Microchips in a crisp bag

Coming across some weird purple stuff on the ground, shining a light on it made it sprout tentacles and suddenly we made a new friend - it called itself Terminus and the group decided to give it a moral compass. Like don't take stuff people need to survive, don't kill people (unless they're trying to kill you first), family is important, that kind of thing. Gunther added that it "shouldn't let the bastards grind it down", which may or may not be good advice? The thing grew and grew and maybe we have unleashed a monster on the world.

We got back to the barge-on-wheels and were stopped by some other mutants, who wanted to jab us with needles before explaining what they were for. Turned out to be some kind of vaccine, but as far as we saw it, it was an unprovoked attack and they were trying to inject us with goodness-knows-what, so we put the pedal to the metal and drove out of there. The vaxxers were very insistent, however, and gave chase. They exploded in a fireball, but not before taking out one of our wheels - Cecil was NOT amused.

Moral of the story: if you're regenerating, eating weird berries is fine. To everyone else, they're less fine.

Can I still be a grumpy racist?

So basically, we decided to go to Crimea - the bit with the war and Florence Nightingale (and Mary Seacole, who was left out of this story as well - how like life!) and also dropped in to see Baba Yaga (officially pronounced ˈbɑːbə jəˈɡɑː so now we've settled that as well) and met the real life version of Ursa. Except he used to be a real bear??? Anyway. What?

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.

It's so dull I’m checking Facebook

Last session we played the Firefly boardgame and I didn't take notes because I was too busy cruisin' the 'Verse. Sooo here's one we prepared earlier!

(It's the last one of this year's Eurovision posts, honest.)

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

Courtesy of Saturday 23 May 2015's Eurovision Song Contest grand final.

“You know if Japan was in it, they WOULD have a mech suit.”

“So it starts off on a bored note.” (Slovenia)

“It would be funny if they tripped on the headphone cable.” (Slovenia)

“You know what she needs, don’t you? A moustache.”
“It may have come last, but it’s still catchier than any songs this year.” (France)

“Well, at least he didn’t end the verse by saying ‘and now I’m going to kill myself’.” (Israel)

“This song is REALLY uneven.”
“YES.” (Israel)

“I remember this. It’s Johnny Cash meets Buddy Holly.” (Estonia)

“He still can’t sing low notes.” (Estonia)

“Turkey basters?!” (United Kingdom)

“They’re no Engelbert Humperdinck, but maybe that’s a good thing.” (United Kingdom)

“You wanna get some ice cream? And heroin.”
“You want to comfort eat?” (Armenia)

“So for this group they chose women who could sing and men who couldn’t.” (Armenia)

“Even the cat’s trying to hide his head more. Look!” (Armenia)

“This sounds like Mumford & Sons used to.” (Lithuania)

“Did they kidnap Florence from her Machine?” (Norway)

“Doesn’t do it for me, but neither did Euphoria and that won by a landslide.” (Sweden)

“What the fuck is that woman on the left wearing?!”
“Diapers?”
“The 80s called, they want their prostitute back.” (Australia)

“WHY DOES THAT HAT NOT HAVE CORKS ON IT?!” (Australia)

“You’re evil! I can’t believe you laughed at that!”

“It sounds even more like a Bond theme now.” (Belgium)

“He looks like Russell Howard trying to be creepy.” (Belgium)

“That piano’s on fire! Health and safety!” (Austria)

“Hey, it’s Cat Deeley!” (Greece)

“He’s got a nature theme going on.” (Montenegro)

“Why’s he talking about his B.O.?” (Montenegro guy pretends to be an airplane) “Oh, THAT’S why.”

“They sing about what they know, black smoke.” (awkward pause) “Because they smoke a lot in Germany.”
“You took the moral high ground there.”
“Someone had to.”

“Latvia is so dull I’m checking Facebook.”

“I would be checking Facebook I if my Nexus was here. I have a cat instead.”
“The cat’s nicer.”
“Than Facebook?”

“EEieEEO? We really needed that translated.” (Spain)

“Is that HAL in the background?”
“You will vote now, Dave.” (Spain)

“Is that Gallifreyan?” (Hungary)

“This song makes me sad.”
“D’you want to get my Nexus then?”

“Meh.” (Georgia)

“It’s not like he’s a good singer either, so it’s confusing AND shit.” (Azerbaijan)

“If Russia won, they’d have to host the gayest event of the year. The IRONY.”

