Author: Trip the Space Parasite

But I write fantasy because I can’t do math!

Went shopping, tried to get quarters, got a hard time for having an expired ID card. I should probably do something about that, but it matters so rarely.

Watched (anime): Kowloon Generic Romance 4-6: Well, now we have Dr Snake’s minion’s theory about what’s going on, but even the characters we thought were in a position of knowledge or power seem pretty confused, and I’m not sure any of this explains what was going on with Blonde Friend. Female Lead seems to be doing better emotionally, so probably it’s all going to come crashing down.

Read (manga): Witch Hat Atelier vol 14 (Kamome Shirahama): And that is why every field needs both young whippersnappers and experienced elders, but no field needs dogmatic zealots.

Written (game design): 209:

Earlier I said there would be three outcomes from a disaster roll:
everything works as intended; partial or conflicted success; disaster.
The middle one is the most effort for the GM, who has to invent a
setback that doesn’t negate the success, so that should come up the
least often for playability, even if outright disaster should be the
least common for plausability. Which do we value most highly? If it’s
playability, then partial success comes up when you make the roll
exactly; if it’s plausibility then a disaster happens on a natural 18 or
something. That’s if we want to keep the Hero 3d6-roll-low. Something
like PbtA 6-/7-9/10+ or FitD’s 1-3/4-5/6 more naturally gives a
three-way outcome, but the range doesn’t feel as large as would match
the 1-12d6 of powersets. They’re completely different rolls, they don’t
have to match directly, but having, for example, skills that only go
from -1 to +4 feels too constrained.

Although, a disaster roll isn’t exactly a skill roll, and definitely
isn’t a to-hit roll. It definitely is more like a PbtA/FitD “how’s that
going for you?” roll, which once again is veering into filthy story game
territory. In the interests of our already-stated goal of not being as
hard on the GM as a full-fledged story game, can we make a list of the
possible results of a disaster roll? Obviously if you make the roll,
then you apply the condition you intended to the target(s) you were
aiming for, or as close as possible, and determine the level of the
condition with an effect roll using powerset dice.

The other obvious two-bit values are right condition wrong target (you
didn’t melt the Despairmech(tm), you melted the bridge truss), wrong
condition right target (you didn’t gently incapacitate the criminal
goon, you crushed them like a bug), and wrong condition wrong target
(you didn’t freeze the villain’s feet in ice, you made the road slippery
under the mayor’s car). There are always infinitely more ways for
something to go wrong than to go right, though, so I’m not sure this is
helping. Even having to pick a point on the scale from No Big to
Complete Disaster is a pain.

Also the second of three Friday 13ths this year. Apparently 2026 is particularly cursed. :looking around at the world emoji: Yep, story checks out.

Did not go to the office, did get my performance review. Apparently since the previous management and the current management, I have become much less satisfactory.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 94. Our motley continues to explore the Dreamlands, which have a very symbolic ruined temple and another island easily accessible by eggshell boat (Petunia is the best chicken) that turns out to be where King Mark’s court dreams. No sign of a grail, though.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 11 (Shinichi Fukuda): Not just cosplay, not just group cosplay with almost everyone they’ve met so far, but horror group cosplay.

Read (novel): Tear Down Heaven (Rachel Aaron): The dramatic conclusion to the war against Gilgamesh, whose plan is indeed universe-shattering in scope and horror, but not quite a match for unexpected demon power and witchcraft.

Written (game design): 146.

That sounds ominous.

Went to the office, climbed the stairs with only a few breaks, ate some jerk pork and plantains, did some work, learned some Kubernetes.

Watched (culture): The Importance of Being Earnest (National Theatre 2026): I had not seen or read this before because I have no culture. It is very silly, although I can’t help thinking that all these people should be in a tumbrel. We only watched up to the intermission because I was sleepy, but will definitely finish sometime when Marith is not dead.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 10 (Shinichi Fukuda): Cosplay Gal is going to have to be a lot more assertive than that if she wants to actually get lucky. I guess first she would have to decide whether she wants to.

Written (game design): 216:

I think they probably do. As I learned from reading the Internet, rules
and dice are for the uncertain parts of the game, where you need some
divinatory power. If you can just say what happens and it’s obvious, no
dice needed. So thrilling heroic battles, sure. You can come up with a
plan, but can you execute it correctly while someone is shooting you in
the face with a railgun? Roll for it!

But roll what? Hero has both to-hit and damage rolls, because D&D.
We’ve been talking about powersets in terms of dice that we roll and
count the Body on to determine the magnitude of effect, but should there
be a roll to decide whether you can even make that roll? We’re basing
this on Presence attacks (which don’t have a to-hit roll) and mental
attacks (which do). Since actions are now to inflict conditions, not do
some random amount of Stun and Body, we need some roll to determine
whether an attack goes overboard, or otherwise awry. Maybe it should be
called a disaster roll instead of a to-hit roll, since a bad roll
results in the wrong condition, wrong target, or both. Then the rule can
be that if the table can see a way for the action to go horribly wrong
without the character performing it having to be an incompetent schmuck,
there has to be a disaster roll.

Since the disaster roll determines who gets to decide on the nature of
the condition and where it goes, we still need the effect roll to
determine the level of the condition. Some conditions should be higher
level based on accuracy rather than (or in addition to) sheer power, but
I think we’re okay wrapping that into powerset dice as a measure of
effectiveness, not just raw joules of energy beam. There will also be
maneuvers/techniques that let you have more dice of effect for whatever
tradeoff, and you can probably have a limitation on some dice of your
powerset that you only get them if you can make a skill roll.

No, not like that! I mean, unless that’s your thing, no kinkshaming.

It turns out the building keycard lets me into the stairwell from the bottom, so I took the stairs instead of the elevator. That’s a lot of stairs, but I did eventually make it. Did some customer meetings, ate some freekeh with falafel, learned some Kubernetes.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 9 (Shinichi Fukuda): What? How dare bodies change?

Written (game design): 196:

It’s not like we won’t have a bunch of different ways to remove a
condition, or different circumstances under which a condition can be
removed. Automatically at the end(?) of the next turn, with a free
action as soon as you get a turn again, with a free action if you make a
roll or an action if you don’t, with an action, with an action if you
can make a roll, with an action from somebody else, after some noncombat
length of time unless somebody has an appropriate power, after ending
enough turns, … I’m not sure we’re actually simplifying anything here,
although since we are placing more emphasis on conditions, we do need
more structure.

