That How Many Dudes Song

it is being piped into my head right now.
It echoes in there.
Cool.
—
I feel like I’ve just come up for air. The last couple months have been hard work. Good work, but hard, and I was starting to feel I was drowning not waving. But now I pop into the open and fill up on O2 and its true that I’m better for it, stronger and more complete. There’s no such thing as time wasted for a writer, just a few less pages produced in the final tally.
Apart from making contact with a few welcome visitors from far afield, Justin Raffan and Avril Barker among them, I’ve been finishing up some roleplaying game commitments and generally discharging old promises. The end of the road was Friday night, taking part in ‘The Vault, a tournament one-off run by Nancy. The nicest thing for me, apart from getting to game with some people I haven’t had the chance to before (e.g.), was seeing it resonate with the tournament one-off I ran nine or so months ago.
This was Amnesia, by the redoubtable Matt Cowens. Amnesia and The Vault begin in basically identical circumstances. They are entirely different things, of course, but it was nice for me to see the start and the end of an intense period of fantastic gaming should complement each other so nicely.
There are many and obvious reasons why tournament games start with “you wake up and you remember nothing”. I think there’s life in that old saw yet.
This particular scenario was of a more experimental bent than most tourny games I’ve seen. I didn’t find an absolute success – it was laden with too many red herrings and not enough solid hooks for either plot development or character interaction – but it deserves recognition for being a good, challenging idea executed well. Anyway, in play most of these things didn’t matter – Nancy as GM and her Deadly Viper Squad of elite roleplaying talent were able to paper over any gaps in the scenario and make the damn thing hum.
It were cool.
—
Three new people came along to ORC this Saturday. Blimey. I have long ago lost track of our total numbers ever taking part, but I’d guess it in the forties, even fifties. About half of those have stick around long term. Which is just great.
The whole damn thing has been quite the success. Two weeks we have our anniversary. Hmm. I guess that means I still haven’t done everything I need to do: one anniversary to plan. And still gotta write up two final Palestine-trip instalments.
But then, lord have mercy, I will start writing Ron the Body.
—
Also: the Fringe Fest booklet is out. There goes August.