Lawnmower Man 2021

During the after-Christmas sales last year I managed to gab myself a virtual reality headset. Specifically, I got the shiny new Oculus Quest 2, an entirely self contained, wire free VR headset. No need for a beefy and expensive PC to process the games. Everything is done on board the headset itself. 

There are limits to this freedom. There is a curated storefront, so I can’t simply buy games on Steam to play on the Oculus right away, though with a link cable and a built in feature, you can use the Oculus as a pass through headset and play the greatest VR game ever made to date, Half Life: Alyx. But that would require the afore mentioned beefy and expensive PC, which I do not have. 

It’s also made by bookFace, and intrinsically tied in to the Facebleag infrastructure, requiring an active Facebukk account to log in and start using. 

However, although I only ever otherwise use it for messaging my local Pokémon Go friends, I do actually have an EffBee account. So, good to go, I did a little research. 

VR is a total body experience. Most games have you standing up, moving about, looking around, ducking, dodging, and swinging arms and hands about. This is a lot more than pressing joysticks and buttons on a traditional console. I have a full body tremor, mostly centred on my arms and legs. Would I be able to get into VR at all? 

It turns out VR, and VR exercise in particular, is really great for Parkinson’s. Basically something, something, something, distraction, something, blood flow, something, something, music, fun and tah-dah! It has been shown to have overall positive mood and health benefits. 

So I got in to the VR space focusing on that. All my first apps were fitness forward, such as the phenomenal boxing simulator Thrill of the Fight, and the rhythm action games Beat Sabre and Pistol Whip, my personnel preferred gmae in that genre. I really enjoyed playing all of these, but they were exercise games, and kinda started to become a chore to turn on. Over time, with a narrow focus on just those games, I lost interest in VR entirely. 

It didn’t help that I had no one to share the experience with, both in person and online. With Covid being very much an ever present threat, I couldn’t have friends over to show of my shiny tech to and share challenges with. And I made no effort to find friends online, largely because last year the Oculus was difficult to get hold of, so very few of my friends had one. 

But now a few of my Twitter buddies have one, and I’ve broaden my library thanks to discounts throughout the year, most recently the Black Friday sales. I now have a wonderfully fun, stunning looking, very real feeling mini-golf game, Walkabout Mini Golf. I’ve been having a lot of laughs with that one, and it allows online multiplayer with avatars and in game voice chat and sounds like a whole lot of future fun, because several of my friends already own it! 

Virtual Reality is here, now. Yes, unfortunately the cheapest, easiest entry, beginner friendly, expert featured machine is owned by a very, very evil mega corporation that willfully pushed lies and mistruths and corrupted millions of users opinions on governments, elections, science, vaccines and more. Sigh. But they really are the only horse in the race at this level. 

It is a thrilling experience to put on a wireless headset and discover you can freely move about within a generated environment, interacting naturally with objects and characters. It is equally thrilling to watch a friend try it for the first time and wave at a robot friend, then pick up a can and throw it at the robot, entirely without formal tutorials. 

I’m really enjoying my time in VR. My tremor rarely causes me any issues while I’m exploring my digital world. I can’t wait to see where this goes. 

I also can’t wait for the first time Ada and Connor try it themselves. There will be video. Dear Reader, I promise you, there will be video.

My Friday Adventure

Last night I sat down early to write my 150 words in order to free up my evening to watch a TV show. Tonight, it’s super late as I start writing. In fact, technically, I’ve kinda missed Friday entirely. It’s already 12:10am as I write this sentence. But that’s okay, because, like last Friday, I spent the evening hanging out with friends playing board games!! 

Actually, that not entirely accurate. I spent most of the whole day hanging out with friends playing board games!! And even more time travelling about with board games as a goal. 

This morning, after dropping Ada to school, I packed my bags, kissed my wife and son good-bye and travelled far across land and water the far off shore of North Vancouver. Took me about 90 minutes by bus and SeaBus. I noted on my way that I believe this was the first time I have travelled on the SeaBus without children in at least seven years, possibly ever. Taking this rare opportunity, I sat at the back of the passenger ferry, rather than gazing out the front window. 

I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in person since the pandemic began, and we got a lovely lunch, on his recommendation. The reason for our meeting was to swap games. I had a game he ordered, and he had one I ordered. With the swap done and nothing to rush away to, we played two board games and had a lovely chat and much laughter. 

Around 3pm we parted ways. I travelled once more on the Seabus, this time gazing out the far more enjoyable front window at Downtown Vancouver drawing ever closer.  I adventured onwards to my Friendly Local Game Store to add two more board games related items to my Bag of Holding. I chatted with the owners, but didn’t stay long! I had places to be and more games to acquire. 

I took the bus back through downtown, getting off before crossing the bridge and walked to visit a friend who had (you guessed it!) another board game for me! He took my arrival to be a good time to head out himself, and we walked and chatted together much of the way back towards the bus before separating and going our own ways, him to buy Christmas gifts (in November?!?), me to finally trek home. 

I returned to my domain around 5pm, ate dinner with my family, put the kiddos to bed, along with the nightly brushing of teeth and reading of the story books. Mud Puddle is the current hot piece of evening literature among 3 to 6 year olds. Some time around all this I managed to squeeze in an hour playing a very silly and fun drawing game with online friends on Twitch. And digital friends are real friends too.

By 8pm, I had the company of two more of my friends in my home. We talked about the news of the day, before playing two board games, neither of which I won. 

But victory was never the goal. Good company, laughter and friendship were my reward, and my day was filled with it. It is late, now just gone 12:40am. It is time for this adventurer to rest, and with a little luck, dream of board games. 

I’m The King Of The Castle

After lamenting the fact that I miss my friends and haven’t played board games in months in a recent post, I got to play a board game with friends tonight!! Hah!!

I decided to have a few games picked out of my collection that I’d enjoy, but let my friends pick which one we actually play. I’ve been in the situation that all board gamers dread where friends call over for a night of games, than spend an hour just trying to narrow down their options from a huge selection. It’s not fun. 

As such, I pulled out three games from my shelves that I thought would be interesting, but also were varied in play style, and dusted them off. Literally. I had to get a cloth. It’s been a while. Most of my game shelves ahven’t been touched since I rearranged everything way back at the start of LockDown 1. 

Tales of the Arabian Nights is a storytelling game, with a huge book of adventures that you can encounter on your. journey, in classic Choose Your Own Adventure style. It’s fun and funny but a little random at times, and I prefer to play it with the goal of telling a fun story, than reaching the victory conditions and winning. 

Quantum is a space strategy game of colonizing planets. It is compact, tight and clean. I’m terrible at strategy games, but this one is just at my level. Plus, your spaceships are represented on the board by dice, with each face a different ship! Very neat. 

Kingsburg is a dice rolling worker placement game, I guess? You usually roll three dice, and depending on the rolls, you can decide the board spaces you want to use. If you roll 2, 3, and 4 on your dice, you could use spaces 2, 3, or 4 with individual dice, but also combine them to potentially use spaces 5, 6, 7, 8, or even 9! The choices become really interesting as you develop your kingdom, with some buildings allowing you to modify dice rolls. All this, and you have an ever looming threat of attack at the end of each of the five game years. 

