Quarantine Post (Lucky) 13: I Swear the Singer is not Singing the Lyrics Listed on Lyric Sites. Plus Grim London

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Let’s return to the Avalanches for one of the most persistent (but enjoyable) earworms of the pandemic:

And we jump from that upbeat song with the dark video to a site that’s straight dark. Grim London is one of the resources recommended in the tabletop rpg Liminal (As I type this, I’m about half an hour away from our first session) as an interactive reference to hauntings and murders in that very old city.

Obviously a labor of love. Very cool.

Quarantine Post 11: Noisy Dance Music and Altered Nature Sounds

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For today’s upbeat tune, I give you this:

There’s an odd story behind this video, according to my son. The song is from 1978. The video is much more recent, and was created for a completely different song. This YouTuber stripped out the original son, put in this goofy old disco tune, and got way more views than the original.

Silly and fun. I approve.

Next:

This is a simple idea that is satisfying beyond the all expectation: A microphone in a tuba, pointed at a little waterfall, at dusk

Quarantine Post 10: Fun Tunes and Beautiful Pictures

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This video hit YouTube last October, but it looks like it was designed for self-quarantine. It’s:

a group of friends
having fun
in the beautiful outdoors
with drinks
recipe included

Plus, the song is upbeat and a lot of fun. Perfect for today.

As for today’s pleasant distraction, if you’re a photographer (or you just like looking at pretty pictures) check out this list of Flickr Groups. Personally, I like Less is More and Catchy Colors, but the Portraits group is nice, too.

Quarantine Post 9: Tiny Desks and Rural Idylls

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Have some laid back tunes inspired by Thai Funk. I’m not sure about the guitarist’s wig, but the tunes are great.

If you’re looking for a soothing Youtube channel to watch, I recommend 李子柒 Liziqi. I have no idea how that’s supposed to be pronounced (or what the Asian writing means), but I’ve been calling it “Liz Icky” for about a year. It’s got natural beauty, cooking, hand-crafts, family, cute animals, the whole deal. Staged as hell, with impressive production design, but I appreciate what they’re going for.

Here’s the first episode the wife and I saw so many months ago.

Quarantine Post 7: So Many Cirques

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Again, no music video this time, because I’m posting Cirque du Soleil, and those guys are pretty much all music video.

First, from April 3:

Second, from April 10, which is today:

I’m scheduling this post to go online ten minutes after the second video goes live. Here’s hoping that works.

Is Cirque du Soleil planning to release a new video every week? If so, they’ll be making this series of Quarantine Posts super easy for me.

Quarantine Post 6: Spitfires, Dinosaurs, and Magical London

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Not sure why I get so much pleasure from music with samples, esp audio clips from movies, but I do. I really do.

Over the weekend, we finally got the chance to play the second half of our Escape from Dino Island PbtA game. As an emulation of Jurassic Park, it’s pretty great: fast and deadly. As I mentioned on Twitter, before the game started, I suggested we start with two PCs each, since the game looked like it was designed to kill characters pretty quickly. The others poo-poo-ed that, telling me I could just make up someone new if I had to.

Two die rolls later, I was doing exactly that.

One of the mechanics in the game that I really liked was that the basic moves were broken into categories: Peril Moves and Safety Moves. When you make a Safety Move, you’re supposed to tell a story about your character (each playbook has a number of specific prompts, which you cross off as you go through them). At the end, when the story is wrapped up, either because the living PCs have escaped the island or they’ve all died, you roll for the denouement.

Like all PbtA games, you roll two dice, then add something to it. For this roll, you add the number of stories you’ve told.. 10+ gives you a great result, 6+ is a failure, 7-9 is a modest success. So, the more stories you tell about your character, the more sympathetic they are and the more beloved they are by the audience.

My character had made the Finale move, which was a self-sacrifice play to save everyone and wrapping up the plot. So while the other two players got to roll on the “Safe at Last” table, and both got the result “… describe something (an image or memory) you will carry with you from your time on the island.” which is the modest result, I rolled on the “Never to Return” table.

And I’d told four stories over the course of the game, so my roll was +4. And I had sacrificed myself for the group! And I rolled snake eyes.

That was the only roll I could have made and still failed, and I’d done it. The result I got was “… tell the others why you deserved your fate.”

Is life fair? It is not.

But I laughed my ass off, which I really needed. At this point in my life, I don’t get to laugh all that much. Not that I’m unhappy (I’m not) but I don’t find many things funny. Except when I’m playing in a game with terrific players.

Anyway, next up is a longer game (we hope) and the group has picked Liminal, a contemporary fantasy game set in London. (I’m not doing an accent.) It looks great, and I don’t just mean the art. Seriously, that art is amazing.

But for the meat of this post, and the whole reason I am doing these, let me link to a site I found inside the rulebook:

http://www.guerrillaexploring.com

It’s a site about people getting into places where they’re not supposed to be, and the pictures are cool. I really liked the concrete… rooms? tunnels? in the bowels of the Tower Bridge.

Anyway, worth checking out.

Take care of yourselves.