[My Personal Rules for Drinking]

I have two rules for drinking.

1. Never ever drink to excess.

2. Know why you're drinking. If it's just to alter mood, don't do it.

When I do drink, it's usually a light fruit wine and either alone or in the company of my housemates after work. I have been drinking since I was well below the legal age and can handle alcohol okay, however, most 16-year olds can't. And to be honest, if you're below the legal age and drinking sensibly, you won't get picked up. It's there to catch the people that are stupid.

[A Personal Appeal:]

I'll post it up when I have access. She and her family are in my thoughts.

[Post-War ---- eh?]

The fact of the matter is, in a war game, friends end up on opposite sides. Before I came to CN, I played a war game in a slightly different style, and I fought friends ALL the time. I probably fought a quarter to a half of my wars against at least one friend (specifically them, not just their alliance). Somehow, we manged to enjoy blowing each other to smithereens and still be friends at the end of the day.

CN doesn't seem to work the same way. I can only put it down to the gameplay difference. CN is much more political, and it's much harder to get out of your alliance's circle unless you're a hardcore player. In the games I've played before it really doesn't matter who you hit (we would attack each other for laughs), and there's no bogeyman in quite the same way there is in CN. Here, we have years and years of built up grudges, and as a new player coming in, it's quite confusing. I found that the grudges in my own portion of the CN universe constrained my communication with people. There are still a couple people that I find interesting and would like to get to know, but don't quite feel I can.

Being so new, I consider myself fairly neutral. I read people on what I see, not on some old grudge match from when I still wore my hair in braids. Being where I am is fairly interesting with my persepctive, and I see a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of things that I'd guess are constraining CN from new blood. I've learned my lesson about power games and grudge matches from other games. I'm happy to stay as neutral as I can for now.

The OOC/IC line in most games gets trashed after a while, unless the game is full of hardcore roleplayers. When people get to know each other well, it becomes really hard to find the line and put it down. At the moment I'm only at war with a couple people I joke with regularly, and none personally. Wars between close friends can get sticky in any game - if our friendships can be called close around here. I'd like to think that I could take it laughing if it ever did happen to me, but a lot of people aren't like that. They just can't put the line down. At that point, it actually ruins the game, because the spirit of wars in this setting SHOULD be to blow the pixels sky high and then drink to rebuilding.

Interestingly (and aside), most of the friendships that came from the other game are now disintegrating after six months away. On the other hand, there are a couple of people from CN that I think I'll be friends with for a long time to come. Different games, different people, different structure.

[12-04]

We're orange now, not blue! (Colossus)

[Booze Review: Very Old Barton]

As long as it's not in a plastic bottle and doesn't taste like kerosene, I'll drink it.

Words to live by. While I'm a fan of quality, I hate pretension. A bottle of booze is only going to taste so good or bad compared to another. I've definitely had some cheap stuff that would be better used as a fuel additive or depilatory, but going up from there is a declining difference in taste from one price to another. Most people are just paying for the name, anyway.

I actually tried this a while ago, don't ask. It works to run your car at about 20% concentration with petrol, much past that and the average car will give up.

[Murder and Mayhem]

Hmm. That, my friend, is quite some class you must be taking...

[Vacation at the beach, crab stew and many other foodstuffs]

/me shrugs

I just cook the food to order, and cook what everyone can and will eat. Have to keep the friends/housemates happy.

@Auctor: You asked for it...

[Boring food and jet lag makes for an unhappy Coyote]

/me throws a stock pot full of soup at Myth

There you go.

[Boring food and jet lag makes for an unhappy Coyote]

Garlic and saffron stock is in the pot. Potato and rosemary pizza tonight, and crab stew (at Myth's urging) tomorrow. I'm going to do the chicken on Thursday night, we're vacationing at the beach with my housemate's brother and a good friend's family so I'll do more than one.

[Pea soup and the incompetence of my fellow players]

I have no doubts of that. The soup was good but I think some lactose snuck into my chocolate (drinking), so I was ill all night.

[Pea soup and the incompetence of my fellow players]

highly approve of you getting back into the kitchen

If you keep talking like that, it'll be crab stew for dinner tomorrow.

No cornbread, and honey?

Cornbread is hard to get here, and the over curious children make it quite hard to make it.

If your alliance can't create internal circles (for the most part, anyway, there will always be a couple of odd men out) then you're probably bad at this game??

Can't as in won't, or can't as in the bullying power of .gov isn't good enough?

[Pea soup and the incompetence of my fellow players]

Yes, it is. I personally have no objection for the few people who have stayed external and the external folks that are trading with us right now. I think trades are still one of the best ways to get to know people and network, but I must say I enjoy it a lot more now than I did before the update. It burned out 3 people before me and nearly did the same to me.