I think that’s what the web page said today was, anyway.
Slept in too much, then was trapped by cats, then took a too-long shower, but eventually managed to do the regular shopping. Katalepsis is on hiatus, though.
Books Inc has been bought by Barnes and Noble. The people at this store seemed to think it might not be completely terrible, but I guess we’ll see.
Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 1.1-3: A crazed apothecary girl is kidnapped and sold to the concubines’ wing of the imperial palace as a maidservant, but her nosiness and medical knowledge bring her to the attention of certain powerful people. Detection and character bits ensue.
Read (novel): The Dark Lord’s Guide to Dating (and Other War Crimes) (Tiffany Hunt): The dark lord needs to marry a descendant of the ancient hero to activate his ultimate weapon, but the apparently hapless noblewoman he kidnaps for the role has way more potential than either of them expected. The dark lord isn’t as bad as he’s made out to be, but still pretty evil, but then the kingdom he’s opposing is pretty sketchy too, it turns out. Lots of boinking, lots of magic, lots of murders.
Read (manga): Princess Resurrection vol 6 (Yasunori Mitsunaga): Prison break episode!
Written (game design): 362:
Some story I read, maybe Clark Ashton Smith (who I normally don’t like
because he brought good and evil into the Mythos) had the blasted waste
at the edge of world, full of monsters and cratered by meteor impacts.
Meteors hitting a flat world (and delivering monsters from outer space)
is a great image, and I like the edge of the world in general. Maybe
some living dungeons fall from the sky like meteorites? Either as seeds
that grow and expand, or just a whole structure blazing down to embed
itself deep in the earth.
Living dungeons are a great hook for a game. People turning into
monsters is a great hook for a game. But are they hooks for the
same game? In one sense, sure; Nexus the Infinite City or any Marvel
RPG will show there’s no limit to the number of kitchen sinks that
can be stacked together in one game. Internal trouble from wicked
people puts it in the police genre, while external trouble from
living dungeons is more like war. Completely different genres.
There is a difference between “this person we know or at least heard of
has now turned into a monster” and “this monster was once a person”. The
latter feels like it fits better with external threats. We could go that
way, and save established NPCs (or PCs!) turning into monsters for a
special treat.
Travelers from the higher realms coming to cause trouble is also more
like living dungeons than like people turning into monsters. There seems
to be a lot on that side of the genre scale, and not so much on the
other. Maybe the world is so messed up that people sometimes turning
into monsters is just not a big deal?
This is not really helping with magic. In fact, the opposite, since it’s
given me time to think that spells being astral tools doesn’t exactly
mesh with harmonizing with the flow of the universe. It doesn’t not
mesh, but needs some more work.