Roll those dice

Monday night is games night and I am pleased that it has survived the successive blows over the years of players dropping out and moves of house. We recently concluded after many weeks, what was supposed to be a relatively short Cthulu scenario of mine own design – part of an occasional campaign based around the fictional Coverdale Institute operating out of Oxford with close ties to both the University and, at one step removed, the Government. The reason it took so long to spin through, apart from the usual summer time absences that derail such things, was that the players took the sensible view that if something could be described as squamous or even gibbous, it probably should be steered clear of. At the same time, they investigated the mystery and though I couldn’t say that they solved it as such, they most definitely thwarted the baddies’ plans with minimal and only temporary loss of sanity.

We have now moved on to AD&D run by ruletwo, picking up from the campaign he started last summer, I think, but using the newest rule books that strip some of the more pointless complexity out of the system. As usual, there is a pattern developing when I play rather than GM a game: the dice perform well as my character manoeuvres himself into a position where he can do nasty things to goblins, Orcs and such, but then the big numbers do a runner as the Karma Pixies switch to the loaded dice in actual combat. I can generally roll the number I need to keep my character alive at the last minute, but only after I have taken a huge amount of damage in the meantime.

Still, last night I managed to come out of it reasonably well and we didn’t have to fall back on the combat services of the Halfling cook with his mighty war ham, a concept that started off as a battle ham, but which gave more amusement after modification because of the name similarity with The Scottish Game¹. I now have to draw a picture of the Halfling cook with his mighty war ham, I think, though this needs to be added to the list².


¹Real gamers NEVER speak of it directly.

²I am supposed to be designing a wallpaper for Furtle featuring her gay elf rogue, or whatever he is, from Warcraft, plus I have a joke to draw, if I can find the inspiration before the Derby event early next month

Roll those dice

Monday night is games night and I am pleased that it has survived the successive blows over the years of players dropping out and moves of house. We recently concluded after many weeks, what was supposed to be a relatively short Cthulu scenario of mine own design – part of an occasional campaign based around the fictional Coverdale Institute operating out of Oxford with close ties to both the University and, at one step removed, the Government. The reason it took so long to spin through, apart from the usual summer time absences that derail such things, was that the players took the sensible view that if something could be described as squamous or even gibbous, it probably should be steered clear of. At the same time, they investigated the mystery and though I couldn’t say that they solved it as such, they most definitely thwarted the baddies’ plans with minimal and only temporary loss of sanity.

We have now moved on to AD&D run by ruletwo, picking up from the campaign he started last summer, I think, but using the newest rule books that strip some of the more pointless complexity out of the system. As usual, there is a pattern developing when I play rather than GM a game: the dice perform well as my character manoeuvres himself into a position where he can do nasty things to goblins, Orcs and such, but then the big numbers do a runner as the Karma Pixies switch to the loaded dice in actual combat. I can generally roll the number I need to keep my character alive at the last minute, but only after I have taken a huge amount of damage in the meantime.

Still, last night I managed to come out of it reasonably well and we didn’t have to fall back on the combat services of the Halfling cook with his mighty war ham, a concept that started off as a battle ham, but which gave more amusement after modification because of the name similarity with The Scottish Game¹. I now have to draw a picture of the Halfling cook with his mighty war ham, I think, though this needs to be added to the list².


¹Real gamers NEVER speak of it directly.

²I am supposed to be designing a wallpaper for Furtle featuring her gay elf rogue, or whatever he is, from Warcraft, plus I have a joke to draw, if I can find the inspiration before the Derby event early next month

Pump those muscles

I have proven to my own satisfaction what really I already knew to be true: to whit, I am quite astoundingly unfit.

Last night I had my first go on the treadmill exercise bike. Admittedly I had my inaugural pedal after everyone had gone home following the game session and was therefore full of pizza. This is not, of course ideal preparation for exercise and just before going to bed is probably not the best time either, but it would have been easy to put it off and that risks the entire health fascism lifestyle folding before it’s started.

Anyway. Ten minutes. Ten minutes, that’s all and not at a very high resistance setting, to boot. I was fekking knackered and my heart was going nineteen to the dozen for some minutes afterward. Rarely has such a short period of time managed to be so boring and hard work all at the same time. My only consolation is that the first hurdle has been jumped and that Furtle tells me that when you are starting off from a very low base such as I am, there is rapid initial improvement if you stick to it. Of course, then, once you have reached the half hour for no effort, what do you do to reward yourself? Cream cakes, juicy steak? No, you make it harder.

In an earlier post bibliovixen suggested that enjoyable ways of exercising might be cycling (proper cycling) or walking to the pub. In reverse order, I think the walk to the pub might be OK, though any calories burnt off by the walk would be more than compensated for by any refreshments imbibed once there. As to the bike well, when I was in my teens (and earlier) I travelled miles on my bike and it was no effort at all, most of the time. Thirty-odd years on, however, the man is rather more than twice the boy that was and the ten minutes on the exercise bike proved that a fair amount has to be done before even considering a real bike. And of course, there is the deep suspicion that cycling in (even outer) London in the noughties is a rather different proposition to cycling in semi-rural Telford and rural Shropshire back in the seventies. I don’t like the thought of driving a car in London, much less belting around the roads without all that metal encasing me!

Still, we shall see. I can’t really make any objective assessment after one ten-minute attempt directly after pizza. Maybe in a fortnight’s time I shall revisit the subject.

If I’m not in the middle of surgery on my cardio-vascular system.

Pump those muscles

I have proven to my own satisfaction what really I already knew to be true: to whit, I am quite astoundingly unfit.

Last night I had my first go on the treadmill exercise bike. Admittedly I had my inaugural pedal after everyone had gone home following the game session and was therefore full of pizza. This is not, of course ideal preparation for exercise and just before going to bed is probably not the best time either, but it would have been easy to put it off and that risks the entire health fascism lifestyle folding before it’s started.

Anyway. Ten minutes. Ten minutes, that’s all and not at a very high resistance setting, to boot. I was fekking knackered and my heart was going nineteen to the dozen for some minutes afterward. Rarely has such a short period of time managed to be so boring and hard work all at the same time. My only consolation is that the first hurdle has been jumped and that Furtle tells me that when you are starting off from a very low base such as I am, there is rapid initial improvement if you stick to it. Of course, then, once you have reached the half hour for no effort, what do you do to reward yourself? Cream cakes, juicy steak? No, you make it harder.

In an earlier post bibliovixen suggested that enjoyable ways of exercising might be cycling (proper cycling) or walking to the pub. In reverse order, I think the walk to the pub might be OK, though any calories burnt off by the walk would be more than compensated for by any refreshments imbibed once there. As to the bike well, when I was in my teens (and earlier) I travelled miles on my bike and it was no effort at all, most of the time. Thirty-odd years on, however, the man is rather more than twice the boy that was and the ten minutes on the exercise bike proved that a fair amount has to be done before even considering a real bike. And of course, there is the deep suspicion that cycling in (even outer) London in the noughties is a rather different proposition to cycling in semi-rural Telford and rural Shropshire back in the seventies. I don’t like the thought of driving a car in London, much less belting around the roads without all that metal encasing me!

Still, we shall see. I can’t really make any objective assessment after one ten-minute attempt directly after pizza. Maybe in a fortnight’s time I shall revisit the subject.

If I’m not in the middle of surgery on my cardio-vascular system.