So, Go Play NW was this weekend, which means I got little sleep and gamed a lot! I had a fantastic time, finally met a few people I’d been talking to online for a while, and got to hang out with old friends I only see once a year.  Following hot on the heels of Go Play, was a Honey Badger concert Sunday night.  It went really well, too.  I’ll talk about both here.

Sadly, because we had other plans, we did not make it to the Friday night feast or the Friday night slot.  But we showed up bright and early on Saturday… Ok, bright and…  Well, a little groggy and a touch late.  I jumped in on a Harry Potter themed game of Hellcats and Hockeysticks, run by my friend Dawn, and I should really come with a warning label, because at the best of times I have a horrendous potty-mouth.  But early on a Saturday morning, after I’ve gone to bed late and I’m still working on my coffee, and you ask me to play a foul-mouthed teenaged girl?  Oh my…  Yeah.  If there is a line too far with language, I may have crossed it.  But we all recovered and went on to have a wonderful time being awful to each other.  In Hellcats, you pick your rival and your best friend, and don’t tell anyone who you picked.  So, I had named a girl my rival, who had named me her best friend, and yeah…  Essentially, we were from an American, magical version of St. Trinian’s, and were in the national Quidditch championships.  Someone stole the trophy, and tried to frame us by replacing it with a statue of our school mascot (The Fighting Octocorn, think hippocampus with octopus tentacles and a unicorn’s horn).  After a couple of red herrings, we finally unraveled it, and the tournament was saved!!!

Second slot on Saturday, I played in the Geek Husband What Rules’s GI Joe: 1946 game, wherein he hacked Dungeon World/Apocalypse World, and then came up with 1946 analogs for all of the GI Joes from the first run of comics.  It was a lot of fun, even if the dice hated me.  Our friend Lesley, of the Girl Game, played Doc even though she knew nothing about GI Joe, and did a fantastic job.  We managed to kidnap Herr Doktor Gift (Dr. Venom), and Destro, and blow up a Cobra munitions plant in Argentina.  Cobra was essentially a renegade offshoot of the Reich, who kept going after the war.  We played that with Kingston and, I think, Dave.  Kingston played Stalker, Dave played Wild Bill and was hilarious, and I played Snow Job.

Third slot Saturday Lesley, Marcy (also formerly  of the Girl Game), a guy named Ben, and I got Joe McDonaldno to run his hack of Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, for us.  In Monsterhearts you play teenaged monsters making bad decisions, having disastrous relationships and doing stupid shit, in addition to being hellbeasts out to devour their fellow man, or if you’re feeling brave, a mortal, or a Chosen One, or an Angel.  Marcy played a ghoul, brought back by her mother when she was killed in a car accident.  Lesley and Ben both played Infernals, or mortals who have made deals with demons.  I played a Chosen One, a monster hunter, in this case raised by a family that believed themselves to be descended from the Knights Templar with the mission to slay demons and other monsters, who has no idea his two best friends are both making deals with demons.  The hardest part of this game was that my character didn’t swear.  See my description of slot 1, only replace “early on Saturday” with “late on Saturday.”  To add to the fun, Lesley and I had decided that her character (Kain) was gay, and my character (Levi) was starting to come to some “alarming” conclusions about his own sexuality, which were in direct opposition to his upbringing.

So, me and Lesley and Marcy start setting up this weird love triangle thing, almost from the beginning.  I kind of felt sorry for Ben, because the three of us have known each other for years, and we’re constantly playing characters with emotional entanglements and we’re really comfortable touching each other to roleplay things like, hitting on one another.  Ben, having never met any of us women before, was… not so much.   He did give it the old college try though, and he was absolutely hilarious as Logan.

I cannot possibly write a synopsis in a reasonable amount of space that is going to fully encompass how awesome the end of this game was.  Suffice it to say, Levi came to realization that being gay is not a sin.  Kain is free of his demon, as far as we know.  Grey, the Ghoul, is ok with Kain dating boys as long as they can be friends and as long as we all generate enough chaos to keep her happy.  Logan is still attached to his demon, but Levi will take care of that later.  And Levi and Kain rode off into the sunset in a battered old 1960s era pick up truck, on the way to tell Levi’s folks he’s gay, because living a lie would be a sin.

First and Second slots on Sunday, Ogre, Wilhelm, David, and I played the second installment of our annual Go Play NW Burning Wheel game.  We started this last year, playing the weird lifepaths that almost no one plays.  So Priss, the Poisoner/Prostitute, Coen, the retired Pugilist, now shipwright, and Nicholas, the Sorceror’s apprentice, picked up five years after fleeing the wreckage of the city of Koenig, and rescuing the last surviving member of the royal family, Maximilian the V.  We made a trip to the fantasy analog of Finland to buy boats, then to the analog of Norway to negotiate treaties.  Pretty fun stuff.  Last year Wilhelm broke my heart when Coen fell in love with my character, Priss.  She’s crazy, but sane enough to know she’s no good for him.  So she let him down gently and became a spy.  We had a lot of fun with it again this year, and I think we’re planning on doing it again next year, and possibly trying to meet up before then.

Then the GHWR, Lukas and I had to leave to get ready for our show that night.  We opened for Melissa and Paul from New Jersey (so awesome, you need to check them out), Dead Ringer (also awesome), and local band Success! (who are awesome dudes!).  We had a fantastic time, everyone said we did really well.  We’re just really enjoying the hell out of being in this band.

If you like the blog or the podcast, or if you would like to help fund future attendance at gaming conventions, please, please, please donate to keep us going.  Donations go to pay for the podcast hosting and website domain, primarily.

Also, we’ll have an announcement about t-shirts soon.  Really and truly.  Soon.  Damn life, always interfering.  I SWEAR IT’S COMING!!!

Oh, and Honey Badger’s first two songs are available for download here, for free or pay what you want.

Remember we’ve got the GGR Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook page.