Fortune Magazine just had an article about Larry Ellison and Oracle that I found quite an interesting read. I've been here for three years and I really don't know that much about the company, and this article helped a bit. There were a couple of things that were a bit different than what I've experienced, but I only have an ants-eye-view so what I perceive is not usually what's really happening...

So last Saturday's games went well. In GURPS Pick had us show up at some Carribean casino in a classic James Bond setup. He gave us 8 xp to buy appropriate skills, so Eric, Woo, and I brainstormed for a half hour looking for suitable MI6 skills. I did my usual thing and just didn't write down any new skills, buying them when I needed them.

Then we entered the casino, where the bad guy (some Latin type) congratulated us on getting in. We were introduced to his two lieutenants, Ping and Pong (a brother/sister duo). At this point we have no idea why we're here or what our mission is. Eric and Woo gamble at the poker table while I hook up with one of the local ladies. So we go up to her room and it's getting hot and heavy and then I notice that the big mirror is a one-way and that someone's on the other side.

Wouldn't you know it, I reach for my gun, two thugs come busting in through the window, I empty my clip into them, the girl breaks the heel of her show and gas pours out, I run out of the room holding my clothes. After getting dressed I go downstairs and meet Eric and Woo who wonder where I got off to. We return to the room, find the three unconscious people, then step through the broken mirror into a hallway that runs behind the hotel rooms.

Travelling down the hallway we encounter a couple of thugs and shoot it out. Unfortunately, one of them gets a shot off which makes a lot of noise (we have silenced Walther PPKs). Wander a bit more and reach a different part of the complex. One of the rooms has the one-way mirror open and inside the room are two well-endowed scientists, twins by the looks of them, both unconscious. As we try to figure out what we'll do, the door bursts open and a bunch of thugs storm inside. To be continued.

Meanwhile the Star Trek adventure ran ok. I was planning on one adventure but then Shannon and Chris flaked so I read another, much smaller adventure. Then I find out Saturday that Shannon will be able to make it to my game, but by then it's too late for me to prepare. So I run the smaller adventure, where the away team has to search an old abandoned space station left by some almost forgotten civilization. A previous Starfleet team was there doing a survey but they don't answer when the ship arrives to pick them up.

As originally designed the adventure is rather basic. A Thought Maker machine tries to make the characters kill themselves. There is also a holographic guardian that poses as one of the surviving survey team members (Shimona). I decided to make it a bit more Halloween-like by having the Borg around and keeping things as mysterious as possible. Pickering was in charge and he conveniently brought two redshirts, one of whom died almost immediately when Shimona shot him (he was pretending to be hysterical with fear). Then he left the other security guard to watch Shimona while the rest headed off. The guard frantically called Pick and said something about a Borg, phaser shots, then by the time they got back there was no trace of the guard, just his depleted phaser.

Anyway, eventually they figured out the mind control thing since Donald and Pick weren't affected (so for a while it was only the rest seeing things that went away before other people could confirm). Then they found the guardian machine and talked it into letting them go.