My friends chose Kingsburg, and we had a blast. Lots of blocking one another by taking the exact space someone else wanted, and plenty of space during the game for chitchat and relaxed discussion. Despite the fact that neither of my two friends had played before, and I hadn’t played in about eight or nine years, it was a supremely easy teach. I had brushed up on the rule book this evening, and watched a How To Play video, which was more than enough. 

It felt good to be back playing games among friends. I wonder why I haven’t been doing it more often…

Oh…

Oh yeah. That. 

Would You Like To Play A Game?

I love board games. 

Since we all got locked in our own homes, a number of resources to play board games online together have grown rapidly in popularity. When they originally launched, in The Before Times, I think much of the board game community gave these digital board game platforms a bit of a snarky side-eye. The whole point of tabletop gaming was the tabletop, sitting with friends, sharing a space. Whether at home or a convention, the point was to get away from the computer screen that was dominating the rest of our lives. But with that not really an option, the idea of meeting through a digital application and chatting over Zoom or Discord while playing swiftly grew in popularity.

Of course, some board games have had a digital version for years. I love being able to play Burgle Bros, Ticket To Ride or Carcassonne on my iPad, churning through single player games against the AI at my leisure. 

But this is different. Digital platforms like Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia and their ilk are basically physics engines with little intelligence beyond maybe snapping appropriate elements to appropriate spots. You need to learn the rules of the game you’re playing, as if you were playing it on a table, but you also need to learn the “rules” of the platform, such as the button combinations for actions, or how to hide you hand of cards. They might automate the setup, but if you want to grab all the cards and flip them over and dump all the pieces into the wrong bag and award yourself a million points, the application isn’t going to stop you. There are a few platforms where games can be programmed with all the rules, but they tend to have a much smaller catalogue, as it takes a lot more to develop games for them. 

I know many of my friends use them a lot, and love playing on them. Or at least, accept playing on them enough to join weekly game nights. Game designers have leveraged them for advance playtesting, or giving reviewers access to their game without needing to ship promotional copies across the world. Crowdfunded games, that might not even have physical copies yet, can get a digital version written up and distributed ahead of the campaign to drum up interest and let prospective backers try before they buy, so to speak. 

This is all great. It’s allowed board games to spread even further, given more people easy access to the hobby, or to sharing the hobby they’ve already loved for years with friends and family across the world. It’s kept people in contact with their groups when they couldn’t get together, or allowed gamers to find entirely new groups, playing with other fans of their favourite game in other continents. 

And I dislike it. Quite a bit. 

I wouldn’t say “I hate it” even though that would be a more dramatic and punchy way to continue this post. I’ve played one game recently on a stream with two friends and it was great. Honestly, it was a whole lot of fun, and it was so nice to be able to game and chat with people not in my immediate family. 

It’s just not why I game. 

I don’t play to win. That’s not to say I don’t try to win. If you’re not at least trying to beat the game or your opponents, then you’re wasting everyone else’s time. It’s just that winning isn’t my reason for being there. I love to sit at a table, chat face to face, feel the cards, tokens and plastics bits and bobs, get excited at a critical roll of the dice, or gasp together at the wrong event triggering at the right time. I love to look my friend in the eye as I take their territory, and then stare them down as they take mine. 

Online gaming can replicate almost every aspect of a board game needed for it to function as the rule book demands, but it can’t match the experience of a shared space with great friends. 

I miss my friends. I miss board games. But, if all goes according to plan, it won’t be for much longer. 

Plastic, Cardboard And Friends

I love boardgames. I love the challenge. I love the components. I love the art. I love the tactile nature of a physical, on a table, plastic and cardboard game. 

But mostly, I love the friends. When we first moved to Vancouver and chose this neighbourhood as our home, I googled for boardgame stores, found one within reasonable walking distance and treked over in the first few weeks after we had settled. It’s not there anymore, the whole area has been redeveloped, but it’s where I made a lot of new friends in this strange land. Over the years, boardgames was my jumping off point for many of my friendships, either through meeting people at conventions or being connected through other friends by way of “Hey, you both like boardgames, you should talk!”

And that’s been the hardest thing about these past seven months or so. Not being able to share a room with friends outside my bubble means no boardgames. There are options, but none of them support the casual chitchat of meeting up on an evening and laughing over some snacks and a short game. 

So, when all this is over, I’ll be hitting up every meetup and minicon I can find within moderately reasonable distance! I needs me my games, I needs me my friends. 

On Friends And Friendship: Part 1: Pokémon Go

I started playing Pokémon Go back in the summer of 2016. I was one of those players not helping the server strain on launch by logging to a US store account and downloading it not my phone before it was officially released outside the US.

Everyone was playing. I’d go to the nearby big park and camp out in the grass beside a triangle of three PokéStops with friends and sit there for hours catching digital monsters on my phone. Dozens upon dozens of other players would be there, all in their little groups, all looking at their phones.

It was huge.

And there was absolutely no in game player interaction. The only benefit to being in a group was when someone on the far side of the grass screamed “DRAGONITE!!” and we all flocked to their location, like a herd of gallimimus.

Once the weather turned, the appeal of Pokémon Go wore off quickly. There was noticeably less people playing and with all the common Pokémon in my PokéDex, little to no reason to sit in the rain soaked mud. I stopped checking every day, slowly lost interest, eventually stopped playing and finally deleted it from my device.

Occasionally, over the next two years I’d see updates and articles about the game. It was still massively popular, with a huge player base. But I never felt the need to get back into it.

Then, this summer, some friends started playing again. One particularly sunny day, I had the kids at a splash park with two of my friends and they were playing. We talked about the new features, like friend lists, gifts and trading, and I started to think about it. Then they joked that Claire and I should just get the app again and log back in while we’re in Ireland just long enough to catch them some regional exclusive Pokémon.

And that did it. The lure of those first generation Pokémon I could never catch before was enough for me to crack. There and then, while sitting under the shade of a tree I downloaded Pokémon Go and logged back in.

I was immediately surrounded by new creatures I didn’t recognize. Everything I caught was a new Pokémon and it was thrilling and exciting again. With two whole new generations out now, 235 new Pokémon in the game, I had lots and lots to catch and it felt like the very first day all over again.

Only this time, I had friends.

And gifts.

And trading!

Oh my!!

Before we left the park I had texted Claire to tell her to download the game as well. She thought I was joking, but by the time she got home from work that evening, she was hooked too. It was fun discovering all the new features, systems, creatures and treasures the game had to offer together.

We travelled home to Ireland and brought back a bunch to trade. Suddenly, those annoying gaps in our PokéDex were within reach. Everyone had a few spares they could share around.

But we only knew of our few friends. Did anyone else in our neighbourhood play? How would we find them. I turned to the most evil thing I could think of, that vile tome of personal information, collected to sell to the highest bidder, the one place I was sure I’d find something, because it has seemingly everything.

I joined the local Facebook group. They were a big, active group that met up regularly and scheduled events together. One of the features added during my hiatus was raids. Raids are big fights in key locations that, at the higher levels, can only be completed with a group, and the rewards are rare and powerful Pokémon. I started to attend these organized raids, meeting other players in person and quickly became friends with some of the more active community members.

