I have the unfortunate news that – despite my efforts to listen to my body – I seem to have injured myself. Of most running injuries I know how they feel, but this one is new again, which is probably why it snug up on me. I still have hopes it's a minor one.

This week also features a bit of a rant about an RPG that went into a direction I did not expect.

Watched

• rewatched Jurassic Park (1993)

Read

• continued The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 3)
• continued Autisms by Darian Leader

Played

On Monday, I played Alice is Missing at our special Alice is Missing evening at the Reroll Works board game shop. Usually we play on Tuesdays (as we did the day after), but since we can never play Alice is Missing on those normal evenings (it requires total silence in the room) we decided to run a special evening of it. We had three simultaneous tables, all using the same 90 minute timer, but each on their own chat group (because yes, you play this through your phone). Couldn't you have played this from home, remotely? Sure, but there is something special about being in a room with 13 other players, the lights dimmed and candles on.

On Tuesday, I played the sixteenth episode of my Mausritter campaign, the first one after the summer break. We're back! I wasn't able to prepare all the cool stuff I wanted, but hey, a break is a break. I am very glad I had the preparation I did have, as it did fit the plans of the party, and now I finally shared the story of what happened with the pigeons – a bit.

On Saturday, I played “Thirsty Sword Lesbians” at Main Quest Con in Rijswijk. It was the first time I played any RPG at a convention – I usually just stand there to scared to join a table. But after visiting a few of these conferences I know that the market alone cannot really entertain me for more than an hour anymore, so I signed up to a game I knew.

Unfortunately, we did not really play Thirsty Sword Lesbians. I had forgotten, but I heard a lot of horror stories about con-games on podcasts, and this turned out to be one. Well, the genre, that is: while I was still trying to figure out how to make my character work within the world the GM was describing, more and more clues were dropped that this was in fact a horror mystery. I only realized this fully when the GM made a bold move and swapped my character, stating I was now this specific NPC. That was the moment I felt no longer guilty about not making any of my playbook moves: apparently I was in an interactive story without much agency.

A note to self: the open table policy is there, even if the GM did not say so. It was a valuable learning experience about needing safety tools – I got a bit triggered by a bully-scene but not too badly – but it was certainly not Thirsty Sword Lesbians: there was no lesbian mentioned at all (only one married gay man with plans to adopt an Asian girl, which I should have X-carded), there was also no sword mentioned (we were at a high school reunion after all), there was no thirst (partly that's on us players, as our first action was to get a drink) and we did not read or resolve any move from the game (“oh yea, I can't find it, please just roll +Wit”).

Most of all I'm just feeling a bit betrayed because I signed up for improvised story telling with Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and I got railroaded horror mystery without safety tools. My lesson: communicate the game you want to play, don't just start playing it.

Ran

On Monday I ran 12.5km easy, which was not intended at a long run. After I finished I was a bit surprised at how tired I was, but then it dawned on me that 12.5km is not really a short distance, it only looked short because it was dwarfed by the 30km and 34km long runs on the schedule.

On Wednesday I had some structured workout planned with 5 times a faster kilometer, but after the 2km warming up I decided in the first interval that it was not going to happen: my calf muscle was not just complaining, but actually hurting. Unfortunately there was no public transport that day, so I had to walk-run 2.5km back again, making this a 5km easy.

On Thursday I had an easy 9km on the schedule, but I ran 100 meters and aborted it. Like I said: this is not just soreness, this is pain, and I should not ignore this any more than I already had been.

The 34km long run on Saturday was therefore cancelled. At the time of writing I think we are back to soreness, but I also am experienced enough to know that might be wishful thinking. Let's hope a bit more rest will save it.

Oops, it's Wednesday already! I guess that's because of my crazy Monday and Tuesday, but I write about that next week.

This was a week of finding my rhythm back, trying to focus a bit more on getting to bed early and getting to the office in time, so that I don't have to stay too long after. I like September for that: the random public holidays are over, people get back from their travels, it just starts to rain and everything is boring and predictable again.

Read

• continued The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 3)
• started Autisms by Darian Leader

I found Autisms at a local bookstore and was like: oh sure, another book about autism, in that form factor, I like that. But my second thought was: is it new though? I am not really interested in a book from the 90s, as our understanding of autism has changed so much since then, but it said it was from 2026, so I bought it. At home I researched the book a bit more and it turned out it had a release date of 3 September 2026, which at that point in time was five days from there. Anyway, it's a nice non-fiction read with short chapters to just pick up in between things.

Played

On Tuesday I played Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast again, and I was surprised to learn that this was the seventh time already. Time goes fast in that way. This was an interesting session, for a friend who usually runs the D&D table finally got a spot at my table, but then he turned out to be the only one, as all the other players had cancelled. Yazaba's B&B, however, does hold up perfectly as a two-player game: we played the chapter After Dinner with Parish and Gertrude and it was very intimate and great.

Halfway the evening one other player did show up, so after the break we played the unlocked chapter Lost in the Corn Maze, which was also amazing. This is just a really good game and I'm kind of sad I have planned another popular game to return next (this) week. I guess there are just too many great games out there.

