Holiday Part 1

So off to Dublin for a few days as the first part of my two weeks of holiday, back on Thursday. We're leaving valient_starr to guard the place, and a bunch of instructions to help keep it nice for when we get back. I've been to Dublin once before, but as it was in my first year of university with the halls residents it wasn't what you call touristy. I'm slightly amused we're going somewhere my not very well travelled self has been to before, because the very well travelled purplegirl23 hasn't been there yet. I think I'm possibly beginning to get excited now; I hate travelling (love flying though) and usually spend the fortnight before any sort of major trip dreading it. At least I know it's an expected state of mind and pay it the appropriately little heed.

Life wise more time would be nice, as would more money. Currently feel there is too much I'd like to do or need to do and not quite enough time or money to do it all - though more there's not enough money extra in order to save up for necessary things* later at a reasonable pace. Still hopefully that'll improve as I get better at organising my time. The project at work is finally beginning to get busy for my team so I've cunningly taken the time of work, as has my boss leaving just one person on the team for the next two weeks. Depending on how things go I could be in Bath till February on this project, and I'm inclined to try and get on the eventual support team for it as it ought to guarantee my time in Bath for a while after that.

*Like on the house for example the roof, the windows, the garage and the back porch off the top of my head.

House exists, I've acquired the number of a decorator who I then completely failed to call today which means we might get the hallway painting beaten at last. This would be nice as it's the last hurdle really before we can finally organising house warmings. Plus the areas of walls where the paint decided it much preferred sticking to the roller than the plaster are beginning to depress me when I see them

Finally managed to get back into larping recently. My plan of saying I'd GM two games worked well as it ensured I went a whole three times in May which may well equal or exceed how many larps I made last year in total (I can't remember). As ever my games seemed to be equally enjoyed by both players and monsters. Though as ever they also ran long. I think I'm just going to have to accept that the things that give me such a good reputation as a GM (which I believe based upon feedback I deserve) are the very things that lead to longer games. Still maybe there's a way to produce interesting games with relatively complex plots, reactive worlds, real party choice and a variety of combat and role play encounters and not have them need 7 hours minimum to complete. At the very least I can certainly make more efficient use of the terrain to minimise travel time which definitely adds time to my games. I'm planning to find the time to write a GMing 101 guide soon (much like xanthipe's scouting guide), so all being well I'll learn some things in the process.

I've also had the foundations of a low level campaign idea forming. Though I need to find some people to bounce it off of, as I'm worried it's based on attempt to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist. Still it is a worrying development, because well considering that my average game with stats runs 3-5k words* and my 36 hour without stats was somewhere around the 17k word mark I get the feeling a low level campaign might be similar in size to a fantasy novel...