Randomish

HOA board meeting tonight. @whee. I have this horrible suspicion our property manager will spring something new on us like she did previously with a letter from one owner. We've eased up some on our oversight since getting new contractors to finish up exterior repairs and I get the feeling she's growing lax again as well. ... Hopefully, I'm worried over nothing, right?

Probably gaming Thursday night. Might be getting back to Dresden Files, for better or worse. I've lost some interest after it being so long, and I already seemed to be having more trouble getting into the game than most - more because of inexperienced GMing than system or setting.

I'm really thinking I need to take a little time off work, but I can't really afford to do much with it. Get out of town for a day or two, maybe, but that's about it. And even a couple days in Albuquerque doesn't sound as intersting as it once did.

The year's still moving fast, it feels. It just dawned on me that Halloween falls on a Sunday this year. Usually, I'm at work Halloween night. Not that this really makes much difference.


And, ahhh Furryfaire...

After polling and discussion, it sounds like Threshold is to be the new setting. What blows me away is it also sounds like we're keeping the existing system. To me, that means we're "fixing" a tiny percentage of the "problems."

As discussed before, Threshold is somewhat less restrictive, controlled, and safe. Somewhat. And that's the only possible beneficial change I see. There's more room for player-based conflict within the city.

Five years and several hundred miles (or a portal-jaunt) is not enough to "force" retirement of existing characters, so we have the exact same disparity between low-level and high-level characters - both because we'll end up with some of the same characters and because the rules aren't being changed to narrow that gap at all.

The city is still a long way from any truly wild lands. You could arrange an expedition out there, but there's not much likelihood of beasties coming a'calling.

The mantle of Blue Wizard is being removed, but that... has zero impact and I can't see now why anyone bothered. The BW was based in the Shire, moving to Threshold renders her influence moot anyway. And it's not like the magical paradigm is being shaken up in any other way. Magic can still do pretty much anything. At least one and probably more areas of magic never got their last revamp, so they're based on things that are old even by standards of the existing system.

So... while at least one person has argued that changing both locale and rules would be too much at once, I'm left wondering what the point is.

Again, it leaves me considering whether I want to actually make a new character to play. I have one half-formed idea as far as personality and all, but when I try to bring that together, I get to "okay and how do I want to build this in the rules" and stall out. I sort of enjoyed crafting, but I was waiting on updates to that system a year or more ago - and in the hands of some, it gave me horrible headaches. I kind of want to do something with magic or psionics, but both feel over-the-top "broken" these days. So... eh... while we have one player jumping on making a new character, I'm just not very enthusiastic about it at present.