Right, first off, that was a bad joke, even by my standards. I sincerely apologise for putting you through thatAND NO SAFARI THATS HOW WE SPELL “APOLOGIZE” IN THE QUEEN’S ENGLISH GOD DAMMIT. Okay, calm. Calm. Click “learn spelling”. It’s all gonna be just fine. Um. Wait. Where was I?

Ah, yes, this possibly-recurring column I’m writing right now. So, as you should have guessed by the title and the badly conceived and even more badly executed theoretical physics joke, this is a column specifically talking about geeky, geeky things. This week, it’s that thing I wish I did more of, GMing (or DMing if you’re a philistine).

For the uninitiated: GM stands for “Game Master”. Ever heard of pen-and-paper or “tabletop” RPG’s? Well, it’s the GM’s job to make sure everyone gets to play through a fun, engaging adventure. Some individuals might claim that the relationship between player and GM should be an adversarial one, with the GM actively trying to off the PC’s (Player Characters. Us gamers love our abbreviations, as you will no doubt realiseGOD DAMMIT SAFARI! REALISE! NOT “REALIZE”!) at every opportunity. I think this is, on the whole, the wrong way to approach GMing. It gives the players a hard time, and can be a little tiresome. No, I prefer a more balanced approach, that of co-operative storytelling. Look, I’m gonna come out and say it right now: I’m a very fluffy GM. I know that. My players know that. I’m trying desperately to rectify this, but it’s difficult. But I’ll delve a little deeper into this a little later. For now, here’s the current situation.

I’ve run around 3 games in total so far, each with a different system and different players. Not that many. Especially when you consider that that’s spread out over around two years. The thing is, it’s not really that I’m lazy. Okay, so it is partially, but it’s also because it’s so damn hard to get a group together. The last game was with three players who I now consider to be my gaming group. They’re keen, they enjoyed their first pen-and-paper gaming experience, they gave good feedback. But even now it’s hard to get everyone back to the table for a second game. I don’t know what it is. I guess it doesn’t help that one of the players is Declan who, let’s face it, is a lot more busy. He, unlike me, has both a job and a more active social life. Understandable. So, getting a solid day of gaming is quite difficult.

It might have something to do with the fact that I suggested we try different game systems and see which one we prefer. Now, personally, I think this would help greatly in giving the group a nice broad range of roleplaying experience, but I do sense a little resistance to this idea all the same. I can see where they’re coming from though (“MORE chargen? But we just spent like 2 hours doing it last time, and you want us to do it again with another system? Oh, please”). So yeah, maybe we should just stick with WFRP for now. I don’t think I should be too hasty.

Yes, having continuity of character is important for players. They like to know that their character, a person that they built from the ground up, don’t forget, is still around, effecting the world. I guess, as a GM, I tend to get a little bogged down in mechanics and scenarios and the like, and I forget that really, it’s all about the players and their experiences. THAT’s what defines a good game.

All gaming groups are different. Some of them really like character interaction (the “roleplaying”), and some really love crunchy combat. My group falls more into the former than the latter category. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of having all the character interaction up front and then piling in loads of combat afterwards. This made it so that the start of the session was exhilarating, but by the end it had sunk into a quagmire of dice rolls and failed checks. Granted, there was a highlight towards the end that featured an NPC draped in entrails and stuffed into a barrel to lure an ogre out of its cave, but apart from that it kind of sagged a bit. I could sense the players starting to get a little exasperated, and I was beginning to as well. But, I’ve heard every game is a learning experience, and that was definitely true of this one.

I think my plan for next session is to get them back into some tasty tasty roleplaying and away from boring lengthy combat and over use of dice rolling. And I’m certainly NOT going to force them into trying a multitude of new systems. Not yet, anyway.

So, I think a GM needs to help tell a good story with the players. I don’t think he should be out to kill them. However, there is one particular exception to this rule, and that is Call of Cthulhu. I think I’ll run it when I’m feeling particularly vengeful.

In my own inimitable way, I’ve come to a rather interesting, if disturbing, realisation about how ma brain works, yo. Recently, I’ve begun to notice my preponderance for tweeting at people I follow for no good reason. If they don’t tweet back (which of course is perfectly reasonable. I mean, come on), then I get very, very, very bloody insecure about how they view me online i.e. as a creepy stalker with nothing better to do. Thing is, that’s kind of what I am, sometimes. This is not good. Not good at all.

