Mind Altered Roleplay

If you've ever seen a month's-worth of blog hits, you'll understand my next statement.

For all of you who actually Googled for "mind altered roleplay" or maybe just "mind altered" or possibly just "roleplay" I am sorry but this is probably not the site you're looking for. I have yet to include any kind of drug-addled shenanigans to my bedroom life. Nor have I ever purchased/worn burlap underwear. I apologize also to all those who came here looking for "proper suicide emo" and "scenes with mice digging holes." For the life of me I don't get it, but I will endeavor to include these topics in my subsequent musings.

Ugh, I've been stuck on that last paragraph for hours now. You'll understand when I say I've eaten a very big sandwich all on my lonesome. And now I have a weird craving for The Money Pit. But I must endure for there will be a torrent of pictures and videos ahead that are sure to boggle the socks and blow the mind off all of you, my dear minions friends.

Each Friday or Saturday night, like most of you I'm sure, my bored housewife existence turns to game night. We hook up with our neighbours (the better half of which I have known for some 10 years) and indulge in a requiem of depravity. Jk. The title might hint to that but, no. As many of us new-age geeks (uh, can I coin that one, I rather fancy it) we play boardgames or roleplay (the pen and paper version, geez). As do most of you. Surely.

What confounds me is why we would ever consider in venturing on with these subjects after opening the second bottle of wine or on our way through our second sandwich. Let me explain.

Setting (in cWoD's V:TM): after millennia of seamless integration in human society, man has seen one too many Twilight movies and is beginning to catch on. Hmm, that Madonna sure isn't getting any older. And didn't I just read in the paper that Nicholas Cage is actually part of the hosts of the undead?

Insert a scrawny Polish vampire whose biggest dream is to quit all this Vampire nonsense all together, a scrawny little girl who's pretty unsure if being undead is what's happening right now and a scrawny rich opera singer who's pretty sure being a Vampire is what's happening and she's quite enjoying it.

Obviously, as I am known to row against any plot, I immediately set myself out as defiant and constructed my penitent Vampire Alex. Because Vampires with common names is all the rage nowadays. Look at Vampire Bill or Vampire Eric. None of those french Anne-Rice-ish names. No. I have a vampire called Alex and by God he will find a cure this this nefarious ailment! Verily, thus and so!

I started out as noble as could be but I got turned around somewhere and ended up performing blood transfusion between two ghoulified cows in a barn and smearing vampire remains on a deserted road in backwater Russia with a stake. I proceeded to then swallow the most critical peace of information we had, have a cat-fight with a human three times stronger than me during daytime and spent a good twenty minutes riding up and down in an elevator for no good reason in a luxury apartment building in NYC. These were the things I did voluntarily, using whatever wits I yet had.

Unconsciously, however, our collective minds drifted in very similar if bizarre directions when analyzing what props we had encountered.

Here is what remained after my attempt at salvaging three important parts of an important document. The first I swallowed, as alluded earlier, the second I triggered burnt but the third one isn't my fault. 

After little under an hour (or maybe it was three) I managed to put the middle one back together. Now, it seems like a perfectly reasonable piece of roleplaying prop, doesn't it? Now let's check the back reversed against the light.

A bit weird yes, but... wait. Wait, what's that there with the burnt patches and... and the outline, is that...

is that... Mr. Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

Oh my God, now I can't unsee it! And is that... is that a giant missile on his head?

No, now I'm just over-thinking it. But, although...

There's a little duck flying up there! I can see it, it's like a Warner Bros. type thing!

Needless to say that was the end of our adventures for the night. We probably retreated back to RockBand as we are known to do. If only the walls were thicker we'd have more fun with it. But, like many console accessories, RockBand's weren't thought for small apartments. They should though, I mean at least the 360 is clearly marketed for frat boys.

Sometimes we play Scrabble. But that never ends well for me.

And "glee" was not a valid word.

I tell you: That Money Pit sure is a funny movie. Best Spielberg movie, hands down. What else can I be but what I am... Carpenter? Plumber? No bells?

Philistines...

Game Nights



Warhammer: Chaos in the Old World
The Boss: It Was Not I



Usually, every Friday we have a game night at our house. This involves a board/videogame, enough cigarettes, something to drink and VH1.

We've developed quite the selection of things to play but, ultimately, it falls to Cat, my best friend and a rising star in the field of lawyering, as she's the most picky of the four. I don't care what we play, I never win. The boys will usually be too busy screwing each other over to pay us any attention and the both of us cheat her way to victory. Once in a while I'll say "can I check the rules" and everybody groans because I'll find something they missed. Good times are had by all.

We started out simple, when we first moved in together. Catan was our first big addiction. Mike even made his own out of notebook covers once. I wonder where that went... Eventually we started buying more and more board games. We're now at the point where we're at a loss as to where to store it all. From Risk to Zargos, we've got an abundance of boxes filled with little plastic pieces, all of which deserve a post and will probably get one in time.

Ultimately, our choice of what to play depends highly on how drunk we intend to get. Tipsy means we can go for some Chaos In The Old World or Arkham Horror (not to be confused with Arkham Asylum). If we intend to end the night under the table we'll probably go for Pictionary or, idealy, Rock Band. I can proud myself of having finished Rock Band (the first) on Expert difficulty mode. Singing, of course. I can only finish it in Hard when it comes to the guitar. We, as most players surely do, have a nemesis; several, in fact, but there's always a song we go back to, thinking enough time has passed that we are now somehow magically able to beat it. Deep Purple's Highway Star has, imho, the trickiest Expert guitar solo in the game. It's not the only one I can't do but it's the most frustrating one. Every once in a while I guird my loins and have at it again to no avail. I have a wonderful time until 0:45. Then I die and someone needs to rez me up.

Bur I digress. Lately we've succumbed to the lusty charms of Citadels, a card based game. The point of the game is simple: have eight districts before anyone else. The one with the most valuable districts when someone builds the eighth one wins. Along the turns you pick a different characer that gives you a certain right: either you earn more money or you "kill" another player or get to be the first to chose characters in the next round. It's more fun than it sounds.

We've been meaning to pick up Twilight Imperium again as well. We call it "the game to be finished the day after tomorrow" and that fact alone keeps us away from it. People with cats are wary of leaving small game pieces out for it to play with during the night. But the game is so worth it that I have to step on a few toes to get us to play it again. And the box is big enough for me to feel bad about never playing it.