Interrobang?!
Went to the office, had the room to myself, ate a huge pile of slightly spicy chicken and some corn, did some work.
Read (manga): Yotsuba&! vol 15 (Kiyohiko Azuma): I’m pretty sure you can identify the end of childhood by the point at which searching for good rocks is no longer fun.
Read (novel): Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Bought Superpowers (Richard Roberts): Another high-school frosh gets extremely sketchy superpowers, so that she can be center of attention as she rightfully deserves. Her variable monster girl transformation power is definitely eye-catching, but also attracts the attention of mad fashion science, ruins her life, forces her to confront monster-defeating monsters in the underground, etc. She does get the attention she wants, though, and of course it works out in the end, somehow. It’s good to see a teen female protagonist who is all, “no, I’m awesome, don’t overlook me!”.
Written (game design): 128:
Wait, are Fancy Temple Wizards the Man? So PCs have to be renegade or at
least politically unsound ones if they’re that kind of wizard? But
mostly they’re other kinds, prophets and pyschics and whatnot. Same with
martial artists who learn the approved styles vs ones who invent their
own forms based on what they learn in living dungeons, or whatever.
Because if you follow the established ways, you definitely won’t turn
into a monster.
Is this too much concrete setting, as opposed to elements people can use
in their settings? Maybe, but let’s keep it for now. Not that tables
can’t ignore it, since the only difference between an unsound FTW and a
sound one isn’t mechanical (much). We can encourage rebellion with the
sample/quickstart characters.
This ties in with another thought I had, which is that at least some
fields of magic aren’t fully explored. In D&D terms, maybe only Fancy
Temple Wizardry goes all the way to 20th level. Blood fire magic
might only go to 10th level, and after that you have to seek out or
develop new techniques. Since we don’t actually have classes or levels,
I’m not sure what this looks like in practice. Maybe it’s just an excuse
to not create higher-end powers to buy off a list.
Even if there are extremely high-level FTW anointments, they probably
are only available to the Politically Sound, which means not these
weirdos. But they’re there, taunting you.
I had been thinking that prophets, as they “level up”, become more like
FTWs, and it occurs to me that it should probably be optional, but slightly
mechanically advantageous, to do that. It’s always more profitable to
gentrify than to keep your town weird. (This is the same reasoning as
not giving out-of-character rewards for good deeds.) But, they can be
weird in solidarity. Each god (where do they come from? spontaneous
excitations in the bureau-magical quantum field triggered by the
expansion of the world’s edge?) has probably three attributes, like
being the god of rainbows, capybaras, and sailing. There’s only one god
of that combination, and only one prophet of that god, but there can be
a god of rainbows, capybaras, and basket weaving, or rainbows/sea
snakes/sailing,and if the prophets of these gods don’t kill each other,
possibly they can combine them into a larger god with more attributes.
This is probably how the “Celestial Bureaucracy” started.
What does it mean for a power to be high level? Just expensive, or
prerequisites, or what? How does any of this work? Pregenerated
lists of powers is easiest for the player, but even a large list
is pretty limited compared to players’ imaginations. Earlier I
mentioned a point-buy system, but a full Hero-level implementation
would be both a lot of work for the designer (me!) and the
(hypothetical) players. We definitely don’t have to pretend that
we can balance things to less than one percent of a character; ten
percent (ie, you get to pick ten powers/feats/whatevers, or fewer
if some of them count double) is maybe plausible. Not that we are
extremely concerned with balancing combat power, but it should be
somewhat fair for players. At least, it should not make them grouchy
about the unfairness.
So, our points system is for calculating what fits into a power slot (or
a double-size or even triple-sized slot for something really great). If
prerequisites are applicable as disads, then yes, of course the prereqs
will always exactly match what the character already has, but it’s not
like they get the points back from those, so I think it’s okay. We need
to figure out how to handle feats that affect other feats, though, which
is the other way of building up. It’s adjustment powers all the way
down!
I’ve been reading something where people get magical powers from
the attention and emotions of others, and now I’m thinking, what
if at least some magic doesn’t work when you’re by yourself? No
more brooding loners! Or at least not as many. Is this how Fancy Temple
Wizardry works? That would explain why it’s popular in civilization,
where they can get large congegrations, even if the congregations aren’t
that invested individually. Wandering wizards have much smaller groups,
but have bonded under fire, so they count more. Does this work with the
Celestial Bureaucracy metaphor? Maybe you have to have a metaphorical
petition from the people? Or maybe you don’t count as human without
connections? So people who turn into monsters and lurk alone in the
desolate places of the world can’t do that kind of magic? I don’t know
if it’s right for XZQJY, but I do like that.
New tangent, “bonding under fire”. Am I really keeping black powder
ray guns? I like them, and they’re not historic which makes them more
fantastical and also maybe reduces the pedantry level? On the other
tentacle, guns and bullets have been around long enough to be part of
the mythology in a way energy weapons obviously haven’t, and people have
a better intuitive feel for them. Also, exorcising the ghost with a
golden bullet cast from the locket of its lover is a better story beat
than tuning your laser to the peak color of sunlight or whatever. On the
other other tentacle, D&D players have been okay with smiting their
enemies with beams of radiance since at least 4E. So, maybe?
Back to character creation/advancement. It’s not just spells and
martial arts techniques and ancestry feats that go in these slots,
it’s moves other than Act Under Fire, it’s extra Readiness dice,
Attack dice, Harmony if we have that, armor, inventory and Psyche
slots, it’s bonuses to action ratings, and probably other things I’m not
remembering or haven’t considered yet, so we have to figure out how much
of each of those goes into one slot. That sounds uncomfortably like
work.
I like the idea of purely diagetic advancement, but punishing players
for NOT harassing the GM seems counterproductive, and would definitely
not seem fair. Also I like the idea of getting XP for failing, as
previously mentioned, so that also has to be sorted.
Still going in circles.