Headspace

So it was quite a weekend, and actually life isn’t particularily slowing donw now either.

On friday, was the Investiture of Moira and Pehr, which went quite well. The thing ran on catastrophe curve, but managed to pull through on pretty much everything. Starting from the travel in a pouring rain, that strongly suggested booking tickets with Noah-cruises as a good idea. Who says that you have to see the road in order to drive safely? Before the ceremony I found enough time to actually learn their fealty, thank god for that, and take some private time to open my voice in the woods. Didn’t manage to screw up the court(s), which was very nice.

The new baronials looked nice and enjoyed the event. Enjoyed a bit too much, as we screwed our departure schedule and got to bed no sooner than 3 am. But dancing together with my fiancee was definitely worth being a bit late. Black Almain is our dance of choise for now. For me personally one of the high part of this event was when Tero and Judy delivered the blades they brought us from Pennsic, yes your’s truly has gone bonkers on a sportshobby, just starting out in the SCA and now the gear is starting to come together. Rattanfighting wasn’t for me (I really don’t enjoy being beaten with rattan by hairy guys, and I don’t have the necesary strength for maintaining a shield and moving in armor), but this seems to fit the bill nicely.

On saturday morning after much too little sleep, we headed to the Helsinki centre to meet the wedding couple, who were in the process of having themselves made presentable (Mikko was being shaved when we entered and Gini was being masked), retreived their planned schedule for the day and headed back to mum’s to have a quick bite, take shower and make ready for the big event. This smallish trip, brought back to me why I really hate driving in the Helsinki city-centre. It was nervewracking, the parking was expensive as hell and… The car remained intact and I didn’t kill any pedestrians so have to be satisfied about it

The ceremony in the Uspenski-cathedral was good, we got there a bit ahead of time and were smart enough to park the car to Casino from the beginning, so after the ceremony everything we needed to worry aboyt, was getting ourselves to the site. They really wanted a herald as a master of ceremonies, and so had took with them the Ekry-herald’s staff, about 2m long white pole, decorated with blue ribbon and a brass-lily as a knob. I had fiendish fun pounding it to the floor of the celebration’s hall, it gave out lovely KaBOOOMMM -sound. Admittedly, I’m a bit childish at times. Contrary to my expectations the whole thing worked out beautifully, I needed to doses of medicine and some strong liquor in order to maintain workingshape, but maintain it I did… and didn’t even screw the timetable too badly. (For my 1 mistake, apologies to Sampsa)

M’s speeches came out nicely. She had chosen a humorous approach, which she delivered beautifully to the mark. (I thought the catlike meowy intonation she had, was rather hot). Mikko showed practically no signs of being as ill as he was, he performed the speech required (as a ransom in the bridenap-part) amazingly, the last part, “your divine husband”, almost but not quite made him crack up, but not quite. He is a performer, and knows it. He also sang (I wouldn’t sing even sober and in good condition, he was in antibiotics) with accompaniment by Anni (consert piano) and Lin (cello), and how did he sing. Most people were in tears, and due to the lump in my own throat I kept wishing that there’d be a long enough break before I had to announce anything (there was, a break…extremely short, but still enough) .

After the celebrations we saw the wedding couple to their hotel and boy, were they happy. The positively glowed at that point. We were asked to join some people in after parties, but I was way too tired and M wasn’t in much better condition either. We headed back to Mum’s idled on sofa in comatose state for an hour and then promptly went to sleep.

On sunday we had quality time with Mum in the morning, and all three of us joined Mummi and Vaari later in the day. It was lovely. Mum took so good care of us through the weekend, with a pile of hugs I don’t know if we could have survived it without her help and I feel heaps better now that we could see her again. Seeing the grandparents was also a treat, Mummi did riceporridge and a pancake, that’s her bravure for brunch, we showed them some photos from the friday, yaped about a number of things, had coffee with cake and then in quite a rush went to pick one guy and headed for home. That evening and yesterday was recuperating and now I’m trying to get some work done (going quite well actually).

