I don’t even need to mash this one up, Sesame Street is an unalloyed good in the world.
Since Former Coworker T was forced out, someone else has to cover Christmas Day, and apparently it’s going to be me.
Read (graphic novel): Over My Dead Body (Sweeney Boo): An orphan witch at witch school disappears, and her senpai mentor tries to find out what happened to her despite the discouragement of basically everyone. It’s pretty to look at, but the story is mid, and the spell rhymes are pretty bad. Like, I might be able to do better poetry.
Read (novel): Jewel of the Endless Erg (John Bierce): Second book in the series our current Fantasy Hero campaign is based on. The terribly shy and self-deprecating hero continues to display that he is in fact completely OP. Also, dragons. And intrigue. And smooches.
Written (game design): 435:
Of course this all falls apart as soon as we look at a number. The
2d6 Str of a normal person only has a range of 2-12 Stun, so can
only ever reach two effect levels, and we have to make the default
Con 0 to even get to Con+10 (and it’s still never going to happen
twice). It would sort of work if we said any hit above Con bumped
the level, so that four hits in a row would get the target to Con+30
(same as 2d6 vs 2 Def and 20 Stun), but what about Body? In old
money, we’d expect to inflict about 2 Body out of 10, but now we’d
expect the target to end up at the Con+10 level of wounded. Since
we haven’t defined how hurt the levels are, maybe that can work.
When we look at 12d6 against 2 Def, Stun is okay: 40 takes the
target to a level beyond Con+30 if base Con is 0. Body is only
Con+10, though instead of dying, and we established that as being
the result of a regular fistfight. That makes throwing around
full-power energy blasts a lot less fraught, which is no good.
12d6 against 30 Def gives Con+10 on average, assuming Con 0, but only
Con+0 against a moderately higher Con. Maybe not even that against a
much higher Con, which suggests we need to make Def or Con or both more
expensive, so that 60 points in attack and 60 points in defense balance
out appropriately.
I’m still not sure if I like it, but I guess that didn’t fall apart
as much as I expected, if we’re willing to have any hit at Con+0
or more bump up the level (meaning, four hits until unconsciousness
at most, not counting recoveries taken, which need to be worked out
but are probably just one action to move one step down the chart)
and also willing to have normals hit by 12d6 attacks get pasted. We’ll
set it aside for future consideration.