Does getting rid of a condition depend on what level it is? It seems
like it should, but is, EG, the “Strength” of a grab or the “Body” of an
entangle based on the level of the condition, or the dice of power (or
environment) inflicting the condition? Or a combination of both, but how
so? I think we’re back to wondering whether to-hit rolls have any place
in this game.

Lame bagpipes can be left behind, or thrown willy-nilly into the cargo pit.

Went to the office in the slightly-less-illuminated morning, had some meetings, did some work, ate some tiny pies for Pi Day (Observed), ate an emergency brisket sandwich, learned some Kubernetes. The pies were from a place I walked past on my way to the train, which seems silly, but Car Culture is like that.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 8 (Shinichi Fukuda): Conclusion of the Cultural Festival arc, Cosplay Gal successfully crossplays as a girl passing as a host despite being notably not boy-shaped, she has it bad for Doll Boy.

Written (game design): 201:

We can mitigate the first problem by saying that a duplicate condition
(same type and level) doesn’t do anything. If you’re already Lightly
Electrocuted, getting lightly electrocuted again doesn’t do anything;
Zapstress has to somehow get to 3 above your defense to make you
Moderately Electrocuted. That way at least it has to be a variety
of conditions to nickle and dime someone. For the second problem,
maybe you can buy extra condition slots as techniques, that only
take appropriate conditions? They would have to be pretty expensive,
and maybe it’s not worth implementing. If you should be tough against
something, buy the technique that lets you use your full defense
against it or whatever.

Not sure how to handle removing conditions from the bottom or middle of
the stack. We can’t have conditions just fall down to the lowest open
slot, or rolling up and getting a level 3 condition on someone right off
is meaningless. Maybe it only triggers when a condition is removed? Or
we keep track of the level a condition was originally at before it
rolled it, and it can only fall down that far? That’s more notekeeping,
but maybe not unworkable?

Or of course we could just not have conditions roll up. If you want to
take somebody out, you need to take advantage of the effects of
conditions to inflict a level 4 condition straight up. Or maybe you can
boost a level 3 condition to level 4 with a maneuver or a technique
that’s good enough to inflict another level 3? But either way, it
doesn’t roll up automatically.

As always when I have an idea, it’s time to stop and look at whether
we actually need this time. Hero characters can get grabbed,
terrified, set on fire, blinded, etc, but without a unified system
for conditions. The mechanics are scattered all over the book with
the powers that are likely to inflict them, which is possibly more
organic, but means there are a lot of different rules for these
conditions and how to get out of them, like a grab having anywhere
from 1 to 24 Body that you need to overcome with your own Str, Flash
absolutely removing a sense and sticking around until a certain
number of segments have elapsed, being prone reducing your DCV by
exactly half until you spend a half phase, etc, etc. Again, charmingly
old-school, but is that better than having a unified system? I mean,
maybe it is! That’s why people like OSR, right? [citation needed]

Lina Inverse, presumably.

Work is the same today as every day, but the world of musical instruments is not, because people keep inventing new ones!

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 7 (Shinichi Fukuda): Start of the School Cultural Festival arc, which naturally has a potential cosplay component for any main characters who might be so inclined.

Written (game design): 136.

Boo, I wanted to keep saving my daylight! Did not manage to get out of bed at any reasonable time, but whatever. Did manage to eventually get more gooshyfood for the cats. Sage is super yelly and demanding, which I guess is a good sign. She does not like the mouth squirts, though.

Watched (anime): Journal with Witch 10: This is so slice-of-life that it’s hard to say what an episode is about, but I was right about the best friend. Also yeah, once somebody’s their kid, they don’t stop being your kid.

Watched (anime): Roll Over and Die 9: Yikes, that is not what I expected to happen!

Watched (anime): Sentenced to be a Hero 9: That is pretty much what everybody should have expected to happen when they let fantasy PCs into their city.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 6 (Shinichi Fukuda): Back to cosplay techniques and fellow cosplayers, but also extremely fraught questions.

Written (game design): 260:

What about getting rid of conditions? Some disappear as soon as they
aren’t being maintained (psychokinetic grasp), some last until action is
taken to break them (frozen in carbonite), some naturally fade over time
and can possibly be removed faster or prolonged by action (poisoned,
wounded).

I’ve been rushing ahead with the FitD model of conditions, because it has
definite advantages. There’s no calculation, just find the lowest open slot to
put the new condition in, and if it’s on level 4, that’s a KO. It also
puts a limit on the number of conditions a character has to manage. It’s
not all good, though: as long as you can inflict any condition, you’re
guaranteed to be able to take someone down eventually. It also doesn’t
distinguish between types of conditions, so the regenerating werewolf
can’t take more physical conditions or whatever. Also also, even if your
buddies get rid of a condition for you, or you regenerate it, there’s
not an obvious way to recover from KO if it wasn’t the level 4
condition.

Failed to get up early, but did eventually get up and get Sage’s medicine and do some shopping.

Watched (anime): Kowloon Generic Romance 2-3: Okay, so maybe she’s [SPOILER]? But what about the guy? Is this all the fault of Dr Snake? (He’s not a real snake, but he is a real doctor.)

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 5 (Shinichi Fukuda): This volume is less about cosplay and more about the two of them doing stuff together, although taking cosplay pictures leads Doll Boy into a new world of embarrassment.

Written (game design): 206:

Duplicate conditions probably discard all except the highest one,
otherwise it’s too easy to get spammed with a bunch of copies of the
same condition and that’s boring even if they stack (which they probably
shouldn’t).

We’re trying to move away from the computer-game paradigm of “select
Attack from the menu, let the RNG tell you what happens”, which now
that I think about it solves the problem of how to determine whether
getting punched is doing Stun or Body. If you make your “attack”
roll, then you inflict the condition you want on your intended
target, or as close as possible given the circumstances; if not,
the GM decides what target gets which condition. Miss with your
fireblast, and the villain won’t be on fire, but something will! Or miss
creasing the criminal’s skull with your .45 and, well… I think we
need three levels of success: you get what you want; you have to choose
between getting what you want with a side of what you didn’t want OR
nothing much happens; or you get a full serving of what you didn’t want.
Which is more like a filthy story game than a wargame, so we need the
guidelines for the GM to make choices that seem fair.

Sadly, I have no cheesecakes.

Did some work, learned some Kubernetes.

Got test results back for Sage, looks like a UTI so I have to go pick up antibiotics tomorrow. I am sure she will not appreciate the additional mouth squirts, but it is actually for her own good!

Watched (videoed stage musical): Act II of Firebringer: Now that fire has been brought, everything can go to hell with social commentary and plot twists and surprising plot twists and everything. Sadly, all the wisdom they gained was lost in the intervening millennia, which is why the social commentary is relevant.

Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 6 (Kiyoko Iwami): Okay, even the manga-ka thinks Cheater Girl is being a dumbass. I think they should all break up and try again in about five years, but on the other hands, nothing’s being broken except hearts and that’s what adolescence is for, right?

Read (novel): Wayward: Running (TA Star): Isekai litRPG, a terminally ill, bedridden, trans girl gets to be a real girl with totally OP powers and only a moderate amount of getting murdered in the fantasy realm. She is extremely special in several ways, in fact, but she doesn’t seem to be actually saving the world on a daily basis, that’s more of a long-term plan the gods have.

Written (game design): 273:

List time!
– Reduce a powerset’s dice for some time
– Make some action require a skill roll, or worsen an existing one
– Make it harder to resist something
– Reduce defenses, overall or against specific attacks
– Apply a limitation to some powers or powersets
– Prevent certain actions, or all actions (IE, incapacitation)
– Apply another condition if certain actions are taken or not taken
– Compel certain actions
– Make them produce some effect (EG, everything they touch ignites)

That might be vague enough to cover most things, although it’s also too
vague to assign even relative costs yet.

What about levels of conditions? It seems natural for some of these
that just reduce dice in a powerset or skill rolls, or whatever,
but less so for others. The ones that are just numbers to subtract
from other numbers want as many levels as the numbers that are being
reduced (so up to 12 for the ones that reduce dice in powersets),
but the more qualitative ones only naturally have like two or three,
minor/major/overwhelming effect. We could reduce the others to fewer
levels by having each level give more than -1, but then they probably
have to be scaled to campaign power. Or maybe not, since the points
of effect do scale with campaign power and one level per point of
effect is natural for those conditions. It’s not natural for the
others, though, so then they would have to be scaled. I don’t see
a way to have both of them work naturally at all levels.

Of course we can have “penalties” and “conditions” as different kinds of
things with different rules, but it would be better to have the same
rules. It also makes it more difficult to add them together for a total
hosedness level beyond which you’re incapacitated. Maybe instead we
should give each level of a condition a stress rating, and when the
stress rating of all your conditions adds up to more than X, down you
go. Probably at least two stress tracks, physical and mental, and a
condition can count 0 or more toward each. That works with any number of
levels in a condition, but it’s another guideline we have to provide
for ad-hoc conditions.

Instead, we could have something like FitD harm, where there’s a fixed
number of slots for a character to have conditions of each level, and
if an attack inflicts a condition at a level that’s already full, it
rolls up to the next open slot. When the X+1th slot is full, the
character is taken out. This would need a fixed number of levels for
each condition, which is probably fine since we already had the
thresholds of def+0/3/6/9 for levels of effect for things like Presence
attacks and mental powers and that generalizes nicely. So we have four
levels of conditions.

Some conditions might not be able to take someone out even at level
4, but I think that’s probably rare enough to be a special tag on
the specific conditions.

Poutine wants to be free!

Sage was still hanging out in the litterbox, so I skipped going to work, called the vet that’s only a couple of blocks away, hauled Sage in, got her tested and praised, etc. Most things except a UTI have been ruled out, which is good, because we know how to treat that. She is still eating and drinking and patrolling her apartment.

Watched (videoed stage musical): Act I of Firebringer: A very ridiculous musical about early humans discovering important things about their world, like what’s edible and how much the previous generation lied to them. Not even slightly chronistic.

Read (manga): Mysterious Disappearances vol 8 (Nujima): Writer Lady seems to have done something to Red String Girl, but it’s not clear what. Also we know more about the siblings now. Nothing good, though.

Written (game design): 215.

I haven’t run anything in ages, so good work, world!

Didn’t go to the office since I had meetings during all the time I would be commuting in. Did some work anyway.

Sage is sitting in her litterbox instead of a cat bed or the floor. Dr Google DVM says this can be stress, urinary issues, or intestinal issues. She’s not barfing and doesn’t seem in distress, but I’m going to worry a lot anyway.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 14 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Hey, put that back! You don’t know where she’s been!

Written (game design): 105. I blame capitalism, but only as a distract from my own uselessness. (But thinking of people as useful is a capitalism thing, right?)

Went to the office, ate a bowl of food, had a meeting, learned some Kubernetes.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 13 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Bathhouse episode of appalling nakedness, and ice cream.

Written (game design): 280:

I had been thinking that inflicting a condition the target already has
but at a lower level would increment the level, so they can’t just tank
hits forever, but maybe we should limit that to only happening if the
difference in levels isn’t too great. That way, if the attacker can’t
up their game enough to get within X of a disabling level of the
condition, they can’t take the target down by spamming that attack.
Since we want conditions to be actual effects, not just colorful hit
points, a condition that doesn’t reach the level of disabling could
still open up possibilities for other conditions that could.

Which still leaves us trying to come up with either a set of generic
conditions that cover everything possible, or a set of usable guidelines
for making up new conditions on the spot without them seeming
ridiculous. Is what we need a list of possible ill effects, from the
smallest penalty to a skill roll through being taken out of the fight to
being turned to the enemy side, and how much effect (in the sense of
Body rolled on the dice minus appropriate defenses) it takes to get each
one? Earlier we considered what kind of penalties using a
maneuver might cause as a trade-off, and some of those might apply here
as useful things to force on an enemy, but that’s just a start.

Hurray for Nightvale, master of carpet-derping! And all of my other cats, but Sage just got a day.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 12 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): The expedition where Maomao finds a frog. Just a frog. Nothing that would disrupt her life.

Read (anthology): Contact! (ed Chris McInally): Military vs monsters (actual monsters, not just other soldiers or spy assholes) in a variety of settings, including New Zealand which I would normally expect to be monster-free.

Written (game design): 263:

In the larger sense, a limitation is a weakness, that’s why it’s worth
points, but the kind of exploitable weaknesses that NPC opponents should
have are different. I mean, they can have limitations too, but weak
spots or ways to shut down parts of their power or ways to inflict
emotional damage are more what I’m thinking of there. I’m not sure how
to quantify them with points, though, especially since some of them
won’t be known until the players discover/assert them, and others will
just be part of the NPC’s powersets. And what if players want them for
their PCs? I expect this to be rare, because who wants their character
to get hosed the same way every session, but PCs and NPCs need to be
written up under the same rules even if they don’t make equal use of the
rules.

