Abundant Werewolvery

This week past has seen the subject of Werewolves arise on a couple of occasions.

The first was when the biannual free-lunch-with-some-training day ended with a presentation from Gamer Phil on his investigation into bringing gaming into libraries. To demonstrate what could fun be had he ran a game of Werewolf for a dozen of us during the snacks and wine conclusion of the days events.

You can imagine one's surprise when at the first opportunity the librarians, led far to quickly by Alltogether Heather,  voted to lynch me despite my taking the job of "Friendly Mayor" to disabuse them of such notions and - even more surprisingly - choosing me while Supervisor Grand Chief K was there to be chosen!


The second werewolf incident involved an equal slaughter of oneself as the gaming group gathered for another of our regular Magic tournaments. This one involved a set with a horror theme and I chose to make my deck involve several werewolves. In succession Pirate Dave, MatrixMan and then, unsurprisingly, ArchEnemy all took my poor werewolves apart. Obviously one has top distance oneself from anything of a lupine nature.


In contrast today's activities were definitely of a non-lycanthropic nature as Salsa Girl and I enjoyed a sunny day at the Moomba parade and associated festivities. At least I'm fairly sure it was werewolf free, but you never can tell.

Anyway, I found it refreshing to get out and about and prove that I am not simple a man of a few obsessions as we made our way about the many Moomba activities following this years theme of Melbourne is Delicious - which it did prove to be.
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2011 A Year of (Gaming) Wonders

As one hasn't produced one of these for a good couple of years - 2008 was the last in fact - I thought it was about time I subjected you all to another run down of a year's gaming.

So here is the summary of my years gaming for 2011.

All up I had 111 gaming events for the year!

98 may be a more accurate number taking out the ones that were traditional cards played along with a dinner catch up.

That is down by 10 to 20 on 2008 but I have gladly traded some gaming time to spend more in the esteemed company of Salsa Girl.

The occasions break down like thus:

46 sessions with my Tuesday Knights group

• 2 playing Magic as the main event (there are usually some games each week)
• 31 playing or running roleplaying. 
• 22 running the Traveller Diplomatic Action game.
• 4 playing Fighting Fantasy Role-play under Legion2's control, 
• 5 playing ElfBoy's Terra Australis game.
• 13 playing board and card games

21 sessions with the Black Guild on Thursdays

• 7 running my Phudge fantasy game Mundus Scenecit
• 3 just chatting - as happens sometimes (as opposed to the 50% chatting that gaming usually is)
• 7 playing The Bastard's D&D 4th edition Dark Sun game.
• 4 playing the ever awesome Tribe8 under the guiding hands of Fantomas.

1 of The Viking Hat GM's old school AD&D days

3 afternoons playing The Bastard's bimonthly Pathfinder fantasy game.

10 Sundays gaming group days playing board, war and card games

6 Spontaneous boardgaming get togethers

3 Spontaneous Magic playing sessions

3 Magic Tournaments amongst our group of players - missing only one new set for the year

1 poker night

13 sessions of Rummy 500 with the Double Jays and Salsa Girl

1 visits to LURG my old uni games club - although no games were played!! (I'm looking at you Camo Spice)

2 evenings playing Werewolf with librarians - run by Gamer Phil while at conference

1 attendance at International Day of Gaming @ the Library - as organised by Gamer Phil at the State Library

All up I played with about 40 different gamers (and about 28 non-gamers).

• 8 players on Tuesdays
• 8 on Thursdays (4 shared with Tuesday)
• 10 at Sundays gaming, 5 from Tuesdays, 1 from Thursdays, 4 not. Multiple attendees: 5 from Tuesdays, 1 from Thursdays, 2 others.
• Spontaneous Magic was only with Tuesday night gamers.
• Poker was with 4 non-gamers.
• Rummy was with 4 non-gamers
• Magic tournaments brought 5 from the Tuesday group, 1 from Thursdays and 2 others
• The old school AD&D was with about 8 gamers and no crossover with other groups.
• The Pathfinder game was with 5 Tuesday/Thursday gamers and 1 other.
• The Werewolf with librarians was with about 20 non-gamers.
• Gaming in the library added another 13 gamers

One thinks that's a reasonable return for a hobby for which one has an obviously mild passion.

