Appreciations of the day

[Dexie Oblivion]

Oh god. I truly love 4chan sometimes, seriously.

There's a thread on /co/ right now: Who would win in a fight, Gaara of the Sand or Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender. After supporters of both sides made their arguements, the eternal battle of Goku vs. Superman got brought up.

It was decided that eventually, Squirrel Girl would appear and kick all four of their ass's at once.

...and now, somehow, it's turned into Squirrel Girl vs. Zabuza.

Damn. XD;; I haven't laughed this hard in ages.

ZABUZA SWORD CANNOT BE BEAT! XD;;;

[Dracos]

Kirby takes all six.

And then gets digestion issues.

Dracos

[Jon]

Toph is supreme.

[Brian]

Having enough medication to dull the pain.  Getting to stay home from work. o_o

[thepanda]

My coveted Sailor Moon Stars volume 1 has finally reached my hands after all these years. Sure, I could have gotten it earlier, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $75+ dollars for a $10 book, even if it is out of print and the only volume in my collection missing. Patience and time have finally paid off.

Also, I get to go fishing for class. So that's cool.

[Ranma_007]

Awesome! Soulriders FOR WORKGROUPS! ^_^

[Anastasia]

I just got a free lunch. Awesome.

[Dracos]

The forums haven't exploded. =D

[KLSymph]

In Missouri, doing four-day research convention. Carrying the tube.

[Dracos]

20 themes  on the board and nothing exploded.

Glee.

[KLSymph]

For our convention, the author of PHD Comics was a keynote speaker. His speech was hilarious. I asked him to teach me to be funny (a request that is one of my chronic preoccupations). He recommended joining an improvisation club.

Hmm... improv. Might want to check that out.

[Dracos]

Improv is fun.  =)  I've done a fair bit of that.

[KLSymph]

Further tales of research convention goodness.

Last night, our funding manager told us there was a pretty good restaurant about ten blocks away from the hotel. Since we (six people) didn't know our way around the convention's city in Missouri, and the convention's dinner was at about 4:30PM and it was around 10:00PM, we said sure, let's go.

The characters of the play:
KLSymph: Myself.
Roommate A: My assigned roommate, a guy from a different lab.
Roommate B: Another guy from a different lab, who became my roommate when we arrived at the hotel on the first night and discovered that Marriot has decided that instead of two-people-per-2bed-room, we are now three-people-per-2bed-room. Yeah, you heard me.
Girl A: Girl who came in during the summer research session a couple of times.
Leader: The academic advisor who got us the funding to get to the convention. Also a judge for the presentations.

Plus another boy and girl, both asian.

The following is a selection of (out-of-context, misremembered, paraphrased, or dramatized) quotes from that ten-block walk last night to the restaurant.

* Everybody was in the hotel lobby waiting for Roommate B.
Roommate A: Dude, where is he?
KLSymph (having just called Roommate B): He said he's coming from the convention center (two blocks away). Don't worry. Oh wait, here he is.
Girl A: About time! I'm starving.
* Roommate B (comes in): Wait, wait, let me go to the bathroom. (jogs off)
Girl A: Let's go already!
* Roommate B comes back from the opposite hall he came from.
Girl A: Why're you coming from Didn't you go to the bathroom?
Roommate B: Yeah. (points the way he left)
Roommate A: ...You're messed up.
Roommate B: What?

* Everyone leaves and begins the ten-block walk
Roommate A: So, Rene, are we going to your car or something?
Leader: No, we're going right to the restaurant.
Roommate A: I thought you had a car.
KLSymph: Even if he did, we're seven people. Can't fit.
Leader: I have a car and an SUV.
Roommate A: Then why don't we just take them instead?
Leader: Well, they're at home. In Houston.

* We walk some more. The streets are hilly and we're in in business district, so we get to see some nice architecture.
Roommate A (looking at a brightly lit office building a few blocks away shaped like a bowl, with all picture windows): Huh, now there's a building that's a bunch of suicides waiting to happen.
KLSymph (squinting at it to make out the shapes inside): Man, that's a lot of cubicles.
Roommate A: I know, right? Look at those windows. Imagine if somebody after a bad office day just fell into one.
KLSymph: They'd bounce off?
Roommate A: Okay, imagine if a fat guy fell into one.