Tangential thought, but are weaknesses obvious/inobvious and
accessible/inaccessible the way Hero foci are? Inaccessible wouldn’t
necessarily mean not affectable in combat, or maybe it would: maybe
you have to retreat or let your opponent escape so you can come
back prepared next time. That means there have to be ways to prepare, if
your powersets won’t do the job straight up. Build a gadget, set an
ambush, recruit someone with the right powerset, lay traps, etc.

Since we are trying to not have hit points, weaknesses aren’t just
“x2 Stun from vinegar-based attacks”. However, there are almost
certainly some that make it easier to inflict certain conditions.
There are probably also ones that allow for different conditions
to be inflicted, depending on how we set up the conditions system.
If you’re a mechanical robot, you can’t be literally poisoned with,
EG, curare, but maybe being infested with devourer nanoswarm is still
the Poisoned condition? Or is it different? Vice-versa, if you’re human
(and not a cyborg), you can’t get the condition Plastic Joints Melted,
but is that on the list of conditions, or do we have a generalized
Hampered? And I still have no idea what to do for getting punched
several times until you pass out, which would just be hit points by
another name.

Hurray for Sage! She is the yelliest!

Played (Hero 6E): Kaiju Academy: Kidnapping, hostage-taking, partial but extremely biased villainous dialog, and horrible bug goo in the conduits!

Watched (anime): Sentenced to Be a Hero 8: It’s not a city adventure unless someone goes undercover in disguise.

Watched (anime): Roll Over and Die 8: Another cute girl, but this one is pretty sus. Also the main two are getting more yuri. And there’s some plot and stuff.

Watched (anime): Journal With Witch 9: Oh no, bad reviews and writer’s block! Queer(?) best friend to the rescue.

Read (comic collection): Getting Dizzy (Shea Fontana, Celia Moscote, Gloria Martinelli): A girl who just wants to be special randomly because a magical skater girl to fight against negativity goblins, but nobody can be that special. The characters are high-schoolers or even older, but I think the writing is for someone much younger.

Written (game design): 158:

What is a skill mechanically, though? Are we keeping the 3d6 roll-under
system? 9 plus the number of dice that have Skills? That’s 10- to 21-
for 1 to 12 ranks, seems reasonable. How many different things you can
roll for depends on how many times you bought Skills on that rank of
power, and we definitely need to establish some way of quantifying that
to avoid the Literally Batman 12d6 powerset being too cheap. I don’t
think we need to be as granular as individual Hero skills; maybe the
skill categories from 6E (Agility, Background, Combat, Intellect,
Interaction)? Is five enough? It’s a place to start, anyway.

Now we’re back to conditions and weaknesses, which are intertwined.
Weaknesses are also intwined with complications and limitations, since
we want one system that supports both PCs having interestingly limited
powers and character-building complications, and NPCs having exploitable
weaknesses.

Following Hero terminology, limitations are things you can’t do with a
powerset, or costs you have to pay, or requirements. Major limitations
only; fiddly little ones are covered by special effect. Once again, we
have to figure out how to have limitations give extra points. Doing the
fractions thing is probably fine, I guess? The limitations are
definitely per-powerset, and with variable-cost ranks, it doesn’t work
to give free ranks. Free points still run into the possibility of
negative cost powersets, so fractions it is until we come up with a new
paradigm.

Only one of those was invented by me.

Apparently I can drop directly into REM sleep in the nine minutes of an alarm snooze. I don’t think this is a good thing.

Socialized too much and only had time for one episode of Anime With Dave.

Watched (anime): Kowloon Generic Romance 1: Ew, smoking. But also, ??!??

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 11 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Genetic coup!

Read (novel): The Sundered Realms (Casey Blair): The start of a different series about a terrifying wizard lady with a traumatic upbringing and her impossibly hot, equally terrifying new boyfriend, in a fractured world where demons are trying to crawl in and eat everything and humans are entirely willing to sell each other out. Magic works by linguistics nerdery, which is always good.

Read (novel): Take Back Worlds (Casey Blair): Conclusion to the trilogy about terrifying lady wizard etc that I started before. Lady wizard manages to get enough people onside, including some of the asshole descendants of the people who caused the problem to begin with, to save three out of four worlds and not actually destroy the fourth (who would have totally deserved it). Marriage, wild magic sex, HEA.

Written (game design): 140:

Or is that only Human Body, and there’s also Human Mind, which
includes skills? It does make sense for powersets to include skills,
since Ninja Training is a canonical source of superpowers. How does
this work? We considered buying ranks in Skills earlier, but never
settled on anything. In most games, a character’s skills have both
breadth (how many things they cover) and height (chance of success)
and it’s usually not a rectangle. Sometimes it’s a triangle (some
FATE implementations), sometimes it’s just a scribble with every
bit of the breadth having its own height. A powerset only has one
dimension– wait, no it doesn’t, some capabilities can be bought
more than once for broader effect. So there are two dimensions
available. But what does it mean to buy Skills as a capability for your
Heat Subtraction 12d6 powerset?

“Mu.” Or, I don’t know, it’s your powerset, you tell me. Start with
the fiction, then buy mechanics to match. I don’t think Human Mind
is actually a powerset, though. Buy a background or training regimen
or whatever as a powerset that has Skills and maybe something else
or maybe not. Talents and Perks are now techniques that have
prerequisites of some number of Skills dice.

Do you need an XXL Pokeball for that?

No gaming, because Ken has family stuff. No extra watching because Marith was asleep.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 10 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): The celestial maiden, more consort intrigue, the mysterious shrine.

Written (game design): 217. I feel like I’m getting somewhere with this, but also like I should be writing fiction instead. Probably just the normal self-defeatingness.

Also, For Pete’s Sake, Girls Already Know About Engineering Day.

This morning was full of all-hands meeting. I hope we aren’t betting the whole company on AI.

Watched (anime): My Hero Academia 8.10-11: The End! There is nothing to disprove my theory that Froppy and Uravity are married now.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 9 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Getting to the Foreign Dignitaries storyline, plus assorted random mysterious mysteries.

Read (essay): Why All Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Are Historians (Ada Palmer): It’s because they have opinions about how the world changes. Literary people on the slack (so, pretty much the whole slack) had many opinions on this when Marith posted it.

Read (novel): Saints and Monsters (Ellen McGinty): A disabled princess has to save her sister and her Japan-flavored country with the unwilling assistance of a dragon. It was not bad, but could have used 80% less heterosexuality, and probably 30% fewer words.

Written (game design): 192:

It may seem like we’re making techniques into Hero powers, but my hope
is that we aren’t, because techniques don’t let you do anything your
powerset doesn’t already let you do. They just let you do it with fewer
tradeoffs or outright penalties than maneuvers do. Also, they don’t
(usually) grind away at hit points, they inflict conditions, which we
still don’t have a good handle on.

