By now, in some parallel universe where Covid doesn’t exist, I’m married.
May was supposed to begin with my wedding, continue with a mini-moon, and end with the beginning of an amazing summer. Instead, it’s been another month of lockdown.
It’s not been quiet, oh no. In fact, I’ve been wondering how I get anything done when I have places to go and people to see. Here’s what I got up to…
Quick wedding update
Let’s start with this. The 3rd of May was supposed to be my wedding day. Instead, it looked a little bit like this.
After the day itself, I spent most of the rest of the month not thinking about it. But we did manage to book our celebrant for next May. We’ve decided to go with a registry office ceremony as soon as possible, but we still want to keep the ceremony element of the big day, so we set about finding a celebrant that matched with our personalities and could bring the right balance of humour and gravitas to the day. Excitedly, we found one – and he was even watching an episode of Doctor Who immediately after the call with us!
Games I played
Megagames
I decided to give virtual Den of Wolves another go, with a run at Con of Champions by American group Splintered Realities. They did some super cool stuff with their technology to really automate some of the tricky tech aspects of the online experience, while leaving enough confusion in there that you never knew exactly where the Wolves were.
I was President of the Survivor Fleet and channeling strong Laura Roslin vibes throughout.
The Press were convinced I was a Wolf, but the real achievement we had was that we managed to brig all three Wolves! Unfortunately this was a) after they’d pretty much ruined the fleet and b) a complete fluke based on someone framing someone to be a Wolf, who turned out to ACTUALLY be a Wolf!
And on the last Saturday of May I took part in True North’s Megagame Design Symposium. I was the first of four speakers on the day, presenting on the topic of “Megagames in 2030”. The full video will be up later this week.
The Symposium also featured design breakout sessions that really helped me progress my ideas for Trope Online, and the day finished with an Open Forum for female and non-binary megagamers. This has excitingly turned into a permanent Discord server, so if you’re a woman or non-binary person in the megagaming sphere, come join in!
Board games
ARKHAM! As you might have spotted above, we played Arkham Horror LCG on our not-wedding day. In fact, we bought a whole new campaign in honour of the day.
Unfortunately, the campaign is The Forgotten Age, which is generally considered in the AHLCG circles to be one of the worst campaigns. We got up to finishing scenario five, but Tim had taken four mental trauma and we decided to bail. We’re going to go back through it again, but with Ursula and Finn rather than Leo and Finn.
We also did a spot of Arkham Horror on Tabletop Simulator with our friends in Japan, as well as starting another run through Hogwarts Battle. This is a really fun Harry Potter themed deck-building coop game that takes you through all seven years of Harry and co attending Hogwarts. It’s a pretty good game but later scenarios do start to drag as you just add all the new cards in as you progress through the years. But most importantly, this time I got to play Hermione!
I’m continuing to play Pandemic Legacy Season One over Skype, and we’ve completed June now. Unfortunately Chennai has started collapsing. We decided to step back to playing fortnightly which means I have a bit more time to play other games.
One of those other games is Holding On: The Trouble Life of Billy Kerr. You are playing cooperatively as staff in a hospice treating a man who had a heart attack. This is a bit of an odd cross between a worker placement game (to keep Billy alive) and a mystery solving game (to work out why he’s so troubled). We’ve only done the first two scenarios so far (again, fortnightly over the internet) so we’re still in the learning phase of the game, but it’s promising to be pretty interesting as we get into the nitty gritty of what happened in Billy’s life.
And I’ve finally managed to play some online Codenames! I fully recommend this website, and it’s a great casual game to play at a distance.
Escape rooms, immersive events and roleplay
A friend of mine is in the final stages of designing a play-at-home mystery box – so naturally he turned to me to playtest it! We were tasked with “speed testing” the game, which meant we went through it as rapidly as possible rather than lingering and debating for hours. It was a super fun experience and I’m pretty excited to see his game on the shelves!
Last month I managed to get back into CosyKiller, which I blogged about previously. The story from this engaging mystery subscription box is continuing to get more and more intriguing – and I’m not even halfway through yet!