Ran

On Tuesday I ran a 12km easy run by combining two routes that I usually take from the office and somehow 5 + 7 indeed became 12.

On Wednesday I tried to run my usual 10k around the Gaasperplas but they keep closing parts of the park without adding a sign before you entering – forcing me to turn around, which I hate to do while running, especially in a tempo block. This one had a 6km tempo block, which I completed at 4:21/km, which felt good.

On Thursday I went to volleyball again, swapping my 9km run for a 4km run to the hall and a 3km run back home, with in the middle three sets of volleyball. It was nice to see everyone again after the summer break and somehow my smashes dramatically improved while doing nothing. Yet my receives where exactly what you would expect after a summer of not touching a ball at all.

On Saturday I went to the barber in Utrecht (I am strange in that way) and arrived in my running gear, so that I could run back home. At the last moment I opted to take a more scenic route and use the 30km to run next to the meandering Vecht river and end up in Abcoude rather than taking the very straight Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal and end up at home. (I took the bus after.) This long run also contained a 16km tempo block, which I did at 4:45/km and I'm still amazed by that. Unfortunately there was an open bridge in the middle of it, so it doesn't really count as my longest non-stop run, but I am pleased non the less.

I went to a festival! I've added a new section called "listened" to deal with that, but I must warn: I wasn't really there for the music, I mostly just enjoyed camping with my friends. My highlight was seeing my brother dj'ing in at the India stage on Thursday evening – he's half of Indie Gloria. It was great to have this must-see in at the beginning of the festival, so the rest of the time I just followed friends and my own mood. Oh and I went completely sober: I rawdogged Lowlands.

Listened

Like I said: on Thursday we arrived at Lowlands and went to see my brother play at the India stage. After that we saw a little bit of the next dj (Menno?), but returned to the tent pretty soon to play some Hitster.

On Friday, I saw Amyl and the Sniffers, a bit of Adéla and a bit of Antoon, before wandering back to the tent because I was overwhelmed. I did see Fulu Miziki (very interesting) and then went for the Basshall in Heineken (we were there early, so we managed to dance behind the dj booth for a while, but I did not make it to Kybba).

On Saturday, we went out early (but not early enough for the yoga). We saw José Gonzalez, Kelis and Ravyn Lenae. I was a bit wandering again and saw one song of Keo and then was at the Bravo in time for the (already?) legendary concert of IJsland, but as the tent was already full 15 minutes before it started, I got scared by the crowd and went out. I listened to it while sitting in the sun outside, while talking deep talks with a co-camper who had the same fear of crowds. This made us in time for Major Lazer, and although that crowd was even bigger, the Alpha stage and surroundings could actually hold it better. I was still very impressed by the amount of people. After that I saw a bit of Geese and bit of Nia Archives. Our group was heavily debating between going to Sombr or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but we ended up in the Lima for Fauna, which was just very strange. After that the group took a sip of Royal Blood before trying to get into the Adonis, but I was too hooked so I split off with two others to watch it in full. I think this is my other highlight because it was the moment I was most engaged into the music: I guess rock is just the easiest to digest for me. After that it was chaos and I saw a bit of Smib and some dance in the Bravo and then Smib again and halfway S!rine I gave up and went to bed.

On Sunday we did the Noord Nederlands Orkest, as one should (it was very busy again, but maybe not as busy as Major Lazer). Although I had promised myself not to walk from Alpha to Bravo and back all day, we went and watched Sophie Straat for a while, then went to Hermanos Gutierrez. I was pretty hyped for El Pony Pisador after that, so I made sure I was on time, and it was good, but not as nice as it could be because it was too crowded (for my taste) to dance, but I still had a good time. We had a tent-moment after that and went to Lorde in the evening (we were too late and missed the beginning), followed by a bit of undecided wandering between Iconic, Vlooiencircus and the dance of Bravo again. We ended up in Skream & Benga and that's where I ended my Lowlands for yet another "early" bedtime.

Read

• continued The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 2)

I'm almost finished, and it was too good not to take this book to the festival. Unfortunately, it was also too good to read it in the tired moments in between the concerts, so I did not finish yet, even though I had the third and final volume in the tent with me too.

Played

I played Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast on Tuesday, but I was very tired – even before the festival – so it didn't feel like the best one. Luckily it's a GM-less system, so I could generally just take a step back and let the other players do their thing.

Ran

I told Runna that I was taking a holiday, and declared it as "not intending to run at all", which took away almost all runs from the schedule. On Wednesday I ran an easy 8.9k and on Thursday morning I added a 5.4km anti-stress run while waiting for my friends to pick me up.

This week World Pride Amsterdam finished, and I finished a book, my time on the pirate island and last but not least, I ran a PR in the second World Pride Run this Saturday. After that I took a shower at home, a walk along the final Pride March and went to the Tropikali party at Paradiso. The following day – and still today as I am writing this – I was completely finished.

Read

• finished The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 1)
• started The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 2)

I finished The Fifth Season and I just immediately opened the next book in the series. I also made sure I already have the third book. This was a really good book, and a really good trilogy so far.

