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Impatience is a virtue

This is what happens when you have us play Tokaido and then follow that up by mixing the Firefly and Monty Python versions of Fluxx into one. It gets very, very silly.

There was also something along the lines of the person who brought Tokaido didn't quite bother explaining the rules properly, which meant that he of course won, and someone else got a bit upset about that. Ahh, good times.

Flatpacked in the name of

We bought this game a while back but have yet to actually play it, so we thought we'd finally get around to doing so, in the last session before our annual roleplaying break over the holidays, especially as we were two players down and therefore couldn't continue the adventure anyway.

It's a game where you build your village, hire Vikings and go on raids. It was really complicated to begin with, but got easier as we played. Good game, would play again.

Zombies with a foot fetish

Baton Rouge turns out to not just have a problem with river pirates, but also with zombies. Zombies with fancy morgue tags on their toes, despite morgues having gone out of fashion (well, they kind of do when the dead get up and walk). Perhaps some nefarious dude is creating zombies in a kind of golem style way? If we can fight them off for long enough - or if the GM could avoid critting when hitting characters who botched their Quickness rolls for initiative - maybe we can actually get to the bottom of this. The murky, swampy bottom.

We're building a vacuuminator

Still in Baton Rouge, we walked around the sunken town and had a chat with the locals - until we were attacked by river pirates again. On the plus side, we have a guy who can kill people with his brain, and the rest of us are trained to use various weapons ...

Pretending we're in Venice and not Baton Rogue

Making our way down the river we eventually reached the flooded remains of Baton Rouge and met the locals, who were rather surprised to learn that a horse had been trained to go outside to take a dump. The locals seem friendly enough. Maybe next time we find out they actually want to turn us into gumbo?

Get out of my guts!

We're back in the future, and this time we have a couple of new friends:

  • Elliot Harrison, a Templar
  • Rufus Sterling, a Huckster (replacing Duke Carpenter)

We've travelled a lot and made it down to Louisiana, where we stopped because the van broke down and helped a guy not to get slaughtered by a pack of rats. Aaaand then we were about to be attacked by river pirates, so we got out of there.

Everyone's killing innocents, why can't I?

With a van loaded full of innocents (and some of the party that don't have their own means of transportation), we got the hell out of Coalition State. Without dying, so there's a plus. The SAMAS and their pals tried their very best, but while we don't actually have plot armour ... we sort of still appear to have plot armour. ;)

Sit down, shut up and roll initiative

Trying to get out of Coalition State ... Going so-so. Especially since we're also trying to save some people along the way. Oh, if only we were the bad guys, we wouldn't have tobe all helpful and stuff!

Can we just call this 'The Monumental Fuck-up'?

So, umm, bad things happened.

Well, there was thing thing called the Prometheus Project, which can allegedly extend Juicers' limited lifespans. This was appealing to Donna, for obvious reasons.

Then ... well it came to the point where she was fined for not being able to show her papers, she went to pay it, was asked for her papers again (we were still waiting for the new forgeries), and shit kicked off. She destroyed a toilet which caused the building to go into lockdown. Gorbash set off a fusion block outside, blowing a crater in the street and taking not just a couple of Coalition State soldiers with it, but a number of civilians. Seeing as how he sort of can't differentiate between civilians and soldiers because they're all Coalition Staters (basically "all Germans were Nazis") ... the characters with a bit more fixed moral compass (read: Elyssia and Jayson) are ... not very pleased.

Oh, and Gorbash doesn't like haute cuisine. It's too bland for him. It's like what an iced bun is to Swedes ...

Sixth Sense has been going off since I met you guys

We got reinforcements - by two players instead of just the one that had been missing the previous few weeks. Alistair is ... well, still trying to look for clues about his brother, probably, so instead we are now in the company of a werebear called Jeremiah, or Jerry for short, and a human Juicer called Donna. So now we have two females in the party, played by men, and of course Jayson is being played by a female. (This information will come in handy to understand a particular quote in a bit.)

Despite it being a suicide mission, because we'll all be hunted down as aberrations (or something like that), we decided to go toward Tolkeen. Or at least go into Coalition territory.

Best laid plans and all that ...