Pretty soon I was recognizing more and more people in my neighbourhood while out shopping or walking with the kids. People that were strangers to me a month before were waving at me on the street and exchanging pleasantries on a first name basis, or sometimes (okay, okay, more often than sometimes), Pokémon Go username.

And that’s how I made a couple dozen new friends in my neighbourhood after living here for almost eight years.

Today’s Pokémon Go is a whole different beast from what I played two years ago. Four months into my return, I’m still playing every day. Not as much as when I started in July, but then, I have all the common Pokémon again. But this time, it’s different. I’m not playing just hoping to catch that rare creature in the wild. I’m not even hunting very much anymore. Now I play for raids. I play to meet up with friends for a few minutes three or four times a week. I play for the events that happen regularly, where I meet more new friends out enjoying the game.

I play for the friends I have and the ones I yet to find in the wild.

Gotta Catch ‘Em All. 

How To Make Friends And Crush Your Opponents

When we first arrived in Canada, tabletop gaming was integral in how we made friends. It was through RPG.net that we met the lovely couple who took us in that first week, and showed us around this strange new city. Once we got our own place, the first thing I did was Google local game stores and went directly there, where I met many of the friends I still have today. And I still use tabletop gaming as an ice-breaker for making new friends.

So when I discovered a new tabletop gaming convention was having its first event back in 2014, I knew I had to be there. And I've been going every year since.

Terminal City Tabletop Convention, or TCTC, is a weekend long tabletop celebration started by one man, and has been my favourite annual event of the year four years running. This years TCTC was March 4th and 5th, and I'm already looking forward to next years. Every year I anxiously await the chance to playing with friends I only get to see at the con, as well as making more new friends every year. My phone contacts list is filled with "John TCTC", "Michelle TCTC", and so on, and my group email gaming list grows every March.

TCTC is a great opportunity to play old favourites with new opponents, try brand new releases, classics that you missed, or just something different. Better yet, there has been strong support since the very first year for independant local developers to show off their in-development creations and get feedback on them. Prototype Alley is always a busy corner of the convention floor, and this year, there was even a new award and prize for the most promising prototype submitted, backed by support from Panda Game Manufacturing. I played a bunch of stuff all weekend, and taught a whole bunch more, but I'll leave those details for another post.

One of the more popular areas of TCTC on the Saturday is the silent auction, which started in 2015 with just a few small tables on the stage area, grew last year to fill every inch of space available on the tables, to this year where the stage quickly burst its banks and flooded onto several overflow tables off to one side. The auction gives attendees the chance to bring along and sell games they no longer play, and pick up games they might be interested in second-hand. I've sold something at every auction to date, and usually buy sometihng as well, but this year I was way too busy playing games to bother with the stress of trying to outbid others that I just didn't bother.

I love teaching games. I bring a few bags filled with games I'd like to play or teach, and I do end up spending a lot of time sharing out my collection and teaching others to play while I play something else, or even go teach another game and drift between both as the group play their first few turns. TCTC has a Game Steward system to help attendees pick out and learn new game. Seeing as how I love teaching anyway, it made sense to sign up and help out. I ended up teaching probably over half a dozen games, including Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Tsuro, Onitama, Tak, Patchwork, Santorini, and four different games of Captain Sonar!

One thing that struck me as odd was the number of requests for two-players games. I forget that although I'm there to play with as many people as possible, some folks are there to find new games to play with their partner. It made me wish I'd brought my copy of Quoridor along.

If I had one complaint it was that it had become too popular for its current venue. I'm delighted to see it grow and grow, because that means more people for me to become friends with, but it's outgrowwn it's current space. In previous years, numbers have been limited to comfortable levels and I felt that everyone had a table to be at all weekend. This year, Saturday especially, there were plenty of folks wandering the hall looking for a corner of a table to set up and game on. People seemed to be on top of each other, careful not to knock into the gmae beside you with your elbow while you played your game. At one point, we had to move out to the hallway and use two tables in the public access area. Thankfully, while I was writing this post, it has been annouced that TCTC 2018 will take place in a much larger venue! Woot!

Year after year Terminal City Tabletop Convention has been a great experience, meeting and making friends, playing a bunch of games and having a great time. It's the kind of thing I wish we had more often in Vancouver, but it's extra special because it's only once a year.

Roll on 2018!

Related Posts:
Terminal Gaming

 

Goodbye My Friend

I'm pretty terrible at saying goodbye.

Moving to Canada was difficult, because my friends are incredibly important to me, but I knew I could always come home, I could text, Skype or Twitter. And I have done all those things and more. But eventually you have to face the reality that everyone has to say goodbye at some point. The forever goodbye.

Last year I lost a friend to cancer. I didn't know him nearly as long as I do many of my other friends, but he was amazing and funny and taught me that it's not over until it's over. Saying goodbye to him when I moved to Canada was especially tough as I knew it might be the last time we spoke. As it turned out, happily, it wasn't. We got to see each other when I was home in 2013, and, most especially, when I was home with Ada in 2015. I got to introduce my daughter to him, and the photo of the three of us together is still a treasured memory to me.

But leaving that time really did feel final.

When I got the news of his passing, I was so upset. I couldn't be home to say that final goodbye, or to be with my friends when we laughed about the amazing person he was. I never got the closure that funerals are for, the chance to see someone off on their last, great adventure to whatever. It hurt for a long time, and I wanted to post about him and what a great friend he was, but every time I thought about him I got upset again, which was not how I wanted my lasting memories of him to be.

I'm not particulary religious, so I don't pretend to believe that he's watching over us, but sometimes...

Sometimes, weird shit happens.

One night, a while after my friend died, months ago now, I had a dream. I know, I know. Just bear with me.

I was at my friends funeral, and all our friends were there. We were laughing and crying, telling each other stupid stories about how terrible he was at rolling dice when it really mattered, and how amazing he was at writing things that could make anyone laugh. We were sharing all these great tales, and among it all, I was there. But I was making everyone to promise not to mention to anyone that I was there, because I wasn't supposed to be. I clearly recall explaining to Mike that the other me was still in Canada, and that me didn't know that I had been able to come. Mike, for his part, didn't even seem to question that this was odd, and happily agreed to stay quiet. I had no explaination for how I was there, it was as if I wasn't dreaming, but instead had somehow travelled across time to be there.

It doesn't hurt that this is exactly the kind of weird story that would have made my friend laugh.

When I did wake up, I found myself profoundly at peace. I awoke with a smile on my face, and my heart beating just a touch faster than normal. I find it heartwarming to think that I still vividly remember this dream, dispite most dreams fading from memory within minutes of waking up, and certainly not lasting more than a few days. Ever since then, I've been able to think about my friend without tearing up. I remember those stories, those happier times.

I'll miss my friend, but I know that he'd rather I missed the fun times than the bad ones. So I will.

Goodbye Chris.

 

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

"Right. I'm in a dark room. There's a clock reading 18:43, and a timer reading five minutes."

"Ignore the clock. That's the actual time. What's on the-"

"Cool! It uses the PC clock to have the real time in the game? Cool. That's-"

"We don't have time for this! What's on the bomb?"

"The timer reads 4:46. There's a space with wires, a button marked "Hold" and a thing with four buttons with weird symbols on them."

"Right, how many wires?"

