Angst X

Zo, nu Angst (http://angst.oneiros.be) een paar maandjes achter de rug is, begint het weer tijd te worden om vooruit te gaan kijken. Na een mail te hebben verstuurd naar de mensen die hebben aangegeven interesse te hebben om mee te helpen, lijkt het erop dat ze ook nu nog zin hebben om mee te doen. Het team zal dus worden uitgebreid want het lijkt erop dat de mensen die bij de vorige hielpen (Wim van Gucht, Onno Ebbers en Bard Neeus) ook nog zin hebben hierin. Als ik de foto's terugkijk: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larpfoto/sets/72157617470253319/ (© Wim van Gucht)Kijk ik met veel plezier op terug op een in mijn ogen geslaagd event. Ik vond het ook vooral leuk om de 2 avonden met dezelfde rollen en een zelfde scenario compleet anders te zien verlopen. Tuurlijk hebben we een rode lijn die gevolgd werd die avond, maar taktieken en uitgespeelde emoties waren compleet anders. Zo was vrijdag meer een familiedrama en zaterdag meer wonderlijk kwa reacties en rollenspel. Ze waren er op zaterdag dichtbij, een speler had een ritueel om dit teniet te doen, maar helaas probeerde hij het zonder anderen waardoor zijn lichaam en brein het niet kon onderhouden.
We nemen wel afscheid van Tim als Propsmeister, maar we hebben wellicht nieuw bloed om de handjes vuil te maken :).
Ik kijk er naar uit om weer in gang te schieten en mijn hersenen te laten knallen op een nieuw scenario... alhoewel ik nog geen concrete ideeen heb, zijn er wel wat ideeen die ik heb maar die zijn niet echt uitvoerbaar voor een Angst... We zullen met het team gaan brainstormen. Ik hoop dat de spelers er zin in hebben... en dat het animo nog groter is als vorige keer... en er geen griep heerst, want dat was me toch een partijtje stress extra. Maar dankzij vooral Gudrun is het toch nog goed gekomen.

More info coming when I have it ;)
Martijn

Toscane

HI all, I am back. Took a while to make a post, but I have been busy and been away for little more then a week. I went to Toscane. I can recommend Florence and Siena to everyone. What a great cities those are. Especially Siena stole a piece of my heart. The way the innertown looks and feels is what I expected of Toscane. The people of Siena have a passion for a tradition they have done for a very long time. The Palio. A horserace where every part of the city has it's own horse and rider with race for the district. The great thing is, every part has its own animal, colours and coat of arms. The passion they have for it is great. Everywhere you see those coats of arms and you can buy things about it.

I let myself go and bought 2 parchments with coats and a map of the city with the districts, bought a 2 flags (1 small and 1 larger) and 2 patches. I choose La Onda; the waves.

LARP

aaaah the summer ends and around me the LARP season starts to flower up like daisies in spring. This last trimester of the year we will be treated with Caege in September, Saga in october (all come, this really will be an important one), Poort in November and Manticore in December. Eternica will return after a sabatical, but unfortunatly they organise their event around the dutch/belgian fest Sinterklaas and since I already made plans for it, I am affraid I will not be able to come.
I am going to skip Caege too because in that weekend I will be flying to Pisa for a week of vacation in Italy: Toscane. I really could use it, the last vacation I had was feb-2007. That was of course awesome, we went to New Zealand.
Anyways on the Saga forum things are really busy so things are warming up again.
What also is warming up is Angst. Angst is an event that was organised by the well talented Sven de Braekeleir. Unfortunatly he immigrated to his love in Australia and Angst went with him. Me and also Onno are very big fans of Cthulhu and Angst (most Angst events are based on the Cthulhu Mythos from H.P. Lovecraft) and we decided to pick it up again.
I had done several other attempts to get Angst (which means Fear) back on the track but many people pulled back at the last minute.
Now we have a team of 4 and at the beginning of 2009 we will offer Angst again. Be there !

BAck playing a bloodsucker

Ok, so saturday was my 1st session in Rotterdam by Night. The vampire chronicle in Rotterdam. I knew nobody and was very curious 'how' this group role played.
It was a brilliant succes, I saw no tests, I saw nobody go outgame for 1 second and personally went outgame for 10 seconds to ask what a certain ingame dutch term ment in official terms. They use a lot of dutch terms for the 'normal' english terms so that needs some hammering in my brain, but it improves atmosphere I must say.

The characters in the domain was a nice balance to see as well...
2 gangrel (ancillae, neonate), 3 brujah (elder, ancillae, neo), 2 malkavs(me as ancillae and a neonate), 2 torreador (2 neonates), 3 ventrue (2 neonates, 1 ancillae), 2 nosferatu (2 neonates) and 1 tremere (ancillae).
Normally the Brujah and mostly gangrel dominate because of their uber combat potential, but here the Brujah were not dressed in leather jackets and breaking tables all the time and the gangrel were informative, inquisitive and philosophic instead of sharpening their claws, which was very nice to see.

People dressed nice, the location was more then ok and the ST did not even have to narrate everything and just played his character the whole time.

All in all I ask myself... why did Antwerp not be more like this.

However in comparison to Antwerp Rotterdam is more riggid (not that that is necesseraly a bad thing) and status, influence and backgrounds are not really put down as stats and therfor I wonder if that is good. However the ST has been very in control and seems to know exactly who does what and why... which is perfect.