Border crossing, we were going to go past pretty much unnoticed, when we see a family of four being hunted down. Because we're the good guys, we of course got involved, because trying to murder children isn't something we approve of. Shooting ensued, but we did survive it to fight another session. :)

Apparently I'm going to Tolkeen

In this session, Booker was finally told that Gorbash can remove the symbiote off his back. Problem is, the symbiote is quite handy to have ... even if it is a Splugorth creation/abomination. But when it saves your life, you know, you sort of get attached to it. Or it's some kind of Stockholm Syndrome going on.

Speaking of Gorbash, he thinks the Cyber-knights should set up a council or something to police their knights and such to ensure that they don't go rogue (like that Josh guy), because Cyber-knights are supposed to be the pinnacle of something or other. Though Jayson explained that there are sometimes people like Josh who are the exceptions to confirm the rules, Cyber-knights are not 100% infallible, because they're still human.

I don't get out of bed for less than 40 MDC

The Shemarrians would like to take the gate off our (squishy human) hands so that they can keep us safe from it. We thought it sounded legit. Some other people would also like to get their hands on said gate, and we're less cool with that.

Also, it turned out that Josh the Cyber-knight who wanted to go to Tolkeen to fight, despite this not being sanctioned by head office, had switched sides and is now some kind of mystic knight thingamajig. Or rather WAS some kind of mystic knight thingamajig. There may have been an altercation with us and some necromancers and stuff ...

There are no nice guys in this game

We're back in Rifts, and we had a run-in with the Shemarrians. Elyssia took on one of them to proove herself worthy of looking after the squishy humans - especially the completely useless males (cue Jayson looking both confused and affronted, and Gorbash looking ... well, he's a dragon, so he wasn't really involved) - and they eventually agreed that maybe a demigod isn't so bad at the whole protection thing after all.

The OTHER Black Forest

Further adventures in 1960s Soviet Russia. This time it included a trip to the Black Forest. When pointing out that the Black Forest is in what was then WEST Germany, it was decided that there was obviously also ANOTHER Black Forest ... somewhere in the Soviet Union.

This should eventually have landed us back in Victorian England (and our third set of characters), but the quotes don't reflect that for some reason. o.O

Thank god we're not actual Russians

When the modern characters met the Russian bear, he started telling a story, which landed us in 1960s Soviet Russia - and our second set of characters ... Cue exaggerated and wildly inaccurate Russian accents!

Are we in an extended Shakespeare metaphor?

We ended up partaking in an M&M campaign, because it's nice to get the band back together, as it were.

It's taking place in three different times. In this particular session, modern day American characters somehow ended up transported to the island in Shakespeare's The Tempest, where they met a one-armed Russian teddybear with rocket launchers. Soooo yeah. :D

Does a low roll mean you fail early or very, very late?

Again, I was barely conscious during these sessions, which is why three of them are combined into one here, as not a lot of stuff was noted down at the time.

As you can tell from the dates, there were a few cancelled sessions during this time. During some of them we boardgamed, but quotes weren't written down. The week before the final session, we were supposed to have the final session, but umm ... character sheets and stuff were left at home, friends from Sweden were visiting and we ended up playing Cards Against Humanity instead. Like you do. *cough*

You make Samurai sound like dicks

So things went a bit hectic with opening a café and stuff, but here are - finally - some quotes from the most recent game we've played - Legend of the Five Rings. I was barely conscious during these sessions, which is why three of them are combined into one here, as not a lot of stuff was noted down at the time.

What Would Booker Do?

In this final session of Rifts (for now), a dragon showed up (it was dispatched), and we nuked Nxla a bit. And then bravely ran away through the portal without the big bad monster following us - saving all the people. We rock!

Let's see if Nxla can be distracted by ice cream

We're in Nxla's realm! Or, as we found out later, not Nxla's realm at all, but a place where he'd once got to and liked it so much he decided to stay.

A bit of Nxla was found playing with some kind of creature on one side, and on the other, a human being brutalised by some other kind of creature, a sort of lizard-cat type thing carrying a globe. We made short work of the creature and rescued the human. Yay for us!

Unfortunately, right about then the Nxla tentacle spotted Booker and we had to leg it. Being the slowest one in the party, Jayson was picked up by Elyssia and casually tossed over her shoulder. (Whether or not she took the opportunity to cop a feel, we'll leave unsaid.) Not the most dignified means of travel, but at least it was effective.