I also found out good things…. Remember when I whined about not being allowed to take certain course, turned out I can That is just so great. Now I have my studies set for the autumn, have to see to the signings still, but the plans are now laid down. Tomorrow we go and have a chat with the judge who’s going to marry us, and later have couple of friends to come over, for a bit of cake. M’s bday is going to be rather small this year, due to rather understandable reasons

Speaking of bdays, brings me to pressies (the materialist I am). M got herself a bracelet from Mum, and loved it heaps. Mummi and Vaari gave her a heartshaped glass tray, that was beautifull. I got pressies too,… (to thinkabout) I got a true gentleman chef’s apron from grandparents, and a smaller one too, but the first is really cool. It’s upperhalf is shaped like a vest… I think I find lot of good use for it. Mum is making me new clothes, which are going to be so nice. I’ve been rethinking my SCA-garderobe and Fashion House of Elizabeth FitzHenry was kind enough to take my silly order. Luv it.

Enough bloggin now, I’ll head back to stabbing the final changes in my summer-project before the delivery, when it becomes R0.1… There’s still stuff to do, but it is manageable. Dugi out.

Shite, this is hectic.

The work-thing, not good but still releasable, by the looks of the tests we ran on it today, do remember to fix the bugs there, do rememeber the bugs, bugs bugsssss…. Then the corrections, no changes to the UI, they ordered TODAY!!!!

In relation to the coming weekend, Got everything I needed to write, written. Go me, good stuff. The things with the pointyhats to be…, settled… check that. Very good. (Memo: Brief them on the use of herald after this…. they’re doing fine, but for your own good)

The things for the other event, I’ve no information none whatsoever, but their call I’ll twist my self in to gordion’s knot if that saves their day, if not…. it will.

Do I seem irrational, that’s because I’m processing 5 or so major projects simultaneously. SWdev, sucks but now seems t o work, Yipee. I am irrational, I need to pull myself together…somehow.

Dugi out

Yeah, been consentrating on all the wrong things today. Sanna-Mari had found a new source of totally irrelevant tests, on which I just had to spend some time on. The one she had was a Muppet-show test, on which I got:

You are like Dr Teeth

Cool as a cucumber with a sinister soul that preys on the unfortunate. People getting Dr Teeth as a result cover their actions with a smile and have no shame!

Which sorry excuse of a Muppet are you?

But on that site there were couple of other intresting ones as well. As something of a KillBill-fan, I just had to try out this one:

O-Ren Ishii (Cottonmouth)

You’re O-Ren Ishii! Twisted and homicidal, you respect most people, but let them know not to mess with you. You have a talent for sensing danger, and keep only the most loyal and skilled people around you.

Kill Bill: Which Deadly Viper Assassin Are You? (Vol. II spoilers… results with pics)

And once I got on the spree, there was no returning anymore. If I appeared in the legendary Happy Tree Friends :

You are The Mole

Which Happy Tree Friends Character Are You?

The sickest thing there however was this:

You Are Subversion!
You are systematic and secretive. Sometimes even very calculating. Most everyone trusts you but they have no idea what really goes on in your head. You are capable of being nice or mean, whatever a situation calls for. You look out for #1.

What Naughty My Little Pony Are You?

I mean really, What Naughty My Little Pony… Jeez, then again, I obviously was perv/sick/etc enough to plow through this test… wonder what it makes me If they’d have this kind of ponies on sale, I think kiddies in some near and dear families might expect intresting xmas-pressies from us

That’s all folks, now I get back to documenting like the good little nerd I am… in a moment.

Well, on the more personal gaming front we’ve in the solo-campaings of M returned to my favourite one, the story of Jezebel. Had a couple of sessions of tuning back to this story and then something bigger in the game (Although in the tuning, she already made some radical decisions). She arranged a date with a lover… it worked. It worked beautifuly even if I was dead tired, after playing through the scenes as I really needed to get that character to function perfectly (He did )

The break taken from this campaing was largely due to playing the story into quite an impasse. See, Jezebel is not a wilting wall flower who hangs in the manor of someone doing cross-stitching. She’s an intelligence officer, who has been on couple few year missions already, she’s an active participant in a major secret society, de-facto wife (although called first concubine) of one of the most influential men in the whole of the gaming world (some hundred or so planets) and a polyamoric who usually in addition to his retinue-courtesan and misstress has at least couple of other flings going on. And this person got pregnant, to the almost-a-husband, whose heir-apparent she is going to give birth to, and probably love the child too… Tricky ain’t it.