It’s almost like my tweeting at a person is sort of like a bizarre litmus test. It’s like my twisted, sunlight-addled lizard brain wants to know whether “we’re friends” or not. Ugh. Stop it, subconscious. Seriously. I thought we’d gotten over this. Thing is, I can be a really needy person, and this very often borders on the weird and creepy side of things. This happened in secondary school, and it’s kind of happening again now. I wasn’t necessarily going to swear in this blog post, but fuck it. Fuck you, twisted sunlight-addled lizard brain. You have failed me on many occasions. Please do not do so again.

If you managed to make it through those two paragraphs of crazed nigh-on depression, please comment with your honest views on this rather unpleasant side to my personality. Do I really come across the way that I think I do? Am I in need of a slap across the face and a good talking-to? Is it safe? Did Han shoot first? Let’s have some reasoned feedback.

Things like, just how much of the world have I seen with my own two eyes? How much of it have a actually walked, ran, jumped, driven and drunkenly staggered my way across? Here’s the answer: a pretty insignificant amount, really. It’s kind of disheartening, to a certain extent. Mind you, at the same time, I’ve got (touch wood) my whole life ahead of me. But to know where to go in the future, I need to know where I’ve been before. So where have I been? Here’s where (with ze notez for your amusement):

Rugby, Warwickshire, UK – A rather charming, British market town that just happens to have been the birthplace of, yep, you guessed it, the sport of Rugby. Never played myself.

London, UK – Oh, you know. It’s London. First visit revolved around the museums. Second visit encompassed the central region. Very big. Very scary for a country yokel like me.

Lichfield, Staffordshire, UK – Fond memories pervade this place. Winding streets. Very old town centre. Lovely three-spired cathedral. Little parks. Well-placed train station for quick escapes.

Birmingham, UK – Gotta love the Brummies. Not much to tell, other than the fact that this city forcibly took both my Nando’s (tasty tasty spicy food) and Games Workshop… shop virginity.

A lot of other places in the UK, including places in Wales and Scotland. I think. Probably.

Crete, Greece – Amazing place. One minute you’re in the booming metropolis of Iraklion, the next you’re on a mountain road looking down into a lush valley dotted with whitewashed farms, villages and Orthodox churches.

Majorca, off the south coast of Spain – very interesting historical places, like the densely packed port of Old Alcudia, and the numerous churches and squares of the Palma Old Town. You’ve got to escape the holiday resorts first, though.

Barcelona, Spain – Yet again, you’ve got to escape the resorts first. But when you do, god DAMN. Weird and wonderful architecture in the city, a monastery on the top of a fricken’ mountain within driving distance, the Dali museum in Figueres. And so on. Good stuff.

Dallas and environs, Texas, USA – And by “environs” I mean the more suburban/rural area just south of Dallas. Yet again, fond memories. Went to all the happenin’ tourist spots in Dallas (the Grassy Knoll, that big tower thing, some place, you know), went to a baseball game, which mostly consisted of eating a lot of hotdogs and occasionally cheering myself hoarse, went to a dirt track race in the middle of what appeared to be redneck country, which mostly consisted of eating a lot of hotdogs, occasionally cheering myself hoarse and getting splattered with mud. It was pretty sweet.

Other Places, Texas, USA – other places include: the Gaylord Texan (a swanky shwancy hotel in the middle of a bleedin’ desert), an old colonial wooden fort, a Texas Ranger museum in Waco, other places in Waco, my American cousin’s husband’s sweet pool, some carp-rich lake somewhere, a church service with lot’s of gospel music and an awesome black comedian presiding, an arcade, the horse racing… the list goes ever on.

And, I think, that’s… about… it? I omitted Ireland, since I’ve lived here more than half my life, so I can’t really call it a foreign country anymore. So where would I like to go now? Well, that’s a toughy. Probably anywhere my friends are. Pretty much.

CHEESE.

Ah, you’re still here. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty then, shall we? I’ll talk about Arts first and then I’ll probably go off on several random tangents before (hopefully) arriving at some kind of witty yet informative closing remark. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t plan these things.

Arts. When I first heard the term in relation to college and university, I assumed it something to do with, well, arts and crafts. How wrong I was. Any Americans who may have the misfortune of reading this probably have something similar in your (albeit far more exclusive) universities. When one takes Arts at a university, they pick one main subject to study along with a number of other subjects, usually covering several different fields.

For instance, take my friend Niamh, whom I shall be using as an example at certain points throughout this blog. She is studying Arts at University X (it’s not actually called University X. I am substituting X for the actual name. However, I think we can all agree that would be one fucking badass university). She is reading Psychology (“majoring” for you snazzy Americans), and also studying English and two other subjects. I can’t remember what they are. That’s not important. Anyway, we’d met up in the city and were conversing at length about third-level education. The general feeling I got from Niamh was that, barring Psychology, she was feeling rather out of her depth (of course, no offense meant, but Niamh always seems to feel out of her depth. But I digress).

