Also Mermaid Day. Now I’m picturing mermaids riding giraffes, which seems like it could be a Dali painting.

I am feeling better today, so I went shopping and ate a sandwich and read the new Katalepsis chapter, as is my custom. I didn’t try to get up early and take books to the used book store, but that’s a newer tradition and not as strong.

Went to see Shakespeare in the Park’s interpretation of The Tempest as a D&D game, complete with bad dice rolls and Final Fantasy battle music. It was amazing. I managed to get tasty olives from the deli that I rarely go to because it is very busy, despite it being very busy so we could picnic delightfully, and also like a million people from the Palo Alto wing of the social circle were there because Rue (who was in my Scum and Villainy game a million years ago) was working tech.

Read (collection): No One Will Come Back for Us (Premee Mohamed): Collection of horror shorts, many with Lovecraftian monsters but also more Earthly old gods that still require sacrifice. Horrible things under the sea, a crossover with Beneath the Rising, lots of doom.

Written (game design): 245:

If it’s possible to give people the ability to use magic on purpose, why
doesn’t everyone have it? They could, it works for Runequest, but that’s
a long ways from D&D. Depending on how hard it is to learn a spell (or to
manipulate an element, or however we divide up magic), maybe it’s not
unreasonable for everybody, or at least most people, to have their one
thing they can push with magic. But, I sort of want PCs to be set apart
by their weird powers, so let’s go with only a few people have magical
ability. Some possibilities (which could overlap):
– magical initiation is difficult/expensive/classified, so only an
established temple/magic school (again, is there any difference
there?) can do it
– magical initiation is unreliable, so most people of the appropriate
social class do it but only those “blessed by the gods” succeed
– magical initiation has to be intense/traumatic, so most people
don’t want to try (although young people are notoriously foolhardy,
so maybe that doesn’t work)
– magical initiation is dangerous and there’s a good chance of
ending up cursed/crippled/dead
– undergoing magical initiation puts some obligation on you, either
socially or magically
– there are downsides to being able to use magic (attract monsters,
poltergeist effect, surrounded by a creeping aura of dread, etc)
Any of these would tilt the balance of magic wielders in favor of
weirdos who got their magic points the hard way.