I haven't flown Virgin in at least 5 years, but I REMEMBER that friggen video, or one very similar. Made me uncomfortable then, I can only imagine how well it's aged. I guess it needs to be updated with some Skrillex-type dub-step to make it slightly less-dated.

So I flew in on Virgin Airlines, and the safety info has been replaced by a music video.  First class still gets a real person because, first class.  I don't know how old this is, since I don't usually fly with them.

I think I'm insulted.  What am I?  A seven year old that needs shiny to be given information?  The video looks like it was made by your uncle trying to teach you something by being cool (right Poochie?).  My favorite part is at 1:40.

Seatbelts?  Really?

Oh yeah, gg guys.

Awesome update!

Sounds like a great con, and that seems like a surprising number of games. I feel like I NEVER play that many games, even when I want to. Cool to hear that it was crowded and happening! Wish I was there.

Congrats on the Robinson Crusoe win! That's some hard shit. Was there heavy QBing going on, or were you all savvy enough to know the "optimal move"? I gotta break that game out again. I only got through a couple of partial solo-games.

Did anyone play Coup? That was a big man-con hit.

I had fun! Just got back tonight. Real quick notes:

- I intended to stay there starting Thursday, but Thursday night was more of a (slightly drunken) cameo for me b/c I got a cold. So the real adventure started for me on Friday.
- Convention seemed more crowded this year with open gaming space at a real premium. The flea market looked bananas too. Some of us passed on it this year and we didn't work it.
- Elzar and I dumped our stuff in the auction rather than deal with the flea market. I'm happy enough with the results, and cleared out a lot of shelf and closet space. Big relief.
- No matter how conservative I think I'm being on my food and beverage purchases, I will never consume more than 50% of what I brought at the convention.

Games I remember playing:
- Situation 4 (vs Mike): Weird real-time puzzle strategy game from the '60s? Interesting for sure. I got my butt kicked, would play again.
- King of Tokyo: We played a whole bunch of games of this. Fun filler game.
- Love Letter: Always good.
- Starcraft: Motorbyke, Matt and I played this on Friday. It was rad! Super dense, big-box FFG game with lots and lots of bits, but really satisfying and fun to play. I think we all want to play it again soon so we can build on what we learned.
- Deadzone: So we got three games together and the plan was to have a three round tourney. It was enr0n, me, Aeryk, Pump, Matt, and game group Eric. Instead, enr0n and GG Eric's game went two and a half hours longer than it should have, Matt was so bummed about his crushing defeat (at my hands!) that he went and played another game, and in the end only Pump and I played a second game. Which I won! So I'm the best Deadzone player. It was lots of fun and very pretty.
- Robinson Crusoe: Played this with game group Eric and we actually won! We were stoked.
- Netrunner: Finally got in a game against Denis. I remember why I liked this one back in the '90s now. It was awesome! I really, REALLY want to play this one again. it just struck me as a lot more fun than most other LCG/CCG type games.
- Formula D: Well, I started in last place and moved up to second-to-last, so that's something!
- Chaos in the Old World: We actually played TWO games of this. Both games had some really hard Old World cards come up. In the first, Pump (Nurgle) was left alone, and cleaned everyone's clocks ruining things like crazy. In the second game, we got absolutely Old World card draws so that the various peasants on the board were fucking up our demons and cultists like they were born to it. In the last round Myke was positioned to win, with me and enr0n also having a long shot. In the end I was able to keep Mike from winning, which meant we all lost (the Old World won), which I considered a moral victory.

I'm probably forgetting something. I was really glad to get in a couple burly games, and it was great to see the guys. Wish everyone could have made it!

Give us a mid-con update! What are the hot games for you  guys this weekend? I wish I was there!

| Sold!

I like your elaborate plan and will sign on! Wait, is enr0n 40 already? Jesus!

Remember when Over 40 was the name of a magazine filled with old-seeming women? Now it's your peer group. The future is here and it's: flapping ball sacs.

(I was thinking the paragraph above could be the caption on some sort of humorous Facebook image? Which would get plenty of likes? I'm not really a visual design guy, though.)

I was in Hawaii for a few days! It was awesome. I ate a lot of plate lunches. Unfortunately, I also got a pretty bad cold. But loco moco has a price! And that price is: flapping ball sacs.

(That one could work too, over a picture of a luau, a spam musubi, or something like that.)

| Life Expectancy > 50 years

As long as we all make it past 50 (at least ONE of us would need to live a little longer) we will make up the cost in on-site registration fees, no problem.  For those of us that remember to pre-reg, I don't remember how much that is, maybe $45(?), so then we'd need to live to be 53.

I like those odds, and I hope to all that is good any right in the world, you all do too!

To better those odds of life expectancy, I plan on bringing a giant-size bottle of tequila and mix and triple sec to Kubla.

| Khansanity?

You have to also figure in our L.H.O.D.- likely hood of death. It's sort of like buying life insurance at this point. How much is the pass verse how many years we have left. Maybe we also need to start placing bets. 🎲💀🎲

| Kublanity...

...is not a very good conjunction between Kubla and Insanity.

Quick! Someone (Enron) get some Google Glass and we'll live-stream the whole thing!  We can output sound to some neck mounted speakers and attach a boom mic to Enron's head so that no audio will be missed!

Lifetime Passes as 40th BDay Gifts

So, I have a plan for all of us to get a Kubla Lifetime Badge, all for the low, low price of a full-price Kubla Lifetime Badge (deferred)!  Hear me out.  Sure, we could all blow our money and each get a badge ourselves, but then many of us would need to explain that one away to our significant others and tell our kids they can't eat this month because daddy spent the money on a shiny piece of plastic that can only be used once a year... so no one wants to do THAT, right??

