purplecat

Not, apparently, having learned my lesson last year, I agreed to help run the Summerfest bar again this year. In fact I agreed to get back from Germany late Friday and set off for Summerfest early Saturday.

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Somehow king_pellinor managed to persuade me that I wanted to help run the Summerfest bar this year. He also similarly convinced ladyofastolat, though since she's married to him I suppose she has some excuse for the folly. Some years ago he persuaded chainmailmaiden that she wanted to nothing more with her summer bank holiday weekend than cook for live roleplayers - she is clearly a lost cause.

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B. and I have not played Fools and Heroes since we discovered I was expecting G. At the time I was playing a front line fighter and though, in theory, you shouldn't receive any blows hard enough to endanger a baby, you'd want to warn people and somehow saying "by the way, the mercenary at point is pregnant", to the monster team seemed a little unfair. Summerfest, however, was being hosted only about an hour from G.'s cousins and G. loves staying there so the time seemed ripe to take it up again. I was inordinately excited about this.

I had, it must be said, an excellent time. The plot, for what its worth (and it was better than many) involved invading Iraq (*cough* *cough* no, sorry Nerese/Khonn) because we didn't like their religion and it all going horribly wrong. Success was to be measured by the extent to which we achieved an orderly retreat. Probably fortunately the satiric overtone was either lost, or ignored, by most of the players. B. and I ended up on an adventure with lots of Demonologists who, typically, spent a lot of time in a secret huddle. They were very good at blasting away demons but B. felt they were pretty useless at solving the riddles we were posed and since these riddles were all aimed at demonologists the rest of us had little to do except complain about them. I seem to have got better at fighting, either that or I've just learned to fight more tactically so I wait for the opponent to attack and then just go for whatever is exposed or, better still, flank them (this means attacking from behind). I'm also in favour of finding someone competant and shouty and then doing what they say because a) that way you don't have to think much, b) where it all goes wrong is nearly always when everyone thinks they know better than the next man. king_pellinor proved an exemplary competent shouty person and as added boneses he bought my character a long sword, a short sword, a studded heavy leather tunic, greaves and braces and a heavy (but not studded) leather hat (*pssst* Pellinor, that's your list for character returns); and ran the bar. We were in the battle together guarding a candle (one of three) and ours only went out once due, obviously, to king_pellinor's leadership skills.

B. actually bought himself a spear so I deduce he also enjoyed himself. I was a bit worried about this. Two days before he had suggested I go alone while he finished the kitchen floor. Since I had foolishly arranged to go to Edinburgh the day before I had to entrust all the packing to him - hence on Friday evening I found we had no food, no chairs and B. had no armour (I did at least pack my kit so I had plenty of leather armour. I had decided to leave my plate mail behind since my character couldn't afford it and its both heavy and mildy rusty). Anyway he bought a spear which suggests long term plans.

The most bizarre thing about Summerfest was the way random people kept shouting "Louise!" and giving me big hugs while Bill looked on blankly. "Who was that?" he would ask. "Oh! they were playing the time before the last time I played F&H". It was a kind of early 90s reunion fest: all that was missing were the Hardy twins, Fiona and a spider demon made from a tent frame.