ManGo's Gaming
— 'Cos Gaming Is Not Kidstuff! —
PERSONAL DIARY (Feb 2020): A devastated wasteland of few games, many headaches, and the weirdest dream…
Where did all the games go?
February was pretty crap for me. Apart from ongoing car troubles that carried over from last month, I also had a tight deadline to meet with a project for the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association), and had to make a start on the next issue of The SPIRIT magazine, too – issue #8 is due mid-March, and I don’t mind admitting there’s still a heck of a lot of work to do to get that issue ship-shape… AireCon is just around the corner, too, in just a few weeks, actually, so there’s still some stuff to organise and finalise for that, too: I will be demonstrating my deckbuilding card game all weekend: Aliens Ate My Planet! – you can read more about that in my last post, but also on BGG here: WIP – Aliens Ate My Planet! — and if you’re attending AireCon or in Harrogate that weekend, you’re more than welcome to come along and join me for a game or three…
So, when all is said and done, there was very little room for gaming this month, although I did squeeze in 3 games of Azul and a game of Barrage on the very last day of February – thank goodness it was a leap year, otherwise February would have been a donut, frankly.
And the bright side? There’s always a bright side, right?
Yeh, well, I did get a new car in the end, and I’ve had several expansions for Marvel Champions (LCG) arrive this month, too: Ms. Marvel, Captain America, and The Green Goblin Scenario Pack. Ironically, The Wrecking Crew arrived last month (Jan), in case I hadn’t already mentioned that. I am of course, excited to eventually try all of these in due course, just as soon as my current overfilled plate is done and dusted, which’ll hopefully be mid-March-ish…
No idea why I’m sharing this, but…
I had the weirdest dream t’other day, and no doubt someone will be able to interpret all manner of deep and meaningful stuff beneath it all. More to the point, as with so many other day-to-day happenings, I couldn’t help thinking there’s the core of a game in here, somewhere, possibly a time travelling, genre-spanning RPG or some such, or maybe a twist on the many live action ‘Escape Room’ tourist attractions that seem to be popping up in various places (we have a couple here in Yorkshire, now, I think).
Anyway, here’s what happened in my dream, and imagine if you will, a series of vignettes that seemed to flash in front of me as I moved from one to the other…
In the first scene, I woke up to find myself and several weird CIA investigator-type people creeping up on my house late at night, and the house itself looked like the kind of rocky old temple you might find in an Indiana Jones reboot, with an exterior entrance shaft made of stone mysteriously appearing where my bay window is. Anyways, with a leg-up from my colleague, I clambered into this shaft and tentatively descended into the house, but there appeared to be a human-shaped carving cut into the base of it. Sure enough, when I started to lower myself into the shaft, feet first, I seemed to fall into the carving, but immediately clambered back out, and started descending into the house again, arms asunder and gripping the walls above the carving, only to find the base of the shaft suddenly seem to tip and fall inward, bringing the top of it over my back and eventually sealing me in – aarrghh!
I immediately woke up when that happened, but soon drifted back into sleep again…
This time, however, I found myself back at the house again, but inside it this time, and curiously, my wife and daughters all seemed very demure and passive around me, and amazingly quiet, like something out of that Handmaid’s Tale TV series (2017, I think), but without the red dresses. My cat had a kitten, too, and we had a baby white mouse or vole-type rodent that was clearly part of the family as well, joyfully playing with the kitten and effortlessly running up the back of our cat to sit on her shoulder and stare pointedly at me — I remarked on this to my missus and she just laughed at me. The whole scene was totally disarming, as anyone that knows my family would attest: they are not quiet, passive, or shy about most things; and we only have one cat that kills rodents for sport, so this was clearly not the house I know, either. I said something to my wife along those lines: “There’s something really weird going on here, and this is not my house, y’know, so I think I need to get back to bed.”
Cue next dream scene…
This time the rest of the household (excluding our pets!) were all dressed up in sports stuff: red and white scarves, red and white hooped tops, etc. They were clearly excited, and running about manically getting themselves sorted, apparently going to a future-ish ‘Gyromatch’ to see the York Jumpers retain their national title. The house felt loud and frenetic, but not futuristic per se, but somewhere along the line I found this weird digital dial-type thingy on an exercise bike (we don’t have one of them, either): the device was bullet-shaped —a bit like the volume control on headphones— but alongside the dial was loads of tiny little writing with various scene settings on it (Future, Past, Quiet, Traditional, Cold, Hot, etc). To be honest, I didn’t have time to decipher this before everything changed again…
Another scene, another time, but the same house…
My wife’s sister was in the house this time, not wearing very much and seemingly trying to flirt with me next to the aforementioned exercise bike; we’re not huge fans of each other, so once again I felt totally disarmed and quite weirded out. The rest of my family were scurrying around doing their own thing in the background: it looked like a slightly off-kilter family morning scene…
Thankfully, I also woke up at this point, but all told the entire dream thing felt totally surreal, especially because I’d not consider myself one to dream that often, anyway!
Pffft! Why the heck did I share that experience? I honestly have no idea, but once again I have an underlying feeling there’s probably an RPG game or concept hidden in there, somewhere… Oh dear.
February 2020 gaming stats: 4 games played (3 wins)
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