When in doubt, reinstall.

I reinstalled the Google Talk plugin, so it seems that I can participate in hangouts on Google+ again. That's a relief.

(My apologies to everybody in Monday's "Vats of Mazarin" game that didn't happen; I tried and tried, but nothing worked. Now it seems fixed.)

Not much else to say, really. I haven't done as much gaming as I'd like lately, but the only person I can blame for that is myself.

I think I'll get back to work on the whole "Freedom in the Galaxy"/"Worlds of Wonder" mashup I was working on last spring. It feels like time to get back to that.

Another Thursday post!

If it's Thursday, it must be Arcadayn's "Conan" game.

Better connection all around, this time. My video froze a couple of times, but I didn't get booted and my screen didn't go all screwy (see previous post).

We're now escaped slaves, in some unknown (to us) city, teaching our Pictish barbarian the ways of civilization by going through pretty much every crime we know, one by one. So far we've done:

* escaped slaves,

* burglary, and

* mugging.

We might work our way up to murder or a bit of light arson; who knows? The night is still young...

Not sure what happened here...

The game I was in tonight had one man absent, but proceeded pretty well nonetheless.

And then, this happened:


(Click for full-sized weirdness)

I've never seen anything like it. Not sure if it was Google+ or my own machine (I had just installed the newest version of Firefox).

This was in addition to the routine connection errors I get.

If anyone can tell me what it was, that'd be great. In the meantime, I'll continue playing and see what other weirdness turns up.

What?

I could have sworn I posted something here last night.

But now it's not here.

Ah, well.

Just letting you know that I'm still here, and I've been gaming both in person and on Google+. Got to try out X-Plorers (which I've owned for about 2 years now but have never actually played until now...I hate that, but it's the way I am.)

Anybody on Google+ have any requests? Anything you want to play that you haven't yet?

I really feel like running something, but can't decide. Too many choices! Arrgh!

(but not Arrr! That's for Talk Like a Pirate Day, and that won't happen until the 19th.)

Not an amorphous blob!

Tried out my new webcam in the Vats of Mazarin game last night. Everybody was happy that they could actually hear me this time, and that I wasn't really the amorphous blob they'd come to know.

Sadly, however, I was having server issues. So for about half the game I couldn't hear them. Pity, too, because I could see them laughing -- but I hadn't heard the joke.

But we had a good session, made some allies, cleared some of the dungeon. Three or four of us made a level (including me!)

So that was pretty good.

Generation Gap

In my AD&D game, we've been trekking through this one tunnel for over a day now (game time). We keep coming across side tunnels, which don't get us to our objective.

Tonight, we came to another side tunnel. And inside it, we found another side tunnel. And the DM was busy looking something up. So, as it my way, I said:

"And we came to another side road and off to the side of the side road was another fifteen foot cliff. And at the bottom of the cliff was another half a ton of garbage. We decided one big pile was better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw ours down. So that's what we did.

"We went back to the Church, had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep, and didn't get up until the next morning when we got a phone call from Officer Obie."


And they all stared at me like I'd lost my mind.

So I said "Alice's Restaurant?"

And they said "What's Alice's Restaurant?"

The DM recognized it, vaguely, but couldn't be sure if it was Arlo or Woodie Guthrie (I told him it was Arlo, Woodie's son.)


That's when I felt really, really old.

Now I'm trying to dig this classic up on iTunes, so I can bring it along and enlighten these puir wee bairns about popular culture from the time of D&D's creation.

Okay, couldn't find it on either iTunes or YouTube, so I sent them the link from Grooveshark. In case you need to hear it (and hey, who doesn't?), here it is:

http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=Alice%27s+Restaurant

...but am I paranoid enough?

(It's the punchline to an old joke, in case you were wondering.)

What could inspire such a title?

Dungeon Crawl Classics, that's what.

Finally got to give it a try, again on Google+. I'm really starting to like this service, by the way. Two nights in a row I've been able to game (and, incidentally, meet fellow gamers), all without leaving the comfort of my home.

What can I say that wasn't already said months ago?

It's not as bad as it looks. How's that?

The reputation that proceeds DCC (for short) is that it's even more hardcore than old school D&D was. When I started, in the early 80's, the old guys in my group told of the days when you'd start 5 first level characters, hoping just one would survive to second level.

Well, DCC trumps that: You start with a handful of unlevelled characters, hoping one will survive to make first.

I must have done well; 3 of my 4 survived. And there were only 2 of us playing! Out of 8 characters, 5 of us survived. Not bad.

I could actually feel my old school dungeoneering skills oozing back into me (which is nowhere near as creepy as it sounds).

I thought I'd lost them, what with all the 3.5 I played. But they're still there. And now some of the rust has been knocked off them.

But aside from the system, I'm absolutely loving the new opportunities to play games with people I've never met before. A lot of them are from the Original D&D Discussion forum, where I've been a regular almost since it started. It's good to put a face and a voice to these guys.

And they are, without exception, Good People (tm).

I gotta say, I like living in the future!