But now it seems its going to work out, all of it… With this return to the more familiar grounds in the game, I’ve gotten the creatice spark back, I feel like finsihing the write-ups, gaming a lot, inventing something new…

I also feel good about the group-campaing, which I hope we get to play again in september now that I’m finnishing the summerjob(s), getting the more neglected one done sometime next week. Perhaps I can find a first date for the new campaing as well. M’s character is taking Anni’s teenbitch to the headplanet of hegemony, and my evil-gm appetite is whetting already on the possibilities there… at this point I’m thinking engineers, cultists, their old pursuers and the inquisition. Perhaps something little besides those too

So some more thoughts on roleplaying and gamingstyles. For a long time now, I’ve had a one favourite in all the rpg’s available in our home and that is Fading Suns. FS depicts a world in the end of the fifth millenium, living a new, feudal dark age, when the science is mainly forgotten, democracy is something thats long gone in the history. To make matters more intresting the world is in the grips of a religious hysteria as the suns are slowly fading out and the omnipresent church once again preaches of true sin and man’s need to atone for it.

It is a hell of a good game. The designers have given out information on the Royal houses, lesser noble houses, interstellar guilds, every imaginable church faction, barbarian factions and aliens and nothing is defined so that an individual gamemaster couldn’t make rathe unique interpretations on them. My favourite of all the factions is the apparent nasties of House Decados, and for them I’ve during the courses of our games developed stuff that is unique to our games.

I think this is one of the main points of the game. I mean it adapts to anything you want to do, form low-fantasy, to spaceopera, from horror to heroic high-fantasy, from court intrigue to gutter-running, absolutely anything. And for all this there’s plenty of room for the gamemaster to develop more, invent something truly new and give in to that fascination of creation, that at least for me is the best part of gming. The rulesystem is light and supports the gameworld, it is not something generic thats developed for something completely different, but a thing that has value spesifically in this world. It takes into account such things as the characters’ faith, their approaches to the church and spirituality their drive in the life.

Did I mention this is a very light rulesystem? It has skills where one skill can have several uses, making them comprehensive and deep, skills can be natural (Everyone knows them to a degree) or learned. It has Blessings and Curses that represent character’s internal quirks, it has benefices and afflictions that define some aspects of the character in relation to their surrounding world. There is only one dice, where you always throw characteristic+skill and you get levels of success out of it.

But there is a catch. This is not a gamingworld and a rulesystem for everyone, no. The world given out like this requires the gamemaster to really flesh it out. The gamemaster needs to make judgement calls on issues, otherwise the players have a snowball’s chanses in hell to get any impressions of the world. The other thing is the rulesystem. It works for me, it works beautifully, but this is because I’m a narrativist in approach and will ignore any rule that stands in the way of my story. This approach is written out in the rules as Andrew’s Maxim. These maxims are meta-rules, opinions of Andrew Greenberg written out to highlight on how the game should in his opinion to be managed and for the most time I can agree with him. (For those who don’t know this guy’s other successes were in the 1. edition of the Vampire: the Masquerade)

So why I am ranting about this… Because, this game has a fanbase as diverse as the lifeforms in my office coffeecup, that I think should now after forgetting it on my desk for a month to be washed again. The unenglightened brethren on the game’s official forums. keep demanding that the rules should be changed into something much more complex either to satisfy their simulationist or gamist needs. Or they keep demanding that stuff they’ve written as fanproduction, stuff that in thin, one eyed, overly comprehensive approach describes everything about the gameworld, be canonised and published by the HDI. I am tired, why is the game that I love so well attacked this fiercely by people who claim to love it? At this point when majority of the gamematerial has been out for years they should know that the level of spesification in this game is what it is, They shouldn’t demand for more, or demand it to be changed, or…!

Well, needed to unload this, feeling better now… and yes there are very smart and good and proper gamers on those forums as well. This was a rant. I get to rant in my blog… even and especially on trivial things that have no significanse in the real world, especially on them. So there.

…seems to be too hard for many men. Even and especially when they would have something to gain from that understanding. On 18th August, Burgeri helped those who try to understand women in gaming. Somehow I don’t think these guys would get it, even if they read his brilliant entry on the subject, but hoping that at least somebody might here’s a pointer.

Unfortunately, I don’t at the moment have more time to write about the subject, read Burgeri and extrapolate as necessary and plausible. I return to this subject at a later time to pass my wisdon and bore you with my rant.

Janka and Orava both commented something that happened to them recently. Not that I’d like to appear very interblogist, but big, warm congratulations from afar and all the best to your (continued) life together.