So instead, as each of us turns 40 (yes, there would be at least one retro purchase :) ) we buy pool our money and buy each other a pass as a birthday present!  In the long run, we would all be spending the same as if we bought one ourselves BUT instead we did it for each other! Pals!

I broached the subject with the Mrs. sometime ago and she was totally, 100% on board with it.  It might help that she just turned 40, so she gets it, but either way - success!

Now we just need to decide who's in, and who's out, then sign a pact and enjoy!

Also, this

Dark Dungeons trailer

It's pretty good!

"RPG! RPG! RPG!"

And I wonder if blackleafgames.com will now be worth millions on the resale market.  Thank you, Jack Chick!

| CONVENSHUN

I can't believe you guys got a Kubla coming up :/

Wish I could go! Damn the children.

Play some new games and tell me all about it!

| TV, or MMMM Consumption

True Detective's 8-episode run has been over for a awhile now, but we just started watching it again. 4-episodes down, it's a pretty awesome show! It's like a REAL slow burn, so it was tough to get through the first couple episodes, but it's getting pretty gnarly. I've avoided spoilers to this point, so it's gonna be fun to get through the rest. HBO GO peeps, watch that shit.

Also, Silicon Valley is super funny. I think it's also only 8-episodes but they're 30 minutes, so that can probably be binged in a night or two.

I don't know if any of you have Showtime, but they've got a good new show called Penny Dreadful. Set in Victorian England, it's very similar to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in that it mashes-up literary characters into one story, but it's pretty friggen dark and scary. There's some Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dorian Gray characters in there, but it's not as wink-wink as the League books. Only 2 episodes have popped so far, but they're GOOD. There was this long seance scene at a high society party where the shit got real, and it was just awesomely tense. And for you Dr Who fans, one of his companions is on the show playing a hooker with consumption - so there's some hot sex/bloody-coughs scenes for your enjoyment. MMMM, consumption.

Or go outside and ride a bike, you couch potatoes.

| another thing

You may or may not have already considered this, but since the reality of our gaming group is that we're mostly decentralized, maybe keep in mind ways to make the game chatroom friendly. Or at least easily modified for those e-friend gaming situations.

| having really only knowing

By saying the rpg idea is gonna die here on the blog, you're setting yourself up for failure! Delete that line from your post or at least from your heart.

Run with it!

Some quick thoughts:

Fiasco is pretty hard. Really more improv than rpg, so  totally not a system for most people. I'd say the best thing to gleam from it is the "playset" feature. Come up with a solid system underneath, then you can plug in your "When Cthulhu Cthalls" playset/deck/dice/module. Next time, it can be the "Dungeon Crawl" set.

DCC: I wish we had played more. I felt like there were too many people to successfully pull off an online sesh with that game. I forget - is it made to be played with a tons of dudes? I also don't remember how much player-input there was when it came to "telling the story". Wasn't Jawn a DM for that?

| TL;DR - I have an idea that will die on this website

So, I've been thinking about roleplaying games.  I suspect I will likely never get into a meaningful campaign again in my lifetime unless I start playing with Wy, which is fine because RPGs are a lot of work and a lot of commitment!  That being said, I still totally like RPGs!

Right now, I'm really interested in the dice mechanics for Star Wars and WFRP 3rd ed, where you basically roll a grip of dice all that once that includes difficulty dice, dis/advantage, skill dice, and 'other' specific dice as well.  Once you roll all them dice, you interpret the results.  Successes vs. failures to see if you pass the test, but then some other results based on the dis/advantage results.  The long and the short of the system is that there is some narration on every roll.  I think our group would have a blast playing a system like this, and I know jr0n and Enron (maybe Mykenloft?) have already played WFRP some and I'd like to hear their thoughts and experiences on the system.

Anyway, I also really like the Mythic GM Emulator which sort of puts the story into the hands of some charts and LOTS of interpretation by the players to drive the story.  When we played DCC using the GME, it added quite a bit of interest because we were sort of writing the story as we played it.  We generally knew the plot because the GME lays it out for you to a certain extent, but the details were determined by our play.

And then there is The Armitage Files supplement for Trail of Cthulhu.  This is basically a sourcebook for all sorts of different NPCs, groups, locations, tomes, etc. for the ToC game, but with a very interesting twist:  Each one is detailed and then additional details are listed for if the 'thing' is friendly, neutral, or opposing.  Basically it means any group that uses the sourcebook will likely use it in vastly different ways.  There was a pretty good blog out there about one groups experience running a game derived from the Armitage Files and it sounded rad!

And THEN there was our mixed experience with Fiasco!  I had fun, but couldn't muster the creativity to really perform like I should have during those sessions.  Maybe I didn't quite 'get it', maybe playing in character seems weird to me in my old age, whatever it was, I wasn't totally into it, but I did really like the idea of joint story telling with a purpose.

ANYWAY, all of these things combined with how much fun we have RPing as a group when things go off the rails, got me thinking about combining them all together into some sort of GM-less Cthulhu/Investigative RPG where decks of cards define the overall story, but to keep it fresh, each scene or something rotates through the players as they sort of interpret and run the game based on a set of instructions they received from their card pull at a certain point in the game.

I don't know narrative/plot/story arc devices, terms, or structure, but it seems you could somehow combine a generic set of narrative cards with specifics from the genre (Cthulhu) combined with elements of the GM emulator for 'chaos and chance' WITH interpretation of dice during rolls, you could make a pretty fun, structured, but bite-sized RPG experience where no one has to do all the prep work and everyone gets to contribute AND join the ride.

I'm still tinkering with some specifics, and like the title says it will likely die right here, but it's been fun to think and fantasize aboot.

| vintage action team