Chailig vs. the Gnolly Ghosts
Kind of an okay one-day. Not so much because of something on Plot's end, they were great. I just wasn't getting that into it.
Here's the horribly-abbreviated version of it:
- First we run into a chaos circle, and dealt with waves of zombies. We kick ass. Yay us. We can't deal with the circle and the bottles within it.
- Fenris was back in the area, and we needed a tuft of his fur as part of the recipe list to make the scrolls what'll kick out the Mephosian Authoritarian Bummer Squad. We went to the mad mapmaker's place to get the map. We succeed. Yay us.
- We head off to find Fenris. We fight biggie spiders and don't gracefully triumph, but we triumph. Yay us.
- We don't find Fenris but we do find one of his followers. Good enough. He takes us to the caves where a bunch of gnolls were killed in some gnoll-orc war or something, and the biggies take the high road and the lowbies take the low road. Off we go.
- I, for some reason, say I'll field-command the lowbie squad, but I don't, and somehow I end up listening to folks that have not yet really demonstrated any battle prowess. This lack of clue is apparently infectious and Chailig ends up dying. Here's how it went: we go in our cave, there's the ghosts of the fallen gnolls. Their commander tells them to go easy on us for being "pups", they solidify, we have to bring it. The commander starts off by casting a Disarm spell on me and my shield... damn. I haven't practiced with using the spear without a shield, and I'm trying two-handed methods and whatnot, but I'm totally sucking and soon I'm down. One of the healers managed to cast a healing spell on me before the gnoll line pushed them too far back to get to me, but I'm totally not used to playing a meléer, so instead of doing the sensible thing of playing possum, waiting until they're completely past, retrieving my shield, refitting my armor, and then attacking from behind, I just jump up and start trying to do the spear thing again. I'm back on the cave floor in about five seconds flat and my companions can't get back to me until about 20 seconds before my body dissipated. Oops. Boo me. LiveDie and learn.
- The resurrection story I received is going to be discounted as cross-dimensional dementia. Otherwise, Chailig would be right fucked up. Or at the very least, he'd give up gardening.
- Edwin shows up to kill himself and become wholly faerie. This involves a lot of talking before the actual act which takes all of 20 seconds. From an RP-standpoint, it was neat, but it really didn't have anything to do with me, so I didn't have much of a point of reference other than tales heard from others.
- The folks who didn't get their asses kicked against the gnolls have to go back and fight mud. The rest of us stand outside and provide... uh, support.
- We do a quick storylining of dealing with the circle, ending up with finding out that the bottles in the circle contain the essences of the whatever-they-were-what-were-calling-undead. We interrogate one about their strengths and weaknesses, and some silliness ensues. ("These bottles contain their essences?" "Yeah." "Ooh. Ask him what happens when we do this." *Shakes bottle up like a can of soda*)
So, okay game. I felt really out of it, though. Maybe it was not getting enough sleep, maybe it was just an off day. I'm beginning to suspect, though, that all the little problems I've been having with this game are really starting to add up, and I'm starting to feel out of phase with the whole endeavor. For most of you with whom I've discussed these sorts of things, this really shouldn't be all that surprising. I didn't get to do much with those that I consider my closer friends in NERO, since they're all playing biggies, and that's really starting to weigh on me. (The exception to this would be that I got to RP more with satyr69, and there were some fun interractions there... the best of which, I think, were for the most part without words, conveyed more with body language and action.)
The worst part about it was how I felt increasingly... manic about it. I wasn't having fun playing my character, so I kept slipping out of it (the bottle-shaking above, for one). I also feel like I wasn't being particularly polite in instances. I'm left with this lingering feeling that I got in ophanim's face about his scene when I hadn't really meant to.
Add to this how I miss playing Evan... or rather, more specifically, I miss playing a character where I felt I was pretty damn effective. Having to drop from 11th level to 2nd (well, 4th now) with a new character and take the time to regain that ability just to be (or at least feel) useful just isn't looking very tantalizing right now. I'm too impatient at this point.
It's a ton of little things that I'm having trouble articulating, or just don't want to keep articulating. I'm not having much fun here anymore, and since it's just a game, that's really the main point. I'm going to take a hiatus from NERO for the time being, to free that energy up to invest elsewhere. Not even necessarily back into gaming; I've got a whole new area of the country I've been exploring half-assedly. There are communities I want to delve into, and places I want to visit. And if I'm going to invest that energy back into gaming, I want something else out of it, other stories I want to be involved in. I want something more irreverant and wacky, something not so drama-heavy. I want to play characters that don't fit into the medieval fantasy melodrama mold. (I think I'm really in the mood for one of vosque's larps, actually. Too bad he's in Phoenix and I'm in SF.)
I'm still going to go to the all-hands meeting on the 15th. From a consumer standpoint, I think I have a lot of constructive input as a player that transfered from elsewhere in the country; what I expected in doing so and how those expectations were and weren't met, and what the staff can do to better prepare incoming transfers for their style of game without changing their vision of the game they want to run. That was a good part of my initial discontent coming in, and I wouldn't want anyone else to run into the problems I had in adjusting.
Stuart, I'll get your shield back to you, and Megs, I'll get your spellbook card back to you as well. :p