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WE FINALLY GOT SNOW YESTERDAY! The initial "2 feet starting at 7 pm Saturday night" became "3-5 inches starting after midnight Sunday morning" but seeing as we haven't had a real snowfall in ten-freaking-years I WILL TAKE IT. (Seriously, I hate "sunny blue skies and cold with no snow" winters. There are few things I find more depressing.) I tried my absolute best to stay up for the snowfall as the estimated start times ticked further and further back into the night but alas, tapped out around 11:30 pm. There was a good 4" (Only four? *sob*) on the ground when we got up yesterday morning, but we went out for a lovely multi-mile walk through the streets and Park in the virgin snow, seeing absolutely nobody aside from a few other couples and a group of seven armed national guardpuppets walking single file up the street in the opposite direction, doing absolutely fuckall of use to the city.
Wintry mix and an increasing number of fishtailing and/or marooned cars on the unplowed roads ultimately got us to head back home. We made hot coffees, and then hot cocoas, and then mulled cider. I settled in to read my Asian news sites, and then my European news sites, and then realized it was Burns Night. And then I got a little sad. Or maybe "wistful" is a better word. Burns Night was such an occasion throughout my childhood. But then we moved to bumblefuck and ma mere stopped dancing, and mon pere stopped piping while I was at high school, and it just sorta fell by the wayside. I like Burns' poetry fine, but not enough to seek it out for its own sake. What I really love(d) was the piping (which I couldn't personally pursue because mes parents didn't think it was an appropriate activity for women) and the dancing (which mes parents didn't want to pay for) and without the community provided by one of mes parents doing either of those things I just...stopped engaging. But the GC and I had been planning to make rumbledethumps anyway, on account of the snow, and we did, so I will count this as an idiosyncratic but successful marking of the occasion.
Games: A main gaming group member's beloved-by-everyone pet passed away last week, so gaming has been preempted by other distractions, hugs, and really, whatever else they need from us for the foreseeable future.
Witchcraft has proved super challenging and great fun. This is a solo player tabletop game where you command a coven of witches trying to protect your fantasy medieval European village from fairytale monsters in the face of a skeptical jury. The game's mechanics are complex and challenging, with enough variability in their components to create a lot of replay value. Would I enjoy them as much if the setting were "medical researchers trying to save their chronically ill patients from certain death in the face of a skeptical ethics review board" or "rogue military alpha males trying to save their kidnapped ladyfolk from 'terrorists' in the face of a skeptical JAG?" Absolutely fucking not. But this game knows the sort of player it wants to appeal to with its chosen scenario, I am exactly the sort of player it appeals to with its chosen scenario, and it plays to my/those preferences brilliantly.
Otherwise, a fellow resident is in the early stages of setting up a gaming night, with Azul, Carcassone, Catan (*sigh*), or Wingspan as potential options, so I'm (no pun intended) on board and excited about that.
Music: I skipped last week's house session as my socializing meter was at 0. Both yesterday's pub session and today's house session have been cancelled due to Weather (ruling out group playing), and seeing as I can't get the humidity in my unit above 19 percent even with both humidifiers going full blast for the past 72 hours, I won't be doing any solo playing at home. (PS: Houseplants, I am so, so sorry. Please don't all of you die on me I swear I am doing the best I can.)
Podcasts/Articles: Nothing this week.
Roleplaying: Nothing this week.
Television: An unsung hero uploaded a 40 minute interview with one of the Stars in My Personal Firmament of Irish Fluteplaying to yt this week, and I inhaled it like oxygen.
Video Games: Machinarium, Pentiment, and Ghost of Yotei continue apace. The GC has been replaying Knights of the Old Republic on the tower, so my Ultima IV replay has not progressed at all in the last seven days.
これで以上です。
Wintry mix and an increasing number of fishtailing and/or marooned cars on the unplowed roads ultimately got us to head back home. We made hot coffees, and then hot cocoas, and then mulled cider. I settled in to read my Asian news sites, and then my European news sites, and then realized it was Burns Night. And then I got a little sad. Or maybe "wistful" is a better word. Burns Night was such an occasion throughout my childhood. But then we moved to bumblefuck and ma mere stopped dancing, and mon pere stopped piping while I was at high school, and it just sorta fell by the wayside. I like Burns' poetry fine, but not enough to seek it out for its own sake. What I really love(d) was the piping (which I couldn't personally pursue because mes parents didn't think it was an appropriate activity for women) and the dancing (which mes parents didn't want to pay for) and without the community provided by one of mes parents doing either of those things I just...stopped engaging. But the GC and I had been planning to make rumbledethumps anyway, on account of the snow, and we did, so I will count this as an idiosyncratic but successful marking of the occasion.
Games: A main gaming group member's beloved-by-everyone pet passed away last week, so gaming has been preempted by other distractions, hugs, and really, whatever else they need from us for the foreseeable future.
Witchcraft has proved super challenging and great fun. This is a solo player tabletop game where you command a coven of witches trying to protect your fantasy medieval European village from fairytale monsters in the face of a skeptical jury. The game's mechanics are complex and challenging, with enough variability in their components to create a lot of replay value. Would I enjoy them as much if the setting were "medical researchers trying to save their chronically ill patients from certain death in the face of a skeptical ethics review board" or "rogue military alpha males trying to save their kidnapped ladyfolk from 'terrorists' in the face of a skeptical JAG?" Absolutely fucking not. But this game knows the sort of player it wants to appeal to with its chosen scenario, I am exactly the sort of player it appeals to with its chosen scenario, and it plays to my/those preferences brilliantly.
Otherwise, a fellow resident is in the early stages of setting up a gaming night, with Azul, Carcassone, Catan (*sigh*), or Wingspan as potential options, so I'm (no pun intended) on board and excited about that.
Music: I skipped last week's house session as my socializing meter was at 0. Both yesterday's pub session and today's house session have been cancelled due to Weather (ruling out group playing), and seeing as I can't get the humidity in my unit above 19 percent even with both humidifiers going full blast for the past 72 hours, I won't be doing any solo playing at home. (PS: Houseplants, I am so, so sorry. Please don't all of you die on me I swear I am doing the best I can.)
Podcasts/Articles: Nothing this week.
Roleplaying: Nothing this week.
Television: An unsung hero uploaded a 40 minute interview with one of the Stars in My Personal Firmament of Irish Fluteplaying to yt this week, and I inhaled it like oxygen.
Video Games: Machinarium, Pentiment, and Ghost of Yotei continue apace. The GC has been replaying Knights of the Old Republic on the tower, so my Ultima IV replay has not progressed at all in the last seven days.
これで以上です。
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Pros
Machinarium maintains both the whimsy and stunning background art of the Samorosts, and introduces some new player mechanics that I really enjoyed. It's also Amanita Studio's first full-length game, so you get to enjoy these elements for a lot longer, across a plot with multiple acts. There are also some really cute cut scenes that pop up whenever your character idles for a while. The in-game walkthrough is fantastically helpful...Cons
...once you figure out that it's there (which I did not the first time I played). Maybe it's just how my brain is wired, but I found the puzzles in this game to be far, far (faaaaaar) less intuitive than those in any of the Samarosts or Botanicula (Amanita's 2nd full-length game). It took me a lot longer to finish my first playthrough than any other Amanita game because at many points I just could not figure out what I needed to do...and even when I had, a lot of the puzzles felt very brute-force-y, versus the Samorosts' or Botanicula's more lateral thinking-style approach.From:
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