* We look back, at our hotel, which as a gimmick has a large number of LED lights put on the side of the buildings flashing Christmas lights, so it looks like a large screen running light patterns.
Roommate A: Eye-catching, huh?
KLSymph: I don't know, I think it's just gaudy. I mean, what's the point?
Roommate A: Advertisement. You get people to look at the lights and then they see the "MARRIOT" right above it. It would stick in your mind.
KLSymph: Meh. I think whatever advertisement value they get from that is counterbalanced by the fact that they charge you $9.95 a day for wireless.
Roommate A: Yeah, that sucks.
Leader: Sucks to be you guys. Marriot charges you for everything. I got Holiday Inn. Not only do I not have three guys in a two-bed room, free internet woo!
Roommate A: I hate you, Rene.
KLSymph: Yeah, well, I don't really like how it draws people's attention. What if somebody looked at our window and saw Zahid changing right next to the window again?
Roommate B: Would you SHUT UP?!
KLSymph: Why do you draw the curtain so we can't see you but expose yourself to everybody outside the window?
Roommate A: Do we not tell you to use the bathroom for changing? If somebody puts your naked picture all over the internet, I don't want to have to explain what was going on in our room.
Roommate B: SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!

* We pass a small theater, where two men and a girl are sitting in front of doing apparently nothing.
Roommate A (just noticing that the girl was not, in fact, wearing pants or underwear): Wait, was that what I think it was?
KLSymph: Slow, aren't you.

* After walking for quite a bit, we seem nowhere near our destination.
KLSymph: So Rene, are we getting close, or what?
Roommate A: Yeah, it kinda looks like we in the bad part of town now.
Leader: Not yet, just a bit more.
Girl A: So uh, Rene, do you have friends waiting to jack us or what?
Roommate A: Man, I don't want to walk this far just to eat.
* We pass a restaurant-looking building.
Roommate A: Hey, Is this it? ...no, that's a strip bar.
KLSymph: Huh. So this must be the one the bellboy was talking about.
Leader: What, you guys want to go to a strip bar?
KLSymph: Can't, he isn't old enough.
Roommate A: Hey, I can't help being under 21.
KLSymph: You drag us all down, man.

* We approach a bridge.
Roommate A: Hey, wait, we gotta go over a bridge?
Leader: It's just a little walk. Walking is good for you.
Roommate A: No, hell no, if we gotta go over a bridge, that's too much walking to get dinner.
* The Leader pulls out a printed map.
Roommate A: What? Hey, I thought you've been to this place before!
Leader: Eh.  Let's see, 31st street, 31st street.
Girl A: What street are we on?
KLSymph (looks): Uh, looks like 15th.
Girl A: What? No! We lived in a city where you got twenty restaurants in walking distance. We do not walk this far for dinner.
Leader: It's alright, look at how far we've gone already.
Roomate A: Wasn't it ten blocks away?
KLSymph: This part of town isn't even arranged in city blocks anyway.
Roommate B: I got GPS on my cell phone. Where are we trying to go?
Leader: Here's the address.
Roommate B: Hmm, from this intersection to that one, we gotta walk another... 1.2 miles.
Roommate A and Girl A: WHAT?!

* We walk some more.
Roommate A: We gotta cross a second bridge?!

* After we cross the bridge, the road begins to widen, and the sidewalk on our side of the street disappears.
Girl A: Now we don't have a sidewalk?  I'm in heels here.
KLSymph: Looks like the city ran out of money.
* Suddenly, there is a random flooded spot on the grass we're walking.
KLSymph: Whoa, watch out here!
* I walk on near the Leader and Roommate B. A few seconds later....
Roommate A: Goddamnit!
KLSymph: I warned you.
Roommate A: It got on my jeans!

* Walk, walk, walk.  Suddenly...
KLSymph: Rene, you better not be taking us to McDonalds, I swear to God.

* Walk up and down a few more hills....
Roommate A: I can't believe we gotta go this far for food.
KLSymph: Don't worry, we'll always treasure the memory of tonight and how we... gang-beat Rene.
Leader: Hey now, it's not that far. How far is it?
Roommate B: GPS says... 900 feet.
* Roommate A and Girl A scream.

* We slowly approach the restaurant.
Roommate B: 600 feet... 550 feet... 500 feet.
Roommate A: Would you just stop talking?
KLSymph: I vote that we just stop walking and eat at (looks at the nearest building) this abandoned parking complex.

