weekend

[cellio]

The mums the previous previous owners of our house brought us a couple weeks back are starting to open up. (It's a large pot with a bunch of flowers in it.) I like mums. I'd especially like to have them outside in the garden, instead of on a windowsill with only so-so sun. I wonder if this is an appropriate time of year to do something about that, or if I need to wait until spring. (Mums are perenials, right?)

Friday night was our first "learners' minyan" (something new we're trying). I was at the other (main) service, and turnout there was low because lots of people were up at the new service. It got lots of good reviews at the oneg. I'm glad this is working. (I considered going to it, but I thought it would be more important to help provide a presence at the other service. And it's not like I would be likely to learn anything new -- I'm not the target audience, so I should leave room for those who are. On the other hand, I know that my rabbi would be interesting to listen to on pretty much any topic, so I briefly considered going anyway.)

There was no bar mitzvah this week, so we were able to have a nice, leisurely morning service and study session without the rabbi having to run off. I like it when that happens. It doesn't happen often.

Saturday night was lefkowitzga's birthday party. It was a lot of fun (and it looked like she was having fun too). She (or her parents, whose house this was at) made a smart move: they hired someone whose job was to make sure food flowed at appropriate rates and the dishes got washed. Sort of like hiring a caterer, but without hiring out the food prep. I like this, and if I ever host a large party I think I will do this. It's worth it to not have to worry about that aspect of hosting.

Last night we hosted Sunday dinner. I planned the dinner backwards: there was a cheesecake recipe I wanted to try, which meant dinner had to be dairy or parve, which made fish a good candidate, which meant I needed a good hearty veggie to complement, which caused me to think of matar paneer, which meant I really needed rice... It all worked out. (Note to self: if you use the "soft" (fresh) mozzerella cheese in the matar paneer, hold it until very late or it'll get gooey.)

After dinner we played Hack!, a card game based on (if I have this right) the "knights of the dinner table" comic. This was either the second or third time I'd played, and I ended up playing the GM for the first time. Even managed to win, though I thought Mike was going to win with all the loot he was accumulating. (The GM wins by killing player characters, which is the antithesis of every decent RPG I've ever played in.)

While the cheesecake was baking I watched the latest episode of Andromeda. Am I getting more picky, or has this season sucked so far?

Comments

[jducoeur]

So what do you think of Hack? I'm rather fond of the comic, but haven't given the game a try yet. (Having the GM trying to kill off the PCs is very true to the comic book. It's very much a parody of stereotypical RPGing, where the GM and the players are mostly set against each other...)

As for Andromeda: haven't started to watch the tapes for the beginning of this season yet, but suckage was definitely starting to set in by the end of last season. I'd heard rumors that they had changed the creative staff, to make the show more "exciting", which is usually a bad sign..

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

IMHO, Hack is a pretty good game. It definitely conveys the feel of the comics, which puts it well above many licensed games.

The biggest down side is that it can be very hard to make much progress, particularly when there are many characters playing. In the game we played last night, it only happened once that a player got three tiles away from the dungeon entrance.

Hack

[cellio]

I've enjoyed Hack the few times I've played it. I've never read the comic, so I can't comment on authenticity, but the game plays reasonably well. At (I think) $10 per deck (and you really need at least four players, I think) it's a little pricy, but it plays well.

As Ralph mentioned, in this game it was hard for the players to make progress toward an exit. I don't recall that being as much of a problem in the past, where it was special properties of certain rooms, rather than encounters, that tended to obstruct progress. In this game players spent a lot of time in one particular room (which had the potential to produce goodies), perhaps at the cost of progressing toward the exit. I never got to use the "rearrange the rooms to suit DM taste" card, which could have made things much more exciting.

Andromeda

[cellio]

So far, they seem to be going for adventure (space-age hack-and-slash) at the expense of both character development and diversity, and that makes it much less interesting. They were good at character in the beginning; the "adventure" aspect was never their strong suit for me.

I'll give it a few more episodes, at least, but its priority is falling.