Played

On Tuesday there was another chapter of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. This time I played the Rabbits in the Garden Who Wear Little Outfits, with a big table including Gertrude, Yazeba, Hey Kid and Amelie, but also the unlocked characters Muckleby, the blob of grime and Edmund Wakeman, the haunted author. We played Chapter 1: A Birthday for Gertrude (I love how this game wants you to shuffle these around) and o no, Gertrude found out about our location, but luckily she accepted the party and most of our gifts.

On Wednesday I ran another week of Pirate Borg. It was very refreshing to play with people new to the game, but certainly not new to roleplaying. Since the group was half-new, I gathered them in The Green Kraken, and all I had to say was: you're pirates in a bar and they were exactly that for a while. So far we've been at Black Coral Bay, the island described in the back of the rulebook, but I feel like it's time to move the next session off the island. I'm taking next week off though, as I noticed it has been a bit much – even though it's fun, I need some rests as well.

Ran

On Monday, I ran home from the office with a small detour: 13km on easy pace. I planned it all out beforehand and only at the last moment I realized that it was 30ºC out there. I went anyway and it went well: I guess I got used to the heat after all these weeks.

On Tuesday, I ran to the office with a bit bigger of a detour: 24km on easy pace. At kilometer 15 it suddenly dawned on me that I have previously signed up for a 28k race, but since it got cancelled because of the heat, I have never actually ran further than 22km. So there we go: this was my longest run so far. It went really well, but I did notice I felt really empty the day after.

On Thursday I ran 10km easy around Gaasperplas, stopping at kilometer 4 because that's where the volleyball people were playing at the beach field. I only watched and continued my route after half an hour, but it was nice to see them.

On Saturday it was time for the second World Pride Run of this year: the one organized by Proud Strides. This was a 5km race, and as I arrived, they urged me to look up the route because I was in wave 1. I was a bit surprised by that, and after looking up the route I noticed that it was actually 5.1km, and thus not really validated. I went for it anyway.

We started super fast, and as I saw a group disappearing I slowed myself down: I was already going 3:30/km at that point and I know there is no way I can hold that for 5 kilometers. Once I settled into my planned 4:00/km I overtook a small group of the quickstarters and ended up in a pair with someone, so we ran most of the race together. In the last 30 meters he suddenly overtook me, and in the surprise I found another source of energy and finished in front of him. I had an official time of 20:11, which is already a PR on 5k (compared to previous 20:31), but Strava tells me this was a sub-20 5k, since the route was 100 meters too long. I came in 6th overall, very happy with the result.

I wanted to post this weeks ago, but apparently it never left my drafts folder. Read this as if it’s posted on 14 July, please!

Last week I played the fifteenth episode of the Mausritter campaign I’ve been writing about before (part 1 after episode five and part 2 after episode ten). I also made it the season finale, taking a break of a few weeks for the first time since it started. The plan is to pick it up again somewhere in September, but first, I wanted to think a bit about how it’s going.

In part two of this series I wrote a bit about how I was changing the way I prepare things. I think I still stand behind the method, but I must say that in practice, it didn’t really happen. It turns out I am terrible at preparing stuff: when I am excited about a game, I read all kinds of things and jot down all kinds of ideas, but when that excitement ebbs, there is no force of earth that can make me prepare. I’m just “too busy” and all of the sudden it’s an even-numbered Tuesday again.

The new way of preparing became just that: at the end of the session – when there was a bit of post-session hype left – I would jot down some ideas and hooks of what I thought was going on in the world. And then I would just leave it for next session. I guess, in (I think) the words of Brennan Lee Mulligan: you can never prepare so much that you do not have to improvise, but you can learn to improvise so well that you will never have to prepare.

To tell the truth though: instead of improvisation I often deferred back to old notes and existing random tables. When entering an adjacent hex that on my map was still blank, I would roll on the tables in the rulebook and generate it. Unfortunately, most of these hexes they visited where in the forest, which means I have used up the full forest table and everything I will roll there from now on will already exist elsewhere. (I just realized: me not allowing certain duplications is also me not embracing the play to find out mindset. Oh well.)

That time I actually prepared

One other thing I said in the previous blogpost is that I would embrace the principle of always making the biggest move I could think of. Sometimes that still goes poorly, it turns out. I had a mixed table of regulars and newer players, but the two regulars said they wouldn’t be there next week. They were also very close to an Abandoned Car full of rats that had problems with them. I thought: great, let’s kidnap these mice as a cliffhanger for next episode.

The next session I indeed didn’t have the two mice at the table who were now captured, and I did indeed have the other half of the regulars. But although I prepared a cool heist to get their fellow mice out of the Car (including a hand drawn map of the car and me thinking out several details about how to enter and exit it) the current party expressed no interest and went to the exact opposite side of the map, leading to a fully improvised session in which I was frantically reading notes of months prior and rolling and rerolling on the aforementioned random forest tables.

The worst part of it was that for three sessions in a row – probably including the upcoming first session after the break – I will have to come up with some reason why the mouse that is there this session has actually escaped the Car on their own. The lesson learned: do not abduct player characters and do not prepare a linear story where the outcome it too big to fail.

