Well, that was fun.

Polly came to stay and I had the week off work to visit people and places and eat out a lot. We went to galleries, saw a movie, ate well and drank a lot of coffee. Thank you for making her time such fun Alex, Andrew, Dave, Emma-Jean, Fiona, James, John, Kate, Linda, Mark G, Mark S, Nola, Shaiyena, Simon and Toby! Polly is sending my pants back from Sydney.

We crammed in so much fun to Polly's visit I was late back to Canberra and missed registering for Phenomenon 2007. Fortunately my α-Dammit teammates were there to register me; thank you John, Shy and Terry. After some urgent rescheduling the next day (which I suspect the organisers engineered deliberately to demonstrate how jolly nice they can be about it) we played games.

Personally, I failed to identify with my flirtatious-army-lawyer character or assimilate the four pages of background information. Then the session went forty-five minutes over time and we missed our Call of Cthulhu game. John, the GM, told a great story; it was just a pity none of the characters was involved in it. However everybody else had a wonderful time, which was nice.

When our Six Soldiers game was rescheduled due to a double booking we were lucky enough to find a GM called Andrew without a group scheduled for the session. We, and James who was visiting from Melbourne, became the Ferocious Rabbit clan. Eager to join all the other ninja clans in the secret ninja organisation (with our five point exploding heart plan), we were fooled into assassinating the Emperor. It was even more fun than it sounds. :)

Oddly engaging for five player characters (and a few non-player characters) who seemed to have nothing but animosity for each other. Jacinta, the GM, had a particular talent in sidling up to the players and whispering in their ear as a sort of conscience. Then my character committed suicide.

A Weird West (Deadlands?) game full of outrageous accents. Best accent was Shy's Chinese mad scientist who continually referred to the "lady down the hall" as a "rady damn whore". There was some magic and a demon war in Hell too, but the best bits were the accents. Thank you Mik, the GM, for tolerating our puns and keeping us on track. (Ha!)

At last I got to freeform. I was a student from Tokyo U and I was invited to the Emperor's Fifth Anniversary celebration, where I met a gorgeous and talented pop princess, and the clever Shogun, and the Emperor announced his engagement (like, right there in front of me, I was right there), and I got a job as a secret Imperial Guard, and I participated in the unification of two worlds, and I made an appointment to see a doctor at the mental hospital. It was my best day ever. Did I mention I could control earth and stone?

Then, because I wasn't actually dead and it was a long weekend, I played Primetime Adventures with Dave, Emma, James and Simon; and then Ars Magica with John, Peta, Peter and Shy. After the sheer fun of the convention I am determined to register earlier and attend the social events next time. (However I am not inspired to write a freeform game, which is unusual for me after a roleplaying convention.)  ¶ 19:24