Other vital things we have no handle on: weakness for NPCs/complications
for PCs, skills, normal human abilities, gaining experience. Well, human
abilities are easy: everybody starts with the powerset Human, with
whatever capabilities and dice are needed to get 2d6 strength, normal
vision and other senses, etc.

Also Chocolate-Covered Clam Chowder Day.

Did not go to the office, did do some work, failed to eat correctly.

Watched (internet): Some professional Minecrafters built a lake. It looked like a lot of fun, and makes me want to Minecraft a bit, but I do not have enough brain cells.

Watched (anime): Kill La Kill 1-2: I watched the first couple of episodes long ago, maybe even back when it was still a thing, so when Crunchyroll reminded me I still had plenty of episodes left to watch, I decided to start over at the beginning. Yeah, okay, it’s about as ridiculous as Gurren Lagann, but more naked. (The one male character who might be continuing also takes off his shirt and does romance-cover poses, at least.)

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 8 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Finally the Lakan thing is resolved. He still sucks, though.

Written (game design): 370:

Let’s try this again. Capabilities for a powerset:
– Affects the environment – sounds like it should be mandatory, but
something like Telepathy that only affects people, or Healing Factor
that only affects the character wouldn’t need to pay for this.
– Affects the environment in many different ways – it’s up to the table
to judge this, but we should have examples. Maybe counts double if the
powerset can do almost anything.
– Usable as an attack – anything that affects the environment can do
damage, but that doesn’t mean it can be useful with a half-phase
action.
– Many different attack modes – you get the picture.
– Movement – dice give speed, techniques give things like not falling.
– Normal defenses – everything that would be PD or ED in Hero, plus
whatever the powerset should counter (cold vs heat, etc).
– Unusual defenses – Power Defense, Mental Defense, Life Support, etc.
– Senses – individual senses are bought as techniques, and have a
prerequisite number of dice in the powerset.
– Affect self – for shapeshifting, regeneration, etc. Again, might count
double if it’s versatile.

I don’t know that all of these should cost the same, but that’s a place
to start. We have to handle the Cosmic Variable Power Pool I mean D&D
Wizard, but it should be extremely expensive to have a powerset that
does everything and even more expensive to do everything in a variety of
ways.

When I said individual senses have to be bought as techniques, I was
wrong. If you buy Senses for your powerset, you can half-assedly detect
whatever your powerset involves by spending some time. Techniques will
get you the upgrades like (in Hero terms), Sense, Targeting,
Discriminatory, or 360. Having more than one die of Senses is still a
prerequisite for some techniques, but it seems like it should get you
more than that. Maybe range or general Perception bonuses?

By that logic, being able to attack shouldn’t be a part of the powers.
If you can affect the environment, or some’s psyche or whatever, you
have the ability to inflict conditions on your enemies, but if you want
to bust out the attacks as half-phase actions at full OCV in the middle
of a combat, then you need techniques. This is even more consistent with
multipowers, where the plain 12d6 EB is as much of a slot as the 8d6 AP
EB, etc. However, attacking is a much more significant action than
sensing something, so maybe it needs to cost more? That could be handled
by making the techniques more expensive, though.

(We’ve come back around to my early thought of buying hexes of generic
movement, and then buying movement modes separately. Apparently I will
never not be on my bullshit.)

How about Defenses? If you can affect the environment, presumably you
can put together some kind of defensive measures as appropriate to your
powerset, but maybe not while leaping around in combat. Also, not all
powersets are going to provide generic Def, although hopefully that’s
less of an issue when it’s not just grinding at people’s Stun through
their PD/ED. Maybe Defenses are techniques instead of a powerset
capability as well.

Fortunately Sage was already spayed when she came to live with me.

No office this week, since I can’t miss morning handover due to transit failure. Stayed at home, did some work, learned a little TLS.

Watched (anime): Roll Over and Die 1.7: Flum is doing pretty well at filling her house with cute girls, but there are still criminal lowlives and classism causing problems. Also monsters.

Watched (anime): Journal with Witch 1.7-8: Teenagers are difficult! Adults are difficult! Grief is extremely difficult!

Watched (anime): Sentenced to Be a Hero 1.7: Another weirdo, also shopping and ninja attacks.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 7 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): The large metal beam!

Written (game design): 231:

Setting that aside for the moment, these either let you get something
without the tradeoff, or get more for what you trade (like putting Area
Effect on a power gets you more than just spreading to fill hexes).
Earlier I mentioned needing one to effectively attack, but is that
covered by whether you pay for your powerset to include attack powers?
Probably something as general as that should be at the powerset level,
but maybe those should be techniques instead? If you don’t have the
ranged attack technique, you have to improvise to attack somebody or
something at range, which gives some kind of penalty, I guess? Or you
can’t use all your dice? It would be a maneuver, trading off something
in order to do the ranged attack at all.

For whatever reason, it seems like getting areas of capability in a
powerset should cost per die, so a flat-cost technique shouldn’t be able
to completely make up for that, or maybe not make up for it at all. Of
course you can always save up and add a new capability to a powerset if
you really want to be able to do the thing.

How do we divide up capabilities? And what do you get for each one
as a base without maneuvers or techniques? I still think
offense/defense/movement/chrome is too coarse, but we can split those
up. I don’t think ranged/melee is the right divide for attacks;
normal/special (NNDs, drains) seems better. Defense I’m less sure about
splitting, maybe it stays as one capability. Are mental powers part of
special attacks, or a separate thing? Based on how many special rules
Hero has for them, they probably are their own thing. Movement also
tricky, since the obvious division is speed vs movement modes that give
you extra stuff like Flight. And chrome is not only a grab-bag, but has
things that don’t really correlate with how many dice you have in your
powerset, like Extra Limbs or Enhanced Senses.

If only.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 6 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Jinshi in disguise!

Written (game design): 220:

All of these things need new improved terminology. The high-level
description that has a number of dice attached, like Heat Subtraction
10d6 or Utility Belt Gadgets 7d6 or Druidic Magic 12d6, is called
a powerset. (It could be called special effect, but let’s save that
for the details of a specific action, like whether you’re using
Heat Subtraction to break something by supercooling it so it shatters
under the pressure, or dropping a chunk of frozen air on it.) You
can definitely have more than one powerset. The cost per die depends
on what effects the powerset can produce, so having multiple that
don’t overlap may not even be more expensive than having one that
does it all. This probably needs to be more granular than
offense/defense/movement/chrome, but not necessarily a huge amount
more. Maybe at the level of the Hero 6E powers section where it
groups attack powers, mental powers, sense-affecting powers, movement
powers, etc. We also need to figure out how to apply overall
limitations to a powerset, because this is the monster that never
dies.

