• Shadowrun character ideas.

    We’ve got our DM back and we are looking at starting a new campaign. I’m a little unsure about what to play, since the characters seem to have a lack of cohesion at this point. We’ve got Katsu, a corporation-raised infiltration man, a mage who is very focused on avoiding conflict, and someone who is considering building a wookie in a winnebago. The latter fellow probably needs a smack upside the head, but the character concepts could work, potentially. Shadowrun is a rich system, and there are many routes to many end results. The same character concept can be made through magic or machinery with roughly equal success. I normally put together a face character, someone who can keep the game moving forward, since I tend to be pretty comfortable with improvising. For the secondary role, I go with either a hacker, or a mage. The problem is, because there are so many build options, I need to have a good concept, or I’ll get lost in different build ideas.

  • Outings and such, part two.

    I got a message this morning from my mother. She’d been able to see the thread that I had previously mentioned.  She’s aware that I’m involved in the kink community, so this wasn’t a shock to her. Had the situation been different, that could have been rather stressful. For many people, what I’ve just described is a nightmare scenario, and is one of the reasons people have cited that they aren’t willing to stand up for their beliefs in the community. I had been aware of the possibility, since horror stories of outing as a weapon have existed as long as I’ve been a member of the community.

    Based on his writings, he doesn’t feel he has outed me, since I was already out. Well, I have always thought that an individual should get some discretion over how out they are, and if you aren’t sure, you should probably ask them. That generally works better when you have respect for the person that you are arguing with. I don’t know that this applies here.

    I had just two days ago said I was no longer going to be sanitizing these posts for any given audience, but I’ve already had demands that I change details of what I’ve written. And)
    I’m finding myself choosing my words carefully, since it seems like whatever is said will be taken in a manner other than the manner in which it is written.

    I suspect that I’m not aware of the emotional flavour that I layer into my writing. I was unaware that my distrust of this individual would be so clear as to taint what I felt was a neutral statement of “at one point, I actively recommend (this event), back when I attended, these were the reasons I recommended it back then. I no longer attend for personal reasons, so I can no longer recommend it, as I lack the required information.”

    Apparently, if you have a perceived past bias, people assume you mean more with your words when you say, even when you don’t even care enough anymore to hold an opinion.

    I was already burnt out and planning to leave the community. I had promised I’d help with one last party. Now, I’m not even sure I’ll bother with that. I’ve been told people want me to attend, but given the vitriol about me, I’m feeling unwelcome.

    I’ve been battling feelings of alienation for a long time now, and I think I’ve reached the end of my ability to cope with that.

    I suspect if helping my grandmother to maintain her independence wasn’t an absolute priority, I’d likely be a suicide risk.

  • Outing and Such.

    Well, originally today’s post was possibly going to be my grumbling about the difference between short term skills and long term skills, with regards to relationships, and to BDSM in particular, and how mistaking short term skills for long term can lead to a fair bit of trouble. Or possibly about the whole community charity moving thing that I’ve been working on, since apparently I haven’t done enough to promote it.

    Instead, it’s going to be about paranoia and vendettas, and outing people. I wrote something on Fetlife about how I no longer recommend Sin City to people. At one point in time, it was in my newbie guide, as a good starter event. Since I no longer attend the event, I no longer recommend it. I’ve no knowledge of how the event is run these days, or the competence of the current staff, just that the people I’d have trusted to handle things are no longer involved.

    This was taken as an attack by the event host, who proceeded to post on his page about my attacking his event. This wouldn’t be too bad, except he decided to use my actual name. I’ve a personal policy that I try to keep my Fetlife and my Facebook somewhat separate. I don’t post anything kinky with the world privacy setting, only the friend’s only setting. This is because I have a belief that one good way for Facebook to make money would be to charge companies for Social Media checks. And if not Facebook themselves, there are plenty of other individuals who could provide that service. So, I’d prefer to keep these things separate.

    Isaac ignored that. I don’t think he understood why what he did was a problem, which is part of why I have said I don’t feel he is part of the kink community, just someone who profits from it.

