Wheeeee!

Amusing tidbits from the journey to Brighton and the game in general.

- Riding the bus up to Hangleton, hearing these girls who couldn't have been more than sixteen talking about how waste gets flushes out of airline toilets and doing their makeup on the moving bus and then one of them saying, "...Well, I went through, like, a chavvy phase..." (Which, I am assuming, is not actually over yet.)

- Game was awesome, but I'm noticing a pattern. My character comes up with a plan that makes sense and doesn't involve attacking anyone, everyone ignores it and me, violence and mayhem ensues, and somehow my character ends up maimed. In this case, I got near-killed by my own people's anthropomorphic personification of law over two chunks of upside-down cake. Law's a pompous, stuck-up arse.

- I never want to hear the phrase, "We can't let the terrorists win" ever again in-game. Especially when it renders my character's risking her life to make peaceful restitution and so forth absolutely meaningless.

- I made the gossip slips. The one I got to see was even about 2/3 accurate!

- Knife vs Sword = ... eh, no. Note to self - pick up the means to use a quarterstaff before next game.

- White chocolate vid cards will not survive in this miserable heat. However, I improvised. Daz was pleased. He ate them so fast he didn't even get to show them off. I'll see if I can't improve upon it all next time.

- The guy we sort of hired to do magic tricks didn't really show up (or something), there was extra cash in the Brighton Below kitty at the end of the night. And since I was the only one left without a ride back to civilisation, Trez basically refunded my entry fee to pay for a cab to the train station. (Which it did, exactly.) So gallant - he even pointed out when he called the cab that "it's a woman on her own so please do be prompt as we don't want her out here on her own this late for very long". Chivalry ain't dead.

- The train ride home was hell, and the buses weren't any better. The last one - 134 to Tally Ho Corner - was chock full of drunken arseholes and one guy actually decided that standing in front of the bus was a good way to make it stop where it wasn't supposed to so he and his friends could get on. Smaaaaaaaart move.

- My right shoulder hurts clear down to my wrist. I think Law may have hit me a bit hard with the foam rubber sword.

Further details available on request, but right now ... whoo. Let's just say it's been a long, eventful day. Fun, too. Roll on, November!

(Don't) Let Them Eat Cake

There must and shall be drabble today. However, there must and shall also be grocery shopping so that there's something in the house so I can feed dodgyhoodoo when he comes home, but first and foremost there shall be telling tales of Brighton Below. Because damn, that was fun.

Being early is seriously worth it. After a trawl for decent foot-saving socks (which weren't quite as foot-saving as I'd hoped, but maybe with another pair...), I eventually turned up at game at about half-three, got changed and had plenty of time to read the Undersider and my little gossip slips. I like the gossip slips - you can't necessarily believe a word of it, but you never really know. Interesting bits and bobs about Clayton Square (oh dear oh dear, Drinn) and so forth. The really unfortunate bit was that I seem to have left the camera switched on when I unplugged it from Eshu after loading my photos from last game, so of course the battery was dead. Which is a damn shame, because Patch Ann was there and everything and her character is so. Damn. Cool. Next time, though, definitely.

The carriage coat went over really well, and Saint loaned me a hat that really just completed the outfit, on the whole. Everyone oooohed and aaaaahed over my Gladstone bag, too, so yay! However, there's a minor issue with LARPing indoors in this heat - the costumes are not generally designed for comfort in hot weather. yshala was bundled up in a coat, hat and shawl. Daz was in three jackets and he wasn't the only one. Drinn and one of his friends were in shirt, waistcoat and jacket. Alex (Patch Ann) was wearing this cropped fun-fur coat. Three of the girls were in heavy velvet dresses. I had the carriage coat and the bulky socks. Some poor guy was wearing chain mail. Various nobles were in various period pieces involving jackets and capes and in one case, a ratty powdered wig. And then there was Law, all done up in what I think is Regency-era riding gear, all ruff and collar and ... ye flippin' gads he looked uncomfortable. It'll be better come November, when it's cooler and being in all that gear isn't going to make people step outside the Market truce just for a bit of fresh air...

We broke the plot. The organisers told us at the end of the session that we had comprehensively broken the plot. But then, as has been repeatedly pointed out, plot doesn't survive contact with the players anyway. It was also apparently the single most combat-heavy Market they'd ever had. And this, I suppose, is about the point at which I'd have to explain the "got near-killed over cake" thing.

( Cut for length, stupidity and cake. )

All to say that we had a remarkably good time. The trip back wasn't any fun, though - train and buses were all full of drunken yahoos. I have issues with drunken yahoos - they are loud and obnoxious. And most of my food intake yesterday involved standing at a counter ordering something unhealthy smashed into a bun. Oh, and the curry, which gave us the best bit of bullshit in-game, in my opinion. See, Travesty's not really ... au fait with anything Upworlder, so a lot of stuff confuses her. So when a predominantly vegetable curry turned up with ridge-cut carrots and soya meat of some description, there was a comment about how time-consuming it must have been to cut all those roots into these wavy shapes. Saint, recipient of said comment, replied with, "No, see, it's an Indian dish, and these were cut with what's called a kris, an Indian knife that's rather wavy, so the waves are all built-in. No extra effort involved." After which we had to go out of character to laugh our fool heads off.

But all told, I got home safe, I don't hurt so much anymore, and I'm already looking forward to the next one. I just need to figure out the new downtime system. Now I should go and do something productive, I suppose. I don't know what I'm going to do about dinner but I'll figure something out.