"Er... Six vertical wires. Red, red, yellow, bl-"

"Horizontal."

"What?"

"They're horizontal. Vertical goes up and- we don't have time for this. Go on."

Later.

"The bar is white."

"Okay. Release the button when there's a 1 in any position on the countdown timer."

*BZZZZZZZT*

"I said 1!"

"I know! I did that. Wait. This time it's blue."

"Release on a 4."

*BZZZZZZZZT*

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? I... Oh. Oh. You said a red button marked Hold... Just tap the button. Don't hold it at all."

"Okay. Done."

"Yeah... my bad."

"Last panel. Four buttons. Top left is a backwards C with a dot in the middle, beside that is a kind of balloon thing, below the C is a mountain with a road on it, and then Ha-"

"Wait. Stop. I've only gotten the C one so far. I have no idea what else you're talking about. What's the balloon?"

"It's like a circle on a pole. A quidditch goal."

"Oh. Got it. Next."

"The mountain... er... it looks like... um..."

"Does it look like an A and a T stuck together?"

"Yes! That's it!"

"Okay. And the last one?"

"HalfLife 3 confirmed."

"Got it. Balloon, mountain, HalfLife 3, C."

"Done!! We did it. 43 seconds left on the clock! Easy peesy. Lets do the next one."

And everyone died because no one could read Morse Code.

The story you just read is mostly true, although it's various beats occured over a few seperate games, with a variety of clueless bomb disposal teams, rather than one entirely incompetent one.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes has been the cause of the most laughing I've done while playing a game with my friends in months, if not years. It's simply a laugh a minute, chaos simulator that will often end with the bomb exploding, but will always end with smiles.

One player can see the bomb and has to describe the various components to the other player or players, who can't see the bomb, but who have the manual and can talk the first player through disarming each component.

Keep Talking is so simple and fun that anyone can play with a minimum of explaination. In fact, I've had great fun just handing someone the controller, explaining the four controls (Left stick to move between highlighted components, right stick to rotate, A to select, B to cancel) and letting them go with little to no further instruction. It's fun listening to them come up with their own way of describing the various elements, especially if you get what their talking about but can resist the urge to suggest your own "better" desciption.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is available on Steam and developed by Steel Crate Games, a Canadian indy developer, and I just cannot recommend it highly enough. It's for two to as many people as you can fit in a room, and is hilarious from opening tutorial to the final explosion and beyond.

 

Join Me On The Couch

Some of my best childhood memories are playing video games with friends and family, all sitting in the same room, within shouting, and hitting, distance. From the time my cousin yanked the SNES controller clean out of the console rounding a corner in Mario Kart, to the time my brother and I stayed up past midnight with two Garda recruits playing four-player GoldenEye deathmatch on the N64 with proximity mines, knowing the recruits had an exam the next morning[1].

But, for a while, the concept of couch multiplay was replaced almost entirely with on-line access, gaming against annoymous users half a world away. Games stopped offering split-screen competitive modes, and sometimes even split-screen co-operative modes.

Thankfully, the couch is coming back into fashion.

I first played SpeedRunners at PAX Prime 2013, and bought it that evening from my hotel room. It a fantastically frantic game of heroes racing around a circular course, jumping, sliding and dodging obstacles along the way. As players fall behind the group, they get eliminated, and the screen slowly shrinks down to just a tiny box with everyone laughing riotously at the chaos.

SpeedRunners is the perfect couch multiplayer game, as eliminated players start to pick alligences among the remaining runners, but rounds are over fast, so the player you were cheering for one minute might become your closest rival the next.

I've had many great hours filled with laughter playing this game. With races generally over pretty quick too, more than four players can enjoy the experience, taking turns on the controls. A real party favourite.

If you're looking for a longer experience, Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator is an amazing co-operative game where up to six players can work together as the crew of a starship in hostile space. Each player takes on the role of a member of the bridge crew, either Communications, Science, Engineering, Weapons, Helm or Captain. Apart from the Captain, everyone has their own personnal screen for their role, with the accompanying console on the screen. The Captain has the main screen, which everyone can see, and uses the information the other players gives her to guide her crew around the available space and defend outpossts or attack threats.

Artemis has been around for a while, but until recently, getting six computers in the same room all running the game on a LAN is very, very difficult. But now the game is available on tablets and smart phones, so we have the server running through Steam on my PC, while the seperate consoles run smoothly on the iPads. A neat bonus is that the touch interface makes it feel very Star Trek!

The game as it's presented is very much a sandbox experience with a minimum of deep interaction. There's no story, just a series of missions to play. But the missions are just a map, and you fly around reacting to distress calls. It kinda gets boring.

Thank goodness for the mission editor. You can create your own missions, or, as we did, you can find a forum that posts completed ones, and play theirs. One guy has a forty episode series that you can play through!! With events, and villains, and surprises, and really clever use of mechanics. They really make the game an actual game. Also, because the story and events are revealed through the Communications officer, it greatly improves that role.

If you decide to try out Artemis with a bunch of friends, then check out the missions. You'll enjoy it a lot more.

I've been having a blast playing couch multiplayer with friends thanks to its resurgence from indy developers. Every one offers a different experience, but every one of them results in fits of laughter and high-fives.

Get some friends together. Grab a bunch of snacks. Clean off the couch. Enjoy a great afternoon making wonderful memories. Together.

And I haven't even mentioned my most recent acquisition yet. That one deserves an entire post all to itself. But I shouldn't Keep Talking. More soon.

[1] - They passed the exam, thankfully. I have great memories of gaming with Basil and Brendan while they stayed with us for a few months. I would love to know they're still doing well, but we lost contact long ago.

BSG: Betrayal So Great

Battlestar Galactica had just come out. We were huge fans of the series, board gaming and Fantasy Flight, so buying it was a lock. In the first week we played it ten times, getting to grips with all the various rules. But there were a few minor hiccups, and one major, hilarious one.

It was a six player game. Both Boomer and Baltar were in play, so the Loyalty Deck had two extra cards. I was the Admiral, and a Cylon from Turn One. Jp was President Baltar, and after the halfway point, he used Baltar's Once-Per-Game ability to look at someone's Loyalty. He picked me. 

My deception game was over. I was outed before I could do much damage.

Jp looked at my You Are a Cylon card. He handed it back and looked me square in the eye. "It's okay guys, we can trust the Admiral."

Now, I've never had the best poker face, and it took every ounce of my being not to squee in joy. As President and Admiral, Jp and I went on to utterly destroy the humans without ever revealing, taking heat off each other as soon as someone got suspicious. We were on opposite sides of the table, two other players between us on either side, so we were devastatingly effect.

As the final blow was dealt, we stood up to High-5 over the table, and two of the other players whooped in victory as well! Everyone froze. There were four Cylons in the game. The only two humans just starred, their very souls and faith in humanity charred and blackened.

I had screwed up the Loyalty Deck. For Boomer and Baltar, I shuffled all remaining cards and added two randoms, instead of adding two "You Are Not a Cylon" cards, as the rules state. By chance, those two cards were both Cylon cards. 

Yeah, it was against the rules. Maybe it shouldn't be counted as a victory, but it was memorable, and we all still laugh about that game to this day.

Cross posted from Tales of Betrayal on Shut Up & Sit Down.