Niamh is not exactly what you would consider an English nerd. At least, she doesn’t consider herself one. She reads books, yes, and she did do extremely well in her final English exam back in secondary school, but books aren’t exactly her passion, so to speak. As such, the (badass) University X English class is rather intimidating. There they are, talking casually about literary greats (you know, Gatsby, Catcher, Winny The Pooh), and she’s sort of left floundering in their wake. Of course, all this information is coming from a biased source, Niamh being Miss Insecure-About-Her-Own-Abilities six years running, but still. She also told me about the auditions on the first day of Drama club, but that was kind of understandable. University X waits for no one.

I can’t quite remember where I was going with this… oh yeah, that’s right, why the hell are all these many and varied subjects plonked in to one thingy? Why can’t they be their own thingy? Why must one study a main subject and several subordinates? Surely the point of university is to narrow one’s field of study, to hone one’s skills in a certain area, to specialize? In the spirit of fairness, I will accept that sometimes another language can be handy in certain lines of work, and Arts is a good path if you want to go for secondary-level teaching. But still, the whole thing just doesn’t sit right with me for some reason.

Me and my close circle of friends (barring Niamh and one or two others) all went to different colleges, but we all studied specialized subjects like Software Development, Business and, in my case, TV & Film. Narrow (but not too narrow), specialized areas. What, in my eyes, third-level education is all about. If you have any views on this, please enlighten me in the comments.

Back to Drama club… damn, University X clubs seem like they are really, really bitchy and exclusive. Apologies to anyone who puts just as much work in to clubs as their education, but seriously, auditions on the first day? This may be the norm for Drama clubs everywhere, but not everyone joining is gonna want to be thrown into the mix like that so quickly. The film club seems cool though. This one guy came up to me in the city (I was carrying my tripod around quite openly) and asked me if I was in the University X film club. He called me “dude”. I would’ve asked him for an application, but of course, it’s for University X students only. Clearly I am not badass enough.

Finally, for anyone worried about Niamh, the conversation I mentioned took place at least a month ago, just a few weeks after start of college. She now seems to be settled in all right, from what she has relayed to me via text.

Yay for blogs that don’t really go anywhere and pose far too many questions! If you are reading this blog, please comment. I want to know just how few of you guys there are, so I can tell how much slacking I’ll be able to get away with.

So the first one of the bunch was one I had on Monday night. I was apparently in Canada with my family. In the dream, that is. We can’t have everything we want. So, yes, Canada, but not as we know it. In fact, this dream version of a Canadian city (I believe it was supposed to be Vancouver or Victoria or thereabouts) looked for all the world like an oversized version of… dammit, what’s the name of it…. this square in London with all the lions and the fountain and the National Gallery and whatnot. So lots of huge grey buildings with columns and a big wide square and all of that stuff. Most emphatically NOT a Canadian city such as Vancouver of Victoria.

So me and my mum are in this big square in Vantoridon (heh, see what i did there? Sorry, ahem, won’t happen again), and we go into this big arty museum place. We completely ignore the barriers and ticket things and go straight in. A bald security guard stops us and asks us to pay for tickets in a frankly ATROCIOUS French accent. Obviously, my subconscious is both ignorant and racist. Ho hum. We can’t pay in Canadian Dollars because we don’t have any. He accepts a number of Euros (which he somehow worked out the exchange rate for DOWN TO THE CENT. IN HIS HEAD) from us and we go on our way.

Suddenly, we’re on a little side street. The guard is hanging out with us, wearing a raincoat, which is on backwards so the hood hangs down his front. He says he’s part of an underground resistance group working to overthrow the fascist government (LOLWTF!?).

We go into a building and up to the top floor and in to a room. Then, I’m alone in the room. The room reminds me of one of the bedrooms at my Grandma’s house in good ol’ Lichfield. It has a dartboard on one wall, a pool table, a dull red carpet and dark walls hung with odd little pictures. All along one wall is a line of cupboards and draws. There is a single, largish window that looks out over the rooftops. I go to leave, and remember that I’ve left my laptop behind. I get it and go to leave again. I stop. The stairs curve downwards into a circular room. There is a light down there, casting the shadows of a group of sitting figures up on to the wall in front of me. I listen, and notice that they are playing a roleplaying game (possibly Call of Cthulhu or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay)

That’s the end of that one. I had this next one the following night after falling asleep to a Call of Cthulhu Audio Game podcast (Tatters of the King featuring the Bradford Players: http://www.yog-sothoth.com/local_links.php?catid=4 ), waking up an hour and a half later and putting my laptop away, then going back to sleep.