The general options of trading off one value against another that
are available to everyone, like spreading an attack (trading dice
for area), pushing (trading side effects for dice or for OCV), or
haymakering (trading time for dice), are maneuvers. This includes
the default maneuver of not trading anything and just using the
power as written.

What do we call it when you spend some points to always be able to do
something even if the GM isn’t feeling it? Are they just applications
because it’s 2026 and there’s an app for everything except tracking
fascists? Not tricks or stunts, since these are the things you pay
points to be able to do reliably. Techniques? Feats? Knacks? Skills is
already taken, obviously.

Right here, of course.

Managed to get out of bed and do some shopping and not much else. The cats have gooshyfood for the next few weeks, though, and that’s what’s important.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 5 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): What, Maomao not in the Inner Palace?! Must be Jinshi’s fault.

Written (game design): 196:

Most applications will use however many dice are in the power, but there
might be some that use less for whatever character reason, so
applications can have at least some limitations on them. This would
include always having a penalty even though you paid for them, but you
would definitely be able to do them since you paid. Another way they
could be limited would be that you can’t use them at the same time,
bringing back multipower functionality, although presumably you still
could do the thing without using your limited application and just
accepting the penalty. Maybe that’s more of a limitation on the power
itself, or a free-standing complication?

What about characteristics? As always, Strength is really a power, so
that’s fine. Def can come from powers, although that might lead to all
characters having the same attack strength and defense strength. But we
want for straight up attacking vs defenses to wear down hit points to
not be very effective against enemies of the same power level, so that’s
fine. What about Presence and Ego, though? Some powers could provide
them, but many wouldn’t. Buying applications to have that be the case is
fine for those powers, but it shouldn’t be the case that everyone else is
fixed at 0. Same for Body and Resilience. I guess most characteristics
need to remain separate from powers, which is fine.

What do you mean you don’t have a pangolin to read to? (Although my pangolin a) is plush, and 2) has an advanced degree in Animal Feelings, so probably can do their own reading.)

I had horrible heartburn all night after staying up too late, so have not been very useful today. I’m not sure whether the burritos were less easy on my insides than wheat tortillas and chicken should be, the chicken that seemed fine despite being in the fridge for ??? days was not fine, or finally getting organ juice again after being off it for a while (thanks, American health care system) was a bit steep.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.23-24: End of the second season! Does Maomao not know what she wants, or does she know and it’s to frustrate Jinshi to death? It’s a pretty definite end to a lot of plot threads, so I’m curious to see where the third season will go when it comes out.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 4 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Back at the departure of the concubine after the garden party of poisoning and intrigue. Apparently this is the end of the first light novel volume, which I could read but haven’t and may not. But may yet!

Read (novel): Azarinth Healer vol 5 (Rhaegar): OP MC is so OP she’s making the system invent new classes. Also saving entire alien species, gaining a third class of her own, etc.

Read (collection): Consequences (Moe Lane): Four short stories about Edwardian monsters, cryptids, aliens, obnoxious gods.

Written (game design): 231:

We need some kind of tables of environmental stuff, like Hero has Def
and Body of various materials, to provide guidelines for how much
Entangle you do get from six inches of water or waist deep mud, how many
dice of zapping a power substation has, etc. The tricky part is that the
environment has to be enough to matter, not a world of tissue paper, but
shouldn’t overshadow powers at whatever level they’re in play.

Do we also need a system for which penalty and how much of it to apply
when someone’s using an application they haven’t bought, to seem fair
and objective? Or is it enough to have a list the GM can choose from, so
they don’t have to make up something new every time? And possibly some
guidelines for how much of each penalty corresponds to a minor, medium,
or severe penalty. Extra penalties for using multiple
maneuvers/applications?

Speaking of dice and powers, do we need to charge more or less for
broader or narrower powers? Every power is effectively a variable power
pool, so the breadth of the special effect does matter, unlike Hero
where it’s only the powers you actually buy that matter regardless of
what your special effect could possibly justify with unlimited points.
Is this where the idea of cost per rank comes in? Powers are now the
only thing we’re buying in ranks, it looks like.

Check! Also Clean Out Your Bookcase Day, which is not going quite as well.

Watched (anime): My Hero Academia 8.7-9: The End! Then some epilogue. More people survived than expected.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 3-4 (Shinichi Fukuda): More cosplay buddies for Doll Boy to dress up. They are cute girls, but Cosplay Gal is clearly the main, and so far only, romantic connection.

Written (game design): 132:

Leaving that alone for a minute, what kind of penalties can there even
be? The first few that come to mind are:
– Reduce dice of effect
– Reduce OCV/skill roll
– Require a skill roll, or flat activation roll
– Lose some Stun/gain some Exhausted or other condition
– Reduce DCV
– Can’t use other powers at the same time
– Takes extra time
– Side effect on you, or backblast on people around you
– Drain the power you’re using

There could also be requirements that you have to provide, like water if
you want to make ice manacles but didn’t buy doing that as an
application. If there’s not enough of it, the amount of effect you can
generate might be capped, like if there’s only six inches of water, you
can only get so many dice of Entangle on somebody’s feet.

Also applies to other forms of plagiarism.

Went to the office, ate some noodles, did some work, learned a little kubernetes. Boss³ commented on how I looked at my phone a lot, so I should probably work on staring blankly at my monitor instead.

No anime, Marith is full of mucus.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 2 (Shinichi Fukuda): Cosplay Gal and Traditional Doll Boy go to a cosplay event. Photography and heat exhaustion and lack of modesty, oh my.

Written (game design): 256:

This brings us back to the implicit multipower, I guess. 12d6 Cold
Powers is the “pool”, and then you can pay a few points for each
specific application you can reliably use: make ice manacles, shoot icicle
spears, stomp around as a glacier mecha, whatever. If you want to do
something cold-based that you didn’t buy, then the GM has to agree, and
you may have to take extra time, or make one or more skill rolls, or
find something appropriate in the environment (EG, water if you want to
make things out of ice). The base power is explicitly not Energy Blast:
doing damage is an application like any other, or maybe multiple
applications if you want to do damage different ways, like the standard
energy projector multipower with plain energy blast, AoE energy blast,
AP energy blast, etc.