“Impressive.” (Italy)

“Did Ireland have a Latvian invasion that we don’t know about?”

“That wasn’t political. They actually liked it.”

We're actually boardgaming next session as well but I've brought the pad this time.

Is he supposed to be good?

We were supposed to play a boardgame last session but two people couldn't make it, a third one pulled out last minute and since there were just three of us left we decided to cancel the session altogether and have an early night instead.

So, filler post time. This is the second semi-final of Eurovision Song Contest 2015, because that's the filler post I have in stock at the moment.

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

Well, he's got until Saturday to learn to sing

Last week we were two players down and decided to cancel the session altogether. That's why I've gone through the previously unposted posts and found this one, which is the first of three. It answers the question about what kind of shit roleplayers say when they watch the Eurovision Song Contest.

A quick re-cap: Austria won in 2014, meaning the two semi-finals and one final were hosted in Vienna. Brits don't really care much for Eurovision, but it's a massive thing in Sweden (spoiler: they won ... again) and there are two Swedes in the roleplaying group, so commenting on Eurovision is kind of a given.

This session was made up of 50% Swedes and 50% Brits, in 100% snark mode.

If everyone hates you, you have to be clever

Here's another collection of quotes from our Victoriana game, played over a few weeks in July and August 2012. This is part two of the character generation session, so nothing in particular happens, aside from generating characters and talking bollocks.

We were going to be playing Rogue Trader, but unfortunately one of the players called in sick, so we played Forbidden Stars, a 40k boardgame, instead, which I inexplicably managed to win. But, in the words of Orson Welles, "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story", which is basically what happened.

You can't buy beer with frog ornaments

Taking the injured What's-his-face with us, the party finally reached the town of Phandalin, where rumours abound. (They have to, it's D&D law or something. Just like all dwarves have a Scottish accent.)

There were tales of the Redbrands, a gang of thugs saying they're "keeping people safe", and there was something about a banshee called Agatha, and basically, we went around town doing quest pick-ups. There were a whole bunch of 'em in the local tavern. (Please consider giving an honest review on Ye Olde Trippe Advisory!)

Gundren the missing dwarf is apparently with something or someone called the Black Spider. Meanwhile, his two brothers have also gone missing, so now the party cleric has three missing cousins instead of just one. Yay?

Does a person count as a flammable object?

Because we were - and this is going to sound a bit weird - one player up and one player down, and the new 5th Ed Player's Handbook was out, we got to re-spec our characters any way we liked.

So that's what we did, and as that didn't take all night but we didn't think to bring a game with us or something, we decided to have an early one for a change and then resume the adventure next session.

On the plus side, our new player is now in play. :D

Offhanded guess becomes true!

I think we can summarise this session with "wow".

So, in the crowd, we saw this weird dude - who turned out was a Sunaj called Marvin. A Sunaj is some kind of Splugorth minion. He offered to give Booker something that will help him/us in the fight to come, and Booker managed to make the Sunaj agree to help out with the Lion situation.

Lion was brought forth, shed his disguise and was - gasp say it ain't so - a Rakshasa. Surprise! (Not really.) Fighting broke out. Booker emptied his guns into Lion's chest and Gorbash then grabbed hold of Lion, who turned into mist form beacuse he could. Dragonbreath singed him slightly, we think. At any rate, the Rakshasa disappeared and we had helped save the East Side Boys gang.

Their leader, Maria, having had the Cyber-Knight as a full body shield in the fight took a shine to him, and spent the next few hours flirting with him over cups of tea in the company of Baradhi. Gorbash went to talk to Ixchal about what was going on (Rita requested her presense), and Booker went to receive his gift. The gift turned out to be an Elom, a symbiod creature whose only real downside (maybe) is that only servants of Splugorth are ever seen wearing them. At the back of their neck. Still, it might come in useful later, so Booker named it "Bally".

We finished off by finally meeting Rita, a.k.a. Hecate, who hadn't really thought to check what dimension she was asked to make a portal to/from. She agreed that maybe that gate needs stopping after all. But that's the next adventure. Cliffhanger!!

WOULD PEOPLE STOP BEING SCARED OF US?!

After getting a good night's sleep back home at the Blackstone headquarters, we followed clues. Booker went to the Crow Bar and got sloshed on psychedelic potions for "research purposes", and Gorbash went to see if Ixchal was home. She wasn't.

