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People are going to ask, so this is here, and public, so I can point people at it.
I left the Maelstrom game part way through the latest event (Appropriation, Easter weekend 2012), and I don't particularly expect to be coming back. I have absolutely no hard feelings for the team at Profound Decisions (who are the company running Maelstrom), and I expect to continue playing Odyssey and am looking at Empire with interest.
The Maelstrom game I played for three years was a game of exploration and intrigue, and I played a character with some pretty serious emotional baggage and a past he wanted to escape. He came to the New World, found people of like mind and founded a church. It was a good life for a bit. Then, the rumblings of apocalypse sounded under the surface. For the next couple of games things got bleaker and darker, and my character and a load of others fought against it, and it was good fun. The Undead rose, my God told me to fight them, and I did so to the best of my ability. Then, on friday, three quarters of the characters I play with were either killed or driven off the field for the weekend.
All of the above is fine. Interfactional tension is a fine thing, and it's been simmering along, grounding in little scuffles and scraps for years. We've all been expecting a fight like that, half the field against the other half, and now it's happened. And it's just driven home that the game as it is now isn't really the game I want to play.
Two data points:
Maelstrom continues to be a great game. It's a different game from the one I started playing in 2009, and the game as it stands is not one I wish to play. So I'm leaving, and reallocating my time to games I enjoy more. See y'all on the field in the future.
So, it's been a while.
Three whole months since a useful entry, in fact. So it goes. As you may have guessed, Advent Science totally imploded fairly early on when I realised I really needed to write the sessions in advance, not on the night. I have no doubt it's possible to put out that volume of information each night for 24 days and have it be correct, complete and coherent, but I wasn't able to do it. Maybe next year I'll actually do the prep :)
Work is work, and continues apace. My department has me doing a lot of XSLT and Python at the moment, and I'm finding that the latter isn't the terrible language I was sure it was a while ago. Syntactic whitespace still bugs me somewhat, but at least it isn't Perl... It's maintaining my interest without any trouble, and while it's a really big job, it breaks down into small achievable sections such that I get a sense of progress, which is nice.
At home, the house is pretty much sorted out now, though it could use a spring-clean. Everything works, there isn't too much mess around and I'm slowly getting used to the idea of having a living room for, you know, living in. I still spend most of my time in my bedroom, which seems like a waste of a space. Have to address that.
LARP is mostly going well (although see the following post). CUTT will start back up soon, I'm looking forward to the next Odyssey game, and I await more details on Empire with interest.
Anything else? Not much of significance. I have a new bicycle, which is nice for the commute (the gears and brakes work properly!). It's a Raleigh Oakland in British Racing Green, with aftermarket Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres. The latter have taken my puncture rate down from two or three a month to zero in three months, and I highly recommend them for use on harsh commutes. My commute isn't too bad: cross the river by footbridge, cycle along beside the Cam for a bit, cross Newmarket Road and then follow Coldhams Lane to Cherry Hinton, then down the High Street and left at the crossroads. Thirty minutes / four miles each way, which has to be good for me, and it's all the nicer now it's still light when I get out of work in the evening.
It occurs to me that I've got a fairly busy few weekends coming up. I should write down roughly what's going on so I don't collapse into a screaming pile of flail after misorganising something, particularly in terms of travel arrangements.
Yep, that's every weekend from now to mid-August booked. I hope noone expects me to be good for anything the weekend after that last one... :)
It's that time of year again: I'm off to go be someone else in a field in Oxfordshire Buckinghamshire over the weekend. Since I pick up the van tomorrow morning, I suppose I should say goodbye now.
Will be off comms, to all intents and purposes, from tomorrow morning until Monday night, except to people trying to find me in said field tomorrow night. Have a good Easter, if you celebrate, otherwise enjoy the holiday.
Me? I plan to. I NEED a holiday right now, corrections are wearing me down and I've too many things people need me to do. I'll be putting them all on hold for four days, then coming back to them refreshed, I hope.
Good morning!
Workaday (0930-1745)
Evening