This also lead to me not preparing a thing for the finale, and of course my players smelled this too and went into the exact direction I wanted them to go, but this time I was underprepared so there were still a lot of holes in the story. Knowing what to prepare is really an art in itself.

The finale

The finale itself went okay, but I was not too impressed myself. I had a few very nice details planned, but it is very hard to express those things in the fiction when your main characters are allowed to roam the world freely.

I think I messed up a bit by giving them a map, which lead them to a place, and then having no clue myself how to steer them back to the actual location of The Thing They Were Looking For after revealing my interesting twist that it was there but had been gone. I ended up fixing the story by adding a post-credit scene where they saw the mouse who had The Thing, but as the audience, not as the mice. I’m not very pleased with the solution, as it gives me something I might have to fix when we resume the campaign.

It’s interesting to me how as a player, it can feel like certain parts of the story can only be true if those facts come from the book or the GM’s notes. As a GM, I now think the only things that feel true are the things that are invented by us all at the table.

After the break

I’m not sure how to prepare for after the break. It seems like the box-set I have ordered / backed on kickstarter will not arrive until January 2027 and even if it arrived tomorrow I am not actually sure if prewritten content would serve this campaign, now that I made the first part of it so open. On the other hand: having a break is exactly what I need to change the tone slightly, which is why I took the break in the first place.

Another thing I want to introduce is the question: what do you think this is? I recently played Pirate Borg as a player and I noticed that the GM asked us questions like that all the time, and I really liked it. With most of these players I played Brindlewood Bay and it that game this technique is called ‘Paint the Scene’ and all locations in every mystery come with a prewritten question. I really like the idea to include it in an OSR style game.

I guess I will try to come up with some new events for the world. I might solve the open loop of The Thing by writing some “love letters” to my players. This is a thing from the “Powered by the Apocalypse” tradition: after a break or hiatus, you write some custom moves for the characters with in it some new backstory or some events that happened, but most importantly a choice (or roll) for them to make. This can resolve some immediate issues they had before the break, and can create some bigger issues to play with during the next phase of the campaign. I might indeed sign them with “love, your GM”, as per tradition, or I might make some of them in-world written letters from NPCs.

After that, I want to rely more on improvisation again. I’ll report back after episode 20, if we ever get there.

As a Dutch person, I'm used to Apple features that have to do with language being later. Siri in English always seems to be more advanced than her Dutch counterpart. But for this post, I wanted to nerd out on how the Dutch grammar itself makes setting a reminder in Siri much harder than it would be in English.

Let's hypothetically say we have a cat and it really really likes apples and we like our cat to have a great time, but we are currently in bed and this downtime has just caused us to realize it has been too long since the last apple and we really love to give our cat one tomorrow. So we say: "hey Siri, remind me to give the cat an apple tomorrow".

In this sentence, it's easy to cut our the piece "give the cat an apple tomorrow". A really smart Siri could parse the word "tomorrow" and add a date to our reminder. Siri usually tries to be smart and ends up cutting that word from the sentence too, and the final thing is a command: "give the cat an apple". It works!

In Dutch, you are out of luck. We have "herinner me aan", and Siri understands that just fine, but it comes with a few twists. The first twist is that it takes a noun, not a verb/sentence. You can say "herinner me aan een appel", but you cannot say ✴︎"herinner me aan geef de kat een appel". You could use the infinitive form of the verb, to make it behave like a noun and end up with "herinner me aan de kat een appel geven", but it feels a bit odd.

The real natural thing to say would be "herinner me eraan dat", and after "dat" you can put a sentence again. Hurray, let's do that then! But unfortunately, Dutch is one of the very few languages that changes its word order around in subordinate clauses. By result of this shuffling, we need a subject again, so we end up with "herinner me eraan dat ik de kat een appel geef". Notice that we are back at the desired "geef" form, but all of the sudden it's at the end of the sentence.

Now for the test, I have given all these sentences to Siri, to see what she ended up with. There is some weird things happening there, and I used ✴︎ to mark things that I find ungrammatical and ~ for things that I find passable.

1. "herinner me aan een appel" → Appel
2. ✴︎"herinner me aan geef de kat een appel" → ✴︎Aangeeft de kat een appel (fair, both ungrammatical)
3. ~"herinner me aan de kat een appel geven" → De kat een appel geven
4. "herinner me eraan dat ik de kat een appel geef" → ✴︎Ik de kat een appel geef
5. "herinner me er morgen aan dat ik de kat een appel geef" → ✴︎Ik de kat een appel geef (scheduled for tomorrow)

I guess the third option is pretty viable, but personally always get confused which of the grammatically correct versions gives me a grammatical correct result. Nowadays, I always use a pause in my speech and dictate after that: "hey Siri, herinner me aan: 'geef de kat een appel'". This gives me the exact word order I want to have, but it is never a natural sentence and it always adds some cognitive overload. Enough to trigger my brain into writing blogposts like these.

