Lacking Liminal

Coriolis online.

I'm finding it a strange evening as our regular game of lockdown Liminal is off this week, as Paul rightly focuses on homelife and also has a bit of space to come up with more nefarious plans as our mini-series of roleplaying adventures expands out a bit further.

It's strange because we've been starting the game at 20:05 after the clap for the NHS and frontline staff in the fight against COVID-19. Now, I'm semi-cynical about the motivations behind this (surely it would have been better to have paid those in these services properly and not cheered when their pay rise was blocked) but there's a wonderful sense of community. Living in suburbia, you can feel disconnected from the neighbours, but increasingly, more and more of them have come out each week. Tonight it was pretty much a full house, so it feels strange to come in and then realise that the game isn't on this week.

It's a good thing in some ways; the kids have been little horrors today. They've not been bad or even mad, but they have played the game of ignoring and being obstructive, which has made it pretty painful for Jill who has been home and trying to get them to do their home-learning. 

And yet, I really enjoy playing Liminal. It's not just that Dr Mitch is running his own game (he and I play often in the virtual world), it's just that it's a great setting and a really nice system. A book and system I've not read yet because I haven't felt like I needed to. Elina asked who was going to run in lockdown, Paul volunteered and I jumped into a great game with great players. If you haven't looked out Liminal, I recommend it. It's a modern-day urban fantasy set in the UK where creatures of horror, faerie and magic exist. You play investigators; our particular group has an ex-Police Officer who fled from vampires (me), a fae, a werewolf and a hunted mage's apprentice.

My reading rate has rocketed this year; it always does when I'm busy and it's certainly been that. February saw the fire causing the loss of the site (but no loss of life or injury). March saw COVID-19 change the world in which we're living. I've been diving into the virtual pile of books on my Kindle and the roleplaying pile. It's been fun. I don't think I've read this much since before the kids arrived on the scene. 

Mechatron in the flesh.

You'll have seen the roleplaying reads appearing here over the last few weeks. The surprise, impulse purchase of Mutant Mechatron led on to a physical copy (which are like gold-dust at the moment as it's out of print), and electronic copies of Mutant: Elysium. Much as I loved Mechatron, Elysium is even more up my street. I described it to Graham and Tom as:

"Victorian values noble houses trapped in an underground city after the apocalypse. The players are all Judicators, cross house teams (much like judges in JD) who preserve order. Politics, decadence, backstabbing in a word with social strata and a failing infrastructure."

I'm about halfway through so expect to see an update soon on my final thoughts.

Unlike quite a few of my friends, virtual tabletop roleplaying is something I'm used to. I'm playing in three games at the moment; Jag's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition Shadows Campaign and Graham's Coriolis as well as Paul's Liminal. Only Liminal was a consequence of the lockdown. The others were planned and part of my gaming life.

Interesting experience last night with Coriolis; we used Roll20 for the tabletop and WebEx for the video /audio side. WebEx has recently significantly changed their free level to compete with Zoom. We had a rock-solid feed the whole session long. Definitely worth pursuing as Google is moving to bullet Hangouts soon.

I'm a safety professional - decent comms excite me. My bad.

Reasonable day today; I was perhaps overly pleased with the full door graphics we'd installed the last week to nudge people on good personal hygiene. The team at safetypostershop.com had delivered a great bespoke graphic, and the local sign supplier had tailored it well. It's catching people's eyes, and hopefully reminding and nudging them to do the right thing. Having a team member hospitalised for flu-like symptoms makes it all too real.

Working from home tomorrow; that'll bring a fair bit of time supporting the youngster. I'm a bit frustrated at the lack of engagement from the primary school staff. There's no interaction between them and Aidan. At least Nathan is getting feedback and has to submit his tasks. Nat's teachers will also discuss the work with him and he gets regular calls to check on how he is. The primary school is very distant; I feel that they're throwing the work over the wall and leaving it to us.

Anyway; that's enough rambling for this St George's Day. Be safe, be healthy.

D

23 April 2020