What Happened at Pete's Place

Mike sticks his finger in his mouth as Pete looks on in horror.

On Saturday, I went over to Pete's place to help our friend Colin playtest his new Traveller module. Mike and Jeff were there, too.

Any roleplayer will tell you that a typical session consists of 90% idle chat, and 10% gaming - if you're lucky. So it was this Saturday eve.


Would you eat this?

First, we taste-tested a mind-bending new potato chip: Old Dutch's "Szechuan Beef" flavour. Not since the halcyon days of Hostess' "French Fries with Gravy" and "Cheeseburger (fully loaded)" have I seen a more ominous-looking bag of chips, so naturally I had to give them a try.


Ack! (Photo courtesy of Mike Totman)

While my friends gave the chips a passing grade, I found them as revolting as I'd anticipated, even though I went in with an open mind. But as far as I'm concerned, Szechuan Beef chips taste like someone left some plain chips in the deep fryer overnight - granted, a deep fryer that had been used to make Szechuan beef, but still...


These Eyes...do do dee do do...


Midway through the evening, Jeff asked Mike, "Have your eyes always been different colours?" Mike said yes, and I was a little taken aback. I asked for a closer look (not that close, you perverts) and lo and behold, Mike, like Jane Seymour (mmmm...Jane Seymour) does indeed posess one brown eye, and one green. At least, that's how they look to me. Funny the things you can miss even after you've known someone for a few years, but then, I don't make a habit of staring deeply into Mike's eyes, whatever Sylvia may claim.


Fiendish evildoer Pete enjoys his ill-gotten gains.

Finally, Pete's bookshelves have at last been completed, and green with envy, I took a couple of photos of his magnificent library. These are gorgeous shelves, extending floor to ceiling, with beautiful brass grommets and even a ladder. I could spend hours in there, but I'm sure Pete and his girlfriend would eventually grow tired of me, so for now I'll just have to dream of a day when I might possess such peerless shelving. Here's another photo, taken with my little Pentax's panoramic feature.


Click to embiggen!



Colin attempts to get the session back on track. Ha ha, good luck.

As for the game, we managed to land on a planet made of poisonous fungus, and Jeff ran over a guy with a hoverjeep, shattering both shins. Not Jeff's shins, the other guy's shins. (Though if you know Jeff, you know that the odds that he's shattered his shins at one point in his life or another are actually pretty high.) He also shot a couple of people. And I bought a weapon called a "puke stick."


This...is my Puke Stick. (Say it in a Bruce Campbell voice.)

You poke, they puke.

You know, come to think of it, these games we play sure contain a lot of senseless violence. I'm not sure if our actions were useful for Colin's playtest, but he knew what he was getting into when he recruited us, I guess.