Horror Movies, RQ Glorantha Con and Other Games, MSc Progress

Last night went to the Astor Theatre with caseopaya and funontheupfield to see Die Goethe-Institut show Nosfertu: A Symphony of Horror with the Ensemble Offspring providing a live score. It really was an incredible version of the film, constructed from surviving pieces (it was supposed to be destroyed) and enormous praise is deserving to Murnau's mise-en-scene. Although I was surprised that the place wasn't packed to the rafters. Who doesn't want to see a film of this calibre at an art deco cinema with a live score? I have been asked to write a short review of the event for Classic Melbourne for the event - that will have to wait until the weekend of course, there is a certain RuneQuest Glorantha conference that I have to attend.

Unsurprisingly said conference has been taking up a good portion of my spare time, with sending the conference journal to the printers, panicking over whether the swag bags will arrive in time, organising catering, and getting a plan B for the registration badges over NinjaDan's 3D printer caught on fire, which was pretty dramatic. Speaking of which NinjaDan has been absolutely legendary in helping out in all sorts of support roles in the badges, catering, and so forth. As a pre-conference event jdurall will be running a session of Call of Cthulhu at the asylum tonight. He was going to be staying here, but instead, we caught, a provided a tour of the grounds. Instead strangedave will be staying instead. Both of these people have contributed enormously to the Con, as speakers on multiple sessions for both days and as GMs for both days.

Speaking of games with friends, on the afternoon of the last post went to visit hathhalla and ser_pounce's place for our irregular cheesequest and boardgames day. We played Broom Service a board-and-card game based on a potion delivery, along with the Glorantha-based Khan of Khans. Broom Service has an interesting feature of being designed by a German company with rules in French and English; there was a couple of times where the familiarity with both languages came in use, as the French rules were clearer than the English. Anyway, for what it's worth managed to come on top of both games, albeit by small margins.

After all this I'll be getting seriously stuck into my MSc Dissertation; I am already around a third through, but seriously continue effectively until formal acceptance of the full proposal. I mentioned in a recent journal entry that I was having problems with my supervisor's rather ornery behaviour; providing significantly incomplete responses, changing requirements, not reading the actual document, and having a lack of familiarity with the content. In any case, after the fourth such response, I asked the college for a new supervisor and, with a surprising lack of administrivia, processed the request within a week. I guess my previous supervisor didn't put up much of a fight on the issue.