The Year So Far

I've been really terrible at posting this entire year! This is actually my fourth post in 2014, easily heading for my worst year yet on this blog.

But mostly, that's because it's been one of my best, busiest, fun-filled years in recent history! Claire and I have done so much this year, from getting our Permanent Residency at long last, to taking a holiday all to ourselves for the first time since we got married!

Both of us have taken this year to get healthy and fit. I've been swimming again for well over a year now, and I recently started jogging everywhere I can, for as much as I can. That usually means I jog for two or three blocks, walk for a block or two, and rinse and repeat until I get to where I want to go. The hope is that I'll build stamina and extend those periods of jogging to three, four, five blocks while minimizing the breaks in between. I still swim most mornings before work, which gets me going for the day ahead.

Claire, meanwhile, gave up swimming in exchange for swordfighting! She joined Academie Duello in Downtown, near where she works. Several of our friends have been doing it for years, and in the six or seven months that she's been involved, she's rarely gone less than three evenings a week, putting in about eight hours of intense training a week! She's recently started noticing that her t-shirts are getting tight around her biceps, and her pants are getting looser around the waists, but much tighter around the calves! She's far more flexible, happier and loves swinging big metal weapons around. I'm delighted for her, and only a little afraid for my own safety.

Summer has been amazing. We've enjoyed trips to the pool, lots of outdoor activites, and generally loving the warm weather, even if it did get a little too hot to comfortably sleep for a while there. I spent the summer working with the school age summer group, which involved loadsd of field trips and spending a lot of time outdoors, developing a vicious farmers tan in the process!

Last summer, boardgames fell to the wayside in favour of outdoor activities, but this year we've balanced our time better, and we get together with friends almost weekly to game, chat and hang out. New, old and even as-yet-unpublished games have been played and enjoyed, and our circle of friends have grown significantly in 2014, thanks to this wonderful hobby.

Speaking of hobbies, I'm still reading at a phenomenal pace, powering through sci-fi, adventure and murder msytery books throughout the year. I've read a few comics as well, but not as many as I used to, usually one or two in between two novels, sort of as a short downtime. Though I did read the entire Superior Spider-Man run, which I highly recommend. Fantastic stuff! I really loved that new, meaner Spidey for a while.

On the other hand, video games have been very seasonal, with lots getting played in the opening months, but quickly falling off once the weather started to improve. I even did a bunch of Let's Play videos for my YouTube Channel, including a long XCOM series staring all my friends! Some died. The video thing is something I do hope to get back to as the winter evening creep back in. They were a push to learn all new skills in audio and video editting, as well as trying out commentary work, which is something I've always wanted to do. I definitely improved between the first and last videos, but I have a long way to go yet.

At the start of August Claire and I went to Whistler, a holiday village about two hours north of Vancouver. It's best known for its ski season, with stunning slopes, beautiful log cabins and lots of places to warm up around a cosy fireplace. But the summer season is awesome fun! We went on a two hour ATV trail up the mountain, during which time we saw no bears, unfortunately. We went to the top of the mountain on the gondola, and then across between the two mountains on the longest and highest unsupported gondola lift in the world! We have a buffet barbeque at the mountain peak, played crazy golf at the base, got lost in the woods around Lost Lake and relaxed and recovered in a Scandinavian Spa for a few blissful hours. And all that was just the first three out of five days!

Now we're into September. We have so much happening over the coming months, which you'll be hearing about as it happens. I have craft projects I can't wait to show off (Hint: They're boardgame related), new artwork I'm super proud of and more. Claire is hard at work on her writing and web development, constantly inventing new ways to create awesome things.

So while 2014 has been quiet on One Terrific Day, it hasn't been in our lives. New things are happening every day, and we can't wait to share them with you all as they come up.

Stay reading, stay gaming and stay tuned!

 

More

Happy 2014! It's been a great start to the New Year for me, and I have tonnes of stuff to look back and blog about from the Christmas holiday, but let's start 2014 off by looking forward.

While I don't make New Years resolutions, my goal for this year is to be "more". Make more, do more.

I'm going to draw more, and craft more. I have lots of art and craft supplies built up in a storage box, and I haven't been using them enough. I made my own Christmas tree this year, which was awesome fun, and I'm determined to make more stuff in 2013. Also, I'm going to draw more, both in sketch books and digitally. I still what to make a webcomic, so here's the deal: Ask me about it. Pester me about it. When I run out of excuses for why I haven't started, you have my permission to demand it. I love drawing, and I get a little bit better every time I take out my pencils. I just need to stop making excuses to leave them where they are.

I'm going to blog more. Yes, I realise the irony of saying that given that it took until now to write my first blog of 2014, but I'm going to do this. I'm immensely proud of how long I've had this blog now, and how much I've written in that time. 2014 is not going o be the end of that, but a strengthening of it.

For Christmas, Claire got me a monster fo a gaming PC. Suddenly, I found myself able to record my game plays, edit and upload them to YouTube and join the Let's Play community. I'm going to do this more and develop my editing skills more. I've been really enjoying it so far, and I find I'm even enjoying the game more because of it. I'm going to try live-streams in time, but before that, I want to try playing games I'm brand new to (Thank you Steam and Humble Bundle), and recording my commentary live as I react to these new experiences.

I'm going to role-play more and board game more. There was a time last year when we were board gaming every other week, sometimes more, but I stopped over the summer and only got back into it during Christmas. We gamed four times in that week, and I loved it. Also, it's been over a year, and probably closer to two since I GMed. Time to fix that.

I'm going to be with friends more, and talk to friends far away more. I'm going to Skype more and maybe even try this new-fangled Google Hangouts thing some time. I have my own PC with Steam now, so I'm going to try to game with friends more.

2014 is going to be more.

And anyone I can take along for the ride, I'll be happy to have the company.

The One Earring

Preface: What you are about to read is utterly unbelievable. It is dependant on nigh impossible odds at key moments, timing down to a single minute within a whole weekend and my inhibitions about talking to anyone and everyone. But every word of the following story is true.

The Saturday morning of PAX saw JP, Stephen, Claire and myself getting up early and into the convention centre ahead of the worst of the crowds. We wanted to do our own thing for a bit, and split up, heading to our various destinations.

We met up again at noon and were all heading across the brightly lit skybridge that connects the two main halls when Claire stopped suddenly. She bent down and picked up a tiny object. As she held it up, we realized that it was a single earring. It was a tiny glass-blown yellow octopus. The little guy must have fallen off of someones ear, but apart from his wire hook being slightly out of shape, he was otherwise intact.

We had a quick glance around to see if anyone was walking around looking at the ground, but didn't see anyone. Claire commented on how pretty the earring was, and how upset she would be to have lost it, then carefully put the earring in her pocket and we continued on our way.

Skip to 6pm that evening, and the main halls are closing. Hundreds of attendees are flooding out of the various exists and down the stairs on their way to evening panels, food or the gaming rooms. We're back together once again, and leave through the exit by the skybridge, one of the busier traffic areas. Everyone is walking along, chatting to each other. There are dozens of bodies within arms reach, and most are talking over each other. It's almost impossible to hear what any one voice is saying.

