You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Changeling, Tricks, Wireless

Managed to just finish the first draft of the rules, and made a copy for everyone, two pages per page... and managed to put the original pages on the photocopier the wrong way around, so that it was really confusing to read. :p

Anyway, people managed to make characters, despite the fact I hadn't managed to write a "creating a character" example; and we even managed to squeeze in one scene, which had the following script for the Sluagh known as the Three Sisters:

Heidi: Something will happen during the Convention at the Queen's Warf.
Hannah: Something terrible.
Lorilei: Something glorious.
Heidi: There will be those whose destinies intertwine with yours, for a time.
Lorilei: There will be a Chrysalis.
Hannah: There will be a death.
Heidi: Some will be there to raise a power.
Hannah: Some will be there to strike in vengence.
Lorilei: [glancing at Hannah] Some will be there because they are sad, lonely geeks with no lives.
[pause]
Hannah: [sarcastically] Some think My Little Ponies are an art form.
Lorilei: [hissed] Some have James Marsters screen-savers.
Hannah: [half-standing] Some will be getting stabbed in the face...
Heidi: Sisters!
[They both subside, glaring at each other.]
Heidi: Here are tickets to the event – pray be in the central square at midday.

I'll be fixing rules stuff, adding examples, page numbers, and maybe even an index. Looks like it'll be 40-50 pages in the end; I'll give people a heads-up when it's done.

We're actually playing next week - it'll be interesting to see how that goes. My initial impressions? The Keys mechanism give the players a big reason to be proactive (though a big chunk of that may be down to the player) - one of the consequences of this is that I'll be less pressured to drop things into the game for the characters to be reactive to. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

***

One of the cool things I learned from Tricks of the Trade is what "diva darts" are. And how about these two tips:

Customer Service Representative: If you're faced with an irate customer on the telephone who won't let you help him, leave them on hold for about three minutes, then pick back up and pose as the manager. Thinking they've "won" the battle, the he customer is much more likely to work with you.

Irate Customer: If you faced with bad service and are being "escalated," calm down before interacting with the next person up the chain of command. The lowly incompetent drone you've been howling at will likely warn his supervisor to expect a raging psychopath; if you are on your best behavior when the manager speaks with you, he will probably be confused and much more inclined to help you out.

Heh. :)

***

Got my 3Com wireless router yesterday, as well as a wireless card for my box, so I'll be able to charge my flatmates with thew cable modem part of the TelstraClear bill in good conscience - once I get around to plugging everything in and set up. The only downside is that I'm even more tempted to buy a laptop... and one of the people in the office has been getting prices from IBM through work, and it'd only cost about $3k, and I'd be able to claim the GST back immediately, and depreciate it something like 49% in the first year, so that'd be about $500 back off my next tax bill. But... that's more than $250 in extra interest on the mortgage in the first year, plus the $3k capital that I wouldn't be paying off. At the moment, I'm thinking that it's a pity that I didn't work out how to do depreciation and so on a year ago. :)

There are lots of really neat things that laptops would let me do... but most of them I can do with hardware I've got at the moment, one way or another. For example, music for games at other people's houses can be done with my mp3 player, as long as I'm careful to set it up appropriate playlists beforehand. Oo, I might set up one of my unused boxes in the main room, so I can browse and stream mp3s there. Hey, with a infrared keyboard and mouse, I could do some pretty nifty things.

But a laptop would still be pretty neat. :)

Posted by svend at April 5, 2005 9:24 AM