schneefink

Prologue: On the day before I left for Scotland I had my usual pre-travel packing anxiety problems, so I decided to go for a walk, enjoy the sunshine and oxygen and clear my head. Five minutes after I sat down on a bench near the top of the hill sudden very heavy rain started, and by the time I had run down the hill to find some shelter under some trees my thin beach dress was completely soaked through. I hid from the rain together with three other people who had also been surprised and I joked about the rain preparing me for my Scotland trip, so they told me about their wonderful Scotland trip a few years ago until the rain had finally let off.
I think it's funny that that was worse rain than I experienced during my entire vacation in Scotland xD


The first thing I saw at Glasgow airport was a big Worldcon banner, that was nice and immediately made me feel welcome. Then I found out my luggage was left behind at my layover stop in Germany and had to figure that out, that was less fun.
I didn't trust the delivery service so late in the evening I made my way back to the airport when my luggage was supposed to arrive, and that was late too so by the time I made it back to the city with my luggage it was 1am and no buses were going anymore. I could have called a taxi but it was only a half-hour walk. Odd (almost) first impression to have of a city though.

( Glasgow )


And then: Worldcon! \o/
I had such a fantastic time. ( Worldcon overview )
I'll write the notes about the panels later, for now some notes about the games. I played three games this time and all of them were a lot of fun, with great GMs and good groups. ( Blood on the Clocktower, Victorian Mars, Fallout )

That was Worldcon! LB arrived on Monday night and we met up on Tuesday morning to start our Scotland travel, but that will go in a separate post.
Sadly it looks like it might not be until 2029 that Worldcon is in Europe again (Dublin plans to apply, according to the website.) But in the meantime there will be other conventions in Europe, maybe I will check those out one day.

I went running today! Despite the light rain, even, I'm proud of myself :)

It would have been nicer yesterday when it was sunny, but in the morning I was too lazy and then it was cat TTRPG time. It was a great session. We successfully pulled of "five cats in a trenchcoat uniform"! We wanted to go through a door that was guarded by the ghost of a city watch officer who was waiting to be relieved from his post by the next shift and didn't realize the skeleton lying across the room from him was his own. After failing to persuade him otherwise we helpfully offered to remove the dead body, dragged it around the corner and then put on the armor & uniform: one cat for each leg, two cats for the upper body with each one "controlling" one arm, and one cat under the helmet as the head. It worked xDDD
Later in the session we fought an entire swarm of rats, but our GM rolled so badly that we barely took any damage at all.

I'm enjoying the system of DSK. Instead of reaching new levels you get adventure points after each finished adventure that you can use to level up specific skills, which makes more sense, and because you roll 2D20 for each skill check the result distribution is a curve, which also makes more sense.
I play a ranged fighter and imo they're at a disadvantage compared to melee fighters: I have a longer range, obviously, and I can ignore enemies' defense (not their armor though), but in return not only do I not have defense myself but I can also only attack every second round (and I had to take a specific "feat" so it's not every third), and I usually do as much or less damage than a melee fighter with a two-handed weapon in one round. If I can stay out of range of melee-fighting enemies I'm good, if not I'm in danger quickly. I can level up some skills to do more damage and I most likely will, but I'm a bit annoyed that I have to use more points for that instead of for other things. Fortunately our GM seems to realize that too and recently he gave me a slightly more powerful bow, and he's open to doing more balancing adjustments when necessary, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm really looking forward to the next sessions! Our larger quest right now is gathering information about the "Child of Rats," a rat that is rumored to also have "awakened" like so many cats have and has gained sentience, and apparently also powerful magic. We've already encountered large rats wearing armor, which is very worrying. Unfortunately most cats think the Child of Rats is something some cats made up while high, so it's fallen to us to find out more about the threat... We've explored several dangerous but fun cellars and dungeons so far and I'm sure there'll be many more.