As we head for the first escalator down, my ears tune into a single word: earring. A girl about two bodies ahead and one to my right is telling the guy she's walking with how annoyed and upset she is that she lost her earring, and how she'll never be able to replace it. She's looking through her handbag for her remaining earring.

Can you see where this story is going?

I ask if it was a small earring, and she turns and says "No, not really, but it was unusually heavy."

Now, I don't have much experience with earrings, and the glass octopus looked like it would fit a "small" descriptor.

"Ah well", I reply. "Probably not the one we found then."

By now Claire, walking just ahead of me, has heard what we're talking about, and reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a closed fist, and opens it in front of the girl, revealing a tiny glass-blown yellow octopus.

Everyone involved stops dead on the spot, and, not to be too romantic about it here, but the entire place seemed to turn silent for just a moment.

The girl removes her hand from her handbag, holding a tiny glass-blown yellow octopus dangling from a wire.

"No. Fucking. Way."

We all have a good laugh, and chat briefly on the way down. It turns out the guy she was talking to is her husband, and they had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary two weeks previously. They had travelled to Vancouver Island, where they had found a man selling tiny glass-blown jewellery he made himself. The octopus was, literally, a one of a kind, hand-made piece she had gotten from her husband on their first anniversary.

True story.

PAX. It's a magical place.

You Gotta Share The Love

I've been a role-player since starting college in UCC in 1998. Before then, I had vaguely heard of the concept, but wasn't all that familiar with how it worked. I got asked to join a once-off adventure with pregenerated player characters, run by one of the taller members of the Wargaming and Role Playing Society, or WARPS. If I recall correctly, it was a Lovecraftian horror, in which I played the wife of a crackpot inventor who ended up being revealed as a clockwork automaton, much to everyones surprise, including myself! At that point I killed my husband and everyone else and escaped into the wastelands with my son who had been locked away in the attic.

Basically, I was hooked.

It was like reading a book with friends and choosing the outcome. Brilliant! I found out much later that those kinds of books existed as well! Amazing!

I spent the next several years playing and running various games, learning various systems and introducing more people to the world of tabletop RPGs, as well as making new friends through it.

Then that tall man with the twisted and uncanny sense of storytelling, who had gone on to write RPG's professionally, told me about a new game on the market, one focused more on storytelling and description than rolling bigger numbers. Gar laid out all the reasons why I should get excited about Spirit of the Century, then hit me with the homerun. It was a pulp setting, based in the 1920's and 30's, styled after the adventures of the Shadow, Indiana Jones, Doc Savage and, of course, the Rocketeer!

Once he got hold of his own copy of the book, he ran a few games, and I jumped at the chance to be in it. Before we were even finished the character creation section, which was most of a session in itself, I knew that this was going to be my system. The system I used for every game I ran. The system I stole elements from even if I was playing with a different rules set. The system I would love and support from this moment on.

I got the beautiful and low print run hard cover edition, read it cover to cover and ran my first successful campaign, including twelve sessions, guest appearances by other players and many, many happy memories.

So when Evil Hat annouced in late 2012 that they were Kickstarting their new edition of Fate, the rules system used in Spirit of the Century, I was stuck to it like gum on a Cirrus X-3! I watched as the Fate Core stretch goals were destroyed as the amount pledged shot through the roof. My own pledge amount rose as more and more was made availalbe as print add-ons. I became involved in the swiftly growing community around it in ways I have never done for anything before. I loved seeing the love Fate Core was getting, and sharing that love with others online.

Jump to PAX Prime 2013.

I'm wandering the main exhibition floor early on Saturday morning. I've decided to cross to the other side of the hall to check out a particular booth when I stumble across a guy chilling out on one of the complimentary seats one of the big booths has lying about its area. His head is stuck in a copy of the recently released print version of Fate Core. I stop briefly to comment on the book.

It turns out he's not a role-player! He saw the book and thought it looked like an interesting read, and already he's about a third of the way through. We chat briefly about the hobby and the book, and I suggest a few places to start, as well as answering a few quick questions he has. Before I leave, I suggest that he takes a look at Fate Accelerated Edition, a companion pick-up-and-play version of the Fate Core book, then I wish him well in his new adventure and keep on wandering.

Saturday goes by and Sunday rolls about. It's late afternoon, and I'm in the convention hall again, but this time I'm looking for my wife. I check my email and discover that she's on the sixth floor, in the Console Freeplay Area. That means having to go up the back stairs, a route I don't usually cover at PAX, as that side of the sixth floor is mostly for various panels.

I reach the fifth floor and sitting on one of the comfy chairs by himself is the guy from yesterday, still reading Fate Core. He's noticably further along in it. I stop and say hi. He recognises me immediately and we both get a good laugh out of running into each other again in a convention of over 70,000 attendees, especially here, as he picked this place to stop and read expressly because it was so quiet and out of the way. I ask him how he's enjoying the book, and he tells me, with much excitement, that he's thinking of running his first game tonight!! I wish him the best of luck in tonights game and many more beyond before leaving to find my wife.

I sit down with Claire and realize my brain wants to tell me something, so I relax and listen. It tells me this:

You have never been monetarily wealthy. You went to college away from home and had to pay for rent and food. Even with a job, you had to borrow money from your parents at times. You finished college with a degree and got a job doing something you love, but for only four hours a day, and you still had to pay for food and rent, as well as now paying back borrowed money to the bank and your family. Any time you thought you had money, an unexpected expense came up to take it all away. And then, you decided to move to Vancouver, so you had less money than ever to spend freely.

In all that time, from your first day in college to today, tomorrow and beyond, you have had amazing friends. They have shared with you all kinds of things, from cards to make your L5R deck better, to board games and books, from video games to comics, to food and clothing. You have long thought about how you haven't often been able to return that kindness to them.

But karma is a universal thing. Others do good things to you, you do good things to others, others do good things to even others. It does not have to be a closed loop. They do not have to be the same people. And

Every.

Little.

Thing.

Counts.

It's not the value, it's the friendship behind it.

You know what to do.

And suddenly I do. I get up and tell Claire I'll be back soon.

I race down three flights of stairs to where I know it will be and I buy it.

Then, I go back up two flights of stairs and find that guy again, still in the same place, still reading the same book. I interrupt his reading one last time and hand him a fresh copy of Fate Accelerated Edition, because I can do that now for someone. It's nothing, I say. It only cost me five dollars. This is incredible, he replies. I've never had a stranger gift me something before. I really appreciate it.

Enjoy the game, I tell him as I head back to my wife. It's the best hobby in the world.

PAX Prime 2013

This was the third trip to PAX for Claire and myself, first in 2008 on our Epic Holiday[TM], and again in 2011 after arriving in Vancouver and getting settled in. But this year was special, as two friends and my brother joined us in Seattle for the first four-day PAX ever, and it was fantastic

Mike had arrived in Vancouver a few days early, and we all travelled south to Seattle by train on Thursday evening, meeting up with friends I had made on the last visit to PAX at the station in Vancouver. It certainly helped pass the time on the five hour trip to have friends to chat to.

In Seattle we met up with JP and my brother Stephen. They had been in Seattle for a day already, and had gotten a jump on us by attending a Microsoft event and playing the Xbox One! Thursday night was pretty much a crash, as we wanted to be up super early Friday morning to get into the hall for a full day of PAX.

