Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

I worked like a monkey today (yesterday, technically) to get the drawing I was working on done, so that I could go swimming with Y and A. (I’m not using those acronyms to anonymize Yvonne and Anghold. I’ve seen that on other blogs and it’s stupid. I’m doing it here because I was too lazy to type out their full names and if you keep reading you would see exactly who I went swimming with. Anyway that is all Pepsi under the bridge now.) While I worked I watched the first 10 or so episodes of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons. I thought it might be really fun to run a campaign where the characters recreate the series. I wouldn’t make the players be Hank and Eric and Sheila and all the rest - I’d let them be any modern day characters of any age, gender, etc. They could even play themselves. It doesn’t matter who they are - the commonality is that they go through the D&D ride at the carnival in “our world” and end up trapped in the D&D realm. I would assign them their character classes (after a short discussion with the players about what classes they definitely did not want to play) and give them their fantastic weapons. They would go up against Venger and Tiamat but there would be no Uni. There probably would be some other NPC (and maybe it would be a pet - but not Uni). I wouldn’t necessarily strictly follow each episode’s story exactly, but the gist of it would be intact, and the best part is, after you’ve played the scenario we could all watch the episode it was based on and compare!

The pitfalls include a few notable shortcomings in the writing of the series. For example - if Sheila has the cloak that makes her invisible, why would she ever take it off during combat? She does that all the time in the cartoon. Truth is - I wouldn’t use the same weapons. I think I would keep Presto’s magic hat and throw out the rest. That’s where the Artifacts of the Ages book from Green Ronin would come in handy. And I would probably use Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed rules as well (nerds).

I think that would be a lot of fun. Too bad there’s no room to fit it into my schedule. I’m already being badgered to pick up the Freeport campaign that has been put on hold in favour of the World Wildlife Federation of Justice game.

Well - sun’s coming up. Time to go to bed. Janet’s probably just getting up about now. Pray for her and lost computer files.

Posting photos…

What’s not Ok
———
Extreme closeups of any kind
Pets & Cars (for fuck’s sake)
Baby / Childhood photos
ANY PHOTO that doesn’t include you.
Cartoons, even ones that look like you.
Nudity
Penises
Vaginae
Drawings and Paintings (even of yourself)
Famous people
Copyrighted images
People other than yourself
Closeups of tattoos or piercings
Funny internet photos

I only violated two of those rules.

Ursula, I don’t hate you - I just forgot to add you to one of my many email lists. That has been remedied.

Anghold, Yvonne and I played poker tonight after a session of swimming. They told me that bluffing wasn’t my forte but I will retort with the following statement - I could do that but I don’t want to.

Now here are the rules for Are You A Werewolf? There are many different variants. The one I played had no seers but had a couple of ‘hunters.’

Materials: Use plain playing cards. You’ll need two cards that say “Werewolf” (Aces) plus one that says “Seer” (Jack) and up to twelve that say “Villager” (numbered cards)

Instructions: Assemble a village of 8-15 people. Most players will be ordinary villagers, but two will secretly be hungry werewolves. A third player will also be a mystic seer who learns secrets during the night. Lastly, a moderator is needed.

Setup: Shuffle together both werewolf cards, the seer card, and enough villager cards so that there is one card for everybody. If no one takes the moderator card voluntarily, shuffle it in as well (Joker). Deal a card to each player, face down. Everyone secretly looks at their card, and may not reveal it until they are killed.

Night: During the night, the werewolves will kill someone, and the Seer will learn the truth about one player. The moderator must lead the villagers through the events of the night. It happens this way: everyone closes their eyes. The moderator tells the werewolves to open their eyes. The werewolves see eachother and decide who to eat (by pointing to one of the others). Then the werewolves close their eyes and in some way the seer or the hunter finds out the nature of just one of the villagers (I forget how this works exactly).

Day: The moderator says morning has come and everyone opens their eyes. He announces who doesn’t wake up because he’s been killed. Then the villagers all have to decide who they think is a werewolf and their villager of choice is lynched. Once a majority agrees to lynch someone, the lynched player shows his or her card and says nothing for the rest of the game.

Game Over: Repeat night and day until the werewolves are dead, or the number of werewolves and villagers is equal, in which case the werewolves overrun the villagers, killing them off openly. All players still alive at the end of the game are the winners.

So sometimes, the two werewolves will be lynched and the villagers will win. Rarer, I believe, is that one or both of the werewolves survive mob justice and they win. The werewolves are also villagers of course, so they get a say in who gets lynched, but they don’t want to say anything that would make them suspect! It’s a delicate game of bluff and bait.

Anyway, my point is that the second and last time I played the game (at Theo’s) I was a werewolf and the only surviving player of the game. I bluffed ‘em all out!

Marlo cut my hair last night and we watched Ocean’s Eleven (the remake). Yvonne and I went out for a walk in the afternoon and watched the game of cricket that happens out in uh…Douglas? Park every Sunday. We couldn’t figure out the rules just by watching, but we came to the conclusion that the players were all Indian/South Asian. We longed for a frisbee.