Meanwhile, Gorbash decided to play hide and seek with Nxla to avoid the rest of the party getting tentacled.

Turned out the lizard-cat people had a whole village where they were keeping stray humans safe, because they are good guys. And we just murdered one of them. Oops? Luckily for them, they have some kind of resurrection thing going on, so the one we offed won't stay dead for very long.

Pretty much all humans are in the lizard-cat village, so all we need to do now is to herd them back to the gate and wait for it to open so we can all go through and return home. Or at least that was the plan until we found out that Alistair is looking for the soul of his brother which he believes to be in this particular realm. Fun times await?


Impatience is a virtue

One player down so we didn't delve deeper into Nxla's world this time. That's for next week.

Instead, we ate red vines and played Tokaido with all the funky expansions which the game's owner perhaps didn't explain as well as he ought to have (salt ensued). Then we mixed up the Firefly Fluxx deck with the Monty Python Fluxx deck and added in the cards from last year's International Table Top Day. We got up to about ten different rules in the end.

Opening the portal is less epic and poetic than I imagined

Innuendo aside, we went to clean up the abandoned town of Angels. The cleanup was successful. We also found some Shifters who realised that they could open the portal without having to kill people. Soooo ... they opened the portal, avoided activating some very nasty runes, and we went through ...

Scenery was a little less epic than pictured, although we recognised it from visions, dreams and such. Now we just need to find the missing people and get them back through the portal without waking up Nxla ...

Don't even PRETEND this was part of the plan!

In a session where the players kept ehh doing things that the GM hadn't planned for ... like trying to communicate with the spirit/thing trapped inside the portal because rune magic. It's a Pandemonium devil, by the way, and it basically went "you what? LOL" at Gorbash and Alistair when they tried to find an alternative way to activate the gate which wouldn't include blood sacrifice.

Jayson hung out with his fellow Cyber-knights, who kept talking to him about keeping on the straight and narrow (Booker's reputation precedes him, shall we say?) so eventually he stood up and held a speech saying he's not turning to the Dark Side just yet, so chill, basically. One of them proceeded to try and recruit him on a so far unsanctioned battle in Tolkeen, which he wasn't too happy about and later raised with Joan.

Meanwhile, Booker tried to test the protection around the gate and voluntarily spent the night in the Cyber-knights' jail, where Sir Alan read the Codex at him for teh rest of the night. Apparently it was a good background noise to fall asleep to. In the morning Elyssia came along and insulted Hecate through Booker, causing a lightning bolt to blow her through a wall. They were asked to take their arguments outside of the city walls until they could calm down.

The way to activate the portal is through blood magic, i.e. someone needs to die, Booker was told by Hecate - she should know, it's her gate, after all. Booker informed Jayson of this and the two went around town looking to see exactly how bad it would be, sacrifice-wise. A cute 7-year-old girl with pigtails was the answer, which even Booker felt uneasy about, despite being a former assassin.

They consulted with Joan, who would rather the people who might or might not be alive in Nxla's realm stay there rather than sacrificing an innocent child. Gorbash came along and suggested maybe we could use Rakshasa instead, because they're evil anyway so doesn't matter. Joan still vetoed the use of blood magic, because she's not insane.

At this point in time it's starting to seem as if we're not going to Nxla's realm after all. 'Tis a silly place.

Is Booker a good person?

So, to recap: a bunch of people have been sucked through a portal to Nxla's realm. Nxla being an Old One, like Cthulhu and the likes. Not a good place to be. There's a portal and we plan on opening it up just enough to be able to pass through, get the people back out, and get back without bringing Nxla back with us.

Before that, however, seeing as how Booker's epic Chosen One shot saved the rest of us, we went to the nearest city, Magestar, and set up camp at Alistair's, because apparently that's where he lives. We found a male Shemarrian, which is unheard of, and he had apparently been kicked out of his group.

We also met with Joan, a Cyber-knight, who was not too pleased with what Gorbash (backed up by Jayson) had to say about Booker. And to think they didn't even mention the bit about what happened in the Rakshasa territory, or anything about the Symbol of Splugorth, or the symbiote ...

Booker wasn't too keen to talk to her, but we later found out he had been trying to flirt with her. Speaking of flirting, Gorbash went to see Ixchal for some advice about the portal and ended up suggesting that he'd be happy to fertilise her eggs if he survives the whole portal plan thing. They grow up so fast these days!