It was Vierdaagse in Nijmegen this week, and like last year I took the friday off to see the walkers finish their final day. It was weirdly overwhelming – I knew it would, but it didn’t feel great once I was there – but I really enjoyed the walk through the Heumensoord forest, making it a relaxing day off anyway.

Also World Pride started in Amsterdam this Saturday, so I participated in the annual Pride Walk. I had done so before, but in recent years I went to the Milkshake festival. This year I had a weird kind of fear of fomo, a fear of being scared to miss out. It felt good to ignore the party and walk the walk and play games.

Read

• continued The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

So good. Halfway now.

Played

On Tuesday I played Root, the RPG after the strategic board game with deceptively cute animals. It was the first time in a long time that someone else was the GM for a session on this evening where I’m the host of. It was a bit of getting used to – to the rules and to each other – but I am really curious to play this more!

On Wednesday I was the GM again, for Pirate Borg, which I had ran many times before. Somehow, the worst happened: I found it silly what I was doing. I had a total collapse, to the point where I had to invoke the Open Table Policy myself and step away for a moment. I later attributed this to the fact that the game is English, and that I have been playing in English for weeks and weeks now, but then trying to roleplay a pirate for this all-Dutch table – especially a pirate really – left me without words. I did a thing I would have thought of as stupid: I switched to English; and after that it was all okay again and I think the rest of the session was still a success.

On Sunday I played the third session of Wanderhome with some of the Tuesday-crew, but now hosted by one of them. I removed this game from the Queer RPG Night because character creation and setup took up two-thirds the session and that was just unpractical at an open table like we had. I am really glad that we got to play another session of this now that we all had character, and I also love that the core group of the attendees are now really becoming friends.

Ran

• Monday: 9km easy
• Tuesday 10.1km with tempo intervals
• Thursday: 7.5km easy
• Saturday: 18km easy long run

I am really back into running again and I love it! I’ve instructed Runna to give me mostly easy runs, in which I now try to keep my heartrate under 160bpm, and for the easy runs this week, that worked! I’m both amazed by and proud of this.

There was a bit of homophobia in my long run, unfortunately, see my previous blogpost.

So, it's World Pride in Amsterdam and with that come a lot of activities. Lots of them are parties, but also quite a few have a more political and activist background too. Today I went to the Pride Walk, one of the protest marches that went from Dam Square (with speeches) to Vondelpark (where there was a Pride Market). Because my running schedule also included 18km for today, I had my running gear on, shoes in my bag, ready to run home after.

On the run home, I had the pride flag still on my back, inspired by my friends who are way more activist than I am. Let's be visible, I thought. And so I was, 18km long.

Somewhere next to the Amstel river, about three kilometers outside of De Ring, there was a boat of white males in their 40s who got my attention by shouting "k*nkerhomo" and other words I don't want to put on this blog uncensored. The safety of their boat made them feel like they could get away with this, and granted, I think they are right. There was not a thing I could do about it.

What did I do to these people to deserve these slurs? I was just running there with a rainbow on my back, trying to keep my heart rate under 160 bpm for the full distance. I failed at that for the next kilometer, thank you sir, because I was annoyed with the whole incident, and quite frankly, I still am. And the more I am annoyed at the power they hold over me by shouting a few words – they ruined at least a part of my day – the more I feel I should also not give them that, to just move on.

But that's privilege too, I am realizing. When you see me running, nothing would give me away as being gay. I am just a pretty tall white dude, going for a run. In fact, some might even see me as a threat, given the white-dudeness of it all. I try to keep a friendly face to prevent this, but there is only so much smile you can keep on during running. But it is really only the flag, or any other paraphernalia I attach to my body, that expose my sexuality. I blend in.

It changed my run. Initially I was aiming to enter the Bijlmer area at a much more southern point, but that would have required me to run with this pride flag through a more black neighborhood. I was not going to remove the flag from my back, but also I didn't want to get into more serious trouble about it. As I was already on this more northern road, I noticed what I was doing, and I also felt the silliness of it: these white dudes had activated the racism in me. Fear breads fear. It pushes us all in the system of oppression.

I don't think I'm brave enough to do all my runs in rainbows from now on, but at least it has shown me I have a privilege too: I can choose to hide and to blend in again, and to run without being disturbed. But this would also mean stagnation.

Not all my runs have to be political, just as my sexuality should not be political either. Let us just be who we are, please. But that in itself is political too, because it means I do nothing and accept the bigotry. At least I should not stop running home after a pride thing. We must be seen, we must protest. We must show who we are, to show that we are here, that we belong here.

Just a nice week of being productive at work, doing my hobbies and actual good weather (warm but not too hot). Also, I finally got a haircut and volleyball moved to the sand outside.

Read

• continued The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This is such an interesting book, especially after the (pardon the term) pulp I've been reading in the past months. That's ok: light reading has it's time, but it's refreshing to have something more intellectual again.

Played

On Tuesday I played Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. This was the first time running it at the Queer RPG Night, and we got here because I pivoted away from Wanderhome (also by Jay Dragon) after we spend the first half of two sessions in a row on character creation, leaving only 20 and 45 minutes of play time respectively. The nice thing about Yazeba's is that it comes with premade characters, so while there was still some explanation going on, after 45 minutes we were actually playing and I think we can get that even shorter in the future. Also: it was super fun! Looking forward to exploring the stories in this game some more in the upcoming month.

