Justin Howe's Blog, page 52

Sad Times in UR

Here's a brief write-up of the latest expedition into Ur. Names have been removed to protect the innocent.

The party made two excursions into the ruins. Their goal was to find the "zoo" mentioned in the journal of Mad Alchemist. The first expedition went well. They stumbled upon an outpost of the Spiked Circle and held the line against them and their carnivorous ape pet.

Three characters went into the ruin, four returned (though one was carried out).

They went back to Fort Low, healed...

Books and TV

Five people walk into a room. They're all what may be called active readers in that they read at least a book or two a month. One of them brings up a book. None of the others have read it. One only reads award-winners and bestsellers, another is reading her way through Dickens (last year she did the same with Trollope), that guy only reads genre, as do the last two, but it's a different genre than the first guy's, and these two are reading at the opposite ends of it. Maybe there's a book...

Complaints Department

There's nowhere to get breakfast in Pohang on the weekends. It's crazy. Say you're up at 8AM and decide to walk along the beach, if you're lucky maybe, just maybe, you'll find a coffee shop open. Even the toast places don't open until 10:30AM. And. They. Make. TOAST!?! Doesn't anyone in this town want to drink coffee outside of their house early on a Saturday morning?

It's become so bad I'm starting to daydream about opening up a restaurant that would just serve two eggs, toast, and hash...

If You See Sartana, Call Your Mom… Because You Won't Be Home For Dinner!

I'm A Bug. You're One Too.

So back on Sunday there was another Vaults of Ur session. Five players went into the ruins and five returned. The party encountered some bug-people and an ancient war golem. Dennis over at What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse (his character's Thidrek the Sleestak) wrote up the expedition. After the game I realized I missed an opportunity to engage in mayhem near the end — but it was getting late and after a few hours of babblebabblebabblerollaD6 my brain's pretty fried.

Next time…

I Can Tell When My Students Have Seen Star Wars

I can tell when my students have seen Star Wars because they'll walk up to me and say, "I'm your father!" which inevitably escalates to, "No, I'm your grandfather."

"No, I'm your grand-grand-grand-grand father."

"No, I'm — I'm your ghost!"

At which point I look them in the eye and say, "No, I'm you."

And their minds explode.

Knowledge Presupposes Ignorance, or Ouch!

"A reason knowledge/learning in general is so unpopular with so many people is because very early we all learn there is a phenomenologically unpleasant side to it: to learn anything entails the fact that there is no way to escape learning that you were formerly ignorant, to learn that you were a fool, that you have already lost irretrievable opportunities, that you have made wrong choices, that you were silly and limited. These lessons are not pleasant. The acquisition of...

A Domestic Interlude

Husband: "I'm going to make pesto and apple crumble this weekend."

Wife: "Are you okay?"

Husband: "What? Why?

Wife: "Just asking."

Husband: "… If I decide to sweep the floor are you going to call an ambulance?"

Wife: "Maybe."

4 Books and a Stuffed Gorilla

1. The Greek Myths Vol. 1 by Robert Graves
From a scholarship standpoint I hear this is a bit ofan unsightly conglomeration of fornicating individuals notable for its awkwardness (a clusterfuck), but damn this book has life in it. Graves is shoe-horning all the myths into his grand unified theory of mythology as laid out in The White Goddess, but he believes it and allows the mythology to inform his own work, so in a way they are accurate in the sense of mythology being a living thing that...

The Vaults of Ur, Session 2: The Mad House of the Mad Alchemist… of Madness!

Second session of Ur went like this. . . shit, how'd it go?

OK OK OK, it went like this.

Kris the fighter, one of the survivors of the first session, gathered together a stalwart band (Holy shit seven players! I've never run a game with this many people before. OK, shit, why not, let's see what happens) and set off for the three-story building he discovered in the ruins last time. Along with him went:

Kullpetal the OrcThidrek the Beastman (though more a Sleestak)Nooquist the SorcererGoron the...