Month: November 2023

A natural followup to Crystal Skull Day, I guess?

Back to work! It wasn’t bad, I just don’t like getting up in the morning.

Played: Lancer. Of course our attempt to get the non-corporate refugees to safety was interrupted by killer robots. We got most of the civilians out with Abrakyl’s power to make everything teleport and teleport and teleport, but the victory condition is to have all of us inside the zone and none of the enemy in the zone at some point after round three. We got to the middle of round three before having to call it a night, and it’s looking pretty good for next week. Roll20 gave me the good numbers this time and I got one or more crits every time I did a barrage, so the worst enemy is gone, as is one of the foliage management units. I was almost cool!

Read: My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress vol 1 (Chisaki Kanai): An elite anti-vampire cop with amnesia breaks a legendary vampire-killing vampire out of secret government custody. Together, they fight crime vampires. A weird mix of awkward romance between the leads and action-horror with body parts as spell components and casual use of high-level pyrokinesis in downtown Shibuya.

Written: FAIL.

*thows up sign of the horns*

Knowing that Saturday would be traveling, and Sunday would be gaming, I cleverly took today off to do weekend things, by which I mostly mean grocery shopping and eating chicken tenders. That went okay. I also read manga and performed my most vital duty, feeding the cats.

Read: Spy x Family: The Official Guide: Eyes Only (Tatsuya Endo): The usual recaps, character info, setting info, promotional art, interviews, etc.

Read: Spy x Family vol 10 (Tatsuya Endo): Loid backstory!

Written: FAIL.

Not sure exactly what that’s about, but better not offend The Skull.

Played: Librarians Errant. We were chasing down a grad student who was using the overdue book for clues to treasure in a dungeon full of unexplained monsters and improbable traps, so it was a surprisingly traditional D&D adventure. The treasure was a book that didn’t belong to the library, so we left the grad student and visiting scholar to their tawdry het romance novel and noped out with the book we were sent for and some incidental loot. Level UP!

That was pretty much it for today.

Written: FAIL.

While I was on vacation, I saw a very cute baby who can stand up while holding onto things (which lets him get off the Baby Preserve), went on a three-mile hike with Ken and Dave, got help with Squaredle, ate a million unhealthy foods, saw many people I rarely see, and stayed up too late playing board games. I slept more than I wanted although not as much as my body wanted. It was a good vacation, but now, despite traffic, I am back. Marith did a great job taking care of Sage and Nightvale, because she is Best Lizard, but she was not in a position to feed them three gooshy meals a day, so they were glad to see me.

Played: Dominion. I did not win, although maybe I could have if the game had gone on longer.

Played: Ra. New to me, all about drawing tiles from the bag and bidding on them with numbers. As often happens, I seized the lead in the first epoch and then got no more points the rest of the game.

Played: Holiday Fluxx. Like all Fluxx variants, it is fundamentally Fluxx, and this is the rule of Fluxx.

Played: Puerto Rico. Moral depravity and I wasn’t even good at it! (Although neither was anybody else; it was a really close game and late at night.)

Played: Dungeon World. Jus wanted to play D&D, but nobody else volunteered and I wasn’t going to do that, so I compromised with an iron fist. An immolator, a rogue, a druid, and a wizard walk into a dungeon… and SET IT ON FIRE! Also there was some tussling with mooks and mutant frogs and traps, but by the time they got down to the heart of the dungeon, Jus had run out of gas. However, we stopped in a good place, and only had four players who are all likely to be up for gaming next visit, so I kept the character sheets and my terrible notes and maybe we’ll pick it up again.

Read: Perils & Princesses: You are fairy-tale princesses, going on D&D adventures. You have Resolve, Grace, Wit, a fairy godmother, a magic gift, one magic die per level(max four), and the contents of your inventory slots, because despite the fairy-tale theme, it’s a GLOG game. It has the usual D&D problems of “roll d20 to have nothing happen” and “everybody’s a bucket of hit points” but the system is simple and mostly player-facing. Also, because all lists and examples are numbered, it’s possible to create a character entirely randomly, which makes me want to try it for a con game.

Written: VACATION

That would have been better yesterday, for finishing My Happy Marriage.

I got up at the usual weekday time to feed some ravenous cats for the first time in their lives, but then I went back to bed. I had an alarm so that I wouldn’t sleep so much I actually decomposed into loam, but I woke up naturally by being done with sleeping, and both cats were snuggled up against me (so I must have been sleeping correctly instead of flailing). Even though it was 11:30, I’m going to declare that winning at morning.

The rest of the day was kind of meh, but I did eventually accomplish a few things on my to-do list, and also complained about writing.

Watched: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 1: Although animated, it’s not just a remake of the comic or of the movie (although apparently it’s mostly the same cast). Same story until the end of the first episode, when it goes in a different direction. Minor detail? Complete derailment? Only another episode will tell! Maybe I’ll watch it with Marith if we both survive Thanksgiving.