As with any dream, I started in the middle. Ah well. So, apparently me, Cait (desertislanddream on YouTube) and her boyfriend Dan ( on YouTube) are comparing scripts and such. Cait is showing us the location much of her script is set in: a miniature forest made by one of her relatives (I think it may have been an uncle). So, as anyone would surely be able to do, we APPEARED INSIDE THE MINIATURE FOREST, except it was all big now, conveniently. None of us question this. Me and Dan remark upon the skilled construction of the miniature, and for some reason Cait looks mildly offended.

We’re walking along a path in the gigantic miniature forest beside a sort of low dry stone wall. I can’t remember what we were discussing. A pygmy starts following us around. Suddenly, the solid ground gives way to wet swampland. Several more pygmies appear, but Pygmy One says the others are dangerous. They chase us, and I struggle to get over a small cement pyramid protruding from the water, with a pygmy scrabbling after me, gnashing it’s teeth (more ignorant racism. me and my subconscious are going to have to sit down and have a nice long chat one of these days). I wade through the water, holding a TINY LITTLE COW in one hand above the water. I deposit the TINY COW on a piece of dry land and see several more TINY COWS and also some TINY SHEEP and some TINY PIGS. It seems my subconscious is also a sucker for cute cuddly miniature versions of farm animals, as well. Great. Just great. This may have been inspired somewhat by Minecraft, even though I haven’t played it since before the Halloween update. Hm.

And that’s the end of that one. Let’s see what the next one’s like, eh? Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think I want to…

So I’m in a rented one-bedroom flat. It looks like I’m on the third floor of the building, and looking out of the window I can see down into a kind of wide alleyway. I decide to see who’s next door to my flat. It turns out it’s notreallyasuperhero (I know her from youtube and twitter). I comment on the fact that the doors into our respective rooms have mirrors mounted on the outside of them. We go downstairs into the lobby (?) and meet up with on of her friends, who it transpires is in fact Other Scott from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. We hear that there is a bar or pub somewhere on the ground floor of this building, but to get to it we have to go through a department store and one of those fancy bathroom/kitchen/etc shops. When we get to the bar, we find that it is a “Norse themed” bar. We get flagons for our beer, but the flagons are the size of thimbles.

So yeah.

Me DON’T DO, JUST………DO

Me OR SOMETHING

Sabia DON’T THINK JUST.. DINK

Me I DINK THEREFORE I BLAM

Sabia I BLAM BEFORE I DO

Edi I BLAM AND THEN I BLAM SOME MORE

Me I BLAM BEFORE I……….. BLAM

Me OR SOMETHING

Oh, Skype. You bring out the best (see: worst) in me.

On Thursday my friends Michael (capricious, mildly insane, frothing-at-the-mouth gamer, guitarist), Declan (patient completionist gamer, “The Sensible One”, generally cool guy) and I (me) availed of my mother’s generosity and snagged ourselves a lift to Mahon Point shopping centre. The goal? To see a nine o’clock showing of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, directed by Edgar Wright, at the Omniplex. Arriving roughly a half-hour too early (don’t ask me how we managed this. Timey wimey, wibbly wobbly), we got our tickets and wandered about the place. When it (eventually) came time to enter the theatre, we bought beverages and snacks (as one does at the pictures), went in and were forced to sit a mere three rows from the front. It should be noted that, combining movie trailers and regular ads, there were only around three or four ads before the feature. This impressed me far more than it should have.

Anyway, yeah, we saw the film, got out and gushed about it all the way home. It was damn good fun from start to finish. In fact I’m going to see it again this Tuesday, if all goes to plan, with my friends Patrick (funny man, film buff, partner in cinematic crime, trainee teacher) and Niamh (fellow art lover, soon-to-be psychology student, girl-wot-I-used-to-have-crush-on, “The Popular One”). Should be good.

In other news, I’m moving to a rented room in Kinsale (that’s on the coast) week after this’n. The college is the Kinsale College for Further Education, the course is TV & Film Production, the length of time is two years and the goal is entering the Multimedia course at the Cork Insitute of Technology via the scenic route. But then, nothing ever seems to go as planned, so let’s see what happens, eh? I won’t necessarily have l’Internet dans mon nouveau piece, but I should after a little juncture, so don’t be alarmed. I’m not. I swear. Really. Not worrying at all about not being able to get on the internet. Nuh-uh. Nope. Never.

