FalCon
This is the entry to commemorate the week of holiday that al_fruitbat and I used to celebrate our respective thirtieth birthdays.
It's now been over for a while, so finally I've got round to writing about it.
I had a lot of fun. We travelled down to the Isle of Wight on a sunny Saturday. I'd taken the previous day off for preparations and had purchased some nice new casual clothes to enjoy, plus using the time to take a gander at a couple of episodes of Charmed and watching some Jade Empire being played.
We stopped for a brief lunch in Portsmouth, interrupted by a message from secondhandrick, who along with hearthfire had somehow got the wrong end of the stick about what time to get to the location. They managed to sort it out themselves. Phew.
The location was Appuldurcombe Cottages which are attached to the Appuldurcombe Owl and Falconry Centre. (See? FalCon! Clever, huh? Also the name of one of my preferred series of choose your own adventure books.) I was Hut Mother for the hut that included bateleur, lathany, frax, cardinalsin, David and Ben. What a nice collection of huttees! We were in The Old Farmhouse, which was conveniently next to The New Farmhouse, which wasn't able to be rented as the family lives in it. It was unfortunately high on the wildlife. My first night was spent in a state of nervous collapse and paranoid lack of sleep after a spider was found on my bed next to my shoulder; later in the week we discovered our Hut Pet, a really rather cute mouse that was nesting in our utility room (presumably with the rest of its family) and had a taste for mint Aero.
The games were great fun, although there was not enough Bridge. In addition to the games, there was a wonderfully chocolatey Hut Dinner. My week looked a little like:
Thank you to everyone who came along.
It's now been over for a while, so finally I've got round to writing about it.
I had a lot of fun. We travelled down to the Isle of Wight on a sunny Saturday. I'd taken the previous day off for preparations and had purchased some nice new casual clothes to enjoy, plus using the time to take a gander at a couple of episodes of Charmed and watching some Jade Empire being played.
We stopped for a brief lunch in Portsmouth, interrupted by a message from secondhandrick, who along with hearthfire had somehow got the wrong end of the stick about what time to get to the location. They managed to sort it out themselves. Phew.
The location was Appuldurcombe Cottages which are attached to the Appuldurcombe Owl and Falconry Centre. (See? FalCon! Clever, huh? Also the name of one of my preferred series of choose your own adventure books.) I was Hut Mother for the hut that included bateleur, lathany, frax, cardinalsin, David and Ben. What a nice collection of huttees! We were in The Old Farmhouse, which was conveniently next to The New Farmhouse, which wasn't able to be rented as the family lives in it. It was unfortunately high on the wildlife. My first night was spent in a state of nervous collapse and paranoid lack of sleep after a spider was found on my bed next to my shoulder; later in the week we discovered our Hut Pet, a really rather cute mouse that was nesting in our utility room (presumably with the rest of its family) and had a taste for mint Aero.
The games were great fun, although there was not enough Bridge. In addition to the games, there was a wonderfully chocolatey Hut Dinner. My week looked a little like:
- Saturday evening - A very antisocial evening as I was trying to get over a somewhat traumatic week at work. Ben and onebyone were nice to me and the three of us watched Match of the Day.
- Sunday - Shadowrun run by onebyone. Thank goodness he didn't use the Shadowrun system, therefore no-one needed to count backwards from anything. Looking forward to the concluding session at which I might be allowed to create a new Denver based character! (By the way - Oi! onebyone! Concluding session?)
- Sunday night - Party!! Champagne, friends and conversation. Mmm, champagne. Also sneaking into CoachHut to be sleepy on a couch.
- Monday - Hash and Slack run by zandev. secretrebel makes such a good evil bitch. I was a Mini Girl Reporter!! My older sister triskellian was really cool.
- Monday evening - Book Club. I chose Bridge of Birds for evangelising opportunity, and the general consensus was good. I found bateleur and ao_lai’s opinions particularly interesting. I’m still surprised that my mother didn’t like the book because it was cruel.
- Tuesday - Glory run by smiorgan. I’ve been looking forward to playing one of these games for ages and thought the universe and the game itself were fantastic, despite being slaughtered by the other players, who totally overreacted to my minor character quirks and shotgunned me in the back. Twice. I blame secondhandrick. And onebyone, on principle. Actually, this was probably the saddest role playing experience of my con, as my really very pleasant character had completely lost her memory and when she was cruelly slaughtered the second time, she was only trying to ask who she was. By the way, onebyone, you have more of a record being nasty to my characters than vice versa. Just thought I should mention that.
- Wednesday - Snow Castle run by David. It was interesting to play in this game as it was a very tightly plotted mystery. One of the things I found particularly impressive was the sheer level of preparation put in by the GM and the quantity of notes maintained - I don’t think we thought of anything that hadn’t already been included in the formal plot, which in my experience is quite unusual. (When I run games I tend to have a “back of the brain” thing going on which fills in the details for me and my notes look somewhat sparse in comparison with the detail in the story. This means I can rarely run a game twice.) Anyway, I’m just registering how cool this was. Oh, and it was great fun with a fine group of PCs and a highly atmospheric GM style.
- Thursday and Friday - Terrrrible Things (sp?) run by triskellian and secretrebel. Yes. Well. I understand they might run it again, so I will do nothing more than commiserate with the next broken group of players to emerge trying not to be a Brontosaurus. Also, less said the better given that my character was an idiot right at the end of the game and ended up playing the violin and having little interest in Arsenal FC. Oh, and poor Bob, I think it was most unsympathetic of leathellin not to fall into his dear embrace.
Thank you to everyone who came along.