I recovered from the novel Coronavirus just in time to take care of Brenna, who came down with it on Friday. I never had it before, and it's been just as novel as advertised. It's like we have two different illnesses: I had a "cold" so mild I was more or less fine in two days. Brenna is riding a horse made of bones in plaguelands, and she is pregnant with its dark gifts. It's not the same! So, I bring her soup sometimes.
Morak, being who he is, has suggested to me that Sea of Stars at this late juncture is probably his Game of the Year, or "goaty." That sounds like an adjective, and not a pleasant one - bare minimum, it evokes goats. But in this case, somehow, it's an indication of particular enthusiasm.
Today is the last day to feast on the riches available from our show store! Come get it!
I’m back home and resting up after my first PAX since 2020. It was a great show but holy shit, I was incredibly unprepared physically for the amount of walking I ended up doing.
I'm not like other girls.
At hashtag PAX West, since it starts on Thursday, Monday rolls around and the show is over. It's a new week. Because PAX West (though I suspect we know its true name) extends, yea, into the Monday after, it creates a very peculiar annual moment where I rise unsteadily on the last day of the show, my mind whipping and writhing like a wavy tube man. It is that precise moment that I greet you here.
Hey! I've got incredible news: you've still got time to shotgun the first season of Seattle By Night in preparation for Sunday's Vampire: The Masquerade game, which picks up immediately thereafter. It's one of the coolest stories I've ever been part of, and unless you're familiar with other Vampire streams I can guarantee you've never seen somebody run a table like Jason Carl. This is what mastery looks like. His meticulously curated filth commingled with the dark energy of the world, its system, and its legacy . These days, D&D is sort of the default - but this creature, and its wicked ways, are from a much more primordial era where the future hadn't been decided yet. Let's hang out there, this Sunday at 11:30am PST on Main Stage - which you can watch from anywhere at twitch.tv/pax.
Years in the making, Ziply Fiber has made the necessary municipal genuflections and now Gabriel is sending me screenshots of his Speed Tests. I assume this is something that frequently occurs on Dating Apps, also; incredible throughput must be seen as a tantalizing inducement.
PAX West 2023 arrives this week and unlike the last few PAX shows, I’ll be at this one!
I think that's what the designers would call it. It's dangerous for me to even be messing around with terminology outside my ken; this is almost certainly called a Photo-Looky. But, in any case: Lidija sent me these images to send to you, and I'm fucken doin' it!!! It's all good, I love all of it, but those keycaps are happening. Like, on my own keyboard after the show. Bet on it. As always, tremendous love and praise to the team on these.
Mork was able to grab some Lorcana up by his place. I thought maybe he'd snatched it up at Over The Brick, largely a card/wargame shop, but I think that like a lot of small locals their entire allotment was sold alongside their first in-store play event. He ended up finding it at Snapdoodle, which is kinda fancy and features mostly toys and boardgames, which is probably why he was able to grab them off the shelf. I never would have considered Snapdoodle for a game like this; it probably has to do with the fact that they also carry a crazy allotment of Ravensburger shit generally.
We saw that our good friend Kris Straub, whose profundities defy easy categorization, had just set up shop on Cameo, which we saw as an excellent opportunity to make an impromptus commercial to bolster his ascent.
It's really fun to have a kid whose intellectual trajectory you recognize - like, at all. I'm also glad that they have somebody to talk to about these things, because I didn't. The vector might have changed in the modern era, but the principle hasn't: you can install entire belief structures at the root of your mind, fully baked, pre-approved. It's easy to find a context where the deployment of shibboleths can allow access to the sanctity of a hermetic cabal. As they have had the opportunity to discover, it gets dark fast when you deviate from whatever the local sacred writ is. I didn't have Reddit or whatever, because nobody had Reddit. There wasn't a Reddit yet. But when a friend asked me if I was ready to pick up a gun and kill in order to create the just society we had been discussing, I wasn't! I wasn't ready. And that was bad, in an apparently unforgivable way.
The terminology changed recently, I don't remember a memo going out. But I don't consider something that has commercials "free" to watch. I'm not trying to be churlish; I just recognize that I'm paying with something. And they know I'm paying with it too, which is why they have the commercials there. You used to be able to buy most content online with this currency - attention - but it's depreciated over time, to the point where you now pay a service to show you ads.
I grew up playing World of Darkness stuff: Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, and some of the weirder ones. So having a chance to play in a Vampire Chronicle with the inestimable Jason Carl in Seattle By Night is something I still think about a lot. We occasionally get asked if we'll ever be able to do it again, and I have the most incredible news. At PAX West -On Sunday, September 3rd at 11:30am - Seattle By Night returns with new guest, Luis Carazo! This would be an incredible opportunity for a rewatch, or even a first time through the show. It's one of the best things we've done. Check out the description, before it's even added to the schedule:
The beloved Vampire: The Masquerade actual play chronicle Seattle by Night returns! Join our Kindred cast Jerry Holkins, Mike Kruhalik, Jasmine Bhullar, and Luis Carazo live on stage as their vampires attempt to navigate the treacherous undead politics of the Camarilla. The coterie has finally made contact with the Camarilla, but how will they prove their loyalty? Storyteller Jason Carl presides over this new chapter in the undead drama.
So, AAAAAAAAHHHH!
(CW)TB