Logic firmly thrown out of the window? Then let us continue.

I end up in a posh, wood-paneled hotel room. I don’t know how, but I know that I’m in Canada. Also in the hotel room are Declan, Michael, Sarah, Denise, Irene, Azeta and Marilyn. Suddenly we’re talking with the Band as they set up onstage, a little while before the concert starts. Michael is exchanging playing styles with the guitarist. I should mention now that the Band are an all-female group, and may or may-not count Sabia among their number. I’m playing random stuff on my acoustic guitar.

We’re back in the posh hotel room. A radio is on incredibly loud next door. So loud we have to shout over the noise. Me and Michael go to investigate, but we wimp out. A photo is taken of everyone in the hotel room. I shout to Declan that I should’ve brought my guitar, “‘cos I want to do some noodling”. Michael goes to say something but Sarah says angrily “Shut up guys, I’m like totally fucked right now” and leaves the room.

We head down along a road or tunnel towards the concert. Soldiers are milling around all along the road and barriers are controlling the flow of the crowd. Someone says that it’s the Chechnyan army celebrating. IN CANADA. AT A CONCERT. A CONCERT IN A ROAD TUNNEL. Of course, I am completely accepting of all of this. At the entrance to the concert, tickets are being checked. I hang back because I don’t have one. Nearby there are some supporting acts playing songs in the road without amplification, even though they’re using electric guitars, so I can hardly hear them. I ignore them and turn around to head back to the hotel. I can see daylight at the other end of the tunnel. Litter is scattered all across the road in the wake of the crowds. Marilyn catches me up and says she was turned away even though she has a ticket, which she brandishes.

And that’s that. My dreams are strange and fun.

Notice that marvelously alliterative title up there? Well, this might be a Thing For Me To Do in future to keep the blog updated occasionally. It’s kind of a dream-journal-y sort of thing in which I show you what was going through my head in the wee hours of the morning just before waking up. Be prepared for weirdness. I’ll also be putting down in parenthetical what I believe to be the source of something particular within the dream. Anyway, here goes. The following was wibbly-wobbling around in my head not two hours ago.

Just like nearly all of my dreams lately, this one took place in and around a twisted bizarro version of my house. It’s night, and everything’s lit by the moonlight. I’m with classmates, on some kind of school trip of some kind (the first odd thing, which of course I completely ignored, it being a dream. I’m not actually in school anymore). We’re apparently going to be going into caves and exploring around them a bit. There are two instructors, both seemingly in their twenties. One is an American, and is doing all the talking. The other doesn’t speak, though I seem to remember thinking he was Australian. Anyway, they tell us their nicknames and give out hard-hats, saying that we’re now “anonymous”. They put us into loose groups.

I’m talking to my friend Andy (Andy actually left school a year before me, along with my friend Patrick who is currently going to teacher training college in the next county) and he says I came “well prepared” while indicating my breast pocket. I reach in and draw out what I think is a compass, but it turns out to be a circle of metal with a piece of glass slotted roughly into it. I remark that I wore this jacket when hunting with my dad the other day, and it must be “a rifle part” (fun fact: haven’t gone out with my dad hunting for game for years. also how could that be a rifle part?). The American instructor says that the last one into the “cave” must look out the door to make sure no-one’s there and then close it quietly. My friend Niamh turns up looking awkward and asks me what my nickname is. I reply by indicating a scrap of paper with a quote on it that the American gave me. Part of it says “thistle in the wind”. She laughs.

I’m the last into the cave and so have to close the door. Behind me a see shelving on a drystone wall. Some of my personal possessions are on it, looking dusty and forgotten. My camera is there. I ponder taking it with me, but decide against it. I close the door and follow the rest through the “cave” which now appears like a dingy, cobwebbed, tumble-down house mixed with a dark cavern. I come out the front of the house, and now only my friend Patrick and the American are with me. We run across some fields, sticking to the edges. We arrive in an ornamental garden, with big white fountains and statues (could be from pictures I was looking at of Thai Buddhist monasteries). We start crossing the garden when the American spots a “guard dog”. It looks like a bulldog, but is the size of a bear (may have come from an episode of Blamimations. The one with the dirty great seal called Noah). It chases us but is stopped by a low stone wall. It’s tongue is lolling out of it’s mouth and it growls horribly after us, one paw on the wall and it’s jaws hanging open, slavering.

Then the American started to describing the goals of the different groups we’d been put into, and I woke up. Oddly, this dream contained no rats, water, giant insects, paralysis or property damage, which are recurring images in my dreams lately. Maybe next time? :s