The whole weekend was amazing! I got so much free swag, mostly in the form of t-shirts, and spent a not inconsiderable amount of cash on merchandise, again, mostly in the form of t-shirts. We all had a blast trying out and seeing upcoming games, and managed to spend time doing our own thing without getting separated for too long, or at least being able to meet up later without difficulty. It helped a lot that the convention centre wifi stayed working under the strain of thousands of nerds on mobile devices for the majority of the time. We could email and tweet at each other with plans from where ever we were at.

Once again, I didn't do much by way of panels. Stephen and JP came in early some mornings to get into interesting presentations without having to queue for too long, which was the best way to do it, in my opinion. I don't see much point in queuing for five hours to play a 15 minute demo of a game I'm already sold on buying when it's released a month down the line. We did go to the Gearbox Software panel together in the Paramount Theatre, which was hilarious and awesome, and then we got to meet the team after at their signing! Very cool!

But my big lesson from this year at PAX was that I'm becoming less and less interested in the triple-A titles on display and more and more involved with the indy games. I found myself in the indy games section at least once every day, trying out games I've never heard of, from companies that might not even have existed in 2011. My favourite games at PAX this year were all from the indy's, from the colourful and frantic four-player chaos of Speed Runners to the beautiful and hilarious Monster Loves You, both of which I got after the convention on Steam. The only triple-A title I spent any time queuing for was Nintendo's HD remake of Wind Waker, and only then for the free t-shirt. I've already played the game one my GameCube.

Two companies of particular note that I got to speak to this year are Vancouver's own Klei Entertainment, creators of Mark of the Ninja, Don't Starve and the currently on Early Access release Incognita, and the team behind my game of 2013, Gunpoint. I fanboyed out bigtime meeting Tom, John and Ryan at their PAX 10 booth. They were a pleasure to meet, and I'm delighted to have been supporting them since launch, buying my copy of Gunpoint before I even had my own Steam account, and before it became the massive success it is. I've been following Gunpoint since November 2011, and I'll be following this team onto their next big project too, whatever that may be.

And it wasn't just the indy companies that caught my attention. JP, Mike, Stephen and myself spend an hour in the DigiPen section, an area showcasing the best games from the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington. The games were creative, clever, beautiful and masterfully crafted with love and care, and we spent longer there as a group than at any of the big name booths.

It was interesting to note that more of the Indy games we saw were supporting couch co-op or couch competition. I have many happy memories of playing Mario Kart or Bomberman on the SNES with my cousins, or GoldenEye on the N64 with the garda recruits that stayed with us, each sharing one TV, and having those immediate and intimate reactions only possible when sharing a couch with your opponents. Even from the Xbox 360 era, two of my favourite memories are playing split-screen with a friend. I'd love to see a resurgence in that social gaming with friends in the coming years, and I think indy games might be at the forefront of that.

I hope that the organizers of PAX 2013 noted the heavy foot traffic in the indy section this year and give them a greater space next year. I realize they can't cough up the same amount as the big studios, but they deserve the support and recognition.

PAX was a fun time with fun friends, and I've enjoyed it every year we've been, but Mike "Gabe" Krahulik's recent comments on transgenders and the whole recurring Dickwolves fiasco has definitely soured our interest in ever going again. At the start of September I said we'd probably never return to PAX, but that's a bit premature. I'm not willing to accept Gabe's apologies, as at this point it's clear he either doesn't really mean it, or he isn't learning from his previous mistakes. But I would like to come back to a safer, more accepting, open PAX with my future children and share with them the joy of being a gamer geek.

So never is a long time. But not next year.

 

Not So Terrific

For some, this is going to be old news, for others, this might be the first time you've heard about what I'm going to say, and for a few, this might just be the first time you've heard me saying it. But, I'm fairly confident that for everyone, myself included, this is going to be a difficult post to read. I'm sorry.

Around February or March of 2012 I noticed I had a slight tremor in my left arm. Nothing too serious, just a small thing. I thought it was stress induced, as we were between our visas and not working. Unfortunately, when I had to get my medical as part of my visa, the doctor said it wasn't stress, or RSI, or any of that, and referred me to a neurologist. As a man, I delayed seeing him for as long as possible.

On October 1st, 2012, one year ago today, I saw the neurologist, and he confirmed that I had early onset Parkinson's Disease. Or at least, he confirmed it as best he could. There's no medical test for PD, but he said I had all the typical signs. He recommended I get an MRI to confirm it wasn't anything else. I got that in December, and it came back clean, so we were back to the PD diagnosis.

Here are some facts:

About 10% of the population will get PD at some point in their lives, but most are over 60 or even 70 years old by the time they get it. About 4-5% of that number get it before 50, so I am in a select group, a fraction of a fraction of the population. I should have run out and done the lotto when I was told, but I didn't. I was devastated. My entire life just crumbled away before my trembling fingertips. For a brief time, I thought I'd lost it all. I thought we'd have to go back to Ireland and give up everything we had worked so hard for here in Vancouver. Going back wouldn't have exactly been a terrible thing, mind you, but we really did love it here by then, and do even more so now. Also, the health care system here is insane, and the University of British Columbia, just a bus ride away from where we live, is at the forefront of research into treating Parkinson's.

I thought I'd lose Claire. I know, that's a stupid thought. But for a moment, I thought it. I even offered to go home without her if it came to it, allowing her to stay here and work on her new and swiftly growing freelance career. She was having none of it, of course, and in the last year, as in the last 13 years that I've been with her, she's been nothing short of incredible.

That's it. That's all the bad news. So here's the good stuff:

It's been a year. Nothing much has changed. I can still work, I still love my job. I'm not taking any medication yet, despite the neurologist telling me in October that I'll probably be on something within 6 months. It's been 12 months now, and it hasn't gotten a whole lot worse yet, which is, obviously, a good thing. It's localized at the moment to my left arm and left leg. My right hand is... yup, just checked now, it's as tremor-free as it ever was. So this doesn't stop me drawing or writing. Even my left arm hasn't gotten significantly worse, as far as I can tell. My leg is fine if I'm walking or even running short distances, but if I try to fast-walk or jog, I notice that it stiffens up a bit. Running and fast-walking must use different muscles, or at least muscles in different ways. Even then, it hasn't been enough to stop me from doing anything. This summer is Vancouver has been astonishingly good, and I've done more outdoor activities than any summer I can think of in recent memory.

And I still have Claire. She's been my rock and my saviour. I know that this kills her at times, but usually, she's fine. She only seems to get upset about it when I'm telling someone about it. When I told the gang back home, I noticed she had to quietly leave the room.

But we're over the shock now. The first week, maybe two, was the hardest. After that, we both realized that not much has changed, or will change for some time. I'm an eternal optimist, so I just picked up the pieces of my apparently shattered lives, discovered that everything was intact, and had, in fact, just been knocked off the shelf for a bit.

I love following the development of technologies, and there is some fantastic stuff coming down the line for PD. This diagnosis 10 years ago would have been a dramatically different story, and in 10 years time, it'll be different again, in a good way.

Why am I telling you this now?

