It me, although I’m probably not as freethinking as I think (freely).
Went to the office, did some work, ate some chicken and rice, learned some kubernetes.
Watched (anime): My Hero Academia 7.19-20: Two very dramatic episodes, Dabi vs multiple Todorokis and Uravity vs Himiko!
Read (comic collection): Rivers of London: Body Work (Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan, Luis Guerrero): A short story about a Falcon incident. I had not pictured Peter as wearing a suit and tie to work every day, but Aaronovitch signed off on it, so it must be so. I did not like the art at all, though. It is murky and rough and bleah and I am a Philistine.
Written (game design): 257:
Are we coming back around to my earlier idea of conditions, but
making them actual conditions instead of hit points with post-its?
As previously realized, that needs a lot of judgement calls for
what conditions a character (PC or NPC) can take or not take based
on their powers and special effects, but it’s 2026, we aren’t
actually expecting the GM to use their infinite power for TPKs.
A lot of this can be done in stock Hero, by giving characters
appropriate complications and limitations, but then we’re back to the
players guessing what weaknesses the GM prepared. Maybe NPCs can just
have “Weaknesses appropriate to being a magical goo monster (30)”? Or
“Weaknesses to be established in play by the heroes (30)”? It’s still a
little vaporous as to what they are ahead of time, but once they’re
established, they should be written down. Possibly there needs to be a
rule (more like a guideline) about when in the fight the GM has to have
spent all those points.
The GM can predefine some weaknesses, but leaving some for the players
to “discover”, although possibly lacking in verisimilitude, might help
with the problem of coming up with a whole new suite of complications
every session. Not sure it helps with limitations, though, so we may
still want a more freeform approach. Or perhaps this is a reason to
revisit the idea of having limitations be accounted for separately from
the base power cost? But probably just writing “susceptible to PC
cleverness as established in play (-1/2)” is enough.