My Weekend
Sep. 15th, 2025 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseLook at me posting on a Monday! Will wonders never cease?
On Saturday, I ran my usual D&D campaign. Because a lot of people find this stuff boring, I shall put my brief discussion about it under the cut.
As part of our usual Saturday alliterative errands, Shawn and I stop for coffee. (Our alliteration is: coffee, cardboard, cardamon buns... and then sometimes other that things we struggle to turn into 'c's, like Mendards which we sometimes just call 'cart,' because it's shopping.) This Saturday is was only the traditional three stops. Our cardboard recycling center has closed in Saint Paul, so now we have to drive all the way out to Roseville, which is... annoying? Though it may mean that we will return "car" to our alliterative errands as the car wash place is out in the same direction.
Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that my barista often ask me if I have fun plans for the weekend and so I mentioned D&D. One of the guys there also runs a campaign and GUESS WHAT THEY'RE PLAYING??? Yep, the same thing we are: The Curse of Strahd. Like me, he's having to do some heavy homebrewing to make it fit into the play style of his group. We both joked that we might be using some of the same source materials but there's no way we're playing the same game.
Which is what I love about GMing and RPGs in general.
Probably the most fun thing that happened in the game on Saturday is that we had a guest player,pegkerr . Peg is a friend of mine who is doing something that I find absolutely delightful for her birthday this year. Her actual birth DAY was some time several months ago, but she asked her friends if they would be willing to provide a "year of adventure" for her. She wanted to do somethings together with friends, maybe try something new, but generally just spend the year with people--maybe some of whom she only knew from social media or other online communities like this one. Peg has never played an RPG of any kind (and I'm not convinced D&D is actually the best one to start with given how much of a learning curve there is,) but I found her a stripped down character sheet and a nice, simplified set of "how the game works" handouts and... she did great. Through no fault of her own, she was turned into a frog, but she played an EXCELLENT frog for those rounds in which she was polymorphed. It seemed to work out great. And, because the world of Strahd attracts random adventurers as part of it's actual stated lore, she could play whatever race or class she wanted. And she will then disappear into the mist, as such things go in this world. (Though we did leave things open should Peg decide she wants to return again at some point.)
It was generally an interesting game on Saturday, too, because one of the things that I like about the written material in The Curse of Strahd is that they suggest to the GM that Stradhd, despite being the final boss, evil overlord vampire, should be run into several times before any final battle so that the characters form an opinion of him, get to fear, loathe, or be charmed by him. Which is a cool idea, honestly. So, I played Strahd on Saturday--which, while evil, was kind of fun, you know?
Anyway, so that was the game.
Other things I did this weekend was start watching Altered Carbon. And, before you ask, no, I'm not watching it for the podcast. It came up when I was looking for something new and I thought: why not? I hear that the second season isn't as good, but I'm enjoying the story so far. To be clear, however, thanks to all the shounen anime that I consume I have a LARGE tolerance for what is essentially splatterpunk. I would not recommend this show to anyone squeamish about blood, gore, or realistic violence. It also treats women (particularly sex workers) as disposable and so has gotten the reputation as misogynistic, but I'm really enjoying two of the women characters in it SO FAR. We'll see how it all plays out as I go along. I'm only up to episode four, I think.
Netflix also reminded me that I need to continue with The Summer Hikaru Died, but I am waiting for a few more episodes to drop before I return to that one. At some point, too, the anime is going to go past what I've read of the manga, and I'll have to decide if I should go to the library and check out any new volumes or if I'm cool with letting the anime carry me. I'll probably be cool with just going with the anime? Sometimes you just have to because the English language release is that much further behind?
Anyway, my alarm went off for my writing accountablity Zoom so I should head off and try to do some writing!
On Saturday, I ran my usual D&D campaign. Because a lot of people find this stuff boring, I shall put my brief discussion about it under the cut.
As part of our usual Saturday alliterative errands, Shawn and I stop for coffee. (Our alliteration is: coffee, cardboard, cardamon buns... and then sometimes other that things we struggle to turn into 'c's, like Mendards which we sometimes just call 'cart,' because it's shopping.) This Saturday is was only the traditional three stops. Our cardboard recycling center has closed in Saint Paul, so now we have to drive all the way out to Roseville, which is... annoying? Though it may mean that we will return "car" to our alliterative errands as the car wash place is out in the same direction.
Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that my barista often ask me if I have fun plans for the weekend and so I mentioned D&D. One of the guys there also runs a campaign and GUESS WHAT THEY'RE PLAYING??? Yep, the same thing we are: The Curse of Strahd. Like me, he's having to do some heavy homebrewing to make it fit into the play style of his group. We both joked that we might be using some of the same source materials but there's no way we're playing the same game.
Which is what I love about GMing and RPGs in general.
Probably the most fun thing that happened in the game on Saturday is that we had a guest player,
pegkerr . Peg is a friend of mine who is doing something that I find absolutely delightful for her birthday this year. Her actual birth DAY was some time several months ago, but she asked her friends if they would be willing to provide a "year of adventure" for her. She wanted to do somethings together with friends, maybe try something new, but generally just spend the year with people--maybe some of whom she only knew from social media or other online communities like this one. Peg has never played an RPG of any kind (and I'm not convinced D&D is actually the best one to start with given how much of a learning curve there is,) but I found her a stripped down character sheet and a nice, simplified set of "how the game works" handouts and... she did great. Through no fault of her own, she was turned into a frog, but she played an EXCELLENT frog for those rounds in which she was polymorphed. It seemed to work out great. And, because the world of Strahd attracts random adventurers as part of it's actual stated lore, she could play whatever race or class she wanted. And she will then disappear into the mist, as such things go in this world. (Though we did leave things open should Peg decide she wants to return again at some point.)It was generally an interesting game on Saturday, too, because one of the things that I like about the written material in The Curse of Strahd is that they suggest to the GM that Stradhd, despite being the final boss, evil overlord vampire, should be run into several times before any final battle so that the characters form an opinion of him, get to fear, loathe, or be charmed by him. Which is a cool idea, honestly. So, I played Strahd on Saturday--which, while evil, was kind of fun, you know?
Anyway, so that was the game.
Other things I did this weekend was start watching Altered Carbon. And, before you ask, no, I'm not watching it for the podcast. It came up when I was looking for something new and I thought: why not? I hear that the second season isn't as good, but I'm enjoying the story so far. To be clear, however, thanks to all the shounen anime that I consume I have a LARGE tolerance for what is essentially splatterpunk. I would not recommend this show to anyone squeamish about blood, gore, or realistic violence. It also treats women (particularly sex workers) as disposable and so has gotten the reputation as misogynistic, but I'm really enjoying two of the women characters in it SO FAR. We'll see how it all plays out as I go along. I'm only up to episode four, I think.
Netflix also reminded me that I need to continue with The Summer Hikaru Died, but I am waiting for a few more episodes to drop before I return to that one. At some point, too, the anime is going to go past what I've read of the manga, and I'll have to decide if I should go to the library and check out any new volumes or if I'm cool with letting the anime carry me. I'll probably be cool with just going with the anime? Sometimes you just have to because the English language release is that much further behind?
Anyway, my alarm went off for my writing accountablity Zoom so I should head off and try to do some writing!
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