Sadly, I did not contribute this year, and Color the World Orange Day is the first Monday in November, not a fixed date, so we won’t observe this again for years.
At work, we’re back to the scheme of every-engineer-for-themself case allocation that was in place when I joined more than six years ago. It still works fine since the time hasn’t expanded much, but it’s more proof that management is just making everything up as they go along.
Read (manga): The Tiger Won’t Eat The Dragon Yet vol 4 (Hachi Inaba): More reasons why everyone hates dragons, more beasts who hate dragons, more tigers who think Hakurei is the hottest thing ever, more interspecies families.
Written (game design): 459:
Speaking of a new paradigm for limitations, it occurs to me that some of
the “power doesn’t work” limitations (OHID, not in strong magnetic
fields, gestures) could be complications instead. This doesn’t help with
limitations that change the power mechanically, though.
It could also be that all powers have to have a minor limitation, and
then only major limitations count, but I’m not sure that’s concrete
enough to be workable.
I still think we can do better than the existing system of base points *
1+adv + active points / 1+lim = real points, but until I can figure out
how, we’re stuck with it.
So, is making hexes more like 10m or as allowed by the environment
actually a good idea? It eliminates the counting of hexes for every
movement and ranged attack, which can be a considerable timesink, and
positioning can be more narrative. On the other hand, a hex of 1-2m is a
good unit for measuring smaller area effects, and having everyone be
alone in their specific hex removes ambiguity.
Zones/large hexes was the right call for the fantasy game, but that
doesn’t mean it’s right for Hero. Does 6E’s hexless approach actually
get the worst of both here? Or is it the right way to go because
it doesn’t impose any structure on the freedom of the space?
Large hexes also make range not strictly numeric. There’s no range as in
engaged in melee with you (already kind of wonky when you include
Stretching) and no range as in within the same hex, and only then do you
get to a range of 1 hex. It’s not at all unworkable, but it’s not as
clean and granular as counting from your own, unambiguous, hex. Same
with movement: there’s 0 hexes of movement meaning you can’t move,a nd 0
hexes meaning you can move around inside your hex to engage people, but
need to go noncombat to get to the next hex. Or whatever.
It feels like going with large and somewhat indeterminate zones instead
of tight hexes also means other measurements like barrier sizes have to
be vague and descriptive instead of a concrete X meters by Y meters,
which is again a different feel than before. But is that bad? Wargamers
love precise measurements, but I like to think the hobby has moved a bit
beyond that (especially because you can get all the precise measurements
you want from playing computer games). You can even make a case that the
precise measurements are less realistic, since people don’t usually
perform in exactly repeatable ways in the real world. Even robots don’t.
Either way could work, I’m pretty sure, but I’m not sure which is a
better fit for what we’re trying to do.