However, Jayson flashed some Cyber-Knight armour, making shopkeepers a bit nicer to us, and we found clues that took us north east, to the Silversmith Gang territory. Apparently they're quite nice ... as gangs go.

Further on from them were the East Side Boys, another gang, a couple of whose members were seen escorting Rita roundabout when she went AWOL. The ESB were really rather concerned about our presense, because our reputation preceeded us. Their attitude was along the lines of "PLEASE DON'T KILL US". We had no plans to. Although, their leader Maria's reliance on a "powerful mage" called Lion was a bit creepy. Lion insulted the lot of us to various degrees. For instance, claiming the Cyber-Knight wasn't a Cyber-Knight. Maybe we'll feed him that fusion bomb next session. You can't trust people who claim to be powerful mages when they're defrauding people with psionics!

On a sad note, we've lost our Glitter Boy player due to him having other commitments (we wish him well). On the other hand, he might or might not be replaced by a guy who's already familiar with this blog, because he's been quoted on here before. It might up the madness a bit more. GASP!

Are we doing one dead body a day now?

After we busied ourselves with doing things like trying limited edition crisps with weird flavours, we got down to actual roleplaying. We had food in the same fancy restaurant as before (Eddie wasn't happy about his fish and chips, because herb-crusted seabass and frites or something like that wasn't greasy enough), and when meeting up at the university, in Tilly's office ... shit got real. As in, there we were, having a nice meeting, and what happened? Murderous zombies attacked us. It was very uncalled for.

On a happier note, Trevor went and got himself a bodyguard. The bodyguard turned out to be less than ecstatic over his 10k/day salary when he realised we'd be chased by near-indestructible zombies and not just general thugs. In the end, we made our way to Trevor's it's-a-house-not-a-mansion, for some televised football and lager (Eddie), breadmaking (Trevor), bathing (Tilly), and researching (Zolistagol). And then we were attacked again, and it all got a little unpleasant.

It's only paranoia if you're playing Delta Green

Meanwhile in Nebraska: Cully went back to North Platte to perform an autopsy. On the way back from Hayden, she was told to go meet a new guy in the hotel lobby. And sure, clutching a copy of the Fortean Times, there he was - FBI computer analyst James McAffe. (He has a driving skill of about 70, so he's the designated driver from now on.) They set off to autopsy the dead girlfriend, but didn't find anything because Cully somehow managed to roll 95 ... out of 90.

Over in Hayden, Bones and Mulligan got a lift out to the radio telescope array where their Sheriff's department driver got attacked by the guard dog they reportedly don't have. There was tazering involved, and then hog-tying.

The staff at the radio telescope array were a peculiar bunch, particularly one of the other computer guys - who seemed to get through his days using a steady stream of JD.

After meeting back up, introducing McAffe to the rest of the party, the four investigators went to the home of the murderer to see if they could find anything. Insects, is the answer, lots and lots of insects. Insects that seemed to home in on Cully. But then, what are improvised flamethrowers for?

As we didn't really find anything at the house, McAffe stayed behind to go through the computer a bit more and the rest went to a tavern to see what else could be got out of the drunken computer guy. In Bones's case, a massive headache ... that can't be a good sign.

Welcome to Louisiana Fried Rat, can I take your money?

Exciting times ahead! Hatch and Murphy are still blissfully clueless their new accomplice is long dead, because he's still doing things like moving around and talking. Ohhh the hilarity that will ensue when they finally succeed on those Notice checks!

In other news, the team decided to find out where the singing dame's fanboy/stalker lived by tracking down his place of work (a bank), pretending they wanted to interview him for a newspaper article. He hadn't come in to work, as it happened, but by promising to do a favourable article on the bank manager - and later do him a favour pro-bono (it's difficult even typing those words!) - by discreetly investigating why the guy wasn't at work, the trio finally found their way to his apartment.

Sadly, it seemed to mostly be a dead end. And there wasn't even any money in it. Hey GM, we've all got rent to pay, you know!

We’ll make a dick of you yet, doctor

We're back in the bayou! Or at least, we're back in New Orelans in 1935, where detectives Hatch and Murphy have decided to pool their resources together and therefore both are now living in the office. One morning, Hatch woke up to find a very old gentleman asleep in the doorway: Doctor James Sutcliffe. Well, if he wasn't a doctor originally, he is one now, because he can actually fix people, and he has a black bag. And introduced himself as a doctor.