As the portal neared the southern gate of the city, Booker handed Jayson a letter to be opened on Booker's demise, and then the Chosen One positioned himself atop a building with a sniper rifle. What was feared being a clocktower situation or attempted suicide by cop was in fact Booker expecting a necromancer to show up, and when that happens, he'll be there to take him or her out. Quite reassuring how our first reaction was "oh gods, he's on a killing spree, innocent people are going to die", isn't it?

Surely at some point demigod Elyssia will regret having come to this plane to help out this particular group ...

Awesome spells are awesomely silly

This is pretty short, because we weren't roleplaying, we were basically just levelling up our Rifts characters in preparation for next week's session when the game starts, so we don't have to spend half the gaming session doing the levelling.

We meant to do that fairly quickly and then do some boardgaming, but it turned out most of the time was actually spent doing the levelling and then we didn't have enough time to boardgame "properly", so instead we got in a few rounds of Fluxx.

Rapid fire!!

In a session where apparently it was difficult to remember that Kon and Nole are gender-swapped in relation to their players, we finally did what we were meant to do - take the Interdictor. Yay for us! There were epic lightsabre fights between Sarge and the Inquisitor, including some obligatory impressive jumping between floors.

Thus concludes this adventure.

Unfortunately in the process, we lost Declan, and with that his ability to roll extremely well, not to mention that he was personable - unlike NG, who, as it turns out (and unbeknownst to the rest of the party), had murdered him. Once an assassin droid, always an assassin droid. :( There was something about "Rebel scum" and hidden programming. Next time we do Star Wars, we're so screwed.

("Rapid fire" has been established as that's what Nole apparently says when he, ehh, reaches a critical point in his bunk.)

Stop making me out to be space Jesus!

We made it back to the (formerly) Imperial dreadnought and were patched up as well we could. Sarge still hasn't quite got his eyesight back, but maybe he will. Someone decided to put a torpedo next to Nole's sick bed in a bid to be friendly (it wasn't a gun so it didn't really work).

NG was less thrilled to have us back - mainly because the condition in which we returned the ship ...

Then we were fired upon. All hands on deck to blow the attacker out of the sky! Kon, flowerless but in much better health than some of her shipmates, pushed the dreadnought to its limits. Unfortunately, the intruders still managed to get on board, but that's what guns are for, right?

We need manpower, morale and proton torpedoes!

Where to begin? We were trying to get to the core and disable it, seeing as how a messed up droid brain had decided it was going to self-destruct Cloud City and set fire to the Bespin atmosphere, and we didn't want that.

On the plus side, we succeeded.

On the other hand, Sarge lost his sight. Doc nearly died trying to fix him, and eventually fell down the core shaft. Nole started off getting trapped in a room (it had a REALLY BIG GUN in it, okay?) which then exploded, and shortly after being patched up from that he was gunned down by that bounty hunter from a few sessions ago.

But on the PLUS side, we saved Cloud City from a deranged droid brain, and we did all make it out of there alive and back onto the ship. Admittedly, the ship has seen better days, but it's back up and running. For now ...

Even bad guys have a bad feeling about this

On the way to Bespin, Kon felt woozy. She just about managed to say as much to Nole (who smelled something funny) before they both passed out. Fortunately, Doc got his rebreather on in time - Sarge not so much - so that he and Declan the engineer could figure out what was wrong. Turns out the Nabooan flowers in Sarge's cabin were some sort of pollen factories and that was polluting the air - air that was already in short supply because we had a few more people on board than we normally would.

All flowers, including the ones adorning the cockpit, were put in the cargo hold, pollen sucked in, air sucked out ... airlock opened. People started coming to, and in Kon's case, when she realised how bare the cockpit looked and her flowers were outside the window ... she was not a happy bunny.

On Bespin the plan was to have Kon pose as a gas buyer, but that turned into a scheme to import plants to Bespin in order to fund the Rebellion. Always good to have contingency plans!

When we got back to the ship, because things were starting to feel rather shifty in Cloud City, the ship wouldn't start. Apparently the fuel had been siphoned off and the pump had been enthusiastically disabled. In fact, power went off on the platform. There was an encounter with a translation droid (the evil silver ones, not the nice golden ones like C-3PO) and it was found that the problem was with the city's central core. Let's go be heroes and save the day, it's great PR for the New Alliance!

