Bird in bath pictures.

CAN YOU STAND THE CUTE!?

( burd )

Still don't like zombie games.

I ended up playing Savage World Zombies yesterday. I was ambivalent about it because I don't find zombie games interesting. Zombie RPs at least. I've played in a few before, so this isn't a new experience and I've played with good players and DMs so it's not them. Yesterday's game was fun. We were laughing a lot and there was some good tension in the beginning. But I still, at the end, was bored.

My problems with them are several fold. First of all the point of a zombie game, the first point is not to die. Not to get turned into a zombie. Story is secondary or tertiary. Sure you're trying to figure out what happened and things like that, but your first basic thing is survive. Find food and supplies. Don't get bitten. Don't get sick. If you do you'll get turned into a zombie and you'll get shot by your companions. Or eat them. Or both. So why get attached to a character?

We got onto the airport runway, in the game I played, and suddenly I was "I don't do anything" I don't have anything to do. I watch the zombies and hope they don't come after me and if they do, I hope I can out run them. Survive seems to be the watch word, which I dunno. I want to do more than that.

Well, you may say, why can't you figure out who's behind it or how to cure it? My group consisted of a drunken barkeep, a security guard with the smarts of gum on your shoe, a stunt driver, a gimpy horror writer and my guy - a master thief. How exactly does this group have the skills to figure it out? How exactly does this group even think about figuring it out? Why would they do it? They don't have the skills.

Which leads into my third problem. I had a heck of a time trying to figure out a character to play in this game. Why? Because why do I want to play a teacher, a librarian -as someone suggested to me- a mechanic? It's boring. I play RPs to not play real people. To not play things from ordinary life. I already am a librarian. Why would I want to play one in game? I took the thief because there was a "package" for thief and I figured well, he'd probably have a better time at surviving than everyone else.. possibly... and built it around that. The thief is a fun guy, but I'm not emotionally invested in him. I don't even feel like making a big back story for him. Because it's all irrelevant. Zombie apocalypse has happened. I'm stuck in New York. By the time I get back to LA (or where ever I am from) everyone I knew probably is dead. My entire life before hand is gone and pointless.

When we were making up characters we got to buy $500 dollars worth of Stuff. Which ended up being pointless because we were on a plane without it. You can't bring guns on a plane. Or a chainsaw or all the other stuff people bought. So, why bother spending the money? I could justify having my equipment on the plane as it was evidence. (My thief had been captured by the FBI - the agent who caught him had been trailing him for years. The agent had three months until retirement, of course, because I knew he was going to die. That made it practically a requirement for his character. The agent's partner I named Jenny Lives because I like irony.) However the plane crashed and so all my equipment is unobtainable, especially since, you know, zombies are surrounding it. I might as well have bought another edge instead of the guns and stuff. Though that's just the DM's scenerio in this case, but in a sense it's true for a lot of things. Why would an acrobat have a gun or a machete or a baseball bat in easy reach when taking a walk down to the bar, for example?

The entire story is going to end in tragedy anyway.

In my regular D&D campaign things are a lot more interesting. My guy can use magic. He died, came back as an undead, and then we resurrected the undead. We've traveled to a mirror universe (possibly) where we've run into our evil selves. Who want to kill us. Or have a long chat with us and then kill us. My character's back story matters. The people he serves has sold his soul to the god of the dead (Possibly... I'm not 100% sure yet.)and so he has to worry about how to get out of being the consort to the king of shadows. I have no idea how this is going to end or where it can even go.

But I digress.

Then there's the odd conceit that no one is supposed to know what a zombie is even if it's staring them in the face. Or trying to eat their face. The movies are out there! The books are out there! It's in popular culture. The Writer Guy knew about them and called it and I had my guy believe him. I mean there wasn't any other explanation for what the people had become. They got sick. They died. They tried to eat you. If you got bit, you got sick and died and tried to eat someone else. Some of the NPCs were all about "oh those strange cannibals randomly trying to eat people!" as opposed to ZOMBIES OHMIGAWD HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!? Even a couple of the players were like that. "Nah, it can't be zombies." If it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck and tries to eat your face like a duck I'm fairly certain it's a zombie duck. It's like you're not supposed to believe that the zombies are zombies, even though it's obvious they're zombies.