* We finally reach the restaurant!
Leader (looking back): Hey, I can see the Marriot from here!  See, that wasn't so far. We can just walk back too!
Roommate A: No. You're paying for our cab, Rene.
Girl A: I don't care what you do. I'm not walking back, because either we're taking a car, or Rene is carrying me back.
* KLSymph notes that Leader is a medium caucasian man, and Girl A is an African-American girl who looks like she weighs twice as much as he does.
Girl A: I hope you got good shoes, Rene, 'cause I'm heavy.

The total trip was an hour, maybe three miles of walking. That night we all had ribs. And the leader paid of our drinks. We took cabs back.

KLSymph to Roommates A and B: So, who gets the floor tonight?

[Asrana]

I've...actually managed to start GMing a game of espionage. I don't know entirely how it's worked, but it has, and it looks like it will continue working.

So the PCs are headed south, two elven lackeys delivering a letter between elven masters on two sides of a continent. They've already dabbled a little in politics by stealthing a cart of goods past some out-feyn 'inspectors' interested in 'stolen' goods for a nobleman. This is a typical feudal land, with the one major exception that use of mercenaries by noble houses is heavily regulated, and only allowed within royal 'allowances'. Such and such Duke can have so many mercs, etc. It keeps the size and scope of wars down. So they head through a city owned by the Duchy of Lusign, who are rich merchant types that make most of their money through ownership of the two trading ports in the Kingdom of Felayn, and giving prefferential treatment to merchants from their family, who's gold conveniently goes into the family coffers.

They leave the town, and a while later, they spot a ship off the coast, this is remarkable in the fact that this ship is burning quite merrily, and so our PCs (a druid and a wizard) set out to help the poor souls jumping from it! As the druid enlists the assistance of a pod of dolphins with promises of copious fish, they start to notice that those sailors getting ashore are being bloodily murdered by a gang of shady individuals. Much aquatic melee, two summoned sharks, and one message sent to the gate guards of the nearby Lusignian city later, there is but one of these shady characters left alive, and a fourteen year old boy in rich looking clothing who may have been the target of all this given the lack of any attacks on his person. The boy escapes to the road, to be snatched up by disguised Lusignian horsemen, and the remaining shady man is critted and tripped by the druid's animal companion wolf. (Fortunately for the GM, this pauses the PCs, so they don't see the horsemen come or go except through the eyes of the wizard's hawk familiar)

Return victorious to the city! ...Only the gate guards deny any receiving of hawk borne messages, cloaked riders, 14 year old boys, and demand proof that the bound man has actually committed the crimes he is accused of. The PCs stumble and let the man go. In a parting exchange, the PCs describe the clothes the boy was wearing, and are told snobbishly that such sounds like Hofeynian fashion. Hofeyn is of course, the main rival of Lusign in southern Felayn, and so the pieces begin to fit together. They follow the shady character into the city, first to a bar, then to a wealthy merchant's house, where gold changes hands, and he heads to a brothel. Figuring this man must be low on the ladder, they leave him be, and instead step into the merchant's. "Your name?" "Trempfor de Lusign." Ahah! This man is a member of the local noble family! It truly all begins to fit together now.

Some bribery of uninvolved shady individuals later, and the PCs are plopped in front of an information broker who can give the PCs information for a substantial price. A significant amount of gold later, and they have discovered the general lay of the political land in southern Felayn - the boy is the nephew and current heir to the House of Hofeyn, and thus the Duchy. The Hofeyn are rather strict in their pursuit of smugglers moving out of Ternia (kingdom to the south) into Felayn through Hofeynian territory. This is making Ternia quite irate, and the Lusigns are facing more opposition in Ternian ports. The Lusigns most likely wish to use the boy as leverage to reduce Hofeynian troop levels on the border, in exchange for trade concessions from Ternia, and so the Lusignian merchant princes grow richer. Fortunately for the PCs, the heavy regulations on mercenaries in Felayn, along with a desire to not be directly linked to the kidnapping, means the guards around the boy will be relatively light.

The PCs are then approached by a third party, the House of Balgur, who are a poor duchy to the north with much simple agriculture and only one city with mild trade revenue, want to assist them - if the PCs will agree to certain things. The Balgur wish to present the boy back to the Hofeynians, in exchange for some favors, relief of debts, and trade deals, or so they say. Being only a druid, wizard, and wolf animal companion, the PCs are feeling their lack of firepower and readily agree to the assistance for a reward from the Balgurians. And so the stage is set.

I rather liked the way things turned out. Far less chaotic than the last game I GMed. Just very political.

[Dracos]

Sounds cool, Asrana.  And good gaming group size for that kind of thing.