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 ...

Let's be mean in game terms!

Because people are away next week and we finished this bit of Rifts last week, we decided to play some light boardgames, i.e. cardgames, namely Exploding Kittens followed by Cards Against Humanity.

Meanwhile, we tried to figure out what we want to do after the Christmas and New Year's break. It's looking like we're starting out by trying the Doctor Who roleplaying game, so that should be interesting. We're all going to be inept companions, no doubt ...

I can't kill my character, I'm the Chosen One

We were on our way to a town we were supposed to be investigating when Booker got distracted by some lights. Turned out that Hecate wasn't keen on him going there, but we ended up going anyway.

Encountered a Shemarrian, who informed us that reinforcements were coming and that we couldn't enter the town in question because humans are puny, even if they're the Chosen One. Gorbash went anyway. Alistair got fed up with the Shemarrian and went to a nearby nexus point.

The town was full of dead people. The Shemarrian wanted to add Booker to that pile, but Jayson intervened and she skidaddled. Apparently she had trouble seeing the Cyber-Knight and kind of thought Booker managed to stop bullets in the air.

The nexus point was full (oh well) of necromancers. Alistair called for backup, and we rushed to his aid. By this point, both Elyssia and Alistair had managed to get soul tag-alongs as well, and after getting rid of the necromancers, everyone except Booker was about to be sucked through a portal to Nxla.

Booker, now having come to terms with being the Chosen One, put his gun skills to good use and severed the soul links and thereby saved the rest of the party from being sucked through the portal.

This was not quite what the GM had in mind, and we ended up actually finishing this chapter of the adventure. Oops? We did it in an epic fashion, though, so points for that, surely. We set it up so nicely for the next season ...

Whose side am I supposed to be on?

So what happened was ... Hecate showed up in Ulmolf's head and sang her siren song again. For character replacement purposes, Ulmolf said "alright then" and had Odin show up in town, asking him wtf he thinks he's doing. They both disappeared through a rift back to Asgard.

Ulmolf's replacement is a demigod by the name Elyssa. On the plus side, Elyssa is a good person, so maybe we can keep Gorbash on the straight and narrow for a while yet ...

In the warehouse where we found the necromancer last session, there was indeed a necromancer. She had a half-dead bloke tied to a wall and she was very pleased to see Booker.

Apparently it was all some sort of ritual to give Booker all the knowledge in order to fight what he needs to fight as the Chosen One, but we didn't really know this when we may or may not have conked her over the head and having her dying on us and completing the ritual.

A lot of people in town (whose HP were powering the spell) died in the process and because the spell sort of backfired because Booker was supposed to be the only one present in the building and not the entire party, Alistair let Gorbash and Jayson know they ended up with a soul each tied to them ...

Why are we so atrocious?

We went to a town called Angels and were going to use Booker as bait. After much arguing about this point, Alistair and Ulmolf had enough and decided to go check out the town by themselves. As Gorbash and Jayson also went to have a look around, Booker decided he was going to agree to the bait plan all along. Following on from this, Booker went around various hotels checking in but not actually making use of the rooms.

Gorbash, trying to fit in, decided to make himself nicely inconspicuous ... by copying Jayson's looks, and because dragons are supernatural and therefore supernaturally beautiful, the end result (looking like Jayson's more attractive brother) did not go down very well with the Cyber-Knight, who's used to being Mr Fanservice.

Cups of tea were had. Stalkings were done. In the end, Booker got a message from a six-year-old girl to please help by rescuing her mum in a warehouse. Booker, being the nice chap that he is, decided to use her as a meat shield.

The child's mother wasn't in the warehouse, of course, but a necromancer was, so he bravely ran away.

I've missed the harassment and forgotten how to roll dice

After a whole month's worth of not roleplaying, we decided to change Tuesdays into Mondays so we could continue.

The party ended up going to the Temple of the Grey Seers. We had to remove our weapons, which made us slightly uncomfortable, and then a room exploded. See, there was this guy who was kinda psychic and he bombarded us with messages to the point where even the Cyber-Knight started crying for his mother, just before he passed out.

Then there was the Sunaj bloke, Martin, who was responsible for putting Bob the Symbiode on Booker's back. He died. The party did try to kill him quickly, but he had really good armour and stuff, so it took a while.

Ulmolf is trying to teach Gorbash how to do rune magic as well, so they considered turning the soul of the Sunaj into a runic spoon.

Basically, Gorbash probably isn't falling from graces, he's more sauntering downwards in a leisurly fashion ...

Morality is overrated in the 'Verse

Again we were a couple of players down so we decided to play the Firefly boardgame with all the expansions again (except the Kalidasa expansion, which we didn't know about until we had finished). This time we actually managed to get a winner, and with a little time to spare! It was a closely fought match.

People were eaten by Reavers, the Alliance space deck was reshuffled an ungodly amount of times and fun was had.

First, however, we start with some "before the session" chatter from Facebook because this is why I love our group!

There are Reavers in St Albans

Again we were a couple of players down so we settled in for another game of the Firefly boardgame. This time we played with all the expansions - specifically, the Blue Sun expansion which we hadn't tried previously.

We also had another player joining in, as he saw us setting up and hadn't played the game. Unfortunately none of us actually won by the time we had to start putting all the stuff back in the box, but we were quite happy to just enjoy the ride along the way. After all, the Firefly 'verse is pretty darn shiny.

Mansions of Butthurt

A couple of players down, we did a bit of boardgaming. In this case, Mansions of Madness. The GM of the game targeted one of the players first, because he had the lowest stats, and the player wasn't too pleased about it. We all got to be the target at one stage or another, and in the end we all died and Cthulhu took over the world. Oh well ...

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.

Save him now and kill him later for the XP

We're back some time in the future! We re-joined the group at the very end of the previous epic battle against Nxla, and the party found that someone was looking at them. It turned out to be a ley line mage called Alistair. New party member!

Rita (a.k.a. Hecate) asked to be escorted back to Stormspire and that's the direction we were going anyway. She didn't waste time trying to get each and every party member to swear fealty to her, by pushing every character's possible buttons. Gorbash and Jayson quickly declined, Ulmolf considered it ... and then considered what Odin would do to him when he finds out Ulmolf's switched deities, and Booker said yes and then tried to negotiate the terms of the agreement. Rita's not really the kind of deity you negotiate with ...

Then there was a party, and then we tried to talk Booker out of going on a suicide mission ... or at least to not go without the rest of us.

Pro tip: don't play Sushi Dice in a store full of people. For hours. Why? The game involves ringing a bell far too bloody often, driving other people in said store to insanity. Because everything is accompanied by a DING! or even a DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!! if the players are particularly trigger-happy.