Vickie and I spent most of the weekend in the garden. An encounter with a tree root stuffed our lawnmower, so I made a dash down to Bunnings Warehouse to buy a new one – and in keeping with the overall fitness kick right now, I picked up a push-mower. Vickie went absolutely nuts on the front and back garden beds, removing the honeysuckle that was growing on (and pushing over) the back fence and cutting our bougainvillea plant back. We filled bags of garden waste, which will probably have to wait until the next cleanup day before we can get rid of them.

Out of interest, I put together a Lacuna character sheet and play summaries for players and GMs, even though I’ll probably never run the game (yes, I’ve been bored lately). I like its premise; that the players are hunting the dark side of human nature through a dream-city of the collective unconscious. It’s one of those games that inspires ideas for campaign rather than handing plot hooks to the GM, and that’s thanks in the main to a setting that’s only semi-complete. Nonetheless, the only thing this game needs to be fully run-able is your imagination; once you start asking questions about the topics the game only touches on, you come up with all kinds of broad themes and adventure ideas.

Interestingly enough, considering Jared Sorensen wrote it, it’s not an iSystem roleplaying game. On the other hand, the iSystem winds up in Jared’s more extensive RPGs (like octaNe and InSpectres) and this one’s only fifteen pages long. Still, the system for this is appropriate for its subject matter. Overall, Lacuna is good quality for what’s essentially a free RPG, and packs a lot of meat into its fifteen pages.

On the topic of octaNe, I think our Dan has had some serious inspiration for a session. When he’ll organise it, I’m not sure, but I think it’ll be soon.

And still on the gaming front, I’m organising a get-together for my Heavy Gear: Black Talon players on the 28th of February. That “development” I mentioned a while ago? Boots has a friend who’s never played a roleplaying game before, but is keen to get involved. Apparently Boots has been doing a good job of selling Black Talon to her, because he described her as “pumped” when I called him this morning (yes, he's back from a week of excess in Byron). The 28th is going to be more of a get-to-know-you thing, whilst giving the existing players a refresher after a four-month-or-so hiatus. (Which reminds me, Boots: are you ever going to do that report or shall I just write something?) We may also guide our prospective player through the process of making a character. With any luck, we'll get that final training session out of the way in March, and then the campaign can begin in earnest...

I still have that Music in Gaming article to finish. I’ll get stuck into it this evening after dinner.