Is there a distinction between effects, that in Hero would be different
powers, and maneuvers, that are more like advantages? Sticking with our
cold powers example, do you buy being able to freeze things solid
differently than being able to spread your powers out over a larger
area? They seem like different categories to me, and they can be
combined in different ways, but can we do that on the fly, or do you
have to buy each combination explicitly like a multipower slot? Or even
worse, do you have to buy each application or maneuver individually to
have access to them without a huge penalty, but still have a smaller
penalty if you haven’t bought the specific combination? That seems both
harsh and complicated, but it lets players spend points on a lot of
things. Can we somehow make it optional and only very very slightly
advantageous? Or is that too much like designing for a different
audience?

I didn’t even make this one up!

Went to the office, ate some yellow chicken curry, did some work, tried to learn some kubernetes but with limited success. Finally managed to get my prescription filled and picked up, go USA.

In case you can stand finding out about the world around you.

Read (manga): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 14 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): More magic ninja causing trouble because there aren’t any demons and now the humanoids have to cause their own trouble.

Read (novel): Neverthorn (Shannon Mayer): It’s like one of those dreams where you have to go back to high school even though you’re an adult, only the highschool is like Hogwarts with a blatantly evil headmaster and all your bullies are now teachers and the dark lord is coming any month now. Also, het romance subplot.

Written (game design): 259:

Of course the advice to game designers is not to design games for people
who will hate them, and I guess that has to apply even when I’m trying
to take over the position of an existing game. I’m sure there are people
who both could and would make a game even more accounting-conscious than
Hero, but I’m not one of them, even if I once would have wanted to be.
I’m more of a filthy story-gamer.

Anyway, even if we don’t need everything to be priced optimally according
to the laws of supply and demand, rating things in small integers makes
them easy to work with, so we’ll stick with powers generating effect,
and every 3 effect over the defense raising the condition by one level.
A full-on superhero has 12d6 in their best powers, which is on average
four steps above the base, so conditions go from 1 to 5, with 4
being incapacitated and 5 also having spillover into long-term effects.
Maybe the levels should have names: Kinda ___, Definitely ___, Severely
___, Totally ___, Overwhelmingly ___. Presence attacks and mental powers
don’t in Hero, though, they just have Characteristic, Char+10, Char+20, etc,
which would be +0/+3/+6/etc now. Although we did mention powers having a
greater or lesser effect, so maybe it’s sometimes +0/+2/+4 or +0/+5/+10
instead, in which case we do want names for levels.

If power usage is limited only by cleverness and special effect, then we
aren’t buying specific powers like Hero any more, it’s just 12d6 Cold
Powers or 8d6 Brick or whatever. We probably want to charge more for
more flexible special effects, though. Or maybe for specific
applications of the power? Like in Champions Now, where if you pay
points for something, you always have it, but if you try to claim you
should get it for free because of your special effect, the GM can say it
doesn’t seem reasonable to them.

Also Random Acts of Crab Racing Day.

Went to the office, listened to the thunder and rain, ate some underheated Chinese buffet for Lunar New Year, got nothing from my scratch-off lottery ticket, did some work, got most of the way home and was betrayed by the bus.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 3 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Maomao visits home, which has more mysterious mysteries.

Read (short): “Barbershops of the Floating City” (Angela Liu): Classism, unexplained magic hairdressing, generational trauma.

Read (short): “When He Calls Your Name” (Catherynne M. Valente): I figured out what the name was pretty quickly, but still good.

Written (game design): 394:

I see two kinds of maneuvers. One is like Hero maneuvers, where you
modify what you’re doing: charge up your power to get a strong
effect, spread it out to affect more, etc. The other is based on
what you’re trying to accomplish: grind them down, take them out,
disable their abilities, set them up for a teammate, trick them
into doing something they didn’t mean to, temporarily incapacitate
them, etc. These are intentionally broad and like a PbtA move, you
have to say what you’re actually doing. Are you grinding someone
down by getting them to use their biggest attack until they’re
exhausted? Taking them out by machine-gunning a crowd so they faint
from trauma? Et cetera. But the first is mechanical means, the
second is narrative ends, so I’m not sure these even belong in the
same game.

Is it even possible to allow for cleverness instead of grinding hit points
without becoming a story game? It definitely could be if the need for
cleverness was preplanned and rigorously documented as a puzzle to
solve, but when it’s ad-hoc or even based on player input, how are
wargame players going to believe that it’s fair and accurately priced?
Reducing the granularity of points helps by not setting expectations of
careful accounting, but is it enough? There’s precedent for judgment
calls in Presence attacks and mental powers, but those aren’t the
primary way of taking someone out, so it’s not as much of a problem to
have the GM make up stuff on the fly.

No work today, but I did have to get up to let the cleaners in (they were late), and ride the bus (it was also late) to go shopping, and then do laundry.

Watched (anime): Sentenced to Be a Hero 6: Six episodes, three demon lords down! Also, for those who were worried whether this might be a pervy anime, Teoritta briefly takes off her coat.

Watched (anime): Roll Over and Die 6: There is some kind of actual problem with corruption and human experimentation (in the FMA sense), but Flum is busy dealing with petty criminals. At least she has a house now.

Watched (anime): Journal with Witch 5-6: Makio is not free of problems herself.

Read (short): “The Teleporting Disaster Fairy” (Rati Mehrotra): Inexplicable events cause lots of trouble for someone.

Read (short): “Unfinished Architectures of the Human-Fae War” (Caroline M. Yoachim): Alien temporal architecture from beyond the gates.

Read (short): “The Millay Illusion” (Sarah Pinsker): Men who said a woman couldn’t be a good stage magician get what’s coming to them, probably.

Read (short): “With Her Serpent Locks” (Mary Robinette Kowal): Don’t fuck with the gorgon, no matter how hot shit you think you are.

Read (short): “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” (Samantha Mills): So many dooms.

Read (short): “Six People to Revise You” (J.R. Dawson): Yeah, capitalism would absolutely charge people a fortune for the privilege of being brain-edited into social conformity.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 2 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): It’s hard being Maomao. But it’s also hard putting up with Maomao.

Written (game design): 152:

Speaking of balance, the effect of using a power cleverly on someone
should probably be proportional to the active points/ranks, just as
(presumably) the amount of Grind Down or KO is. But greater cleverness
should also increase the effect, and different effects are going to get
quantified differently if we aren’t just chipping active points/ranks
off. And then there’s defenses against conditions, or maybe against
maneuvers, which also need to have an effect according to cost, however
that works. Maybe there are weak, normal, and strong conditions that are
different divisors on the level of effect, just like moveby and
movethrough need different amounts of movement to get +1d6? That at
least gives something to come to an agreement on, instead of the GM
making it up out of whole cloth. Or possibly it’s split along some other
axis, but we should definitely have a short list to pick from instead of
having to guess at the magnitude of effect from first principles.

