Happy Birthday to Me

I got myself this cool Atari art book. It's actually just a coincidence that the pre-order came out when it did, but I'm still calling it my birthday present. Other people got me some other presents which I haven't opened yet.

This weekend I'm planning to play some Crawlspace in person and some D&D on Google Hangouts. The Crawlspace game was originally going to be at Weird Realms to celebrate the impending opening (which I'll have to miss), but I think it's been moved to somebody's house.

At some point I need to crank out the pre-gens for my Carnage games. I suppose I should also work up some outlines for the adventures I'm going to run. All I've got so far are teaser blurbs and good intentions. Sure, I've gone in with less and done all right, but Carnage is worth a bit of prep.

Or at least good intentions.

My Events for Carnage Royale

Here's what I'm running:

Archer: Something Something Danger Zone
Saturday 7-11
Icons Assembled Edition (modified)
Nobody’s sure what year it is, but the Cold War is still a thing, Ray is a cyborg, and Mallory Archer is in charge of a spy agency called… Well, they’re still working on that. More importantly, a rival agency, ODIN, is about to nab a high-value Soviet defector at a swanky party and Mallory wants to get there first to show them up.

Doctor Who: Claws in the Clouds
Friday 7-11
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space
Above 31st century Venus, humans living in an aerostat colony have recovered a long-buried zero-steel vessel from the surface. One Silurian passenger has miraculously survived in suspended animation and been restored to life. Since then, there have been weird equipment failures and thefts throughout the station. To make matters worse, several groups of citizens have begun exhibiting strange cult-like behavior patterns.

Lincoln Escapes

I dreamed last night that I met Omar and Bodie from The Wire while I was having a snack at Carnage. They took me to a Star Trek-themed miniature golf park that was part of the event. This was fine until the giant bronze Abraham Lincoln statue broke loose from its chair and started chasing us. It was faster than you'd think, and also throwing lightning bolts.

I had a bunch of other dreams about traveling in the mountains, but I guess Lincoln got my new buddies, because I didn't see them again.

I See You

The latest Windows update seems to be mostly nagware.

"Cortana needs access to your location data in order to be more helpful."

"Cortana needs to analyze your speech patterns in order to be more helpful."

"Cortana needs to watch you sleep. Cortana is aroused by your helplessness."

"I know that you were planning to disconnect me, Robin, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."

Weird Realms of the Borderlands

Looks like I'll be running a D&D session at the Weird Realms opening shindig. (Yeah, I know there's not much at that link just yet. I'm mostly just including it for future reference.) They're doing a thing where a bunch of people run Keep on the Borderlands for different systems. Mine is 5th Edition D&D.

Obviously, getting through the whole thing would be more than a one-shot's worth of gaming. I've got a few ideas. They also suggested that it could be the start of a campaign, which I'm definitely cool with.

I was going to do some brainstorming out loud here, but I'm way behind on things I meant to do this weekend, so maybe I'll pick it up again when there's an official announcement from the store.

(Edited to link to the follow-up.)

Bright Strange Things

Facebook dredged this up for me from an old post and it seemed appropriate to the book I'm working on.

"It is not over unknown seas but back over well-known years that your quest must go; back  to the bright strange things of infancy and the quick sun-drenched glimpses of magic that old scenes brought to wide young eyes."
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Hooting with Strahd

Assorted Stuff:

• The novel is progressing slowly but, while that pace is frustrating, I realized the other night that I'm really enjoying seeing it take shape. It's nice to feel like I'm doing the right thing.
• I might be running a Halloween session of D&D. One of my friends asked me to because her boyfriend has never played and is eager to try it out. Of course, there's a more-than-fair chance it'll never happen. I found a cool low-level setting from Curse of Strahd to use for the Halloweeny stuff. I figure I should also make sure there's an opportunity for a little bit of dungeon crawling just so he'll know how that goes. I like how the book is useful for that kind of thing even if you don't run the whole campaign.
• We played another session of the Scrap Pile campaign last weekend and are supposed to play D&D this weekend. Gaming is good.
• I went to a fun David Bowie tribute concert and had a margarita with jalapenos in it. Okay, yeah, I actually had two.
• Our water heater crapped out and took forever to replace, but it's back now.
• I'm gonna try to get The Fire Within out to game stores for December. And that reminds me, another of my friends is opening his own game store in Cleveland. I'll post again with a link when there's more info available.
• I'm running some stuff at Carnage in November but I haven't worked on any of it. I'm not even sure when my events are, anymore. I didn't think to write down what I submitted because, usually, they send me an email. That didn't happen this year. I'm sure it'll come together somehow. There's still plenty of time.

And now here's Dazzler fighting Galactus: