... in which the fool makes a booboo

Yesterday, I was supposed to run a simple Marvel game. I had around 4 players wanting to make their characters and they were all anxious to see what they could make. The pace of the game was more or less set out in my mind -- I don't use notes -- all I needed to see was their characters, and how they would fit in the game. In fact, I've prepared for the game nearly two days in advance, setting out the simple plot, the setting, even the main villain. I was so intent on making something interesting in a span of four hours.

Before I left for school, I managed to bring the Marvel rulebook with me downstairs, where my bag was waiting. I turned around to look for a bit of sustenance before I leave and saw my cup of chocolate waiting for me. I gulped down my drink quickly, to be able to arrive in school early and work on my laboratory experiment before my players start arriving to make characters. I grabbed my bag and strode out the door, to the rainy day waiting for me.

As soon as I stepped off the jeep though, I noticed that my bag was noticeably lighter. Lighter than the past few days surely, even though I was sure that I was bringing the same stuff with me -- I rarely clean my bag nowadays. On a hunch, I thought of checking what exactly I didn't bring, expecting to see Spider-Man's face poking out of the bag staring wide-eyed at me...

I saw everything that I usually brought to school -- my rarely used notebook, photocopied notes, some philosophy books, a few pieces of scrap paper to doodle in... But no Spider-Man's face. Not even a hint of those wide bug eyes. In other words, I forgot to put the Marvel Rulebook into my bag before I left for school.

Needless to say, the players were disappointed. If I were a player, I might have laughed at myself for being dumb enough to leave the rulebook at home. But I was the GM as well, and I was similarly disappointed at the events, not to mention laughing out loud to my own stupidity. There's always a next time I suppose, perhaps next week. And I will bring the book next week. At least people can make their characters over the week and the game can start on Friday.

Surprisingly, I had more respondents to the Marvel game than to a DnD game. When I brought the DnD rulebook in the past, all I received were looks of curiosity on the book that I was holding, followed by knowing nods as if they knew everything there was to know. Only a few people were the slightest bit interested in playing the game (which reminds me... I ought to run a DnD game soon too) and they were those that already played the game (in one mode or another -- Neverwinter Nights, for example) in the first place.

When I pulled out the Marvel Rulebook and started explaining the system to a friend, some of the other people in the vicinity suddenly expressed interest as well. Could it be because I was explaining what sort of "Challenges" a superhero could possibly experience and they were interested in that? Or was it genuine interest in playing the game? Hopefully, I'd know the answer to that sometime next week -- which is the time that I mentioned when they could create their own characters. I'd prefer for them to make their own characters than to have them pick someone in the Marvel Universe though... I know that they'd enjoy the game more that way. If they don't, well I could let them choose to play someone (in the list) and act as a guest star for that day's session so that they'll be able to know how the game plays...

Anyways, that wasn't the only boo boo that I made yesterday. I tried putting on Borj's jacket, trying to see how I would look. As I pulled up the zipper though, I accidentally broke the slider. It didn't just come off the zipper tracks -- the back part of the slider (not the handle, the slider itself) broke away like a piece of a cookie. I tried putting it back on with super glue... The pieces would hold together alright, but when I tried putting it back on the zipper, the two pieces would break off due to the strain.

I had no choice but to look for a way to replace the zipper. Unfortunately, yesterday was the last day of the week. My money was pretty much down to zero meaning I couldn't replace the whole jacket if it came to that. So I tried to bring the jacket to a tailor (after taking a lot of people's advice) to have the slider replaced. Unfortunately for me again, the tailor shop didn't have stock of the zipper that I was looking for. "If you could buy a zipper for that jacket, you could bring it back here and we'll help you out. You can buy zippers like that in Cubao, along Aurora Blvd."

I felt like going on a quest. But I guess there was nothing else that I could do to Borj's jacket so I went off to look for a tailoring supply stores in Cubao. The shop that they sent me to didn't have stock of the kind of zipper that I needed (at least they didn't need me to destroy some random enemy that was bothering them before they told me they didn't have the zipper...). So they sent me someplace else instead. I ended up in Farmer's Plaza, a crowded semi-mall that had good air-conditioning but not too many high-quality stores. It was the first time I stepped into the place, and although it remined me of Tutuban, the place seemed to be much better than that semi-mall in Divisoria.

