I guess this was the wrong day to wear my pro-procrastination shirt.

Slept way in but then was able to save some time on shopping because there probably haven’t been any new books delivered since Tuesday.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.11-13: more villains who have always existed yet were written into existence days ago, finally someone willing to monologue about the villains’ plan, but then the end of the season! Although this is 13 episodes and where we should be at the midpoint, so it’s probably annoying marketing splitting season 4 into two.

Read (manga): Spy Classroom vol 2 (SeuKaname, Takemachi, Tomari): The girls still have not gotten one over on their teacher, but it’s time for the suicide mission anyway! After hearing about the great spies who failed at it before.

Read (novel): Any Minor World (Craig Schaefer): Same setting as most of Schaefer’s books, a hardboiled private eye gets mixed up with the criminal cartel that tries to control the multiverse and a dame who is already entangled with some of the less pleasant parts of it (think Gotham but with more supernatural horror). Colorful villains, desperate chases, redemption, betrayal, subway trains to hell.

Written (game design): 409:

My bullshit definitely includes people becoming able to use magic
after getting exposed to the supernatural or otherwise traumatized,
and this coming with some kind of curse that makes normal people
not want them around so they’re pushed to the edges of society. At
least part of the curse is susceptibility to turning into a monster,
either through one’s own wickedness or through being cursed or
whatever. (Note that meeting a vampire’s cursed eyes is definitely
exposure to the supernatural, so one is immediately vulnerable.)
Every person is equally susceptible to this; there’s no lineage
that has more or less magic than any other, although in-world that
may not be apparent. In fact, I’m pretty against any plot tokens
being passed down by blood, even if characters want to be weird
about it.

PCs can have whatever role in society they’re permitted, but
fundamentally they ain’t right and are going to end up, sooner or later,
as the ones dealing with problems that ain’t right. So what are those
problems and where do they come from? Monsters that used to be people,
obviously, and monsters that are still technically people (the wealthy
and powerful, insert Leverage intro here), and sometimes the two working
together. I mentioned interdimensional incursions as a source of
monsters before, and still like strange creatures from the higher realms
(although I’m less sure about PCs being able to do much about them,
because, higher realms). Living dungeons are also good, although they
need some kind of different spin than in 13th Age. A good source of
problems, though, possibly as good as pre-apocalyptic ruins? Also
there’s probably something about dimensions trying to invade and
corrupt each other with vacuoles (completely independent of anything their
inhabitants might want).

Living dungeons don’t have to be interdimensional. Maybe the ancient
layer of fallen heavenly palaces is rebuilding itself upward. Maybe it’s
just the regular D&D Underdark expanding upward in search of water or
plants. This might be the kind of thing that needs a list of 1d12
anticanon possibilities.

There’s a particular kind of player (I heard, from a friend) that will
want to play a monstergirl from a living dungeon. I should probably
figure out what to do about that.

This answers the question of whether to apocalypse, at least. We have
weird stuff from other places, not other times, at least mostly.