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Reflections on a Life

Rigil Kent

As I stated previously, my mom passed away on Monday and I’m currently here in Florida with the rest of the family in the aftermath of the ‘memorial’ service. My mom had already prepaid for the arrangements – which is a great idea and something I need to look into doing since I’m unmarried without children and, sadly, unlikely to have either – and she intentionally did not want a big ‘dog and pony show’ for a funeral – which is, again, something that we share; when I’m dead, I don’t give a crap what happens to my body since, you know, I’m dead and all. So we’re at Florida sister’s house with her, her husband, her three daughters, the other sister, her husband and their daughter, my mom’s two sisters, and the husband of of those two … and my mom’s boyfriend. Which made me realize that my mother had more game in the dating area than I do … which isn’t depressing at all.

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Insert Witty Remark Here

Rigil Kent

So, my mom passed away last night. I’ve booked the flight to Florida – ugh. $700 – and will be leaving work early today so I can go home & pack (which, luckily, consists of throwing some stuff in a bag) before heading to the airport. I have an hour plus layover in Atlanta.

A lot of conflicting thoughts and emotions at the moment. I’m not as emotionally wrecked as I expected to be, which makes me wonder once again if there’s something wrong with me. It also served as a reminder that, if I dropped dead right now, there’s no significant other to care. Dealing with my body and all that would probably fall to one of my sisters. My mom apparently pre-arranged all of the funeral stuff so none of her kids have to deal with it … which is honestly something that I need to do since I have no SO or kids.

Huzzah.

Life Kicks Back…

Rigil Kent

What a shitty way to start the week. One of my sisters called me this a.m. – evidently, my mom is in the hospital and may have suffered a stroke. We don’t know yet what the prognosis is yet, but my mom is 74 so … I’m not entirely hopeful.

GM Commentary: The Verge, 1×02

Rigil Kent

Recap here.

I covered most of my thoughts in the GM Notes on the recap, but I’ll redo them here.

  • Man, there was a lot of joking and cross-talk going on tonight. We did not get as far as expected.
  • The duel was amusing. As a honor duel, they faced off with Shot Pistols (so 1 shot, 3D damage) and gained the full +6 Aim bonus to the shot (which meant Baefre could not miss), then rolled initiative to determine who went first. I decided that Ilik’s psionic actions would cause Bane on Baefre’s opponent, which allowed the Taareh to shoot first; he hit but rolled miserable damage, even with all the bonuses – if he’d have been able to eke out 1 more point of damage, his opponent would have been knocked unconscious. On my turn, I shot and did exactly enough damage to knock Baefre unconscious (END + STR damage.) Duel over.
  • We encountered some rules questions that I have to look up – how much does medical treatment actually cost post-creation? Or does it cost the same (5000 per point healed)? Plus, how much do the PCs get paid by LFC?
  • I didn’t control the “what are you doing while Baefre is recovering” montage very well and tried to push Ephraim’s character to finish up more than I should have. He’s the admin guy; he should have his moment to shine.
  • The crash went fine but I also didn’t quite manage the immediate aftermath very well. I’m going to have to review how to do that better.

GM Commentary: The Verge, 1×01

Rigil Kent

Recap here.

I covered most of my thoughts in the GM Notes on the recap, but I’ll redo them here.

  • We spent an hour or so sorting out equipment for the characters. This was to be expected.
  • WxMAN was out on vacation, so the need for his character to be delayed by the TSA equivalent. He’ll be showing up next week.
  • I declared the people-mover was probably an Exeter-class but in retrospect, it should have been a Xuan Wu. I’ll be changing that for the future.
  • The entire investigation was intended to go by more quickly, but we’re still learning the system – this was the first actual bit of gameplay we’ve had – so there’s a learning curve. Plus, everyone was involved with the investigation and it made sense to let the players take me where they wanted.
  • The Shrike is straight up ripped off from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos. No idea what I’m going to do with it; I just threw it in as flavor with an eye toward it being spacer lore. I even jokingly referenced the “Cult of the Shrike.”
  • I used the Traveller Emulator to spin up Mr. Roberts and man, the dice were not kind to him. He had no characteristics above 9 and most were below 6; INT and SOC were both 4, so I declared that none of the PCs really got along with him. One of the random elements that showed up on the emulator was that he had been in a monastery so I said “a type of monastery” and mentioned that he’d frequently chatted with Rostya (who spent a career as a Truther (from Traveller Companion). This was intended as a one-off joke, but one of the players asked if Roberts had perhaps been a member of the Cult of the Shrike … so I went with it.
  • I enjoyed explaining how screwed up the culture of the Twelve Families was and even decided on the fly that each of the major colonies have “dueling arenas” so disputes can be settled properly.
  • Everyone was in the process of leaving the “street-captain” – a phrase coined by CommJunkee that I promptly stole and “canonized” for the game – when MagMan had his character react to my street captain muttering crossly about the Taareh. This led to the cliffhanger which will be resolved at the beginning of next session, one way or the other.