Marsden is Here

Slightly belated post.

D & I were only able to attend 3 sessions of BoD, and even these were hampered by her back pain :( We managed to both be in the same game for two of them.

Between arriving and session start we participated in a game of Between Two Cities (board game), which neither of us had played before. It was short with an interesting mechanic, would play again.

Session 2 we played Underdogs of the Underdark, a Dungeon World adventure where the party were a group of F-String gladiators thrust into the ring after their sponsors's main team was uncharacteristically slaughtered by their opponents. My barbarian got to have fun literally throwing various PCs and NPCs around the ring, and we managed to foil the necromancer who was using ring politics to drive his competitors for dead bodies (including our sponsor) out of business and win the grand sportsperson award by saving our final opponents from the fiery death he had planned for them.

Session 3 Daena LARPed and I played in the first of the D&D 5E Dragon Queen scenarios (Hoard of the). I had reasonable fun with my character but the game as a whole moved much slower than I would have expected from the experienced DM. The promoted Dwarven Forge terrain was pretty but didn't really add anything.

Session 5 we played Horsing Around, a D&D 5 game where we played the horses of the royal guard, off to rescue the princess because our knights had stopped and gotten drunk at the first tavern. Since we all had the same base character sheet with a little customisation in terms of skills this was a roleplay heavy game and quite fun, although I'm not sure how awake anyone at the table actually was by this point.

After I played in a 3 no 4 no 3 player game of Seven Wonders which I probably shouldn't have organised, given how many times I managed to cock up putting together the right combination of expansion cards / guilds into the age decks.

Early on D & I were given a surprise engagement present (thanks avron) of Seven Wonders Duel (ie the two player version). We broke it out earlier this week; it lends itself to a more brutal style of play than we are really keen on as a couple so I suspect Splendor will continue to be our favourite.

Reading back over the past few years entries I notice a clear pattern of going in already exhausted and not getting nearly as much gaming done as I would like. This year was no exception; various issues at work have triggered emotional breakpoints and seen me push myself harder than is safe. To boot a head cold which has been threatening for the past fortnight arrived with a vengeance, leading to me wearing a flu mask Sunday and Monday; arguably I should also have done so Saturday or even not attended at all. However I had a friend down from Wellington staying with me and commensurate responsibilities to make sure she was able to be there.

Despite my efforts to keep the Hall calendar clear it had two entries; the Saturday morning one was a no-show and the Monday afternoon one arrived an hour late and then was un-prepared and spent half-an-hour doing make-up. I was able to leave them shooting with someone else on site but both instances meant time spent waiting around in cold wet weather when I could have been gaming. An alarm call out just after midnight on Saturday morning did not help matters.

My brain is blanking on some of the games I played and when
- Saturday had at least four games, starting with Betrayal at the House on the Hill which I had to abandon to get to the Hall, but apparently the Haunt won two rounds later (although we'd seemed to be in a good position), late afternoon was Kingsburgh, later in the evening a quick 2-player learning game of Fairy(Faery?)Tale and then ? . I was also able to purchase enough card sleeves of appropriate size from the Comics Compulsion table to kill time sleeving my copy of DC Heroes.
- Sunday I had two long, 3-player games of DC Heroes Crisis with different people where we lost at the very end, the first time to the final crisis and the second time by the stack running out when we had only to defeat the final super-villain two more times. I must have played Roll for the Galaxy because we discovered one of the cups missing. Jamaica because I noticed one of our often-indecisive players was quite quick at it.
- Monday had Castles of the Mad King Ludwig (which someone kindly stepped out of to let me play when I arrived as it was being set up) followed by Egizia. After getting back from the Hall I managed a game of DC Heroes before helping a little with pack up.

Today I called into work sick and have spent it napping / doing chores around the house / a delivery/groceries run / coughing a lung out. I would have liked to go along to Saga tonight for a couple more games but by about 4pm I had to admit to myself that wasn't going to happen.

~~~
Three times during the past few days I have teetered on the brink of emotional collapse. One was Saturday morning trying to get out of the house on time after oversleeping, and that was pure exhaustion.

The second was when I wandered upstairs on Sunday night to try and take some discrete photos of the LARPs in progress (trying to keep myself occupied and stable between running out of gaming options myself and my guest finishing up) to be shooed off. The shooing off wasn't entirely unexpected but the way it made me feel was. The third was being called out on possibly having taken photos including someone without permission - I haven't actually looked at the photos yet but yeah likely. I was sick, tired and probably sloppy with my judgement/recall/asking.

I'm still trying to figure out the reason the last two hit me so hard; I can't tell right now whether I'm feeling hurt by the criticism, upset with myself for not being more careful / not holding myself to high enough standards, or because I caused upset to someone I care about. In any case all there is to be done is apologise and attempt to not repeat the mistake.

Probably also time to book another psych appointment.

This year was very mixed for me. I think I probably broke-even with Saturday compensating for the disappointments of both Saturday and Monday, but it is currently the end of Monday and I am exhausted and grumpy.
( snip )

So, Buckets of Dice weekend. I preface this post with having had approx 5 1/2 hours broken sleep for each of the last 5 nights. Only the late nights were due to BoD, the broken part was due to (false) alarms at AH.
( stream of consciousness )