What neither of the two dicks know is that he's a Grifter (they don't have Hucksters anymore) ... and whenever either of them finally manage to make a good enough Notice roll to smell anything other than tobacco smoke, they'll notice he's actually been dead for quite some time. That's right, he's Harrowed. Because that worked out so well last time!

The party of three then came across a new case - a singer didn't show up for her performance yesterday. Has an obsessed fan kidnapped her, or does it have anything to do with all the voodoo paraphernalia the party later discovered in her snazzy house?

Must be talking to the tinfoil hat

Because Mulligan had an epic dice roll for whether or not people in a restaurant had a camera, it turned out a photography convention was being held at that hotel ... The photo in question was taken of a couple of Japanese fellas standing outside with a black Mercedes. We've been joined by the original offshoot of the Aum cult!

And we have reasons to believe we're going to need tinfoil hats going forward. In fact, the plan is to make stetsons with a Faraday cage inside, because we're all sophisticated, like. After all, isn't the tinfoil really meant to ward off things like radio waves? Then a Faraday cage is what you want! Simples!

Our journalist pal took us to see her father, who managed to translate enough of the old scroll we had in our possession to realise it wasn't the lyrics to a Eurythmics song. But we definitely agree that there are shenanigans afoot in Texas.

Don't mention the war!

Happy Halloween, what what! Our GM was out trick-or-treatin' with his mini-me yesterday, so we didn't have a session. However, there were a few more quotes left over from the road trip in September/October, so here's more of our stereotyping musings from the good countries of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. Oh, and France.

This is basically just a post to have something to post this week, as opposed to not posting at all. We're back again next week.

Dude, where's our beer?

Okay, well, I couldn't quite stop myself to jot down a few comments, primarily mentioned while driving. Roadtrip!!

These are comments between Vianden in Belgium and Munich in Germany ... where we may have gone to the Oktoberfest. We'd post a review, if it was that kind of blog, but it isn't, so instead, some craziness. Mostly about our Germanic neighbours.

Read everything in a German accent, and you get the idea. In fact, you should have heard one of the tour guides at one of the castles visited. He spoke English in German. Sort of like Arnie, except with an even heavier accent. So read some of the comments in that accent for a giggle.

It's all gone a bit Laudanum

Here's a collection of quotes from our Victoriana game, played over a few weeks in July and August. The three players (one regrettably dropped out between character generation and the start of the game a couple of weeks later) were elves, and they woke up in a field somewhere in the English countryside, not far from a burning airship.

Robert Affette ("Bob") was naked, Cedric Ignatius Dashwood ("Cid") wore ill-fitting clothes (because they were Bob's), and no one dared touch Unlike's rags. No one remembered who they were, where they were or how they had got there, but the burning airship and dead parrot probably had something to do with it.

Trying to find civilisation, they came across an awkward lord, Ralph, and his shy Irish farmhand, Ted Doyle, who were discussing what to do about the pesky drainage in the lower field. The gang invited themselves to the lord's manor, where they got offered tea by Ted's missus, who insisted. A lot.

After some investimagating, it was decided to go and talk to a nearby vicar, who might have some clues, and so the vicar did. He recognised them as the paranormal investigators he had hired to suss out what the ghostly nun haunting grounds of the new-built rectory wanted. Poltergeist phenomena occurred, orbs went missing from crypts, churchwardens muttered, and the residents of the local manor house might or might not have murdered one of their maids.

And not once did anyone bat as much as an eyelid at the adventure being set at the most haunted house in England. Guess not everyone is as obsessed with Borley Rectory as myself. *cough* As I ran the game, there was less time to write things down, but I'm planning on transcribing the sessions in the next few weeks.

Shaddap-ah you face!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. We finished Shadowrun, then started creating characters for Victoriana, then I was away for the next session, and because I'm actually the one running the Victoriana game, I have less time to write down what people are saying - because I'm too busy GM:ing!

So, we might finish the adventure on Tuesday, and then I'll write a post with the quotes I've gathered from the game. Meanwhile, here's some more Shadowrun madness for you to enjoy!

In this bit, Dru the dwarf and Mr G the troll hire a hacker (Will) and some orc muscle (JDog), and try to convince them to help find an ugly elf who needs his head to still be attached. Oh, and experience the 'Shaddap-ah you face' pizza, courtesy of Mario at Pappardelli's.