New Blog

For various reasons (or maybe with no real reason), I started a new blog. In italian.
www.ultimaratioregum.blogspot.com

thanks

I said to her I wasn't going to make a counter-thanks, but I think i lied about that.. simply considering the situation, I think she made me the best thanking I ever received... I hope all your works may, one day or another, someone or some other, instill so deep a feeling, Snatch

the (Campaign) World is ending.

Very little poly this week... strange, but I simply haven't had the time to sleep. Nor polyphasic nor monophasic. So, I'm speaking of the Campaign.

Because the Campaign is about to end.

I'm speaking of a campaign of RPG I started some 4-5 years ago, with the intention of creating the best campaign I ever did... and to end it, too (a rare thing for almost every role playing campaign i ever played, master or not).

And it is... the best I ever created.
How much time i spent thinking on the story? How much creating scenes, characters, and moving them, managing so many background stories, most advancing without them player seeing? Countless hours. When I found myself with nothing to urgently think about, I was thinking Campaign. When waiting, walking, driving. Before sleeping. Searching on internet, news, facts. Talking with friends for inspiration. I made graphs, notes, writings.

And I'm pretty satisfied. There are still things I regret not having been able to insert somewhere, but my players liked it, and so I. What better satisfaction for a master when the players, past 1-AM, about to close the scene, ask, implore to continue, because they simply cannot stop there? When they propel forward through so many years, developing their characters, evolving with them? When a players start crying for what is happening, when players get's angry about what's happening, when a player says that you've made his flesh creep, when a player feels deep feelings about a character, when they continue playing even when you are not in the room, or when they play between them in a bar? That's the only reward I seek, and I was rewarded more than I ever hoped.

It was well played. I choosed among my friends those I though more skilled, more appropriate. And no one was below expectations. More often above.
Their characters started as normal people...
ah. I'm forgetting the setting. World Of Darkness, Verona, 1999. Started in october. About to finish at the end of december. Not three months has passed in game, more than four years in real life.

I was saying... normal people, more than less. Almost all with a family, friends, university, work.A previous life not so implausible for a common citizen. Then they ae put in a maelstrom of events and they have to find a directions, find allies, find knowledge of a world parallel to the bright one of everyday life. Free to do anything, if they can. Every action a conseguence. Some that spans for the entire Campaign. They learn that the apocalypse may happen. And may happen in a short time.

And so they start to fight to find a way to stop it. And in a downward spiral of choiches, choices on players and characters both, because i narrated to afflict (yes, afflict) players and characters equally, they find themself finally with the power to influence the events that dragged them around. But now they have little freedom of choice, and they are the greatest engine of what they had tryied to stop all the time. All in a smooth, coerent transition. They snickered about the almost all-powerful angel-demon Belial, because, incarnated in the body of a child, with memories of a child, had wishes influenced by the wishes of a child. Now they have great power, but they have to choose between the world, themselves, and the ones they love. And no choice seems the right one.

So, the world may end, end maybe, they will be the destroyers.

Forced disconnection

One week without connection at home because of problems of the telephone company... I survived ( :) ) but a lot of things stopped, and some didn't only because I was able to do them at university. I had a problem with credit card/bancomat as the bank disabled the old one, but the new one arrived to my old address almost a month ago. Now I had them resend the code, but it's about 20 days without money other than what I have in my wallet.

Yesterday we had a pizza (and a drink in a couple of pubs) with the boys and girls of the Universitary Laboratory of Theatre. Quite a good evening/night, even if there where less than half of the total of the partecipants.

As I said before, polifasic is hard when your body is tired from exercising. Last friday I wasn't able to stay awake, so I interrupted a wake cycle early to go to bed. Almost same happened this wednesday, because I closed eyes for a moment after the alarm went off, I slept three hours...
Anyway, in the overall is helping me.

I'm back

After one almost one month busy with exams, two weeks in monophasic for exams themselves, and some time to return to schedule, it got to my mind that i have a blog.
All well. The shows season for Lame Scaligere is to begin in about a month, and then there is Salgari, and the Universitary Laboratory of Theatre. In total, 13 hours of theatre lessons weekly, plus 4 hour of theatrical literacy. Then university, then work. Kali. Medieval Fencing. Almost every week to Vicenza to meet Erika and the rest of my friends there. Very difficult to keep the poly schedule.
One thing I learned from poliphasic sleep is that is quite difficult to keep it if you have a phisical life as active as me. I workout almost every day, plus Medieval Fencing (and doing combats or training for duels may be quite exausting) and kali (sometimes with very hard training sessions). All too often, even if now I use an alarm that keeps ringing to be sure to wake up, I find myself too tired on wakeup, costantly risking to fall asleep. Nevertheless, I'm trying again to find my poli-schedule.

All bad, all good

poly is going pretty bad. Most of the time I wasn't able to stick to schedule, often crashing. Mostly because I wasn't able to convince my body to crawl from the warm of the bed to the cold of the room. That's weakness. That must stop. I'm regaining some sleep routine in the last days, but too many worries leave me with too much to think, so I find some trouble when trying to sleep.
As I'm quite low on founds, I had to stop some activities until I start working again. Hope that studio thing I'm doing with a friend is really going to function, or else I'm to part-time. I stopped kali, and I'm adding kali exercises to the normal ones. Doing so I destroyed a light-bulb with a rattan-stick. Still finding pieces of glass.

stats are meaningless

To day, I never fully recovered from crash. I don't know if I now I'm really adapting to polyphasic, or if I'm getting something wrong, but it's really hard to keep routine. I find myself unable to get off bed because I'm really tired, or simply because of falling asleep, so I was unable to do a true 25x6 poliphasic day in the last week. I've tried lengthening the nap time to 45, but maybe it's too much (maybe letting the body relax too much, maybe not leaving me sleepy enough for the next nap), so i went back to 25, but the sometimes I was able to drag myself out of bed (antother tip, if you are to start poliphasic sleep, do it in summer--it's easier to crawl out from under the sheets when the air is warm) even if my body asked sleep, I was so tired and so sleepy I had to anticipate nap or I was going to fall asleep on the chair.

I'm not posting stats anymore, as it's quite difficult now to compare to "normal times".