It’s certainly not my fault it’s Friday the 13th! It’s my fault I’m on vacation today, though, since I volunteered to work on Juneteenth.

Took some books to the used book store, Got some tasty Thai lunch, did some shopping, bought a blood pressure machine.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 4 (Yoshimurakana): Absolutely no one was surprised by how Kuroko succumbed to the lesbian cult’s brainwashing, but it was surprising that Yakuza Princess went to some lengths to get her back. Maybe she actually likes her!

Written (game design): 255:

That’s simple actions sorted, but what about opposed rolls, social
skills, NPCs rolling, etc? NPCs do get to roll, this isn’t a completely
player-facing system. We’re not going that story-game. But *mostly*
player-facing is fine. Since there aren’t target numbers,
directly-opposed rolls or using the opposing skill as the target number
or whatever isn’t viable; the GM sets the Difficult as usual. Most
social actions will often get the +1D for having someone working against you
because a lot of people are ornery and self-interested, maybe more if
you’re being extremely unreasonable.

What about when the NPCs try to bamboozle the PCs? Save vs Influence!
Rolls are mostly player-facing, so you make saves instead of opposed
rolls. We could do Fortitude/Reflex/Will, but that’s
not as interesting as the old-school named saves. The names could be a
little less opaque, though, so we have something like
Save vs Influence, Save vs Ambush or Trap, Save vs Poison or
Sickness, Save vs Curses, Save vs Restraint, Save vs Falls, Save vs
Possession and Compulsion. Or maybe some other way of dividing up the
vicissitudes of the adventuring life, but those seem to cover most
things and it should be obvious which one to use for novel problems.

None of these saves are “miraculously take half damage from the fireball
while standing still at ground zero” because I don’t think that should
be a thing. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the area of effect!

I have a whole lot of bad ideas about combat.