Food for thought

As I have been I'll with the phage over the last couple of weeks I have been left with no other choice but to let my mind wander on the subject of role playing. Never takes long to raise an eyebrow tho, Vulcans not withstanding, as I have come across a new initiative, possibly quite literally.

Seems that munchies at the tabletop are now entering a new dimension as a German pastry cosplayer by the name of Sonja has made an entree into the market by producing a full range of sugar based edible dice. Now I can see some issue there to be fair as we do consume a fair number of Onion Rings of an evening but I admire the business model of allowing customers to eat their tools as it should provide a fairly constant income stream. Not sure if it would be wise to extend the approach to character miniatures, terrain relief or edible paper but a particularly tasty enemy would struggle on the Darwinian scale.

 Full article on https://boingboing.net/2018/03/22/gamer-makes-edible-polyhedral.html 

If however you are more of a chocaholic rather than a sugar addict then sadly I have to tell you that the indegogo "Candlyize your game" only manged to hit %2 of its funding goal. Whilst I understand the candy  market is very competitive, I suspect that the market for lovingly crafted chocolate polyhedrons is actually quite a small one, but one has to admire their excellent video.

"For warriors that know the bitter taste of defeat"

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/candylize-your-game-games-rpg?utm_source=landpage&utm_medium=www&utm_campaign=candy-land-page#/

Perhaps on a more seasonal note, something along the lines of Bunnies vs Face Huggers is more to your taste. Anyways, Happy Easter.

Mirror Universe

It was my pleasure to pop down and see everyone at the Craft Beer RPG club last Monday. Much as on other occasions its always nice to chat with familiar strangers and swap mutually embarrassing stories. This time round I had a brief catch up with Simon Appleton who continues to support the scene and who was also promoting his Larp event in Pulborough scheduled for the summer. We were also frothing about the latest version of Paranoia (25th Anniversary Edition), though I hadn't realised it went from 2nd edition to 5th edition in honour of its own dysfunctional narrative and I also didn't realise that Microsoft requested the creators to change the name of the ParanoiaXP series. Luckily Microsoft is our friend and we can trust them.

The Meetup was well attended overall with several GMs touting their wares; my favourite being a "Honey Heist" one page rpg one shot where you play one of several bears on a mission to steal the aforementioned honey. There are of course two stats: Bear and Criminal.

There were also a few D&D games getting their share of attention and by the end of the evening everyone had someone to talk to. As a predominantly virtual organisation I never know quite what to make of the club as there is no particular indicator as to the overall number of games or players, but the semi regular meetings do seem to keep topping up interest on the back of lively scene; its a sort of mirror universe to our venue I feel. Nevertheless I represented the Railway Club admirably and made everyone aware that they would always be welcomed with frozen lasagne and a very friendly punch in the face.

RIP

RIP Stephen Hawking 1942-2364

Games are healthily chugging away in clubland at the moment. When I say healthily this is with respect to the fact that I did see almost the entire Warhammer group rolling up characters a couple of weeks ago; whether this was a result of going a level up or a hit point down I am unsure. Nevertheless I have mastered the habit of nodding encouragingly when I have no idea what people are talking about.

Not sure if there was any free press in the Star Trek universe.. a quick mental riffle through my favorite episodes is not revealing anything but now I think about it, perhaps a press officer could have been a good addition to one of the crew, though I will get an update from GM Jon in due course.

Both the Exalted and Part time Gods are in full swing now and people are starting to get into character. In the Exalted we are after some black petals and in the PT Gods we are sort of trying to solve a murder, as Gods belong to a particular ethnic minority that you cant really ignore - Immortal Lives Matter.

This Monday is also the Entmoot at the Craft Beer Co and I will go down to say hi as usual and catch up with the community and I am on the verge of kicking off a Mondayish D&D as Thursdays are full now but not absolutely sure I can do two days in a week. Think I like the idea of it tho and I suspect I'll make the decision half way through my ramblings on the night.

Roleplaying.com

So there has been a subtle and yet critical shift in the Googleverse of late. For a long time as travelling souls wandered into our establishment they would alight on our tables I would cordially ask "So how exactly did you find us ?". Among the numerous, inaudible and occasionally sarcastic comments I would regularly be told "The Blog" and so it has been for millenia.

However our great mystical stones of knowledge have seemingly passed into lore and now we are now firmly in the great Bronze age of informations as our monolithic tome is now firmly second on the list of roleplaying options in Brighton having been subsumed into the great social bucket that is Meetup.com

This has been reflected in our conversations for about a year as visitors now exclusively say "Meetups" when interrogated for information about their past and events transpiring in the outside world. This is not so bad really as we are just one big community and although the Meetups site has been designed primarily to serve  the social network based around the Craft Beer Co, it servers very well for us too as we have a fairly generic entry advertising our Thursday wares. Moreover I occasionally bump in to some of our members whenever I go down there.

The point of all this is that basically There is another upcoming Entmoot on the 19th of March and whereas I usually let everyone know that there is a Thursday club frothing away merrily, there seems little point in telling everyone that we are full and that no one is welcome. So it's actually decision time, do I take a D&D to a spare day in the week and sow the seeds of another band of bards or do I just pull my trousers down at the next Meetups meetup and stand my ground ?