Played (Hero 6E): Kaiju Academy. The extradimensional goon is interrogated, and maybe now the squad knows what’s going on, a little, although people keep saying it’s dangerous for them to learn too much, like the previous cohorts did. The overarching plot does seem to be some kind of memetic subjugation by some kind of hive mind, so maybe that’s true, or maybe adults just kind of suck. Then, back at Skyhold, the squad happens to be near the entrance to the labyrinth when more horrifying bug monsters burst out and attack again. They are put down, but not before the surprisingly tough scorpion monster just about snips Mallipattra’s leg off! Fortunately med student May is right there and a fully-equipped trauma ward is just upstairs, so she doesn’t completely exsanguinate, but she is in no condition to go to the Mid-Winter Ball.

Read (comic collection): Sweet Paprika vol 2 (Mirka Andolfo): Oh no, fake dating turned into real feelings! Who could have guessed that Paprika’s heart is not actually cold and black? Also, whether or not opposites attract, some similarities are definitely incompatible. The End!

Written (game design): 133 again:

No, the different between grind down and KO would depend too much on the
target’s defenses. Better to allow grinding down to take them to zero
eventually, but KO is all or nothing. (For all I complain about to-hit
rolls, it seems weird to have an all-or-nothing maneuver, but now it’s a
choice to gamble, so that’s okay.)

Since attacks that aren’t Grind Down or KO do other things than take
away hit points, they don’t necessarily need OCV/DCV penalties, although
of course the better ones might end up with penalties. Although, since
we want to get away from everyone wielding their own chisel at the pile
of hit points and encourage teamwork, maybe hitting should be harder
without help. Or less effective? Depends on what teamwork maneuvers we
want to have.

The most Hero way to do conditions would be to grind away at the active
points/ranks of the targeted ability, which is a lot like hit points but
at least you’re having an effect along the way. However, there is
precedent for multiplying (double Stun when surprised) or dividing (half
Def against AP attacks), not just subtracting, so conditions could do
that, or teamwork. If distracting someone can let your teammate do
double Stun (so, double effect on Grind Down or KO?), there might need
to be some rebalancing.

Monday is a holiday, so I didn’t go shopping today, I just pulsated grotesquely.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.21-22: All the conspiracies and rebellions and other national-level politics are coming to a head around Maomao. I wonder if anyone will make it out alive?

Read (novel): Take Back Demons (Casey Blair): Sequel to Take Back Magic, main character is actually doing pretty great at restoring Earth, making friends, defeating enemies, getting a hot husband, etc.

Read (comic collection): Gotham Academy Second Semester vol 1 (Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl, Becky Cloonan, Adam Archer, MSASSYK): I thought I read the first arc of this, but I don’t remember any of these characters except Batman. Everything is creepy and haunted and half the adults have questionable fashion sense and obsessions they’re willing to kill for, so it checks out as being in Gotham.

Written (game design): 133:

Hero, like other games from that distant era, treats hits to locations
as things that just happen while hit points are being lost, or if
you somehow have a reason to aim for one location over another, it
boosts the Roll To Confirm You Wasted Your Phase probability. If
there are effects beyond loss of hit points, then they’re similarly
incidental and based generically on the body part. But we don’t want
“oh, I guess you hit her in the leg” because we’re deemphasizing
grinding away at hit points. We want, “you successfully slowed her down,
now maybe your teammates can do something”, so conditions should be
created from that point of view.

If we’re demphasizing the hit point grind, then it shouldn’t be the
standard result of a combat round, maybe not even the default. “Wear
them down” can be a specific maneuver. Maybe it’s the same as “KO them”
(when they have few enough hit points or whatever), maybe those are
separate maneuvers and you can skip straight to KO if you outclass them
by enough, otherwise you have to wear them down with clever maneuvers
and/or emotional damage I mean moral suasion.

Didn’t go to the office, did do a little work, ate some salad.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 94. How do you even play this game? Despite not knowing, we got our characters and their chicken Petunia to go on a dream-quest to find the Holy Grail. This is probably related to the other quest about contagious dream-apples, and indeed the first place they get to is a sanitarium where there’s an apple that needs flinging out a window. Also a lot of unconscious people who seem vaguely familiar, which is ominous.

Read (manga): I Wanna Be Your Girl vol 3 (Umi Takase): Much more about gender identity and expression than about orientation or romance, even though there are definite Feelings.

Read (novel): Take Back Magic (Casey Blair): A terrifying ex-mage who was exiled from a magic world because Earthlings have no rights manages to get back in the game and starts trying to completely upend the order of at least 3/4 of the known dimensions, with the help of an unnecessarily hot demon. It’s always nice to see a female lead who is unapologetic about being OP and ambitious, even if heterosexual.

Read (???): Sophie and the ARC of Emonglia part 1 (Maryana Rights): I think this was probably AI? Sort of in the same genre as The Phantom Tollboth with conceptual characters in a mysterious land, cuts off suddenly.

Read (novel): Rats (Craig Schaefer): Third in the “Castaways” series. Our magic students have to go behind the faculty’s backs to rescue their friends who were kidnapped at the end of the last book. Interdimensional adventure, pirates, half-naked rat-ladies, actual civilization, multidimensional mobsters, all the good stuff.

Written (game design): 242:

And what about the effects of conditions? Sprained Elbow and Sprained
Knee give penalties to different but overlapping sets of actions, but if
they’re both just part of Clobbered, how do we keep track of that? Just
throwing on general penalties to everything is arguably realistic, but not
interesting. And what does a -1 to using your leg mean when you’re a
speedster with 30″ Running? We need not just the list of conditions and
variables they have, but the list of possible effects and what they mean
for characters at different scales. To be properly Hero, this should be
related to points, like a rank 1 condition knocks off 10 active points,
but a sprained knee could affect anywhere from none to many powers based
on the details of special effect, and reduce their effect or give a
skill penalty or both or something else.

What we need is prefab conditions that cover all the standard things
(punched by a brick, energy-blasted, shot, exploded, crushed by a
collapsing base, mind-controlled, encased in carbonite, turned into a
toad, poisoned, frozen in time, traumatized by the villain
machine-gunning a crowd, etc) that happen to the standard character
types (living human, elf, vampire, robot, alien, ghost, golem, etc), but
also the ability to make ad hoc conditions for creative things
happening to original character types, which all seem fair and easy to
manage in play, alone or in combination. Should be easy.