And a friend is running a “West Marches” style D&D game which I’ve statted up my first-ever D&D character for (except for the one-shot I did a couple of months ago). I haven’t statted a roleplay character since about 2013, so this was a blast from the past for me, and I had a great time learning about the sysyem and brainstorming character ideas with another friend. My character Coti is a half-elf courtier whose family were slaughtered (who by? who knows!) and was saved by archfey Titania who gave her warlock powers. So excited to start playing that campaign sometime this month!
TV shows, films, music, etc
I’VE SEEN STAR WARS!
Okay this is a slight exaggeration because I literally went to Secret Cinema’s Star Wars event (which I loved so much it inspired me to go to their Moulin Rouge event). I watched Episode IV before I went, V at the event and VI afterwards. But I barely remember what happened in them, beyond the pop culture general knowledge.
But thanks to Disney+, we sat down and watched them all, in chronological order, including Solo and Rogue One (still have the most recent three to go). And honestly. I prefer the prequels #fiteme
Part of the reason I decided to watch Star Wars is because I decided to watch/rewatch the entirety of Starkid’s musical catalogue in order – which meant I needed to watch Star Wars before I got to Ani. I’ve still got that on the list obviously, but it was great to go back and watch classics like Twisted, Holy Musical B@man and A Very Potter Musical!
And also on the Disney+ front, I watched the new Aladdin! It’s a really good remake, giving Jasmine more of a role and closing some of the plot holes from the original. And Will Smith did a damn good job stepping into the humongous shoes left by Robin Williams.
I’ve been binging Doctor Who, starting with Nine and Rose, and I’m up to season 4. I also took a detour to watch Torchwood, which was a massive trip down memory lane, although I the characters’ behaviour rang more true to me at 16 than it does now, even though they’re in their 20s and 30s.
Tim and I have recently started watching Space Force, taking a break from our ongoing watches of Suits and Battlestar Galactica. It’s a really funny show, poking fun at Trump despite him not having appeared on camera once (yet, at least).
Aaaand May meant Eurovision! Naturally the show itself didn’t take place, due to Covid, but the show they put on instead was a good watch. The recap show prior to it was total laughs as well.
Other stuff I’ll remember
Towards the end of May, I received a letter telling me to check my shielding status, and after filling in a questionnaire and speaking to some NHS staff (IBD nurse, MS nurse and my GP), it’s been determined that I no longer have to shield. I celebrated by LEAVING THE HOUSE.
I’m still clinically vulnerable and advised to stay home as much as possible. But since work isn’t going back into the office any time soon, and all the events are cancelled anyway, it’s not too awful. I can now nip outside for some fresh air, or take a short trip to Roundhay Park for a walk. I’m not heading into a shop anytime soon, mind you, and we’re looking into getting our first car (not that I can drive yet).
The protests, unrest and conversations that are currently taking place regarding race and racism have had a massive impact on me over the past week or so. It’s really made me take a hard look at myself – what I was doing and not doing, what unconscious biases I had, and how I was contributing to racism by not being aware enough or proactive enough. I feel like something has changed: whether in the world or in me, I’m not sure. But I am determined to use whatever position and power I have to elevate Black voices.
I’ve started by looking for some Black gamers to follow on my socials (so if you have any suggestions let me know), and I’ve also started a conversation in the aforementioned “women and non-binary megagamers” Discord about how we can use our combined will and ideas to make megagaming a more accessible space for people of colour.
I find it uncomfortable to talk about race – but the people benefiting from that are same people as those who propagate racism. It’s not a good enough excuse to not do it, though I ask for your patience as I’ll probably end up making some mistakes along the way.
The upcoming month
June is pretty quiet currently. I’m hoping to get to see my parents this weekend, for the first time since lockdown, as well as my best friend in a few weeks’ time.
I’ll be starting that D&D game I mentioned, a friend is running a murder mystery, and I’m hoping to FINALLY try some more online / print-at-home escape rooms. They’ve kind of been on the backburner because of Arkham Horror.
But most of all, I’m hoping to get to book my wedding ceremony. I am so over being a fiancee.