Short overview of the session:

My character was introduced to the court by a Ventrue Neonate and he was looked at with great interest. Not many kindred of the court had met Malkavians that 'communicated' normally, which of course surprised my character. I talked to many people of the court and was informed with the case of Scarlet a Malkavian that apparently has been tampered with, by her sire, an elder Malkavian Antitribu. The prince himself ordered that the woman would be investigated and if possible restored to 'normal' status. I offered my help and by hearing what they tried to do... need it. Also had a very nice talk with the Gangrel which has gained the interest of my character... can't wait for next session.

MMORPG's

I like to play MMORPG's.
I started with Everquest which wasn't that good and then a time nothing and then I played WOW a lot. I used to raid a lot and before the 1st expansion I cleared little to all content (did all but a few bosses in Naxx). Got bored with WOW, started to test some other MMORPG's which were all but nice:
Vanguard: Saga of heroes was buttugly, boring and resourceheacy (why I still wonder).
Pirates of the Burning sea was really boring as well.
Lord of the Rings online was a bit fun but lacked latelevel content.
city of villains was a lot of button smashing ending and a lot luck based.
So I went back to playing wow again. Went for Vasjh and Kael and got bored of Guilddrama again. Then I started to play Conan, which is a very nice game.
However, the lack of endgame content, the bugs in the clientsofware and last but not least my son is making me doubt to quit it.
18-9-2008 Warhammer online will come online, which would be nice. However the news that they cancelled 4 out of 6 capital cities and 4 out of 24 classes makes me doubt to play it. EA took over the company and we know their policy: Better to Release yesterday then tomorrow... so they probably were pushed to launch and needed to cancel parts of the game which makes me wonder what else they cancelled to push to release. Off course this news came after my pre-order so I am getting the game anyway.
of course WOW will release their new expansion which makes it possible to do all instances with not only 25 but also 10, which makes it more interesting as me and some others who quit are quite good at raiding and with 10 perhaps we can make something out of it without spending countless money on assholes fucking up encounters with stupid actions.
Few more MMO's on the horizon but nothing worth mentioning atm.
what to do, what to do :)

weekend

The misses was away for the weekend so I had the house for ourselves.
Friday I went heroclixing with some peops in Antwerp... and lost hidiously.
It appears armoured men are good... but once you penetrated the armour ur done playing.

Saturday I picked up the old guitar again (no not a real one) and played guitar hero until 15.00 when 2 friends came and we played Mario Kart for while.
Was nice.

Sunday I spent to Age of Conan... I really need to level my char, I am the officer with the lowest level, but hey, I am the only officer with a kid ! :)

too many interests... too little time

With a little one in the house your time is limited.
Especially is the lady of the house is taking care of him all day and would like you to do something as well when you get home from work.
I hardly have time to play my new PC Game Age of Conan but that is but a fraction of things I would like to do and get into but simply do not have the time for.
Right now LARP, Role Play, Computer Games and Board games are largely taking up the spare time I have.
However I allways see such great things I see people do and I would love to do it too, but simply just cannot find the time for. A good example is Heroclix.
I really love the game and I spend quite some money on it, however it is catching dust now... such a shame I really like the game and models...

Antwerp

Antwerp has allways been a city I liked.

I feel nice at home there and unlike many other Dutch people I do not come there to piss against the Cathedral, be loud or shop till I drop.

Many of my social events play on in Antwerp. I know many people there who I can call friend and many of the role play things are over there. It also looks like the role play folk is overall a lot less nerdy then in the Netherlands where most role players are one or a combination of the following: Nerdy, dorky, Acne filled, socially inadequate and smelly. Of course Antwerp had its fair share of those people, but the real hardcore are all role players to my heart and I love playing there.

 

So to all the role play homies down south… a big word up !

sports...

Ok for the first time in 5 years I started being active again. Yeah I know, 5 years of playing role playing games, computer games and table top games with beer, chips, nuts and cookies has brought me the belly… I knew for some time I needed to work out again (see new year’s post). But I hate most sports as they are boring. However I went swimming this week and did 40 lanes in 50 minutes. I was broken but it was fun and I feel good 2 days later.

I think that will be my thing for the coming time… my work out: swimming.

BACK

ok I decided to kick this Blog a bit back into Life... if anyone is still reading it.
Busy weeks coming up.
This weekend I got my family coming over to watch things from New-Zealand.
The Weekend after that I have a LARP (Caege Renaissance, very curious how that will be).
And the week after that I have Saga and the week AFTER that I have my birthday.
I am still not sure what to do with it though... I wanna do something but I do not know what.

XMASS

Christmas is the most weird feast of the year.
Christ is born and we celebrate… 90% of the dutch do that without going to the church and see it as a free day off…
No problem. Then they changed it, Christmas is a time where we spent time with our family and have a good time.
Then Christmas became a day where we should think about others… the less fortunate so to speak.
Then the commercial aspect kicked in… presents, diners, Santa Claus (cheap rip off of Sinterklaas made up by Coca-cola).
You tend to get confused. What should one do.
Christmas is certainly not a day where we think about others. Statistics show that we spent more and more money on exclusive foods and presents.
Everyone shouts it is wrong… we are capitalistic pigs…
I’ll tell you what… I think Christmas is a good excuse to eat good food you normally do not eat, receive and buy some things for your loved ones and stuff myself with white wine and food like the stuffed turkey on the table.
Don’t start about the less fortunate etc., I worked hard for my money and I spend it how I want to !

Happy Holidays… celebrate em however YOU feel fine… but do not start to criticise my way…