I realize that some people like zombie games, I just don't. And that is why.

This has been another random ramble by Kippur

Nope. None for me. .. Oh, we weren’t talking about me? I don’t see why not? I’m allowed to have feelings too!

Fine.

This chapter goes back to Roran.

Because.

The chapter starts with Roran showing us that he’s coming along the ax-crazy path just as nicely as his cousin. He sees Nasuada’s Speshul Guards, the Nighthawks standing outside the room she’s in. They consist of two humans, two dwarves and two urgals.

… wait.

Wouldn’t it be better to have some of the guards inside?

There better be more guards inside.

*looks ahead*

(Follow the Fake Cut to More)

Well, that was a complete disaster.

I went to the job interview thinking it was for technical services. Instead it turned out to be working in the children's and teen departments.

Cue internal panic attack.

I can barely handle three hours of serving uppity university students and adult patrons. The idea of having to work with small kids and teenagers for five hours a day doing public service stuff?

Yeah. No.

Thankfully I managed to get to the car before melting down. The biggest problem I thing was I went in thinking it was one thing and they were thinking another and I had to mentally shift gears. Not only that but I had to shift gears into territory I wasn't prepared for. I had no preparation for questions like, "How would you handle bullying?"

How was I supposed to answer that one? I couldn't handle the bullies when I dealt with them in school. There would be no way I could handle them in a working position. Likely I would freeze up. Some how I didn't do that in the interview. I was doing it inside, but I didn't do it on the outside.

This is a good thing.

Still, as soon as I was excused I walked as fast as I could to where my mom was, without a word, grabbed her and went to the car. Where I proceed to have said panic attack, complete with rocking, curling and crying. Oh and inane babbling.

I have no idea how I managed to hold on to sanity for that long.

But, I don't think they're going to give it to me. I'm more than certain I failed at answering a lot of the questions. If they do, on the highly off chance, offer me the position I am going to tell them I can't accept it because I thought it was for a different one.

Warghle

Job interview in a couple of hours.

Nervous.

Wish me luck.

I saw the Avengers yesterday.

It was just... awesome. I mean awesome. I haven't had such a good time watching a movie in a while. The audience was excellent. There were laugh out loud moments. The character interaction was delightful and stemmed from character and situation as opposed to the "We have superheroes! They must fight!" sort of things. I never wondered "When is it going to be over" and instead I was wondering "What is going to happen next?"

Other things:

I made it past a slush pile! Woo! I got rejected, but I made it past a slush pile!

Anybody have hints on job interviews? I've never been on one before.

A Cradle Song

So, we left Eragon taking the baby to his tent to fix the harelip. He is seriously worried about what will happen if he screws up fixing the baby. Scar it for life (hah) and all that other fun stuff. He and Gertrude sit down after Eragon turns on the light. His “elf” eyes can see all right in the dim light but hers cannot. He doesn’t use a lamp but instead creates a floaty ball of light. He also doesn’t say “Brisingr” because that would set his sword on fire. Oh yeah, because learning how to stop the sword from doing that would be silly. Or even just crafting a spell that says, “Don’t burst into flames every time I say Brisingr”. Pfft. Nah. Let’s go with the damn running joke. A joke that was never funny in the first place.


(Follow the Fake Cut)

I have a job interview next Thursday at the Beverly Hills public Library.

I am uncertain as to how I should feel about that. On one hand the starting pay is five dollars more than I was making at my last job. On the other hand it's at a library and I'm not sure I want to go back to work at a library.

It is part time though.

Well, I shouldn't worry about it until I get the job offer.

I wrote a thing. An interview with Kevin Hearne.