someone who'd be interested in playing I'd feel perfectly comfortable inviting them, which wouldn't have been the case before.
Anyway, Dave P.'s pirate campaign finally got off the ground this week, with characters firmly created and a defined system (RMSS) in place. We roleplayed for about four hours, just long enough to get a handle on the static maneuver system and even make a half-dozen combat rolls. A few shots at a deer, and Eric F. punching out another pirate to try and get off the boat first. We ended up in jail, which is where Dave had tried to start the campaign a month and a half ago, before we figured out we were using two versions of the RoleMaster rules.
I still suspect that no one has actually read the rulebook, and I'm tempted to bring it home one week to do so. (The books we're using are all mine, since the RMSS collection was one of the last major RPG purchases I made, but they're hanging out at Donald's apartment so that we can all use them.)
It was enjoyable. A few laugh out loud moments and a real story starting to be told.
A few hours after I got home, after dinner and all that jazz, I was talking to Kimberly, and she was talking about wanting to go out to a cafe or something, just to get out of the house. So, I said, why don't we go see Howl's Moving Castle, the new Miyazaki film which we'd been planning to see anyway this weekend.
So, we did. There was fortunately a 9:35 showing, about 25 minutes after we made our decision, and the theatre is just 15 minutes brisk walk away.
It's a good film, definitely one of Miyazaki's better ones. It doesn't have quite the sense of strangeness and wonder that you find in Spirited Away or Totoro, but like Spirited Away it has a great sense of adventurous storytelling. I liked it quite a bit, and it made me want to see some of his other films again. (There's very few pure Miyazaki films I haven't seen. Porco Rosso and maybe one more. We have a collection of them on a set of Ghibli films I got for Kimberly a few years ago, but most of what's left unwatched there are the other Ghibli offering.)
We got home right around midnight.
A busy day.