Read: Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue (Dlanora): Romance is difficult! Feelings are complicated! Families are questionable!

Written: FAIL. But I complained a lot!

Nightvale counts, even though he is partly stars!

Getting two cats got me two weeks of Fact Or Share, but this time I had to use a fact, which is that deepsea anglerfish are not the size of a Nerf football, they are big enough to swallow you whole.

Watched: My Happy Marriage 10-12: We find out what’s up with the secret family and why whatsisface is being so creepy and how you should definitely not underestimate Miyo. Happy ending!

Read: System Collapse (Martha Wells): Oh man, poor Murderbot! I’m glad it has a terrifying friend to watch media with, and also that it is developing non-murdery skills for saving the day. Plus, “capitalism sucks” never grows old as a theme.

Written: FAIL.

I’m short on bears, though. Also, shouldn’t this be shortly before Fat Bear Week? I’m sure party snacks are dense in calories!

My mucus is decreasing, but possibly asymptotically and not necessarily to zero, so still not in the office.

The new Murderbot is out, but it seems to follow on directly from the previous situation, so I had to reread.

Read: Network Effect (Martha Wells): This is the one the new book follows on from, I could tell even though I apparently didn’t remember it very well until I read it. I thought there was a lot more stuff with [SPOILER], but no.

Read: Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells): Published after Network Effect but set earlier, when Murderbot was hanging out on Preservation keeping an eye on Dr Mensah. I therefore did not have to reread it right now, but I did anyway, because Murderbot.

Written: FAIL. Only reading.

I mean, I kind of do, I’m just really bad at it!

Skipped going into the office to avoid sharing my mucus, although possibly I could have gotten away with it.

Read: She Who Became The Sun (Shelley Parker-Chan): It’s fantasy China, the Mongols have invaded, tragic backstories for everybody, but tragedy spawns ambition that will not be denied, which in turn spawns a whole lot of murders. There are a lot of terrible people, including the protagonists, but also a few good people and a lot of people who are just trying to get by. There isn’t any magic per se, but there are definitely supernatural elements to the world that can be taken advantage of by the few people aware of them. There are So. Many. Feelings. I was afraid this would be too hard to read with my 2023 brain, but although a lot of terrible things are done, it was not too much to deal with.

Written: 189 words, which is almost more than nothing.

Happy birthday, Nonny!

I had to get up early for bonus meetings, which are actually a feature of every normal Tuesday now but that doesn’t make me like them any more. I had no brain, I did some work, I read some more GLOG stuff, I coughed up a bunch of mucus, I read an essay about how Tolkien orcs and D&D orcs are in fact still racist no matter how much you say “it’s right there on the page they aren’t human” or “Professor Tolkien would never”. It also convinced me that D&D-style stats are bad, even if you manage to avoid racial modifiers (which hardly anyone does). All the “natural ability” or “innate potential” type stats are like thinking your IQ is what matters, instead of what skills and decisions you actually make with it. This does affect my game design thoughts, since I was already tending toward BitD-style actions or Castle Falkenstein-style skills for the Champions thing.

Played: Nothing. Not only is Ken busy with Nonny’s birthday, Vivian got her brain electrified today.

Written: FAIL. Too many snuggles, not enough free hands.

 

Yeaaaaah!

Of course Monday the 13th is also the most cursed of days, but that’s on theme. Probably explains why Coworker T brought COVID back from vacation, so he’s still out and Coworker K just left on vacation.

Still kind of coughy and generally disgruntled with biology.

Read some more GLOG stuff. BONES gives up on stats as chance of success entirely and uses them only for slot-based inventory capacity. A sword, a spell, a best friend, a bag of gold, a recurring nightmare, each one takes up a slot in the appropriate inventory. Wounds and stress and madness take up slots too, and kick out what you already have if there isn’t enough room.

Written: FAIL.

I had pneumonia when I was a smol, so will never say anything against antibiotics or modern medicine.

Gaming was cancelled because plague and infirmity abound, so once again I did nothing useful. I read more GLOG stuff and like all OSR stuff I have very mixed feelings (not even counting my growing dislike for hit points). It is (or can be) way cooler than the Hasbro (or wannabe Hasbro competitor) focus group product. Roll twice on this list of vaguely goetic, extremely specific extradimensional entities to see what you can summon. Oh, you want them to be useful? Sounds like a you problem! Anyway, the world is composed of four elements: ash, bones, blood, and fish. Artificial fire is the divine element and will not burn the righteous. Dogs are sacred because they’re warm! At the start of every day, tell us which saint’s day it is, who they’re the patron of, what they help with, and how they were martyred, and get one miracle die for each one you tell us! But on the other hand, I want my characters to be cute and successful and have to roll on the Death and Dismemberment table just because the d20 hates me. I know, that’s definitely a me problem.

