Sadly, all piloted by the Loch Ness monster. In further depressing news, it’s Second Half of the Year Day, which means we are now and forever more closer to 2050 than 2000.

Went to the office, ate some scallion pancakes rolled around meat and veggies and some sesame balls, did some work, got notes in everything that might become active before next Wednesday, set my email and Salesforce to OoO.

Watched (live-action TV): Slow Horses 1.5: There seem to be a lot of guns around for the UK, but I guess most of them are coming from the government thugs. I have definite hopes for who gets shot next.

Read (short): “Finer than Silk, Brighter than Snow” (Shveta Thakrar): The power of stories, and also snakes.

Read (novel): The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands (Sarah Brooks): Another in the recent subgenre where part of the world goes weird, in this case Siberia, although it has a Great Train running through it to have steampunk capitalism vs mystic landscape.

Read (manga): Failed Princesses vol 4-5 (Ajiichi): Love confessions all over! Apparently there’s only one more volume in which to get everything sorted.

Written (game design): 329:

D&D combat is very much putting all the pieces, whose rules are
public knowledge, onto the chessboard in plain view of everyone,
each in their own square, and then taking turns moving exactly one
piece at a time from square to square and applying one of its rules.
There are definite advantages to doing it this way: when the sorcerer
takes her turn, the barbarian is absolutely in this square and the
evil pharaoh is absolutely in that square, so there’s no question
about who’s in the nine squares of the thunderwave. Easy for newbs,
consistent results, no need for judgment calls. But there are board
games for that, some not even explicitly based on D&D.

I want something that’s slightly more like being in a haunted cave
while a giant worm monster and its pet sewer cannibals try to eat
your face. It’s still a tabletop game, it’s not going to be that
much more, but some would be nice.

Instead of having each unit activate, take its turn, and then freeze
again, we can separate declaration and resolution. From worst initiative
upward, each character declares what they’re doing, but they can declare
they’re getting involved (either for or against) in something that’s
already been declared. Then everything gets resolved more or less at
once, which may involve some judgment calls on the part of the GM as to
how far the human charging toward the wizard gets before they get
intercepted by the war bear, or what have you. This does want a new
initiative roll every round, so we might not want to have everyone
do double-digit addition ever time. My hope is to make a round a larger
chunk of the combat, though, so a heavier end/beginning of round
procedure might not be as bad.

Positioning should be looser, not down to the minimum space a
medium-size combatant occupies. I don’t know whether we want to be
as loose as 13th Age, which has zones of one standard move, and
then combatants can be engaged (adjacent) if they’re in the same
zone, or at a specific point like blocking a doorway, or just
somewhere in the zone. Maybe like 10′ zones, so anyone in a zone can
interact with anyone else if they want without having to take a move
action? That might still be too finicky, though.