Sorry about missing last week, but the election happened and I’ve done an awful lot of drinking.  Apart from my twitter feed, I am not interested in talking about it here.  Find me somewhere else if you want to commiserate, or attempt to convince me (not gonna happen) that you aren’t a bigot if you voted for the cheeto.

The weekend before the election, however, was heavenly.  AmberconNW in it’s 20th year was utterly fantastic.  It’s like hanging out with 150 of your very best friends.  There is so much love and support between the members that it’s almost unreal.  And, as I’ve said before, the gaming is magnificent.  So damn good.  And the site is a dream, so much good food and booze.

First slot was a recurring game, Lady Faiella’s Finishing School.  My friend Dawn runs this, and most of the players are returning.  We had one new player, Ben Lehman (of Polaris and Hot Guys Making Out fame), who utterly scandalized my character by not wearing a shirt.  It’s mostly an excuse to be snide teenagers at one another, with some semblance of plot.  It’s great fun, and a perfect intro to the weekend.

Next was my friend Alex’s Whitechapel game, using Monster of the Week as an engine for a game where sex workers who were part of a secret society hunted down and killed Jack the Ripper in the sewers of Victorian London.  Alex did a phenomenal amount of research, and it was very important to her that their status as sex workers did not detract from their humanity for the players.  It was so good!  We were all invested in seeing it through to the bitter end, and the Japanese woman who my character had fallen in love with, sacrificed herself to save everyone else.

Alex and I took the next slot off to go to Sock Dreams and buy socks, and do a grocery run.

Then I ran Monsterhearts in Weimar era Berlin.  Last year when I ran this game it got violent, but was more sex focused.  This year, it was mostly just super violent.  We had a couple people run skins I wasn’t familiar with, and while we got off to rocky start, ultimately I think it worked pretty well.  Anyone who has ever worked in a nightclub will tell you that a game written with a high school in mind will translate beautifully.

That was Friday night.  Saturday during the long slot, I took my players through, essentially, two games of my powered by the Apocalypse game, Guns and Glamour.  I had hoped to Kickstart that this fall, then we moved.  So, maybe February after the holidays.  Anyway, we had 9 players for that game with a late addition, and it went super great!!  And it got real dark real quick.  I don’t want to bore you all with a blow by blow, but it started with kidnapping the mayor’s daughter and ended up with the Flapper character being the kingpin of Chicago after the Redcap decided to retire to Portland, OR like the Pixie hit squad he was part of in last year’s playtest.  My friend Kris played the Redcap, with his killing spree slaughtering a big swathe of Al Capone’s guys in a warehouse.

Saturday night  played in a teen-friendly game, Familiars of Hogwarts, wherein we all played the animal familiars of Hogwarts students, bored while our humans were in class.  It was a blast, especially watching the kids in the game just run with it. The next generation of gamers is gonna be awesome!!!

Sunday was our recurring game, the Portland Titans the continuing story of our superhero team in Portland, OR, which is run with a modified Amber Diceless system.  Some of us are of Amber descent, some are not.  It’s a good time.  My friend Carla and I usually manage to wring one at least one teary, emotionally-laden scene out of this game, and did it again this year.

Man, I never know how far to go in detailing these games for you guys.  I mean, i can go into a lot more detail and give some really involved synopses if you’d like.  Or I can leave it here for now and go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour for a change.

So, I’ll leave it here.  But if you want me to go into more detail on any of these I can.  Let me know in comments.