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 3 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): And now Kasuga (the one who likes to eat) has put a name to her feelings for Nomoto!

Written: Continued, unending, FAIL.

I don’t feel at all qualified to comment on what’s happening in Israel, but pretty sure an armistice would not be bad. Alas, when all you have is a nation-state, everything looks like a rival nation-state.

I was well enough to eat chicken tenders and buy groceries today, but not to do any braining, so it’s good that customers didn’t want anything from me. Instead of braining, I read a bunch about GLOG, which is a (more) minimalist, (more) DIY submovement within OSR, or something. The first rule of GLOG is obviously that there are no rules to GLOG, but if there were a rule, it would be that classes only have four levels worth of stuff, so there are no boring levels, and if you don’t die (which you probably will, because OSR) you will end up multiclassing. Other commonalities among  Many Rats On Sticks (Skerples), Runaway Princesses (Alcoops), Nuclear Ooze (Micah A), Moonhop (Type1Ninja), Vain the Sword (Phlox), and Ultraviolet Gloglands (Skerples) are slot-based inventory, copious random tables, and a magic system where you spend some of your precious few magic dice on a spell, the parameters of the spell are based on how many dice you rolled and the sum of them all, doubles and triples are bad, and only dice that roll low come back for reuse. Roll under your stat instead of vs target number is common but not required. What happens when you get to zero hit points usually involves a Death and Dismemberment Table.

This is irrelevant to my own game design struggles, since I want no hit points and do want superpowers and mostly nonlethal combat and the ability to play vampires, robots, goo monsters, tulpas, living black holes, or whatever other craziness can happen in Champions, which is an entirely different paradigm, but I’ll pretend looking at any game design is helpful.

Written: FAIL.

My theory: Everything wrong with the US today is a result of insufficient Sesame Street.

Watched: My Happy Marriage 6-9: It was nice to see the random rich guys who thought they were so great pick a fight with an actual military monster hunter, but Cinderella still needs to communicate better!

Read: She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat vol 2 (Sakaomi Yuzaki): It’s kind of adorable how Nomoto (the one who likes to cook) is just “Welp, guess I’m a lesbian, I should check the Internet to find out how that works” and now she has a pocket friend to discuss things with. Plus, new character with a completely different relationship to food than the main couple.

Written: 184, although it took me like two weeks to accumulate what should be half a night’s work. Neither kitties nor germs are conducive to writing. (Also I suck.)

I like nachos in theory, but they never seem to be as good as I remember the nachos of my (relative) youth and make me vaguely ill. Maybe it’s because I’m not eating them with the stomach of my youth, which had a much better capacity for Mexicanish food. But I did not have nachos today, only work and kitty snuggles.

Read: “A Sign of the Times” (Joe Hill): What if the process of the Great Old Ones destroying the world involved Youtube videos about the benefits of branding yourself with the Elder Sign?

Written: FAIL.

I went back to my usual grocery store this week, which is next to my usual bookstore, which was full of things to buy, because I haven’t really converted to reading manga digitally, because I’m dumb. Also I ate chicken tenders to prepare my digestive system. I was on call in the afternoon to cover for coworker M who was trapped by the perfidy of automobiles, which boss B made a big deal of appreciating even though it was only for like 45 minutes.

In the evening, Ayse finally came over to meet my cats, and then we all* went to Brazil Meat Center (which is actually called Taurinus) for meat and more meat and grilled pineapple that tastes like peach pie and more meat and dessert because Marith hadn’t gotten a birthday celebration yet. Happy Lizard Day!

*Except Nonny who is sick and Dave who was keeping an eye on him and doesn’t like eating out much anyway.

Written: Still FAIL.

It me. But it’s also one-week Cativersary Day! Sage and Nightvale and I have been living together for a whole week and hardly any of us are dead!

Later in the day, I went over to visit Ayse and everybody for pizza and conversation and Glow Stick Party (which involves rings of light zipping back and forth on the smooth floor of a dark room) and it was very nice.

Written: FAIL.

Ovodiablerism is the best!

However, office lunch was Nepalese(?) which included two or more types of paneer plus garlic naan(ish) and no deviled eggs. Still good!

Read: Dandadan vol 5 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Another bizarre encounter with cryptids and cultists and aliens, most of them dumb or horny or both.

Read: Omega Morales and the Legend of La Lechuza (Laekan Zea Kemp): A twelve-year-old from a magical family but with defective(?) magic of her own and her annoying cousin and friendly ghost are stalked by an owl-witch-monster and also annoying middle-schoolers and racist buttheads and family that is not as helpful as they think. It’s hard being twelve.

Read: Me and My Beast Boss vol 1 (Shiroinu): A human (and therefore marginalized) office lady gets promoted to work with the terrifying lion-guy CEO, who is terrifying but also appreciates her abilities. Possible romance!

Written: Still FAIL.