Friday Night Fights

I do. I love them. We're having our Friday game night tonight. A couple of our players are making up their characters now, those of us who have made the characters are chatting, and the kids are in their room playing some esoteric and noisy game. There's chicken stew simmering on the stove-top, chicken legs roasting in the oven (for the kids, who dislike the stew), and brown rice staying warm. There are good friends, good food, and good fun. It's homey, gamer-geek style.

This game should be fun. We have a Gryphon-Riding Skirmisher, a Knight of the Church, a Cranky Mage-Soldier, the Otherwordly and Mysterious Fighter, a Shapeshifting Assassin, a Pinocchio Stone Golem, and an Orcish Warrior. We're playing in a fantasy universe, set on a worldlet - a continent floating in space (air and gravity provided by magic).

So we ate dinner. Mental Note: Kids need to eat before the adults if at all possible. And at the table (or at the outside table on the porch once it's warm enough). They get entirely too excited having a picnic on the floor, and their respective parents - hell, all the adults - get short on patience with them. Also, the chaos increases the feelings get hurt more easily, and even people calling on the phone get confused by the noise. Misunderstandings happen. Nothing serious, but it's a learning process - all the things to remember - the crock pot for some Fridays, feeding the kids first, trying to stay on the game topic instead of random musings about, say,. the price of tea in China. Or the relative merits of assorted Saturday Night Live skits. ("I'll take The Penis Mightier, Trebek.") The Land Sharks were in a different game, with the same group. Or were they Mystic Landbugs with their own Twitter accounts?

See how easy it is to get off track?

Anyway, we're a bunch of Gamer Geeks with budding Gamer Geek Kids (who prefer the electronic RPG to the pen-and-paper). And since G did not bring his Kung Zhu Pet and they do not currently have any DS games in common that they can play together, they were forced to use only their imaginations! And of course, the pens, paper, crayons, princess crowns, foam swords, and a zillion other props. Heaven forbid!

The 8yos are allegedly cleaning up the kids' room now. I say "allegedly" because, well, you know. They're eight. And Abby is extremely Cinderella Syndrome right now, and G just can't stay on task at night time. And they'd rather play than clean of course, like anyone would. But trying to keep them moving in the same directions is, as they say, "like herding cats".

Or Mystic Landbugs.