Down to six hundred sixteen unread Google Reader items! Here are some of the coolest of the nearly 200 I’ve read in the last couple of weeks (as well as random surfing, of course):

• How to Lower Your Heating Bills This Winter – I definitely need to try out lowering our thermostat. We keep it on 72 F in the winter, which we could probably stand to lower by 5-7 degrees if I bundled up more.
• 9 New High-Quality Free Fonts | Freebies – I really like the Spatha and My Fair Cody fonts on this list. I'm (back-burner) working on a design for charsheet.net, and the styles of those two fonts grabbed me.
• The Definition Of “Money” Is A Bit Different In Swampland… – Das Krapital – Washington City Paper – "Two BILLION dollars…I wonder how much you would have to raise taxes on the wealthiest one percent to raise two BILLION DOLLARS over the course of the fiscal year?"

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The setting: our town fell through a portal into a dark and inhospitable world. Luckily, Erathis shines upon us and keeps the darkness at bay… for now.

Except that the portal’s not closed. Little pockets of other worlds and planes are landing outside the town, chock full of baddies. Who’s going to squash these bugs?

Four adventurous types with big weapons and the gods’ backing step up to the plate.

So they’re a little breakable right now. They’ll grow into it, we’re sure. Or we’ll replace them.

Flimsy plot? Yes. It’s essentially a miniatures game, combat-only. Greg and I (playing two characters each) are going to work our way through the Monster Manuals 1 and 2 by monster level.

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Last weekend at the city-wide Geist live-action roleplaying game I play in, I let Greg twist my arm into running a plot. In a game the size of ours (10-20 people, depending on sleep schedules), there almost has to be more than one person running stories–there just isn’t enough of one game master’s attention to go around.

The trouble with me getting involved in running plots is that Greg is the main game master (or “story teller”, in the Geist system). Nepotism, anyone? Eep.

I was very, very worried about accusations of such, especially since I’ve been accused by others of using my “feminine wiles” to get judgments in my favor in tabletop games.

I guess I should just be flattered that he thought I had wiles to use. Can’t say I was, really.

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Chapter 8 of The Witches of Ming Ung, “Observation” is up, and picks up right where “Interception” left off:

“Hardi, why in all the worlds wouldn’t we tell Wilder about this?” Robert asked, waving a hand at her comm. He’d just listened to the ransom note for the second time, and was sitting at the desk with his feet propped up.

“Yet. Not tell him yet.” Hardi stood still in the middle of the room, staring at the floor with her hands tucked in her pockets. “And I… don’t know,” she said slowly.

After that deep voice had threatened to go on “vacation” for a week, Hardi had listened to the message again. And again, until the rough voice was etched into her memory. Robert had walked in on her standing as she was now, letting the file loop. She’d looked at him guiltily, but let it play for him.

Robert sat leaned back and balanced his chair on two legs. “Have you had one of your visions? Does it feature you as the heroine, saving the planet from the bad guys?”

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So. I LARP. Twice a month, I go out of my house dressed like a nurse and stand around acting like I see ghosts and have an extra-special creepy ghost of my own on my shoulder.

Yeah, so if I’m late to your Saturday afternoon picnic this summer, this is likely why.
I LARP in White Wolf‘s Geist system, which is very new in the LARP world — the worldwide game just started in March. There’s one person that has taken it upon herself to create and maintain (sorta) Excel character sheets, and the sheets for the Vampire game seem up-to-date and fully functioning. The Geist one isn’t so much, alas.

Instead of mucking with Excel files — which don’t work in OpenOffice or GDocs very well — I’m going to move this whole idea online. The idea’s in architecture/design, but the core idea is simple: a place where people can make, save, and print World of Darkness character sheets. It’s going to be tailored at LARPing in the Camarilla for the moment, including fields for member numbers and such. It’s designed so as to be easy to add other World of Darkness games — those of a certain version adhere to the same formulas, by and large.

The initial release’s functionality is simple, too. Folks create an account in a very slim process — username and password, with a (re)CAPTCHA to cut down on spammage. When you create a character sheet, you pick which game you’re playing. Initally, that’ll be base World of Darkness or Geist.

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