Oops, apparently I got the week numbers wrong starting at the very first post. I’ve corrected it now, sorry for the RSS noise.

Read

• continued Closer by Dennis Cooper, but only a few pages

Listened

I do listen to a lot of podcasts that I usually don’t mention, but after this week’s session of Brindlewood Bay I decided it was time to watch and listen to some actual plays (people playing RPGs and recording themselves) to get a better view of how the game could be played. I’ve watched (parts of) several versions of Dad Overboard, the introductory mystery, but there was one I wanted to mention here.

It’s Roll Plus Heart, a group of friends from the UK who make a queer podcast, which was already in my podcast feed. I started listening to their Brindlewood Bay a bit later, because they don’t do Dad Overboard, but what they do is so much better. I only hope I can get some of this style to my table, it’s good.

Played

I’ve ran The Great Brindlewood Bay Bake Off mystery on Tuesday and it was delightful. I had only three players, but two of them had brought their own bakes, which really added to the session. Besides the real-life baking, the story went well too, some remarked that it was the best session so far. I leaned more into the odd and occult part of the game and I will certainly go further with that in the next session.

On Wednesday I was a player in Neverland, which is an open campaign Peter is running over at Utrecht RPG. He’s using Cairn rules and a nice green setting book that has a lot of the world in it.

On Saturday I played my stick figure Gillian again in a second session of Under Hollow Hills. It was a busy session with five players (as opposed of the three in the first one), but we managed to get through a performance of the circus, performing some ceremonial sacrifice that was demanded of us.

Also played boardgames, both with friends (Machiavelli) and at Zuiderspel:

• Machiavelli (aka Citadels)
• a prototype of a game called Checkpoint
• 24/7 Rally, in which we all finished before the creator of the game (but hey, that was luck)
• Compile: Main 1, which I only understood in the second half of the game

Ran

It was supposed to be a deload week, but there was also a race coming up. When Runna decided to put me a bit back in pace (I didn’t make all the intervals), I just said “screw it” and chopped the 11km easy run from the week. Three times is plenty, and my legs need the recovery – unfortunately they still do.

• Monday: 6km easy run, after work, through the Houthavens, before volleyball training.
• Thursday: 5x 400 meters at 3:40/km. I’ve planned this one so that after the 2km warm up, I was at a walking/cycling path with a 15 kilometer speed limit. Right when I had made the picture I wanted to post on Strava, a police car showed up. Luckily they didn’t give me a ticket, even though I did go way over the speed limit. However, I misread the description of the training: it was TWO TIMES 5x 400, which I only noticed when my app kept suggesting to start running again. I did my best but missed the second to last interval by a few seconds.
• Sunday: City Pier City 10km in Den Haag. Despite wanting to take it easy, I couldn’t resist once we started. I ran a PR of 43:10, taking more than 3 minutes off my old one.