Travellers Sometimes Travelling Together

We picked up an extra traveler yesterday, in the form of Zachary Selman-Palmer, who is a good friend of ours from Canada. He’s going to be doing some work with the UN out of Latvia, and on his way, he managed to stop in Amsterdam for a day while travelling from Brussels. It was lovely to have him with us, and seeing a familiar face in the crowd was more than amazing. Mostly, it made me feel a little more a part of the city, and a little less apart from it.

We started off with a trip to a cute little comic shop on Zeedijk, which was a tiny thing. They had comics on a shelf behind a rope, and a bunch of manga along the wall. The only really impressive thing in the store was the back-issue bin layout, which I found better organized and set up for browsing than those at Warp One. The store utterly lacked role-playing games of any sort. We’d scouted the place out before-hand, so we knew exactly where it was, and we also planned to go to the American Book Store near Kalverstraat. We hadn’t been there yet, but it was apparently the only place in Centrum holding D&D: Encounters.

That book store was fucking amazing. It made a Chapters or an Indigo look like kid’s stuff: three floors of books, no coffee shop; just wall-to-wall paper. There was a small selection of role-playing games to be had there, mostly Wizards of the Coast and some Fantasy Flight books, but the selection involved a few books I’ve never seen in a Canadian book store, including my own. I’m working on getting them, either from a Canadian distributor or from the ABS here.
Then we hit a museum, where we saw some pretty kick-ass pictures of a guy who looked a lot like Zak. We took pictures, and the guard laughed at us.

Then we went partying in the Red Light District a bit. We’d been invited by the wonderful young lady at the coffee shop to come to her vodka bar on Saturday, an invitation we readily took up. It was only ten or so in the evening, and things in Amsterdam only really start to heat up around midnight. Still, getting drunk and a little high on the canals was a fun experience for everyone but Zak (who doesn’t want to get drunk or high, and finds the whole idea of the Red Light District a little distasteful).

Zak took a plane to Latvia today, and we will miss him sorely. We wanted to go to the Nazi Death Camp that Holly’s great grandfather was kept at until the end of the War, but we were sad to discover that it’s nowhere near Amsterdam. It’s in Hamburg. For us to get to Hamburg, we would have had to have booked our train a month in advance, which is something we did not do. Sadly, we won’t be able to go. We are, however, going to the Anne Frank museum and the Homomonument today, both of which should be amazing.

Game Stuff

Four sessions or so ago, there was this non-player character you really liked. Maybe she was an adventurer, or maybe just a source of information. She was fun to play, the players enjoyed interacting with her, and things went pretty well. She was only supposed to be a quest-giver, though, and once the quest was done, there was no reason to have her come back.
Well, fuck that noise. When you’re out travelling around, sometimes you run into some people you never expected to see there. It doesn’t happen often, once in a blue moon, but you’ll be kicking around Tatooine (a real place in Tunisia) and just happen across your ex-boyfriend of six years ago and wonder how in the fuck you both ended up in the same place at the same time. The world is far smaller than we tend to think it is, and people will crop up in the strangest places when you’re not looking for them.
So that non-player character is back, and she’s doing something completely different this time around. She may not even have a quest for you. She might just be hanging out on a mission of her own, and when she makes contact with the player characters, she uses them, or doesn’t, as she sees fit.

Roll 1d10

1) “Hey guys, you think you could deliver this thing to a guy for me?”
2) “Oh, hey, love to talk, but I’m battling Minister Angus von Wyvern’s minions. Coffee later?”
3) “Here, have a sword. It’s magic. Don’t let anyone else have it. Don’t ask questions, just run.”
4) “So we meet again, . This time, you die…”
5) “Help! Save me! Oh thank the gods, it’s you!”
6) “So I’m supposed to meet a guy about a thing here. You guys here for the same thing?”
7) “I’m actually on my way to but had to stop here to resupply. What do you guys have going on? I’ve got a few days here, I’d love to help.”
8) “Some bastard stole my family’s fortune. I’m here to get it back. I’d be willing to cut you a percentage if you’re willing to help.”
9) No dialogue. Just roll initiative. begins combat dominated by an unseen foe who has: Standard; At will; vs Will, target is dominated until the end of your next turn.
0) “I’ve been looking for you guys everywhere. [CHARACTERNAME], I love you. I’ve come to ask your hand in marriage. I won’t be taking no for an answer.” Even more fun when the non-player character is of a gender not preferred by the player character in question…