After I bought the zipper, I took another FX back to school. Unfortunately, the damned FX driver accepted the payment but didn't tell me that he wasn't passing by that route! It was probably due to the noisy barker that kept knocking on the FX to stop and pick up passengers or proceed to the next waiting spot. Whatever. The FX driver drove through P. Tuazon street instead of Aurora. There was no way that he would pass by the Aurora - Katipunan intersection because there was a faster route that he could take to Marikina. Disgusted, I had to step off the FX a good half-kilometer perhaps from my destination and walk. Not that I'm not used to walking -- I wasn't expecting to walk at that time...

Well at least I managed to have the jacket fixed. At the cost of being unable to help out in the laboratory experiment that we were supposed to finish yesterday. I should be able to finish it by Monday though. Hopefully.

Come evening, my cousin and I were in Charles's game. I made a half-dragon paladin/rouge/blackguard with decent equipment (thanks to Cyril). However, I learned the reason why most of the people didn't make characters with level adjustments the hard way. The character I made was pretty much passable, in other DM's that character would be pretty powerful.

Unfortunately, I keep on underestimating the power level required in Charles's and Jobert's games. I found my HP pretty lacking for a frontliner type character. Granted, I could probably deal decent damage to most common enemies. However, against Charles's customized Hydra... my half-dragon character was chopped liver. I almost got away with calling the Hydra "Badingers" in the early part of the game, until the hydra took offense and attacked me with all 11 heads. A good 7 heads hit me, with one making a critical blow. My less than 60HP vanished faster than I could call myself "badingers". Thankfully, that blow wasn't enough to kill me outright. I still clung on to dear life before being healed to a functional level. I managed to kill the Rakshasa that was hiding though.

The next encounter against Orc-form Canomorphs (shapechanging hellhounds who prefer to transform themselves into orcs) killed me though. Charles made them explode into little pieces whenever they died, which dealt a good number of damage to me. The last Canomorph that I killed exploded in my face, taking me with him. I knew I should have bought a decent ranged weapon...

Oh well, that's it for the meantime I guess. I still have the BESM d20 book waiting for me, not to mention Ragnarok...

... in which the fool is frustrated with Ragnarok

For some strange reason, there's something wrong with the servers of Ragnarok today. It seems like they'll be needing the entire day to fix the problems. As of the time of this writing, they still haven't fixed the damned problem, whatever it is...

I'm getting irritated. I purposely bought internet cards and top-up cards today just to be able to play Ragnarok and I find such a stupid problem waiting for me as soon as I link up. To top it off, the "R" key on the keyboard seems a bit stuck -- I need to press down a little more forcefully on it just to have it display "r" on the screen. And here I prided myself over having the best keyboard of all the people that I know...

So here I am today, going back to downloading all sorts of things on Kazaa. Its been a long time since I tried to download anything and I kind of missed wasting tons of internet hours on Kazaa just to get a specifically hard to find file... I seem to be a glutton for getting frustrated... Instead of catching up to my reading, I'm trying to drive myself crazy over the computer by wasting a lot of time for nothing... I'm guessing its been 10 minutes since I've logged into Kazaa and I still haven't found a good SRW song...

I think if I get pissed off here, I might go play the PS2... At least I know I'll be doing something more productive there... Perhaps to practice on Nightmare? Or learn some new character? Hm...

In the meantime, I've been trying to internalize the rules of the new Marvel Roleplaying Game. Compared to the old Marvel game, this one focuses more on personal effort than the roll of a die. As long as your character gives enough effort, then whatever he's doing would probably succeed. I kind of missed the old random character system -- you could end up being an alien from another dimension with all sorts of useless powers just like all your friends. And all of you would have fun going to all sorts of crazy adventures... Ah... The joys of crazy gaming... That doesn't happen in this game though, so I'd have to think of a better adventure for my players on Friday. So far, I know Anton and Santi have expressed interest in joining my game, and a while ago, it seemed like Terence wanted to join in on the action too... I really have to think of a good story this Friday...

And I just remembered that Charles has a game scheduled for this Friday too. I'd probably be there with my cousin, but he mentioned something about not being sure if he could game... I wonder what that means. I'm thinking of a decent character for Charles's 12th level game -- playing a Sorcerer would probably be interesting but I'm thinking of doing something else again... We'll see this Friday if I'll get to think of anything early.

I'm getting annoyed -- not only is the Ragnarok server down, but Kazaa can't even find a good book or song for me to download. And I've been retyping some of the words with "r" in them a little too many times here... I can feel the blood going up to my brain now. If I can't control myself, I'll probably start doing something violent here... Might as well retire early tonight before I do anything drastic.