Mental note, do not read playtest forums right before heading to bed. I made that mistake tonight and have thus utterly failed to get to sleep. It’s still hot here, so that didn’t help either. I read for a half an hour (Jim Dunnigan’s incredibly interesting Dirty Little Secrets of World War II) and then lay there for an hour trying to get to sleep. Instead I just kept thinking about rules I need to add, tweak, throw out, or revise, sections I need to flesh out, examples I needed to write, and questions I needed to answer. Then I had to wonder how much I could get done before GenCon and how much during GenCon (probably not much, but I’m going to bring my laptop anyway). I guess it started earlier, because Tuesday is game night. We are, of course, playtesting WFRP and we had a good session that highlighted a number of areas for me to look at closely. Afterwards, I thought it’d be a good idea to see if any of the playtesters had encountered similar issues. The result: I am thoroughly awake.

The game was pretty funny. Nik decided it’d be cooler to play outside, so she brought out my minis battle board from the garage and laid it on top of a blanket. We sat around it on the lawn, drinks in hand. We had one light run out from the garage, but as it got later that didn’t provide enough illumination. Nik dug out a bunch of small candles and placed them around the battle map. It made the whole thing look like a low grade Satantic ritual, which we found pretty amusing in light of the accusations leveled at roleplaying games over the years. Completing the scene was Evan’s infant daughter Zoey, who was tonight’s special guest. Evil RPG? Check. Ritual candles? Check. Innocent child? Check. Guess we really blew an opportunity to please the Dark Master by being social and having fun instead. We were able to blame all of Zoey’s crying on Chaos though. It’s a new maxim: Chaos makes the baby Zoey cry.

Photo at Nikchick.com