Showing posts with label bass ale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bass ale. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Spider Baby Bombs







The last few weekends I have been camping out and working at a California Renaissance Faire, where friends and I do several music shows a day at one of the stages. I’ve done this on and off for a couple of decades, and it is still big fun. Running around in baggy peasant clothing all day, and getting cleaned up and into street cloths for nights of partying out in the woods and under the stars in this amazing village that gets recreated. It’s sort of my mini-burning man. One of the ale stands opens up around 8PM Sat night, and I often hit the bar scene, sucking down 3 dollar Bass Ales fresh from the tap, which is what I like to do when there is no particular party going on that I want to be at, or some girl I am trying to hook up with.

Last Saturday night I staggered back to camp with a few folk right after midnight, and we were sitting around the fairly quiet camping area having a beer and shooting the shit. Suddenly up comes an old friend of mine, shining his flashlight into his pewter Ale mug. Inside was a monstrosity exactly like shown in the picture above. A wolf spider, apparently, with its little baby monsters clinging lovingly to its back. It was around the size of your thumb.

Needless to say, I freaked. I normally like spiders, but this thing is especially brutal looking, and the babies were icing on the cake of fear. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and although not an avid camper I have had countless such weekends in the woods. As others around us freaked when they looked in the disgusto-mug, I thought about how I was going to go to sleep that night thinking about these bad mamajammas toting there tots around beneath my covers, or dangling on the tent ceiling 4 feet above me. In fetal position, that’s how.

So naturally one day I am going to have to have a giant version of this thing show up in a D&D game. But what would set it apart from other giant spiders? The ability to use the babies on its back as missiles, that’s how. Every round the mama could lunch one or two of these things, baseball sized spiders that could latch on to you and inject some nasty poison. Or hell, why could they not explode in a mist of deadly gas? Perhaps act as a firebomb on contact? I dunno, it’s D&D man. But in the game, those babies gotta do something besides look for a free ride from mama.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

“Don’t Drink and Game”





Obviously if you’ve read a few of my posts from a year or so ago, you know that I am no stranger to “mind altering substances” at game time. With my love of brewed liquids (and I ain’t talking coffee and tea), the title of this post is obviously a ruse. These days I enjoy several ales during the games I run, with Bass Ale, Fat Tire Ale, and Blue Moon being current favorites (all usually on sale in 12 packs at your local Rite Aid store). I know this sounds like a lot to you, but I am over 6’2”, currently built like a Samoan, and for sure ain’t no momma’s boy Sunday drive drinker. Although I have cut down lately so I can chop down that Samoan build 5 or 50 lbs, my years of practice give me a certain amount of tolerance. And for sure when driving from a session I’ll knock it off around an hour and a half before ending the game (I privately refer to this as “Engine Cooldown Period”), and often take a walk a few blocks to shake the mist out of my melon. Maybe grab a vitamin water at the local market before heading back to the car.

Almost everybody in the group but Big Ben (total tea totaler – although now that I think of it I don’t think he even drinks tea) enjoys a few drinks. Dan Dan the Power Game Man almost always has a sixer of Rolling Rock he’ll suck down 5 of. Andy, fairly slight of build, like 2 or 3 ales. And little Ben often has a tall can of something. Paul is not much of a drinker, but a couple of times has brought along a few Jack Daniels Lemonades. Our lady player Terry likes a couple of ales as well.

And as you may know from past posts some of us like to smoke a bit of the pipeweed before the game and maybe during a break. The fact is I would probably do this more, but during the game sometimes if I step out on the patio for a quick inhale Dan will come running out thinking it’s a chance for a cigarette break, and this can cause all the other little penguins to come waddling out to see what the fuss is and take part in whatever substance they prefer. But for the most part I would not say that anything is getting used in excess. If I am getting a ride, I might drink an ale or two more, but nothing crazy or shameful.

So sometimes I think about gaming, and how for the most part my experiences outside of the group have been fairly sober. When I was running KOTOR sessions for an established group of middle aged Star Wars dorks in Hollywood the other year, it seemed like at least one of them was a beer drinker but did not do it at the table. So I ran those sessions, that were already treated like I was working for these guys, stone cold sober. And that was one place I really felt I could use a few drinkypoos, being surrounded by what amounted to very weird and ultimately unfriendly creeps. At another session I went to last year, the host made it very clear to anybody that was playing that no substances, alcohol included, would be tolerated. And hell, in that case, being a fairly mellow and happy drinker (much nicer guy than sober me) things might have worked out differently if I had had a couple of belts when something unpleasant and unfriendly ended up going down. I just might not have walked out of that game less than an hour into it, which I don’t think any DM worth his salt wants a player to do.

I’ve had a couple of nice drinky games outside the main group the last year or so though. At last year’s Socal Smackdown con I had brought a little cooler with some beers in to get me through the session, and Cyclopeatron who was in attendance even hit me up with a nice rum and coke from the hotel bar. And earlier this year Cyclo organized a little pub game in Anaheim (or was it Fullerton?) with me and Trent Foster running our early sessions, and I had quite a few pints in that one (full tab for me and my driver Terry’s drinks? 90 bucks).

But one of my attendees at the Smackdown Session, Gary his name was I think, asked me to run some sessions at his place for some people in the future, but that no drinking of any kind would be tolerated. Needless to say, those games never panned out.

