Summary: Yesterday was going to be a reading day, but became a day of sleeping. Sort of. Sarah and I have been working through a bit of dietary change, again, and RPGs dominate the rest, with bonus goodnesses as I see fit (GURPS Horror and Fiasco get brought up).
Day in the Life 12832: or, Meant to Read but Slept Instead, Dietary Change, Fiasco, RPGS, and other Customer Interactions
Yesterday was a day off and precursor to several days on (with the exception of Saturday, I will be working longish days from now through Sunday), and so I had thought it could be a good day to dedicate to reading and movie watching. I had caught Hellevator: Bottled Foods (LGT: Youtube for Trailer) the night before, but did so kind of late, and had big plans to watch The City of the Dead (LGT: Wiki) and at least one Val Lewton picture. Then I was going to be all bad ass and finish the last third of H.R. Wakefield's They Return at Evening and maybe knock out half of the new Arkham Horror tie-in novel: Lies of Solace. What I did I slept. Off and on until pretty much noon. Then, I got up, got some files organized on my new computer (something I am still well behind on), and then I tried sleeping again. Again, it did not quite work (lots of noise yesterday afternoon).
Waking up, made up a recipe for a red and black bean meatless mushroom chili that I'll have to post a recipe to, soon. Sarah and I have been gradually drifting towards what I call a "plant-centric" diet. The basic concept is that meat really is limited to a serving or two a day, as opposed to the American standard of having a serving or two per meal, and that we eat lots of varied greens and grains and fruits. We have been drifting this way for a couple of weeks, but this past weekend has actually been so heavily plant centric that I have not had any meat since Friday (excepting some ramen that had sort of a brothy "meat" powder) and so tonight I probably need to aim for something meaty in order to stop myself from building up some sort of weird "how long can I go" thing that ends up kind of sucking because it feels forced. In the past, Sarah and I have tried a few dietary shifts—usually the kind where you do it for a month or two—and those sucked for us, but this one is fun and natural. In fact, and I'm sure my anti-rabbit-food friends will disagree, there is simply more that you can do with a wide range of vegetarian dishes than you can do with meat dishes, excepting stuff like curries and casseroles and soups, and nearly every one of those can be just as easily meatless.
In non-food news, I picked up a digital copy of Fiasco. Yes, because it was featured on Tabletop, but really, it was the first game on Tabletop that I did not own already (or plan to buy) that really caught my eye as a game I would like to play at least one good time. I had been planning to buy Ticket to Ride, already owned Zombie Dice and Settlers and Gloom and Munchkin, and moslty found Castle Panic and Small World (I may have those names wrong) just alright. Fiasco, though, looked like a fun RPG-lite sort of social event, How to Host a Murder without the large crowd and costume requirements, and one that can be played (and must be played) in the one-shot style, and that was neat. I also downloaded a bunch of playsets, probably too many, but there are like three or four that I really want to do. And, I think when I do it first, hopefully soon, I'm going to try and get people who aren't roleplayers first, to see how that goes.
Sadly, I felt like the Tabletop episode was possibly the most stilted so far, with some confusion about the game world building (though, well, I think three of the people were doing a fine job though at least a couple of them kept forgetting elements that had already been established, I think), and by skipping ahead [an error, apparently, in that the set-up video was supposed to be out about the same time] a lot of the rules felt glossed over. It is the first Tabletop episode where I do not have any real clue about what the rules are, or how to play, outside of the basics of roleplaying in general.
Speaking of roleplaying, the GURPS Horror game continues. I've been doing some philosophical thinking, and I realized two important things. First, a continual mode horror game is trickier than a one-to-three shot style mini-campaign. Secondly, that if I keep setting the characters in no-win, bang-at-the-end scenarios, they would probably not continue to delve into the dark. So, my plan right now is to speed up and introduce the "true darkness" aspects of the campaign and allow something like a chapter break, and then retool the campaign slightly to be a little lighter, a little more literary, and then have the known nemesis show up from time to time as an overarching story element. I'm also going to stop, to a degree, the "introduce story, introduce setting, allow attempts at resolution, destroy all attempts" 1...2...3...4... set up and go for more of a mix where things happen all throughout and where resolutions can and will work...sometimes. Because part of horror is not knowing who will die, and having a death or dark ending everytime actually lessons the blow over time.
In this light, the last session (this past Sunday) went more off-kilter than most, and was slow paced with a very weak end (I often try to script disasters that have to be overcome, but tried playing this one out more organically and I don't think that organic style horror works for me when I'm running a campaign...I left out things and simply could not deliver the same punch...I much prefer having something that is doomed to happen...and at the same time just making up horror where it fits to ramp things up [not that I did this, but it is a temptation] is just as bad because it becomes super-schlocky real fast). BUT, I did get some character notes sorted, introduced a couple new NPCs that should be fun to bring in, and have set up a story-line where the characters are split up and their branches of the campaign will continue concurrently.