I expect to up the ante in the coming year and push on for the magic 150 and I'm sure nothing will hold me back from fulfilling such a humble ambition.

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Holiday Haze

So it transpires that when one is on holidays for weeks at a time things such as, say updating one's blog, actually become harder to make happen.

The very astute of you may have noticed that The Tales has been rather quiet for the month of October and much of this month as well. So quiet in fact as to have been non-existent. Well, as of this post, one is rectifying that oversight.

Such a lot has happened that one's usual highly-enjoyable ramblings could well go on for many a page and exhaust even the staunchest fan's endurance. Therefore I shall recount the happenings in bullet point style in order to regain somewhat of a regular posting style.

One has been through:

• the horror of a Grand Final loss endured with The Great Sandro fretting that a lead of 40 points could be lost in the final 2 minutes of the game while Legion2 and I tried to accept our tragic loss. This understandably took away one's will to blog for many days afterwards.

• the horror of putting myself through yet another of the The Viking Hat GM's fiendish D&D days. Albeit made easier by being held at Exploding Ninja Pony's new awesome Man-Cave (or Geek-Grotto if you are one of those pedants who prefers accuracy).This understandably took away one's will to blog for many days afterwards.

• the horror of realising that accepting Salsa Girl's Facebook declaration of our engaging situation announced it both far and wide and that "Facebook Friends" do indeed see what you display there. This one nearly confirmed one's Facebook shyness.

• the horror of another training day with free morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea . . . wait that one wasn't so bad. Understandably one was too bloated on returning home to conduct any blogging.

• the horror of having to set up one's new computer after the old faithful failed to respond at all. Of course this one made it rather difficult to get blogging done.

• the horror of realising that holding our sixth annual Absent Friends card day meant that we've been without an old friend for more than half a decade...

• the horror of yet another interstate conference junket with the threat of too many LibraryLand cocktails looming over one's head. Even Gamer Phil from an adjacent library service running gamer games in the evening couldn't help one from having many a drink thrust into one's hands (and yes, I do have to drink them). Still I managed to come through okay - at least from what I remember...

• the horror of another of our card tournaments where my cards refused to shuffle up in any sort of normal distribution pattern.

• the horror of a planning training morning timed to end before lunch so we can all head back to work! This one had me distraught for days and unable to commit any blogging activity.

• the horror of going to Geelong for another conference and, well, being in Geelong. The hotel gave me a room overlooking the stadium of the team that had so recently defeated one's Magpies and the trauma returned blotting out any thoughts of blogging.

• the horror of an afternoon under The Bastard's control in yet another irregular game. Maybe I shouldn't accept all these offers...

• the horror of ... ahem, the bliss of a week away down the coast with Salsa Girl. Time spent reading. playing Rummy, walking along beaches and cliffs. One did make an attempt to blog in the peace and quiet but that bX-1fv8xl error did in my mobile posting ambitions.

• the horror of a feline neglected for a week that decides the attention it is due shall be collected at 4am. Sleep deprivation makes one decidedly low in motivation to think up another of one's brilliant blog postings and high in motivation for disciplining The Tiger.

• the horror of BestFriendSincePrep abandoning one to make an international move of a few years and support his wife's career. Really, where was my opportunity to have a say in this decision?

• the twin horrors of a day of Gaming at the State Library (organised by Gamer Phil) followed by a regular Sunday's gaming. So many games to choose from, such little time...

• the horror of realising one has only a week remaining of one's holiday before having to dive into that mound of email and meeting invites.

• the horror of facing up to the construction of a huge update to the sadly neglected Tales. This one, especially, made it hard to get any blogging done.

Phew.

Regular service shall resume shortly.

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