On Wednesday I ran Moonlight on Roseville Beach at the Utrecht RPG Night, because someone proposed we did a summer theme day, and I proposed "beach" as a theme and then it got voted as the theme and this is just a nice beach themed game. I ran it before and I wasn't happy with the system itself, and I must say: it went much smoother this time (I dared to improvise a bit more on the theme, instead of trying to follow the adventure to the letter) but I still dislike the game system. I totally adore this as a setting book and the vibes are amazing, but the dice pool with up to 6 different sources, and four or five tables to put those dice on... it just dissolves any tention you have been building up to. Next time I run this I would love to adapt this to something Carved from Brindlewood.

On Saturday I ran Escape from Dino Island at D&D Amsterdam, because hey, I guess I was a player in Yazeba's, so there was room for another session in which I GM? (And they were short on DMs, and this game has the best DM title: The Dino Master!) This is a game I can fully recommend! It was very easy to prepare: I already ran it once, so I just read through the 32 page booklet again and that was it. And since it's a one-shot game, it was perfect for this event. It's really an adventure and a game in one, and all the rules just push the story forward and eventually to good closure. Also: I completely surrendered to improvising the content based on the prompts in the book and it just worked. I love this game and would 100% run it again.

Ran

I'm doing four runs per week again! On Monday, it was 5km easy and on Thursday I did another 5km easy. They had a similar place and a similar low heart rate I was very pleased with, but I already wrote another post about that this week.

On Wednesday there were "Practice Race Pace K's", which meant a warmup and four times 1km at 10km race pace with walking in between, and a cooldown, for a total of 7km. My last interval stopped right in front of a guy looking through a garbage bin, and he got really angry with me for some reason. I guess he was a bit confused or under some influence, maybe he thought I had already picked up all the 'statiegeld' cans that he could trade in for money? It's hard to tell, as I couldn't understand a word of the language he was speaking to me as he walked after me (luckily slower) and tried to slab me with his plastic bag of cans a few times (luckily always from at least 30 meters distance).

On Sunday, I ran 10km in the World Pride Run organized by Rainbow Athletics. It's a bit of a tradition for me to try to run fast here: for the longest time my 5km personal best was here (2016 to 2025 when I finally broke it again). So despite the "this is not a PR run!" I tried anyway, as it felt doable. I ran 43:41, which is still very nice, but my PB is 43:10, yet I'm not disappointed. It was a very cute event with a lot of fun people and I liked the chatter along the way of other athletes trying to keep each other on pace. I probably ran a bit too fast in the part with headwind, but I kind of did it for the girl behind me and it felt good to share the race like that.

This week was a week of stomach issues. I will not describe too much detail, but it started Tuesday and I thought it was finished Thursday, only to return with a huge punch on Saturday when I thought I could eat anything I liked again on Friday.

Saturday I went to The Hague for some volleyball matches: I saw the women’s U22 semifinals match between Serbia and The Netherlands, and I saw the finals of the male European League between The Netherlands and Finland. It was interesting to see the matches and nice to do something else for a change, but whelp, watching a sports match is really overwhelming.

Read

• finished In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens
• read The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark by Warren Wagner
• started The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Lots of reading last week. I finally finished In Deeper Waters, which was a nice easy read but also not a masterpiece. I guess it took me so long because I was not really that invested in this gay romantasy story, but it was nice to read something of the genre.

The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark was a much more interesting read. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s say it combines the themes of HIV with a zombie apocalypse. It was an interesting combination, which makes this one certainly a recommendation if you’re into it, but also a warning: if you’re into the genre, you will probably not encounter anything new. Most of the story was pretty predictable, but it had some nice twists. It was also only 80 pages, so I finished it fairly quickly.

The Fifth Season was mentioned in an ages old RPG review of Quintin Smith / Quinns – from before Quinns Quest even. I decided to give it a try and so far it’s world is much more interesting than the previous two mentioned books.

Played

On Tuesday I ran the fifteenth episode of our ongoing Mausritter campaign, and I have dubbed this one the season finale: we will see our mice again in September. It was a very full episode. Last time, I had prepared where I though the story would go, but my players had other plans. Since this campaign had always been very open, I allowed this and just threw my plans away, but this also meant that this week I had prepared nothing: I only knew what was going on in the world. Interestingly enough now they followed the thread that I would’ve prepared, and I felt underprepared again. It was still fun though, I’ll write a longer post about it soon.

On Wednesday I played the first episode in a new multi-table Pirate Borg campaign in Utrecht. I was planning on running a third table myself, but we didn’t have enough players, and in hindsight (with the stomach) I was very happy I could just join one of the two other tables. It was fun swashbuckling and the GM managed to kill 3 out of 5 players (but I must say we helped him a great deal by just jumping into every dangerous situation he presented us with).

