Today we gamed at Pickering's, the second floor of this old house in Oakland. Not a great neighborhood, but I've never seen a great neighborhood in Oakland. It's not a rich city and maintaining its beauty is not something that's in the city budget. But my percep- tion of the kind of city that Oakland is is probably not the same as the perception of its inhabitants. I'm sure that some people don't think of my hometown, Sacramento, in the best of light and yet as I was growing up there it was, and still is, a great city.

Anyway, Pickering is one of the messiest individuals I know. No, that's not quite the right image. Pickering himself is a rather dapper fellow, it's just his office, car, and home that are these monuments to chaos and disorder. The first time I went to his place, you walk through the entry way into a small landing and then go up the staircase to the second floor. But the whole of the landing was filled with junk mail; you couldn't see the floor and it was a bit of work to open the front door. The living room had no table, just some chairs, a stereo, a television, and a mattress pad thing to sit on. The kitchen had a table covered with newspapers and empty bottles, a sink full dirty pots and pans, a fridge that smells like something crawled in, died, and got covered in mold.

But, when we gamed today he had remarkably cleaned up the place. The landing was almost free of clutter. The kitchen table had been moved to the living room, and the kitchen was a lot cleaner, with the sink relatively clear and the bottles gone. But that's not really the point of this journal entry.

Anyway, we got enough people to play a session of AD&D. In this episode our arch-nemesis/ally returned our dragon-scale shields, although in his own way. It was really a trap and we had to fight a few demons (or were they devils?). Now, since not everyone showed up we doubled up on characters. But how can I be expected to play someone else's character when I can barely play mine? It usually ends up that the other characters are there to provide firepower but not for much else.

So we get into this big fight, and once again we don't take our opposition seriously and almost have our heads handed to us. The monsters kept screeching which stunned us, then they had a great AC and lots of little attacks, and these gas spores, and the had mirror image, and could only be hit by +2 weapons. But we did win with the judicious use of magic and once again we came to the conclusion that we need more true fighters in the party. We only have one true fighter and five people who can hold their own but won't change the tide of battle. Then we have a mage for pure firepower.

After AD&D we played Ars Magica. It was a faerie adventure. Last week we killed a faerie lord and this week the faeries put us on trial. This was mostly a thinking adventure, a lot of talking and interaction. I didn't pay much attention to the game but Eric and Pickering had things well in hand and so we were aquited in the end.

We play so infrequently nowadays that every session counts. But I still don't pay much attention and give it 100%. I enjoy being there and watching everyone else play while I try to catch up on things. This week I was reading some comic books. And that's just how it goes.