On Friday we tried going to the Red Sparowes concert at La Sala Rossa.

Unfortunately, the venue was just... bad. Too cramped and the sound was terrible. Took forever for the first band to get set up and on stage, too, and then the crowd that came to see them got way too rowdy (really, a mosh pit in a room as big as an attic?)

Their music just sounded like a whole lot of aggro noise. The instruments just blended together, due to bad mix and acoustics. I couldn't really get into it at all. Heck, I can't even remember what the band was called!

My ankles were suffering (this was no sitting concert), too. So by the time Red Sparowes started setting up, I was really in a sour mood, and Jon was disappointed at the bad acoustics. So we just left without even seeing the headlining band. Pretty much a waste of money, unfortunately. :(

We did have a good time before that though. We went to the mall, had some yummy Indian food for lunch, and did some window shopping for birthday presents (my birthday is in four days! ack! and my mom's is... today! double ack!)

I found out that Arms-Commander, the newest Recluce novel, is out in hardbound. I'm really excited for this particular book because it's the first Recluce book told from the point of view of a woman. And it's a woman of Westwind, which is a nation where women are the dominant sex. Women of Westwind are trained to fight and men have lesser positions as consorts.

Not that I'm a feminist of any extreme, of course. I'm for equal rights, not female supremacy! I just happen to be huge fan of Westwind and the characters from the Fall of Angels / The Chaos Balance time period, and Arms-Commander starts up 10 years after the events of The Chaos Balance. It's going to be so awesome to revisit that era and see how things unfolded afterward from the perspective of the women that Nylan left behind when he disagreed with the ways of the Marshal, Ryba.

I realized way after the fact that Archana was actually strongly inspired by the women of Westwind. Particularly Ryba, though Archana eventually deviated from that somewhat when I started roleplaying her interest in Seventeen. Archana is cold and dutiful to a point, but she won't betray a person's trust for the sake of a greater vision. (Which is pretty much what Ryba did to Nylan, eventually triggering his depature.)

Sometimes I really miss playing Archana, but at this point I think it's more likely I'll write her into a story than RP her again. I've got my novel idea concerning her burning a hole in the back of my mind, along with my Reborn Again continuation (when will this happen? Ugh... I don't know at this point, this year looks like it's going to be pretty full!)

Either that or I'll run a game I play Archana in, but that still isn't quite the same. GMing means less time to focus on RPing one specific character.

And going back to the game I made her for is out of the question. I've pretty much burned my bridges with Wardragon and all but a couple people I ever RPed with back when it was still running. I had an urge at one point to send an email to Grey, after talking to Kraken about a few things and realizing there were some misunderstandings remaining. But I ended up procrastinating to the point I just gave up on writing it. :(

I couldn't figure out what to say, really. I mean, I really had nothing against Grey, all things considered. I was upset at the time about his participation (or lack of it) in rpol, but that was mainly because I had built up this expectation in myself that he'd put as much effort into my games as I did into his. A couple things broke this expectation and led to my disappointment, but neither are his fault. It's really just a lack of compatibility in playstyle.

There was one other issue that's even harder to resolve than incompatibility, though. The reason I ultimately left that group altogether was because I knew it was unresolvable.

Anyway, that was quite the tangent! Let me go over the rest of the weekend quickly.

Saturday was pretty much me getting all irrationally pissed because I thought Dragonrealms obligations would get in the way of my NWN2 gaming night. I had already given it up on Friday for a bad concert, so I got really upset about it and kinda ragequit for a while, but mostly because I was too angry to really explain myself well at the time.

It turns out that the DR thing didn't end up happening, so I was kind of mad for nothing. Of course, I found this out after the fact; I had already decided I'd take a DR break that evening. Either way, the end result is that I got to play with Clark, Jim and Jon!

We're really getting into Neverwinter Nights 2. I can't remember the last time we stayed up till 2 am gaming, so yeah, it was really engrossing! There was a part we played that night where we had to try to fetch some documents from a warehouse. Even with the four of us and 3 NPCs, we were totally getting owned in there by the huge groups of thugs inside ganging up with sneak attacks on us. So we kept reloading and reloading for an hour or two till we managed to split up the thugs enough that we could defeat them.

One thing that's such a pleasure about playing games like NWN2 is that they're not just straightforward killing sprees. There's strategy involved in surviving and completing our objectives. So charging in with swords swinging and spells blazing doesn't always work! Fortunately, we're so used to gaming with each other that formulating a plan together, splitting up tasks and taking on cooperative roles are all pretty much natural for us. And I LOVE cooperative play. It's so nice that we fall into such complementary roles!

So at the end of Saturday night, Tezima got her 5th Rogue level. After this I'm gonna have her start on her 5 Wizard levels before I make her an Arcane Trickster. I am kind of iffy about doing it... I already took a xp hit from being a Tiefling and now will be dividing my effectiveness as both a Rogue and a Wizard until I can get my prestige class. :( But, Arcane Trickster looks like it'll be fun! So I hope I can weather the awkward multiclassing period and not get discouraged.

Also, it'd make Neeshka more useful if Tezima's not primarily a Rogue, since then she can do all the Rogue-y stuff for us and I'll feel like less of an overlap (darnit, didn't think there'd be a Tiefling Rogue NPC!)

Saturday came and went, and on Sunday, I was still feeling miserable about some of the disappointments and frustrations of Friday and Saturday. Playing NWN2 was the highlight, but I still had some things to deal with, like talking to people about why I was so upset on Sat! That didn't take too long to resolve, though, and I spent the rest of my day playing Dragonrealms.

I've been training Talliska almost non-stop when I'm playing DR, unless I have some Order duties to attend to. Still seems like backtraining takes forever, though. I'm not good enough at keeping it up consistently, I guess. (I'm training heavy edged, longbow and short bow, and at the time of this writing still have 72 ranks to go. Wah!) That and I don't really find the game fun when I'm doing nothing but training. I want to socialize, too!

Sunday night I ended up going with a few folks to a DR trader auction, which was pretty fun, though also frustrating. I kept getting outbid on things I wanted! I had more than enough money, but was just too much of a cheapskate to pay the exorbitant amounts some people were dropping. I've gotten much better deals bulk buying items from people directly. Though I DID manage to score a nice looking herb case, some gifts for others and also bought a few cloaks from one of the other auction goers.

The other thing that occupied my Sunday evening/night was Livestream. Now and then Lumi's been setting up a channel so people can chat with her and listen to music she likes while she works on some art pieces. I finally hopped in for the first time to check out her art and music and chat with people she knows. It was lots of fun!! And honestly, as much as I love Dragonrealms, it was nice to talk to folks that aren't playing DR, and share some of my other tastes in games.

I regret falling out of touch with Lumi and some of my other friends in these past several months. So I'm gonna do something about that now that the rest of my online life is starting to settle down, I think!

I'm happy I took the time to finish this journal post. Need to get back into the habit of blogging again. I've gone from posting multiple times a day to once every one or two weeks! It makes sense that I'd write here less, since I've got so many other writing outlets, but there's still plenty I could be writing about... if I wasn't so lazy about doing it.

But for now it is time to nap. The sun's up! Aiiieee, it burns!