We spent the past weekend in Hämeenlinna attending the medieval fair, M organising our part in that (SCA, Humalasalo’s own spot, craft-demos and the worky stuff that needed to be done). I taking care of her, filling in on the ticket-sales when needed and heralding for our dance-performances and tourney (on saturday only, lost my voice and had to find replacements for sunday). Prior to the weekend I really disliked the idea alltogether. The idea of the things to come didn’t feel good and I would have much rather stayed home for some R and R. Good things to look forward was meeting special people, whose company I really appreciate.

The scheduled departure from home was 7.40 saturday-morning, picking up people 8.00 from the Tampere railwaystation. We were late from that, but not too badly. Not so surprising was the thing that I ended up sleeping only 5 hours before leaving, due to my own sleep-cycle. Needless to say this didn’t particularily improve my mood. The saturday was hectic, but… my mood improved and on saturday evening, when we got ourselves to Aurora’s and Mika’s place I felt good. They whipped up a pizza that was gorgeous, showed us Lilo and Stitch which was good and generally treated us to an evening of quiet nice that was just the thing the doctor ordered.

So on sunday it seemed very nice, especially after it came obvious that my voice was gone there were good alternative heralds for both fighting and dance (my thanks to Vesa and Halla for this, note to anyone looking for a good field-herald, pick Vesa he is good). We bought jewelry for both of us (M got herself a nice chain and as an early b-day present irish-love-earrings) I got myself a ren-styled cross.

Looking back to the actual fair after some much needed rest and with an uplifted mood some things came out rather strongly.

1. Our display was better this year
   • Raconzay’s sign was very good
   • Display tables were laid out nicely and we had showy and fitting things for sale
   • Craftshows that Johanna and Tofa did on our display worked extremely well and captured a lot of intrest. It really pays of having the craft-shows with the rest of the display
2. Our little tourney was a darn good one. This yar we had an actual tourney, with lady protector, introductions of the fighters, nicely laid out field… The fights were for the most part (note: I watched through the thing only on saturday) showy and we managed to create some feeling in the audience as well. (For the showiness, extra thanks to Mikael Karhu, the axe thingy really worked). For a minute I pondered if the audience actually knew sir Edmund that big was the cheer when I introduced Thorstein as the said knight’s squire
3. Our dancing shows were truly magnificent. Adrian had managed to herd out ten dancers, who performed courtly dances from all across the Europe from the the courts of England and France through Italy all the way to the far Island of Rhodos. They gathered a lot of audience and obviously were able to suitably impress the gathered commoners. My congratulations go out for them all
4. Besides all the spectacle and showing off, we also had the braves of Humalasalo, who took the most thankless, but no less important (could even say that the most important if I was thinking only financially) task of doing ticket-sales on the northern gate to the castle, which we as a local society had agreed to handle. This is a rather thankless job, but the organisers had finally made it a bit easier by posting permanent security staff on the gate to check tickets. I filled in on couple of shifts and my heart goes out for anyone who did it more.
5. The value of the coffee-tickets granted to us had increased from last year significantly. Now we had the choise of taking coffee/tea/grandi with a sandwich(big and good)/sausage/flapjack with jam, where last year this was coffee/tea with a small pastry or sweetbun(the latter was dried and tastless). This was a thing to be really happy about. The actuall food on both days was something I didn’t like, but then again I’m rather picky when it comes to food

There were other things too. I know we had an archery show, I saw it gathered audience and that the target was a very qute bambi. I didn’t see the show, but it must have been good, right?

In the end the best part was seeing and spending time with friends, even if shortly. What I’m most grateful was the lodgings and care gotten from very good friends. Thanks guys, because of you, I consider attendance next year as well. Hugs to all, who like that and pat to back for those happier with that.

(To be edited)

Not a surprising result I have to admit. Being something of a sucker for silly web-quizes I felt dumb when M asked if I had already done this. Now that it is done, I have to admit the bloody thing was pretty aqurate, storyteller/method-actor fits rather smartly my gming style.

You see I don’t play, I just GM. Most of the times I’ve tried to play It has ended up rather miserably. My player-characters tend to end up as idiots, powermongers, wannabes or just simply very illfitting for the particular chronicles/epics/campaigns they appear in.