On Friday we played the finale of our Pasión de las Pasiones campaign. I probably should also make a writeup about this whole campaign now that it’s finished, but the gist of it is that my character unfolded himself as a bit of an anti-hero, despite me trying not to. I guess this is a bit of “bleed”: I am not always the fastest in decision making in pressured situations, and romance always comes with pressure for me. But in this finale, somehow, my character got hold of a gun a few times, and in the last one he finally did something with it. I guess it was still the other player’s decision to push him this way, but he ended up being the new El Jefe, the boss of the gang that ran around the hotel he was previously working in. I loved this game and this campaign.

Ran

On Monday I did an 6.5km easy run in the heat. It wasn’t actually in the plan at first, but I changed the plan from 3 days per week to 4 days per week because I just wanted to run that day, and because I figured it was easier to run more shorter runs (I kept the weekly distance equal).

On Tuesday the new plan included a 7km tempo run with 5 sets of 400 meters at 4:25/km plus 400 meters at 5:05/km. I did hit all pace targets, despite the heat.

On Thursday it was an 5.9km easy run again, when the stomach aches finally decreased a bit.

I moved this weeks long run from Saturday (renewed pain!) to Sunday (which was fine). I went to the Ede-Wageningen railway station by train and ran to the train station of Amersfoort, through the forests of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. It was a 19.1km run and really, this is why I do this. Running through the forest is so great, I want to do this more often now that the weather allows it.

Yet another week where the most exciting things where just the “normal” RPGs. I really like this hobby and I love that I get to play as much as I do. Also happy the weather is “good” again, in the new definition where +30ºC is not good and a light rain at 20ºC feels very nice. The title refers to the music genre I’ve been listening a lot to lately.

Read

• continued In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens

I have also been reading in the Blades in the Dark rulebook. I don’t always include the RPGs that I read in this list, but I guess I want to mention this one because I own a physical copy and I started on page one and read it one page after another like a real book. Still feels different though.

Played

On Tuesday I played the second session of Wanderhome at the Queer RPG Nights. Like two weeks ago, we spend over half the session on the creation of characters and the Place, despite me trying to optimize this process a bit by creating the place with the three players who already had a character. It was a cool session and interesting perspectives emerged, and I love how the system does that, but I also decided against running it any further at this location. It’s an open table and we just can’t risk throwing away half of the session any time a new person joins in (because I really value the table being open and beginner friendly too!) I can completely recommend the game for groups with returning players though!

On Wednesday I played in a session of Blades in the Dark. This was a bit harder for me, as I read so many RPGs these days, and am quite opinionated on how I want my RPGs to be run. I had this really weird experience where I on one hand really appreciated the mechanical aspect of the game – this game has really interesting rules, that create a story almost like a machine – and on the other hand I really yearned for a bit more narrative – it was very much action packed and roll-heavy. I think this was in part also because most of the people at the table – myself included – were new to the game. It’s just easier to try to obey the rules if you don’t hide them behind a narrative veil. My fingers itched to run it myself sometimes though.

On Friday I played the fifth episode of our Pasión de las Pasiones campaign. This was really also an action packed episode, but because of the nature of the game, that means packed with narrative and drama. Three of the four characters went in meltdown, including mine. I found it interesting that I had such trouble with the romance part of this game, the other characters being mostly female, but that I now feel so much more relaxed about it after having this meltdown in the arms of a male character. I guess I am really gay. We decided that next episode will be our finale, as we can’t really find other dates in July and we don’t want to have it fizzle out due to holidays and people moving away. This fifth session, however, felt like a finale in many ways. Curious to see what happens next week.

On Thursday I also played the board game Harmonies with my brother and his partner. Would recommend! (And I heard they ordered the game for themselves as well...)

Ran

On Thursday I ran 11.6km to the office. That’s the nice thing about this weather: my full office outfit fits in my trail-run backpack. This was just an easy run, but also quite a wet one: it started raining when I just left and midway I was soaked. Luckily the rain slowed down a bit near the end, so I arrived mere wet – and was very grateful for the fact we have a shower.

I also ran 11.6km back, because I had skipped the interval run earlier in the week. So I did run the 2km warm up, and then the two sets of 5 times 400 meter at 4:15/km, and then ran the 2km cool down and the rest of the way home (still quite a bit). I did not hit the required pace, as I didn’t want to push myself too much after the run in the morning and to be honest, I think this was actually a bit too much.

On Saturday I wanted to join Proud Strides again for 5km, followed by 14km at the N70 trail route in Nijmegen, but no, I was just not recovered, so I skipped running all together.

On Sunday I ran 6km easy around the ArenA where a lot of people where gathering for a Bruno Mars concert. It was interesting to see how the logistics of it worked, which crowds moved to which lines. I usually only see the part at the train station.

I feel fine now, so I am confident the upcoming week will go well.

Last week was very hot and ended in a thunderstorm that flooded our bike parking and the rest of the ground floor of our building. But cancelled plans lead to other plans and although I don’t consider weather above 30ºC “nice” anymore, I still had a great summer week.