Yeah, except there was a Purge Trooper about (BUT NOT FOR LONG!), and when we got to the core, there were more of them and they were shooting at Stormtroopers and Bespin security guards. One firefight later and the Purge Troopers were pining for the fjords, Sarge was blinded and Doc shot in the back trying to help. Doc got better, Sarge will have to work more on his Third Eye or something like that, yadda yadda, Force powers.

Also: the reason for the core acting weird is because they've recently installed a droid brain to run the place, and they must have got the brain from some guy called Abbe Normal ...

And now we learn that weird means friend

Last week's Star Wars session was cancelled due to illness, but fortunately, I kept a quote log of our recent Skype game, so here's that to tie you over until we're back in space.

In this session, the group went to Baldur's Gate and tried to flog some uncut gems, with the cunning use of haggling. Well, other stuff happened as well, such as saying hello to Fagin and his street urchins.

No prejudices, but ...

This session was primarily about planning how to move forward with what we were going to do next. After all, the mission is to break the blockade in the sector.

On the plus side we now have an Imperial Dreadnought on our side. Problem is it's short-staffed by about 600 people, so we went on a recruitment drive.

Ran into a bit of an issue when a ship came along demanding we hand over Konvoru because reasons. In turn, we called in a favour from some friends ... and a frigate ship showed up, hastily dismantling the intruder ship. For some reason we got a pretty clear run after that ...

Oh, and we also learned a bit too much about Nole's sexual preferences. Yeah, let's not talk about that.

Apparently I have the Force

Everyone mourns the passing of their friends in different ways. Nole by searching Rhan's - or Sarge as everyone tends to call him these days - quarters to see if he happened to leave any orphaned guns laying around (sadly not), and suggested to Kon that humans tend to like flower arrangements when someone's died. Kon subsequently turned Sarge's whole room into a flowering jungle, just like they do on Naboo, because that's what she found on space internet.

The party made plans for doing the delivery of space meth to Voras the Hutt, but there was a slight problem ... namely the arrival of a couple of star destroyers and some other assorted Empire craft in the planet's orbit. We needed to get off-planet in order to get in touch with the other Rebels, but we needed to drop the crate of Glitterstim off while we were at it. Finding out we had to do business with Voras the Hutt, our contact was not pleased. Something about a relative being held as a slave. New side quest: revenge-kill the Hutt.

Meanwhile, in a valley a few miles away, Sarge wasn't dead. He was told he could use the Force, and a Jedi ghost told him where to find his lightsaber and robes and to hopefully not freeze to death on his way out of there. He didn't. He found an old spacecraft and flew back to base. After being welcomed back to the land of the living, he got his combat knife back ("Here, I ... kept it safe for you" - Nole), and had the touching jungle tribute slightly rearranged so he could actually use his bed.

We learned that a Captain Yolarin of an Empire Dreadnought wanted to defect along with his entire crew, so that's another thing to look forward to once we manage to get off the planet. And that we did. The Rebel message was sent, and the crate of drugs was delivered ... after a bit of shooting, because two crews showed up to take it to the Hutt. In the end, it was insisted that the Hutt's translator/spokesperson come in person to fetch it to avoid further altercations.

After the session we found out what the Doc had to say to the GM and NG in private: that if Kon and Nole were trying to steal the ship when Doc and Sarge were away, NG was to kill them. Just because one's got a bounty on his head and the other one's a Twi'lek doesn't mean they're going to go all Mutiny on the Bounty. Sheesh!

The Rebels made their presence known today

Sarge's majestic shot from the previous session seems to have turned into him shooting down the Death Star single-handedly ... Well, when you're epic, you're epic, right?

To throw a spanner in the works, a bounty hunter showed up in town asking for Nole's whereabouts. Much to everyone's surprise, Kon didn't cash in on the bounty. The bounty hunter did track her back to where the rest of the party were hidiny., on the other hand.

Trying to be nice and give the lady some flowers as a token of his appreciation, Nole ventured outside the walls ... and was shot at. Kon, running to the ship in order to dismember dismantle the threat also got shot.