    I attempted to defend myself in post, but he has decided to block me. Personally I find blocking people to be a cheap trick. I prefer to have the conversation. If my opinion isn’t strong enough to stand up against opposition, I should reconsider it and the thought process that led to it. I understand some people don’t agree with that, and prefer to limit the dissenting voices that they are exposed to. I understand it, I just don’t really respect it, unless it’s for medical reasons.

    Currently his cult is making personal attacks against me, which I suppose allows him to keep his hands clean.

  • Code blue?

    I plan to write more often, I’m aiming to write daily, and I will be ranting more. Likely I will offend some people. Consider this your disclaimer.

    When I first created this site, I wanted a place where I could speak my mind freely without it impacting on the TOU of a few sites or on friends, Reive in particular; Erotic Vancouver where I’d been writing before was his brand, and I worried about tarnishing it.

    I let the fact that this was posting to Facebook taint the purpose, since I let myself worry about the audience again.

    Well, in 2016, the gloves are coming off. I’ll probably need to change the way snippets from here are posted to facebook.

    Thus it begins.

  • Empathy Training tools.

    My copy of …and then, we held hands. has arrived.
    It’s a strange board game, and the writings about it have mentioned this. It can be played in silence, with both players showing what they have, attempting to work together to reach a common goal, for if one of you can’t use their cards to move, you both lose.
    I think Reive and Moondancer would be interested in it.

  • Earthquake bandwagon

    So, last night, at around twenty to midnight, there was a brief thump or rumble, as a M4.9 earthquake happened about 23Kms north of Victoria, about 45Kms underground. Relevance of the details? Well, the fact that it was deep underground means it probably wasn’t a prelude to the big one that people have been predicting.
    The reactions have been mixed. Some people are posting photos of minimal damage and saying we will rebuild, making light of the possible impact. For some, that’s the easiest way to cope with this fear that we’ve been all generally been ignoring.
    Others are looking at what they can do to prep for something. Most of those people will forget about it in a few days, though some will be more long term about it, especially those who had the power outages recently. Will this mean a decent percentage of the population is prepared? Probably not.
    What should I be doing? Well, I should make sure I’ve got a better first aid kit, and probably more supplies in the basement and the garage.

  • Blood Rage!

    So, we played our first game of Blood Rage today.
    It was pretty enjoyable. The drafting mechanics were interesting, especially since nobody knew too much about what to expect.

    We found a few combos that felt a bit broken, like the leader who could travel after battle, pillaging around the board during the first age.

    In the third age, I managed to get the lovely combination of Eternal Dragons and Friga’s Domain, allowing my flaming ships to return if they were destroyed.

    We ended the game with myself at 144 points, Dimestore at 106, and the others not far behind.

    I suspect this will hit the table again shortly. It has some elements in common with Cthulhu Wars, specifically the Power/Rage system, but I think Cthulhu Wars might be a slightly stronger game still, though certainly less played by the majority.

  • 2016 approaches.

    Starting the year off with the end of Noir. Probably my last kink event for the foreseeable future.

    While I enjoy spending time with some of the people in the community and have the wisdom to might come in handy for some people, I seem to be lacking in some aspects that seem to be required.

    Aspects of bdsm are still something that I think will probably need in my relationships in the long term, but I suspect it’ll be something of a slower developmental nature. Though currently my thought is that at some point I became a type of person who doesn’t interest others, perhaps in part because they subconsciously they feel rejected by how insular I’ve become.

    In the meantime, I can be found on steam, and local gaming events.

  • Post defense parity.

    Well, I just did a training scenario where I had a man in high gear with a rubber knife stab me multiple times, with my objective being to kill him before I passed out from blood loss. Apparently I did pretty good at it. Had I been smarter, I’d have removed my glasses first, but losing them mid fight didn’t slow me down. Apparently I got in a few more kill shots than I realised, though I was clear when the scenario had ended. I think I was done slightly before “redredred” was called.

    My knees are not happy with me, neither is my toe. I don’t think my adrenaline response was as bad as some of the others, a couple of them were shaking pretty hard.

    After I’ve had a bit of time to recover, I should write up a piece on the class. It was definitely a solid 6 hours, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

  • nanowrimo

    Well, it’s November again. And people are doing nanowrimo again.
    November is usually a pretty brutal month for me.

    This time, not so much, I don’t think.

    So, I’ll give it a shot.