I really should be more active again. So here goes!

Yesterday, I played #VivaLaQueerBar by @plotbunnygames together with @Bratapfel, @curiouscat and another dear friend. It's a story game in the tradition of #ForTheQueen where we used card prompts to help us develop a queer bar and our characters within it. I've already played the game in a Roaring Twenties Berlin setting and a Shadowrun/cyberpunk future, but today, our bar was located in present day London. Also, it was a feeding ground for vampires.

Over the course of four wonderful hours, we found out that the primary team of the Broken Crown are Nigel Wilberburton (a fashion designer from Victorian times), Eugenie von Karnstein (a libertine highway woman from the Regency era), Charles Miller (modern photo model for the dictionary entry "superficial") and Nate Crandall (fledgling of the group, lawyer, masquerade keeper and *definitely* not to be called Jonathan).

Our bar was founded in, I believe, 1820 and we just had our bicentennial celebration with some of the original guests present. We found out what happened when Charles denied entry to a horribly unfashionable elder vampire, we had Nigel argue for (and Eugenie against) some necessary renovations, we saw Nate inch ever closer to a nervous breakdown trying to keep humanity from finding out about them and we finished the evening by holding a werewolf-themed party. As always with the game, we were reluctant to let our messy bunch of monsters go into the night, but fun was certainly had imagining their antics and I'd love to play again soon in another bar.

#CiferRPGMusings #CiferRecommends #TTRPG #ttrpgde

Because of @catrinity and @Ghulgrube, I watched the first episodes of #pokerfaceTvShow by #RianJohnson starring #NatashaLyonne (so many hashtags!), available for streaming via Amazon Prime.
It's a road trip case of the week mystery show where the viewer starts out knowing who did it and the main character also quickly gets an idea of who did it due to being a human lie detector, but because of her low social status and a justice system not accepting "Trust me, buddy!" as valid evidence, most of her time is spent figuring out how to prove what she already knows. I really like the characters, both Natasha Lyonne's Charlie and the people she meets - the virtuous, the villainous and the beautifully weird. And it scratches the mystery itch without being copaganda, which is always a plus in my book. I hope the series stays as strong as it started!

(CN: A dog gets hurt in the third episode.)

#CiferRecommends

Yesterday, I finished #ChantsOfSennaar, a video game about translation and the cultural exchange it makes possible. It's an adventure puzzle game inspired by the Babel myth where you piece together five different languages with their words and simple grammatical rules from context clues - so if you find a sign post pointing towards a mill with two glyphs, one of them will probably mean "way to" and the other "mill".

The game is ultimately optimistic in tone and the cultures are interesting to learn about - just what I needed these days. Also, the game is part of Steam's current sale. If you're looking for a relaxed puzzle game, give it a try!

#videogames #CiferRecommends