On the plus side, neither were killed, and for those to whom it matters, the gun that shot them was pretty damn awesome. Just the kind of gun the party could use for assassinating the governor, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter got away ... with his awesome gun.

Wounds patched up by Doc, it was finally time to launch the plan. Complexes were infiltrated, droids were placed in places to suggest they had broken down and triggered alarms. NG went scouting and became mistaken for one of the security droids and had to do the rounds.

Shots were fired, but the governor had a pet Force user to save him. Running and more shooting ensued, but at least the Rebel message was broadcast as planned. As everyone made it to the ship, the building exploded and Sarge was lost in the ensuing rubble. OR WAS HE?

Oh well. What's a Royal Ball?

Doc seems to have taken the lead (he can namedrop Luke Skywalker et al and have the selfies to proove it) wanted some scouting to be done in the capital of Gerrenthum. The obvious (?) choice for this were Konvoru and Nole, who got on so famously last session. One was to gather intel, the other keep an eye out for security.

Stopping at a local market, an NPC suggested that he had some intel to part with ... for 100k worth of credits. Our current party funds are in the region of 160. (That's 160.00 not 160k.) Nole, probably because he's spent a lot of money in such establishments, suggested they might raise some cash if Kon took her top off. This did not go down well with her. At all.

The charming NPC offered the group a job as alternative means of payment (transport some goods to a Hutt) and offered to take Konvoru to dinner later that night. This later happened, although she decided to pick Rhan as a bodyguard instead of Nole for reasons unfathomable to the latter and unknown to the former. Probably a good thing that she did, because on the way back, they were being shot at, but Rhan managed to kill six people in one round of firing.

Meanwhile back at base Doc continued to plot the upcoming assassination of the governor, when not busy making people pancakes for breakfast and recounting when he met Luke Skywalker. NG wasn't impressed by this, seeing as he had served as a medical droid previously and helped patch him up. Did you know Luke's hand is only a version 2?

Can we take off with a forest inside the engine?

After missing a couple of weeks' gaming (one planned, one very much unplanned) we were back on Gerrenthum, disposing of a dead Stormtrooper by staging a hoverbike crash. There was some commotion at a nearby base, which ended in Rhan, not terribly closely followed by Nole, running up a mountain trying to help a fellow Rebel out by killing Stormtroopers. Konvoru helped by firing the ships guns at a group of Stormtroopers ... causing a crater, which launched assorted bits of woodland into the ship's engine. NG was not well pleased ...

Doc fixed up all the injured parties, and it turned out the guy fleeing the Men in White were the person we were supposed to have met with previous session. He took us to a nearby fallback base and introduced us to the handful of Rebels on site.

NG set to work on fixing things that needed fixing, Konvoru helped herself to the local flora (flower arrangement is very important), and Nole learned how to drive a hoverbike because it had a massive gun on it and he wanted one of those. Rhan was not very pleased when all of the Rebel's munitions stash had been brough aboard the ship "for safe-keeping in case we need to evacuate very quickly". Doc had the more sensible idea to install some med pods for later.

Planning of what we're actually supposed to do, mission-wise, ensued ...

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away from taste and decency

We're starting off the new year with some Fantasy Flight Star Wars roleplaying, because let's face it, who isn't in the mood for some Star Wars shenanigans these days? Or as the GM put it (cue theme tune):

It is a time of chaos. In the
months following Emperor
Palpatine's death, IMPERIAL
GOVERNOR ADELHARD has
begun forging an IRON
BLOCKADE around the Anoat
sector, preventing its planets
from learning of the Emperor's
fall.

Desperation and rebellion
grow in the shadows of the
blockade. The people, turn
to local crime bosses for the
goods they need to survive.

Word has been sent to the
fledgling NEW REPUBLIC, who
even now assemble a strike
team to liberate the Sector....

(If the mental image of that doesn't give you goosebumps, then something's clearly wrong with you.)

Guess who the strike team are? That's right - us!
  • 3N-G1: an IG model droid and the ship's engineer/mechanic
  • Karl "Doc" Smythe-Williams: A Mon Calamari medic
  • Konvoru: A Twi'lek explorer/scout with a flower arranging obsession
  • Nole Gerran: A human mercenary with a gun obsession
  • Rhan Korne: A human soldier/commando
So from the scrolling text, we pan down ...