Dream with Our Eyes Open

... after running three Numenera campaigns back-to-back for the last few years.

We're starting at third level.

I'm trying to build my character, and my brain HURTS.

What have you just finished reading?

Regenesis by C.J. Cherryh, but maybe I shouldn't count it because I didn't start at the beginning? This time I actually enjoyed the part where Yanni is stuck in Novgorod; it read a little more like a political thriller than I remember. I do find it strange to contemplate people still wearing tweed jackets 300 years from now. Things get a little weird for me every time CJC goes into details of their clothing, although I do like the description of the black-and-gunmetal-and-bronze outfit that Ari II gets at one point in Cyteen. Also, the second stringers among Ari II's coterie, like Tommy Carnath, are all too plainly there just to have someone else to voice an opinion when they're discussing things. I can't even remember who Tommy is except that he's clearly a member of Amy Carnath's extended family.

I keep thinking I must have read something else, but it was probably magazines and the D&D 3.5 Players Manual. (Our gaming group is getting ready to start up a new campaign.)

What are you currently reading?

Nothing. I finished Regenesis last night and haven't started anything else yet. Decisions, decisions. Maybe I'll rip through Redshirts again so I can write it up: it's a fast read.

What do you think you'll read next?

My mind is blank on the subject. Sad. I never located Among Others, which I proposed reading last week.

This session of our pulp SF tabletop RPG campaign actually took place a while ago, before I started taking detailed notes, so it will be a little sketchy.

When we last left Trask Force Alpha, they were finishing up solving the problem of the sabotage at the lunar water-generation stations. Their next assignment was to mingle with and prevent problems among the passengers and crew of the Mars Express, a luxury space liner that happened to be taking a large number of diplomats and corporate representative to a special meeting of the Solar System Congress on Mars. At stake: a "planetary genesis" project that would create self-contained new planetoids capable of sustaining oxy-breathing life ... .

This is the space opera game in which I am a dog-person medic. We are using the D20 game system, and this week, for some reason, abebooks had several of the books we use for rules etc. on sale for semi-reasonable prices. So I ordered them, and they have all arrived! Yay - not so much tussling over books every time someone goes up a level.

I've been enjoying james_nicoll's write-ups of the sessions of the game he's in. Is there any interest in hearing about ours? (Please don't feel obliged to humor me ... .)

As proof, I offer the fact that I spelled "dead" as "ded," above, when I started this message.

We're RPGing on Saturday night for the second weekend in a row, in an attempt to get the monthly game back on its pre-summer schedule (it has now become a space opera game; I am an uplifted dog ... who happens to be a fantastically skilled paramedic). And the Young Lady is in a high-intensity driving/driver safety course that runs 10:00am-1:15pm on every weekend (both days) for the rest of the month, and it's located in Rockville (= 40-minute drive).

And between dropping her (and her best friend) off at driving lessons tomorrow and going to the game, I am driving to Glen Air to visit my sis-in-law who is recovering from a hip replacement. So I am not going to be able to mellow out for a day any time soon (hmmm ... maybe Columbus Day, although TYL has school, so I will still be waking up early).

And also! Sunday is the Takoma Park Street Festival. Which will make it hard to get in and out of our neighborhood, because they block off the end of our street near the main drag and set up one of the stages there ... .

No wonder I can't get any creative thinking done ... .

I actually took this a while ago ... I think I got a different character class last time. I will confess I gamed the quiz a bit: it wants to make me Lawful Good, and I certainly don't tend to play either D&D or life that way.

I Am a: Neutral Good Human Druid/Sorcerer (3rd/3rd Level)

(Hello hello ... back home again after being away for most of a week!)

telophase has finished the picture I won from her in the Sweet Charity auction a while back. It is the most gorgeous thing! Check it out here, and also see her notes about how it came about - what I prompted, and what happened after that - because I think it was an interesting process.

And I have won the story that emungere offered on the livelongnmarry auction, which closed in the wee hours of the morning! I need to come up with something really good in the way of an idea ... probably I will do a few ideas, as I did for the picture, and hope that one really hits home.

(A digression - or perhaps not - on the subject of creativity on demand: In my gaming heyday, when I ran tournaments at cons and stuff, someone once asked me what type of roleplaying scenario I liked best as a player myself: Tolkien-ish? Oriental fantasy? SF? Urban noire fantasy? Spy? My answer was: "If the gamesmaster is good, then whatever the gamesmaster enjoys running the most."

XD