Things I've Learned in London: Day 1

-

  • London has a serious thing going on with avocados. I mean, I like avocados a lot, and even I am now wary of finding them where they don't belong after a single day. Caprese salad should not have avocado. Just. No.
  • Yay, I'm staying in a Georgian townhouse, on streets with a lot of other Georgian townhouses! I can pretend I've come to London for a season and can leave cards for people!
  • Boo, I'm staying on the third floor in a Georgian townhouse, with three flights of stairs and no lifts, as they say! And the plumbing is wonky. And there's no climate control, though the gorgeous weather currently makes that less of a concern.
  • I can eavesdrop on everyone, and only half of them are in a language I understand! Fun! :)
  • Doggies are everywhere! Everyone's walking a dog. It's awesome.
  • People are generally nice! It probably helps that I'm generally nice too.
  • I still feel like I'm walking around a movie set. I'm not sure how many days it'll take me to be convinced this is a real place I am actually. Perhaps all of them. The strangely surreal plumbing issues at my dorm do not help this feeling, to be frank.

    Stay tuned for more! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The RPG Industry and fair compensation

-
So an interesting discussion has started about compensation for freelancers in the RPG industry (see here for David Hill's initial blog post and here for Ryan Macklin's continuation of the theme ). They basically bring up that working for hire on a per word basis at current RPG industry rates is frankly both unfair and untenable, and although they aren't sure what the alternative is right now. For those who aren't already familiar with the problem, freelance author rates in RPGs run from $.01 per word to $.08, with perhaps WotC and Paizo paying .08 and Onyx Path paying $.03 to new authors, with a cap at $.05 for established authors. Terms are typically half upon completion, half upon publication.* This level of pay is shit, to put it mildly. It is difficult to ask for more, however, because RPGs do not in any way make the money they once did. If you sell through a print run of 1000 books, you're doing well. The bigger names do far better than that, but by and lar...
Read more

Character Creation: Blue Rose

-
Image
Character Creation! Okay, so since we're on break, it's time to make a character, and thus Matt and Al and I will engage in creating one for a game that is long overdue: Blue Rose . Currently out of print (to my knowledge) Blue Rose was one of the first overtly inclusive RPGs, inspired by the fantasy romance properties of Mercedes Lackey, among others, where "fantasy romance" really means "fantasy that isn't primarily a heterosexual male fantasy," because really it's all fantasy no matter what. Still, the focus is on community and groups, inclusion instead of exclusion, and on that score "romantic fantasy" is the moniker the game itself chooses. Blue Rose is a True20 game, so some of this is going to be super familiar system-wise. The setting is the kingdom of Aldis, which has entered an era of peace after the Shadow Wars of the Sorceror Kings. Nearby kingdoms still struggle under the Shadow, but the heroes of Aldis strive to defen...
Read more

Timewatch: Session Six!

-
Going by Wallis's reported date of death, the team showed up in 1924 a few days early, trying to get ahead of the time split (which they did). Solomon hung back at the Citadel for a moment/day/ever -- time travel tends to make that sort of distinction meaningless (their player was out). The team staked out her house and started looking for ways to find interference/figure out exactly when the event would take place. Micah starts off with his disguise as a groundskeeper at the Spencer household (she's still married to her first husband at this point). He sees a chauffeur working on the car outside the garage in back of the house, so he wanders over and starts a conversation. He has a pleasant talk with the driver, with the result that he learns there's going to be a party on Friday and the driver isn't needed to stay and wait. He also learns that her husband is gone for quite long intervals and is not terribly close with his wife.  Caroline, in the meantime, pays...
Read more