Toulouse: Report

From: sgpchambon@yahoo.com (Sylvain Chambon)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: [F] Toulouse meet, 25-26th August
Date: 28 Aug 2001 09:15:32 GMT
Message-ID: <slrn9omo9o.6pu.sgpchambon@genua.se.room33.com>
Reply-To: gourou@lepcf.org
X-Old-Xref: news.lspace.org alt.fan.pratchett:263394


Disclaimer: this is not a meet report[1], I don't know if a meet
report is forthcoming but in any case, this is just a set of
recollections.

There was an afpmeet in Toulouse, far down the South of France, last
week-end. The theme was roleplaying (GURPS Discworld in particular).

Attendees:

Rose Humphrey
Yannick Larvor
Boris Bret
Fabrice
Hervé and his 18-month-old daughter Lola
Ophélie
Emmanuel
Frédéric
and me (did I forget anyone?)

The quote file:

A few quotes were jotted down by Ophélie during the meet; however
she's still on holidays for a week without Net access, and in any case
the quotes will have to be translated by commitee before being
posted. Watch this space!

The story:

All began on Friday night, when Ophélie and I took her car for the
700km drive from Paris. As it happened, we arrived in Toulouse a bit
earlier than we thought, around half past 6 in the morning, which is
to say, too late to try and catch some sleep and too early to begin
phoning people. A largish (in my case) cup of coffee and a very long
walk along a canal later, we stumbled by chance on to Emmanuel and
Frédéric's street (they had volunteered to provide crash space to
Ophélie, but had assured her the place was too remote for her to find
it by herself). A bit later (well, the time to get back to the car,
then back to the street, but with the car) we woke them up with an
early morning phone call (about nine or tennish IIRC, so still
decent...)

Some refreshments, showers, and small talk later, we called up Rose
and proceeded to the meet itself. Everybody was waiting for us at
Rose's when we got there, so after a short while to arrange
distribution of the people into three of the five (or six? I forget)
vehicles we had at our disposal we headed to the lake of ??????[2],
where the meet was to be held.

Once there, the temperature had risen to a pretty high level (I'd say
over 35 Celsius, but I could very well be wrong), and the first pangs
of hunger were making themselves felt; the Toulouse clan therefore
began taking amazing mountains of food out of bags, installing a
portable, single-use barbecue, as well as a few drinks (including an
excellent white wine).

Lunch was over rather more quickly than expected, with only a fraction
of the food consumed... A special note to the "saucisse toulousaine",
which was excellent with peanut sauce.

While we ate, chatted and lay down in the meagre shadow offered by a
few trees, Rose and Boris huddled in a corner to discuss various
GM[3]-related issues; they soon started to call each of us in turn to
discuss the characted we would be playing.

The rest of the afternoon was basically spent eating, geeking RPGs,
sleeping, shifting to follow the shadows, and (very importantly)
creating the characters.

Around eightish, decision was made to proceed to Emmanuel and
Frédéric's flat, due to sunlight soon to falter too much to play.

Once there, we ate some of the (copious) remains of lunch, drank some
of the (not less copious) remains of the rum and wine from lunch,
geeked RPGs a bit more and finished creating the characters.
Unfortunately, when everything was ready to play, it was already two
in the morning, and since Ophélie and I hadn't had the chance to close
an eye the night before, we decided to adjourn to the following day,
in the morning. We therefore adjourned to our respective flats or
crash space.

Sunday at ten sharp, Yannick and I (I had been crashing at Yannick's)
met Fabrice at Emmanuel's door, and we had the incommensurable
pleasure of waking Ophélie with a shock (and a doorbell -- she was
sleeping with her head a few centimeters from the doorbell
loudspeaker). Once in, we found we (and now Ophélie) were the only
people awake, which didn't really surprise us.

Waiting for everybody was spent geeking RPGs, reading comics and
playing UNO (a card game that can be very fun and/or very frustrating
when playing with extended rules).

Around twelveish, everybody was in, and hungry, so we ate the final
remains of Saturday's lunch. After lunch (around two), it appeared
that we (well, I) wouldn't have the time for the RPG since I had to be
at the airport at three; we therefore started watching the Wyrd
Sisters DVD which I had brought along by chance[4]: the RPGmeet became
a Videomeet.

Shortly after the start of the film, Yannick drove me to the airport,
and I have no more information about what happened at the meet so this
is a good end for this not-a-report.

As a final word, I would like to thank the Toulouse afpcrew for
organising a wonderful meet, with special mention to Rose for the
gigantic heaps of food coming from her apparently bottomless bags,
Fabrice for the desserts, Emmanuel and Frédéric for kindly offering to
use their flat, and Yannick for the crash space.

Sylvain.

[1] as far as I can remember, nobody's volunteered to write one... but
I might have missed it...

[2] A bad memory for names, I have.

[3] Game Master. Not Genetic Modification. Hopefully at least :-)

[4] If anybody could confirm that Ophélie did take it before leaving,
I would be very happy, BTW.

-- 
Sylvain Chambon - gourou@lepcf.org
New and improved! http://gourou.lepcf.org

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