Cajun-Jack’s demise in Juhana’s V:tM chronicle made me rather happy. He was a total misfit for the campaing and the best that the bastard could do for the group was to die in a good way, he did and for that I’m still gratefull for Juhana, a fitting end for that character. Jack’s successor in that campaing, Paul ended to be probably the very best (player-) character I’ve ever played. Paul had a psychology of his own, deep emotions and as I had recently returned for my illfated and prematurely terminated military tour of duty, some rather intresting problems through which I had the possibility to process my own state. (Sounds like a typical rpg-character to you?) Only problem was that he didn’t fit the chronicle and not only other character’s but also gm pretty much hated him and his precense. These kind of stories happen repeatedly every time I try to play in the campaigns. There is hope that I manage something better in either the 7:th sea or the new Mage, we’ve tried with M.

My NPCs when GMing seem to be a rather different. They appear while the story proceeds, if they are not characters enough to develop personality and remain they go away, but those that do remain have usually intresting personalities, quirks, afflictions they truly have character.
Uncle-Andropovich in the Sabbat chronicle, Milaric, Roman, the fool and giant in FS campaings… first come to mind from recent games. When we play solo / 1 on 1 with M these NPCs offer me a chanse to play a character for a while. Even if this approach is a dangerous one, it gives me something special that I don’t get to experience to often. The trick is not to get too attached to these characters since as a gm I have the responsibility to dump/kill them the very instant that the story it demands. Judging from the campaing with Anni, the approach also seems to work in group-campaigns.

That was a long preface to the results from the gamingstyle-quiz. Found it via Sanojen valtakunta.

You scored as Method Actor. You think that gaming is a form of creative expression. You may view rules as, at best, a necessary evil, preferring sessions where the dice never come out of the bag. You enjoy situations that test or deepen your character’s personality traits. Storyteller 83% Method Actor 83% Specialist 75% Tactician 58% Power Gamer 50% Butt-Kicker 8% Casual Gamer 0%

Law's Game Style
created with QuizFarm.com

This was all in all a very intresting day. My morning didn’t go exactly as planned, but funnily enough it was a good thing. I felt fresher than usual for the most part of the day and got more done at work both regarding the actual work (Two more finished features and two advanced significantly, looks like its getting done ) and the studies next fall.

It turned out that I probably can’t take an actual course in Software Project Management, because I have the course Project work not done in the dpt, but granted to me (Hyväksiluku) based on my earlier studies. I kinda understood the points the responsible professor made about this, but still I wasn’t too happy. Come on, if it is in the register as “You have the equivalent knowledge and skills” then I should damn well be able to take the damn thing with that equivalent. Fortunately the professor found other almost as significant problems in the my and my assistant professor’s proposal, based on what this is going to be denied. Have to rethink the master’s program and see what is actually smart to take.

After work it was time to reunite with my love and go handle some more wedding matters, post the invitations (we’re done with them already, Rejoice!) and go out to look for things that might seem smart to put in the wedding-gift-wishlist… We met up in Fantasiapelit, but didn’t end up wishing for anything in there From Fantsu to the post-office and we were that much further on the program. Thank goodness M wanted to eat before we went to see for the dishes we might like as that turned out to be anything but easy. Especially cutlery was rather short on the likable options. It seems that we spent over two hours at Stockmann wondering on what kind of cups (No, we found none that we could have agreed on to be nice), plate sets, etc. We should wish for. It seems to be traditional to start collecting some set at the time one gets married, but…

In the end we found that we both liked dining plates in one range of Villeroy & Bosch (With a ripoff price, so we put a few of them in the list, remains to be seen if someone wants to actually invest in them) and some more plates (the small ones for bread, deep plates and some serving bowls in Arabias 24h of particular green (very nice surface)) and one more set of glasses… So the wishlist’s cutlery section is still very much of a work in progress, but we keep digging. The wishlist’s current version and I have to say, that Emma did beautifull work on the design, looks very nice and in line of our wedding’s graphical theme.

Of the dinner that we had, M treated me to a wonderfull dinner in Coyote-grill, complete with desserts. Apart from the giftlist exhaustion, I think we actually managed to enjoy it somewhat together. Which is nice, we’re going to marry soon, she got her engagement ring back today fitting better and all polished. It was very good to see it on her again.

So here was the hairdo today (My hair is still unevenly long, today it was freshly washed as I started today with a shower. It was tied to a ponytail (low in the neck) as I usually like to have it). Even if I read some political debate, good online comics and some of the department’s new study guide, this (again) was all that I managed, perhaps some political or real rpg stuff in near future, now… just go to bed.