 Despite having a noticeable tremor since February or March, I was diagnosed a year ago today. It's hard to find the right time to tell people bad news, and it's very easy to find excuses why any time is the wrong time. I didn't tell anyone when I first got diagnosed, apart from my family. It was right before Christmas, and I didn't want to "ruin" anyone's holiday. Then we were planning the trip home, so why break the news to my closest friends over email when I'll be seeing them in a few weeks any? Then we were back, and I had work to divert my attention. Then it was the summer and everyone was having a great time. I could find excuses for now too, like, "I'm too busy", "I haven't blogged in months", "I want to write about other things", but that's all just putting it off, when really, I feel like people should know.

I don't want this to be a secret, to be some dirty thing that I'm going through. I want to be open with it, to show everyone that I'm still me, still living my life. And this is the first step to that, telling people.

I'm sorry if reading this has upset anyone, or ruined anyone's mood for the day. It wasn't easy writing it either. I'm sorry if you feel left out because I didn't tell you in person. It's hard to talk about at times, even after a year. I've never been sick before. I've never had to tell anyone I'm suffering from anything that doesn't warrant a "Ya big baby! It's just the flu!", or what have you. I've never taken medication for anything stronger than an over-the-counter painkiller, and even then, it's rare.

I've told people in a reasonably big group, in small groups and individually. I had to tell my mum over the phone. None of them are particularly "easier" than any other. At least in person, people can see how I really am. I mean, for all anyone reading this knows, I can be saying "I'm fine", while rolling around uncontrollably on the floor! I'm not. I really am fine. It's just clearer in person.

We live in a world where we know enough about the brain that I could get a probe shoved in to just the right spot to stop the tremors at the flick of a switch. A world where, excepting some horrific natural disaster, we're moving forward at an alarming pace with technology of all forms. A world where someone somewhere is finding another new way to make us live longer, better, healthier lives.

And I'm going to benefit directly from all of that.

I live on. I look to people like Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's when he was 30, and has just started a new sitcom as I write this[1]. He still works, and has a wonderful family, and this brings me great hope.

This is a comma in the story of my life, not a full stop.

Denis
[1] - I can't bring myself to watch The Michael J. Fox Show just yet, but I'll be sure to write up a review once I do.

International TableTop Day: Prologue

As it is officially past midnight here on the Pacific coast, the first International TableTop Day has begun!

We have loads planned for it in our place, with about a dozen friends expected to call in over the course of the day and play a huge variety of games, from Forbidden Island and Pandemic, to Elder Sign and Small World. We might even get in a fast-form RPG, like Fiasco if there's interest.

We've gotten hold of a few extra chairs and an extra coffee table to allow for multiple games running at once, as hopefully there will be enough people around at some parts of the day to make that a real possibility!

I've also managed to install a custom firmware on an SD card that will give my Canon G12 a bunch of cool extra features, the most important of which, for tomorrow is time lapse! I'm hoping to photograph a few games with this and upload them later to my YouTube page! Naturally, I'll be taking a bunch of photos as well, and they'll be found on my Flickr.

I'm really looking forward to being a part fo this, especially for it's first year running! If we do get a dozen folks showing up, we'll have more people than some of the local gaming stores are expecting!

We're starting at noon today as I post this, Saturday, March 30th, and we intend to end when the second-to-last person can physically got play another game! Pizza has been promised for dinner, and snacks will be available throughout the day!

So, what are you doing for TableTop Day? Even if it's just getting together with friends for an hour or two in the evening, make and effort to play something with friendly company!

And remember, is TableTop Day, so boardgames, card games, role-playing games, anything counts! Just game and have fun!

Christmas Catchup: Board Gaming

Over the holiday season we had ample time off to enjoy relaxing and hanging out with friends. Claire and I decided to make use of this opportunity to host a few gaming nights, and all were massively successful.

Elder Sign is a perfect game for a short evening gathering, playable in a reasonably short length of time, and easily explained to new players. The rules are fairly straightforward, and most complications can be left to be explained as they arise, such as locked dice. We find it best to explain a standard turn order and actions, victory and loss conditions, and any player character special actions at the start of the game, and then just jump right on in. It got played a lot over the holidays, and every game was enjoyably tense. We won some, we lost some, though one issue I do have with the game is that, in my experience, it does seem to be a bit easy to win. I've won significantly more than I've lost, even when we played with randomly assigned player characters, so we couldn't optimize our strategy. Perhaps because of its ease to teach, and ease to claim victory over, Elder Sign makes a wonderful introduction game to the bigger, more complex level of board games, such as the associated Arkham Horror series.

Getting even simpler, but by no means less fun, No Thanks, Guillotine, and Fluxx all got a workout over the Christmas. I picked up Space Fluxx, which is one of the few sets that I feel builds strongly on the basic game. It adds new elements that enhance play, and avoids the outright silliness present in Monty Python Fluxx. That said, we did also get in a game of Monty Python Fluxx, and had a blast doing so, even if some of use proved ourselves better at remembering the lyrics to the various songs than others.

We also got to play some new games that friends brought along. Bau Sack is a block balancing game from Zum Spielen that was wonderful, if stressful, fun, and reminded me that I really want to play the Dread RPG at some point and experience its Jenga mechanic for myself. Bau Sack was made all the more difficult playing it on our slightly wobbly table, and my defeat was brought about when I bumped the leg of said table and knocked my impressive tower to its foundations!

We're looking forward to playing lots more board games in 2013, both new and old favourites. We picked up a few over the sales that we have yet to try, including Forbidden Island and the beautiful Gears of War[1] tabletop game from Fantasy Flight Games. I'll try to write up some reviews of those when I get to enjoy them.

[1] - This post was actually written about a week ago when I had my iPad and some free time, but I only got around to publishing it now. I have since played and loved the Gears of War boardgame. I'll post more on that and other new games soon.

Catsitting 2012

Over the last twelve months we made friends with a few of our neighbors in our apartment block. Two of them have a cat each, and both were going to be away for a time over the holidays, but at different periods.

So Claire and I volunteered to take in their cats while they were away. It was a tough decision, as my readers probably know that we both hate cats, but we suffered through and cared for them!

Miyu is not even a year old yet, and acts her age! Hyper-active to the extreme, she bounces off walls and chairs and races around our apartment at a speed approaching C. The little monkey took a liking to Claire's work chair, and climbed onto it as often as she could. Miyu's nickname is Squeaks, as that's the sound she makes if you startle her, or when she gets excited, or sometimes for no apparent reason. She has a gorgeous turtleshell coat, with a very distinctive pattern on her face. We had Miyu for a few days in early December, as well as about a week in October. She also visits regularly when her owner comes to play boardgames with us.


Kizzy is 14 years old and sleeps 23 hours a day. Her favourite place to sleep in our apartment is in Claire's underwear drawer, which, while adorable and cute, I have been strictly forbidden from photographing for sharing purposes. She found this spot with 30 minutes of arriving, and has been enjoying it ever since. We had Kizzy throughout Christmas while her owner is in Florida with family, and have her until the 4th of January. She loves attention just after she wakes up, or when we first get up in the morning, and will roll onto her back and demand belly rubs, following us around until we pet her. Kizzy is tough to photograph as she's all black and rather effectively resembles a pillow in almost any photo I have tried to take of her. Also, she purrs like a train engine!