Read

The book about sign language is not finished, but I just didn’t get to it this week. I guess motivation is less now that I have almost finished all the chapters about grammar, and now that the only deaf person I know stated that he does not actually use the grammar, but the word order of spoken Dutch. I read a bit in the other book though, and I still want to know more about Dutch sign language.

• continued In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens

Played

On Tuesday I ran the fourteenth episode of my ongoing Mausritter campaign. This was a weird one: for once I had prepared a storyline because some players gave me the feedback they wanted to “get more done”, and I knew they would be there this week. However, they did not seem to want to do what I hinted to was the “main content”, and went the complete opposite direction on the map. It ended up to be a very hot evening of improvisation and looking up old notes, but it was fun nonetheless.

On Wednesday I played Big Gay Orcs, a Grant Howitt one page RPG and it gave everything we wanted. The climax of this game was my character catapulting another player’s character into the opposing warlord with their new found partner – both of them sharing a wish to die on the battlefield. I somehow rolled three sixes (on 3d6) on the roll to aim and pull the pin. It also turned out me and another player’s orc had the exact same Reputation, Motivation and Secret – another virtual three sixes on 3d6 – so we found love in the end too. An unexpected happy ending.

On Saturday I played Trophy Dark instead of running 28.3km (see “Running”). I knew nothing about this game, including the fact that I had signed up for the other table at the event, but due to cancellations it made more sense for me to even out the tables and to play this one. It turned out to be from the same publisher as Brindlewood Bay, but now we were a bunch of members of an occult organization in 1902, trying to summon some creature. Weirdly enough, it turned into a bit of a contest in the end and my roll was the highest, so I guess this is the first time I “won” an RPG? It was still fun though.

Ran

Since I already had the suspicion the Midzomermarathon would be cancelled, I did a bit more running than I originally intended. On Wednesday morning I ran 6.7km on an easy pace, but I was already greeted by a lot of heat and my heartrate was way higher than usual.

On Thursday, I ran back from volleyball in a 2-1-1 tempo run. I did not run the 2, 1 and 1 km at 4:15/km as planned, because it was still super hot and 4:45/km was good enough for me. Runna put my place back for future runs because of this, but I don’t mind.

The 28.3km run during the Midzomermarathon on Saturday was indeed cancelled – there would have been more ºC than km, and on this kind of distance, that’s significant. Instead, I ran a half marathon to Scheveningen from my parent’s house in Leiden. Thanks to getting lost at Wassenaarse Slag it turned into a 22.6km run, which is the longest distance I ever ran. The last 6.5km of it were on the beach with a strong headwind, which was way tougher than I expected, but I made it to the Pier in the end!

This week I obtained the Nederland Dal Vrij subscription, which means I can travel all across The Netherlands outside of rush hour for just €49 per month. Apart from my usual trip to Utrecht on Wednesday I haven’t used it that much yet, but gives a great feeling of freedom. Oh and I guess we’re in the period of the year with the longest days. I love it.

Read

Slow progress in the same books, but progress it is.

• continued Gebarentaalwetenschap by Baker, Van den Bogaerde, Pfau and Schermer
• continued In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens

Played

On Tuesday I played the first session of Wanderhome at the Queer RPG Night. I have played this game before in Utrecht, but in that context it was more of a guided game where we didn’t really interact with the core mechanics of the game as written in the book. I was a bit nervous to “run” this game as written (without a guide) after the Utrecht warnings that it might be hard for beginners. Indeed, we spend more than half of the session crafting characters, Kith (side characters) and a Place and were left with only 20 minutes of “actual” game time. This was fine, because I already adjusted the expectations that creating these things was an act of play, and the whole table was on board with that. Also, the D&D table went a bit longer, so we went longer too. It was an interesting experience, but I guess I want to dedicate a separate post about it once I played some more sessions.

On Wednesday I played the fourth episode of our ongoing Pasión de las Pasiones campaign. I was a bit tired and worried that it might not be the greatest of sessions, but somehow all fell into place and it turned out to be my favorite session so far. I don’t think I have enough room here to fully explain it – “je had erbij moeten zijn” – but all the events just snowballed in a very satisfying way into one big dramatic scene at the end.

On Saturday I went to Comic Con in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht, and I accidentally bought three new RPG books. I guess it doesn’t count as “played” – I also could not find the RPG play area – but I’ll mention them here anyway. Stacking up on the classics, I’ve got Fiasco Classic, Fate Core and Alice is Missing, with the expansion. (Returning readers will notice I have actually played two of those games last week.)

Ran

On Wednesday I ran 7.7km from the office – it had been a while since my last office run and I am glad I added it to my week again.

On Thursday I ran 3.2km to and 3.2km back from volleyball, playing some volleyball in the middle. There were a lot of people, so we had three teams and thus I was not continuously playing. This allowed me to have some energy left and not take the metro home.

On Sunday morning I ran the 10k at the Gaasperplasloop, around the local lake Gaasperplas. Due to the weather they shortened it to 8.5km, but I ran the 1.4km from home to compensate. I ran with E., an RPG Night regular, and it was nice to talk a bit during the run, trying to keep a conversational pace while showing the neighborhood.