Freelancing

And now for the text-heavy blogging you've come to expect from me.

Valentine's Day is tradationally a day for boyfriends-- for girlfriends-- for spouses-- for couples -- for love. And while I am more-or-less happily single, I love Freelancer*.  I love D&D style, pen-and-paper RPGs. I love the interaction and play of half a dozen people coordinating and thinking through danger. And I love being nerdy and having other nerds to be with.

So, yesterday despite sharing the date with Valentine's Day, we were supposed to play Freelancer. And as I implyed above this involves getting half a dozen people together for several hours. This, however, didn't happen. When playing we can't always get all the players, generally we will play with anywhere from 3-8 players (and 1 GM). The holiday prevented us from being able get the game started with a significant lack of people and getting stuck spending a good deal of time trying to name our ship. Completely changing gears we went out for tacos, and instead switched to video games. And spent the rest of the evening happily engaged by Starcraft.

Not the ideal, nor traditional Valentine's... but you could do a lot worse. And in the sum of the whole weekend I was able to see a lot of friends, debut a Freelancer character sheet, and roam the galaxy a little.


*Freelancer: A pen-and-paper role playing game (RPG) or tabletop RPG set in a dystopian, Sci Fi universe. The gameplay is similar to D&D and has the participants describe their character's actions through speech and outwit situations presented. The ingame results of the player actions are decided by a system of rules and, to create a sense of randomness and realism, dice rolls. The narration of the story is supplies by the Galaxy Master (GM) who creates the setting, drama, and conflict for the characters and voices the enemies and non-playered characters (NPC). Leading to virtually unlimited outcomes and scenarios.