Meteor's Edge

[lathany]

Twelve people roleplaying in a house in Cheltenham. On the downside, the week included many ill people (including me); on the upside, it had excellent roleplaying, gin, tapas, roasts, steak and much, much fizz. There was also a train graveyard (Final Fantasy fans take note) and bateleur and I went for walks most days.

Note: Anyone planning to play in a re-run of any of the week's games should not read the spoilers. (However, I don't know how many will re-run.)

Friday
Friday afternoon we all arrived and took rooms. Most were ensuite and all were lovely. I don't have a particularly clear picture of my room, but it did have a balcony with some good views.



quisalan cooked risottos and we ate in the long dining room.



Afterwards people headed for various sitting rooms and leathellin lit a fire in the biggest room. We sat around with drinks (and some people played boardgames).

Saturday
The first game was bateleur's Alt-Thulhu game Grand Exhibition: "The great painter Pauline deMoor has died. Now you are in the process of helping to put together a grand exhibition of her life's work." This turned out to be portals, alternate timelines and the possibility of ending the Universe. Particularly memorable was the tunnel to Hampton Court where a painting used to be. After ladders, giant beetle-like things and confusion we saved the day. And all the other days. Dinner on Saturday was the first roast, courtesy of zandev.

Sunday
Sunday's game was smiorgan's Powered by the Apocalypse game Transuranic World: "Based on the TV and audio Sapphire and Steel series. PCs are agents from a "higher power" who fix breaches in Time. Closed environment, mystery, supernatural agents and enemies, modern era (more or less)". I got to play Steel (a female version) and was very happy. This captured the TV series atmosphere beautifully. The Agents were mystic (and also somewhat out of their depth), the situation was very confusing and the human got shafted. I'm less convinced by the system, but I suspect that's down to personal taste. This was the first game we played in the largest sitting room.



Dinner was burritos from bateleur. I think this was the night that we played Betrayal at the House on the Hill. smiorgan became the traitor and beat the rest of us.

Monday
This was bateleur's systemless game The Perfect Shopping Experience: "A game about helping customers and taking pride in your work and respecting your colleagues. You can't remember what you did yesterday after you got home from work. In fact, you can't even remember where you live. You know your name, though. It's on your badge. (Spoiler: This game is not at all about what it seems to be about.)" A surreal experience of being sales people in a department store whilst our memories were - supposed to be - reset every night. We eventually figured out that we were centuries in the future and were part of a twentieth century experience experiment trying to cure the population of depression caused by a lifestyle where they had little they needed to do. Fortunately, the rebel faction rescued us and explained that our strange legal status meant we could run the new world and make decisions about the future of the human race and also AIs.

I think Monday was the first lovely day of weather after which people were outside more.



Dinner was roast number two from davefish.

Tuesday
This was my GMing day and I ran Keeper's House (percentage dice and cards): "Five people stay at Keeper's House over the weekend. This is a standalone tabletop game set in the present day. It involves pre-written characters and should be fairly system-lite." I may re-run and if anyone is interested, don't read the spoiler text. Supernatural creatures, an unfinished historical treaty between the races and snow. And a beeb. I enjoyed running this one a lot. Dinner was tapas from leathellin with triskellian's garlic and cheese pie. I think this was the night I played Flashpoint for the first time.

Wednesday
quisalan ran Relics of the Past: "Modern day game where "magic" has begun to emerge into the world in the last two generations. You are a looking for an old religious relic in Paris for a private collector, willing to pay a decent amount for it. You just need to find it..." I played the historian hunting the relic, I had been assigned two security people, a logistics man and a local guide. Plus we all had magical powers that had been appearing around the world since the 1970s (there was always something about the seventies). We tracked down a ancient church artifact and then battled it away from the person who had been using it and killing children. The powers were very nice and chrestomancy's character was very pretty.

This was my Evening of Stress as I was cooking (shepherd's pie). However, I was helped by davefish and bateleur before I dissolved into a small puddle of panic. I've not cooked for twelve before. Wednesday was also zandev's birthday and there was much champagne.

Thursday
First thing in the morning (OK, after everyone was up), chrestomancy and I went shopping for dinner. On the way back we took a somewhat unplanned detour. Although this gave me the opportunity to photograph some sheep.



Finally - the Warhammer 40K game from ao_lai: "Rogue Trader themed. Board the derelict, seize anything valuable, secure the ship if possible. What could go wrong?". It was something of a sequel to the 2012 Con game and the universe had indeed been Johned. We found a Tech Priest ship floating and its crew were chaos-tainted. We managed to destroy it... but still have a copy of the AI blueprint that's causing all the corruption (although we're not fully aware that it is the problem).

Thursday dinner was steak and salmon from chrestomancy.

Friday
The usual tidy-up and stuff.



We got home around midday to a surprised and rather vocal puss. He's been climbing on and off my lap all afternoon.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Good writeup! :-)

[clairval.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you had a really fun vacation. Out of curiosity, how did you find Flashpoint?

Also you must be proud to be Reeve's favourite possession. :3

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I liked what I saw of Flashpoint although across the course of the game, someone was reading the rules and was discovering it was being misplayed (in two different ways: one of which made it harder and one which made it easier). So I haven't played it by complete rules yet. I liked the different character types and that you could change them. There seemed to be a lot of scope for strategy in that alone.

This is, in part, because I like co-op games over competitive ones (Betrayal at the House on the Hill squeezes in as it starts co-op and sometimes remains that way).