What is it with the drinking hate among many gamers? This is not a new phenomenon. In the 90’s, when I was running games for a group of mostly women in the latter part of it, those were some smoke and tequila soaked gaming. But each and every person there parties. And not falling down drinking. They were several hour weekend sessions, and we would do a shot and a toast from time to time. Well ok, I was putting beer in that mix too, but I lived a 15 minute stagger away so no big woop if I was feeling pretty wet on the brain by the end of the session. Hell, I was a much younger man then. But I also remember going to some games in the area on a Friday night some guy was hosting in the late 90’s. . These were terrible games, with a GM who kept no notebooks and totally made things up, badly as he went along. But I stuck with it because I think I was low on players at that time and was sort of trolling one player he had who I felt was a right fit for my group. But by game two I was bringing a six pack along to dull the pain and boredom. A couple of games later I was alone with the host working on some GURPS character for another game, and when talking about drawbacks for a character, disabilities or whatever they called them in that system, he made a big point of telling me alcoholism would be considered a weakness, and that he personally was creeped out by it. Ah, I see. My sixer on a Friday night habit was freaking the boring little douche out. I think I was done with that group at that point.

What do this people think is going to happen? Am I, or anybody else who wants a few refreshing adult beverages, some kind of old west Indian savages who will go nuts and kill the whole family if we get our hands on firewater? What’s the deal with that?

You only have to read a few threads on Dragonsfoot or RPG.net to see that there are drinkers out there in the game community. But that seems to be not the norm, and for the most part gamers are some kind of dorkish prudes who see it as evil. They probably would even see drinking half a Near Beer as some kind of pathetic persons personal struggle with Satan. I don’t get it. If you have kids, then I understand not wanting smoking to go on around your property. But a few beers? What is the real harm? Would these people see prohibition come back to save all the poor sick souls who enjoy a handful of suds during a several hour sit down were pretending and mind expanding seem to go hand in hand?

I myself would not want to run a game on mushrooms or acid or have players doing so, but I think that is a far cry from a little alcohol. Nobody is going to come to your game, have a few drinks, and wreck the place. They aren’t going to offer any to your kids (if you have kids why are you having weird strangers over to your place anyway?). What the hell is the real harm here? Stick up the ass may be the best explanation I can come up with for each and every time I have encountered anti-drinkers in the gaming scene.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Playing D&D with Pub Stars





I guess if a fortune teller told me a couple of years ago that I would be running a Dungeons and Dragons session in a busy pub, I would have told her not to listen to those spirits again, because they were full of shit. But there I was, at a Santa Ana British Pub, running a sort of Tegel Manor prequel game for seven players, and drinking pint after pint of delicious Elvish brew (Bass Ale).

Cyclopeatron put this together, and it was an interesting experiment. Basically, we took over a back area, slid some tables together, and I did the 5 hour session while Trent Foster ran at another table nearby. It was a stormy day in Southern California, and I really thought I might face the prospect of this falling through if a lot of players decided not to forge out into the weather. I told my regular player and designated driver Terry, and great trooper, to bring along her Mythos card sets in case I had to go ahead and fold whatever players showed up for me into Trent’s session (who was willing to have up to 12 people play).

But as it turned out, I had a full boat. Seven players including Terry. Wow. I think Trent ended up with a couple players less than I had, which surprised me. I think some kind of word of mouth, somewhere, is getting around about the breezy little OD&D sessions I’ve been doing since last year. It was really gratifying to me to have such a great showing.

At Around 11AM the pub was filled with hollering and shouting soccer hooligans, but before long the TV matches were over and it quieted down a bit. We took our time getting characters set up, I ordered up two pints at a time, and tore into some delicious Cod and Chips when it finally showed up. I had a nice cozy booth type seat to adjudicate from, and it was the perfect amount of players for the space we had. Just enough room for everything and everybody.

The pub manager was a hilarious Manchester lady names Jackie, and her often mean and sarcastic attitude in the morning blended nicely with her more warm and friendly chatting in the afternoon when things quieted down a bit. Personally, I think she had tilted a few herself in the back, which is always a bringer of cheery feelings. One of my players that day was also English, from the London area (there was an old London map in the bathroom that he could see his old neighborhood on), so the combination of the Euro accents, pub atmosphere, and rainy day was super conducive to good gaming feelings. It was all quite perfect. After making sure of taking care of Terry’s Cod lunch and a couple of pints for being my designated driver, the day cost me around 90 bucks, but it was well worth it for a great day out. To me this was more fun than a day at Disneyland or Knott’s. Limey manager Jackie said that for next time she might arrange a buffet and some booze discounts to cut back on costs a little.

As far as the scenario, I did a sort of Tegel Manor prequel, set in a time before that mansion become the most haunted place in the world. I used some of the Tegel personalities from the 100 portraits in the Tegel Manor adventure, and had them still be alive, and a family trying to hold off the encroaching curse of the area.

Later this week I’ll post a bit about that Tegel Manor Prequel session, and also about tomorrows Night Below session, which I think will be quite brutal and very likely the last game of the campaign.

Meanwhile, go to Cylcopeatron’s site to see a couple of photos of the sessions from that day.