Tag: apothecary diaries

Also, Earth is at perihelion, which probably doesn’t matter much given the poor quality of spaceships available locally.

I meant to get up early and do all the things, but instead slept way in and did a few of the things. Dave is back in town, so we were able to watch more anime, after getting the AV equipment back in working order (bad cable).

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.8: Time to investigate a curse!

Read (artbook): Bleeding Edges (Danni Shinya Luo): Pretty girls and watercolor. Reminds me of Olivia.

Read (novel): Fallen lands vol 3: Siren’s Reach (C Peinhopf): Oh god, now there are three of them. Or maybe four. Also ocean-based monster attacks, politics and warfare, excessive pranks, restoration of the proper order of the universe, etc. Not the end, though.

Written (anything): FAIL. I have no excuse, I just suck.

Didn’t manage to celebrate this one.

Got up at commuting-to-work time to try to get to phlebotomization ahead of the rush, did not succeed. Fortunately, I have a smartphone, so queues of reasonable length are not distressing. Made it back in time to go shopping and eat pastrami and read Maidens of the Fall at my usual lazy time.

Read (graphic novel): Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (Mariko Tamaki, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell): Another lesbian high-school drama. MC is dating the hottest, most popular lesbian in school. Drama ensues. So much drama. But also opportunities for personal growth.

Read (novel): Hell Hath No Fury (Rachel Aaron): At the end of book 3/5, everything was terrible, the lovers were separate, the villain looked like he was winning, etc. Now in book 4/5, the plan is starting to come together, they’re invading Heaven though the basement, making friends, influencing demons, reuniting, discovering the power that was inside them all along, etc. But Gilgamesh’s plan to crush them once and for is clearly about to come to fruition, because the next volume is the final battle.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.5-7: Finally, the Moon Fairy! Also, genetic infiltration.

Written (game design): 508:

This implies that all ranks have the same cost, so we have to adjust
powers by how much one rank gives instead of cost per rank. As always,
the benchmark will be 1d6 damage per rank. This also means that
characteristics and skills/skill levels have to be bought in ranks,
which might be a little harder. Maybe a rank of Skill gives N skill
points, which are not the same as character points, or something
similar. Depends on how broad or narrow we want to make skills.

What kinds of ranks do we need? One for each power, although we can
consolidate some: Blast, Hand Attack, Killing Attack (already
combined in 6E), and maybe Mental Blast can be combined into Attack;
Mind Control and Mental Illusions can possibly be combined; FTL
Travel and Extra-Dimensional Travel, etc.

I mentioned ranks of damage/effect before, but I think those actually
come from ranks in the power itself. If nothing else, we may need
to have some that only give 1/2d6 (average 0.5 point of effect) per
rank. (1/3d6 and 2/3d6 are also possible, but we’ll try to avoid
those.) I think this may also apply to defense, although I’m less
certain about that. Maybe there is no Armor or Forcewall power, you just
throw a bunch of defense ranks and optionally some area and range ranks
in a bucket and call it a day?

Enhancement ranks? Is that a good name for them? Good enough for
now. We have, obviously, range (0 ranks is melee, then same zone,
nearby zones, distant zones/LoS, usable through mind scan), area
(0: single target or an area of a meter if appropriate, then enough
to block a doorway, cover a room, fill a zone, zone and adjacent zones,
etc), penetration (1 rank knocks off 2 of whatever defense), AVLD/NND,
constant/persistent, affects desolid, affects solid, alternate CV,
cumulative effect, damage over time, autofire, invisible, hardened, hole
in the middle, faster acceleration, more noncombat speed, knockback,
indirect, invisible, megascale, teleport more mass, safe teleport,
resistant, killing, sticky, transdimensional, trigger, usable by/on
others, variable special effect, probably more I missed or will need to
be invented new. A lot of these are only going be available as a
single rank, some will need multiple ranks to be effective at all,
some start at 1 and go as far as you can afford. Some only apply to
certain powers, or even a single power (depending on how we combine
powers).

Then we need to take all the power limitations (which may also only apply to
certain powers) and figure out how many ranks each one is worth. We also
need to list all the requirement limitations, although they don’t need
to be rated in any way: if they come up, you get XP, and if not, you
don’t.

What it means for a requirement to come up is easy for something like
Gestures or Extra Time, but less so for something like Only At Night. If
the adventure happens entirely during the day, does that automatically
count as a single incident for the whole adventure? As many incidents?
Does it depend on how many times you say “I wish I could use that
power”? (I was thinking if a Complication comes up once, you get 1 XP;
if it comes up several times (5?) then 2 XP; maybe if it’s constant for
the whole adventure, you get 3? Is it per adventure? Per session? Is
there some other time period like D&D’s long rest that we use to divide
up play?)

If we give 1 or more XP per Complication per session, then an XP
probably can’t be a full character point the way it is in Hero,
especially if we use chonky points. I don’t think we’re going to be like
Storyteller where points are linear at character creation and geometric
afterwards, just a straight ratio.

That sounds even more repulsive than plain vodka.

Did not manage to get up early to go get blood drawn, or even get up at a reasonable time. Eventually I did get out from under the cats and go shopping, though.

After cancelling my Spotify account and spending a few weeks listening to music on Youtube which is not ideal, I signed up for Qobuz on the recommendation of a pocket frond. So far, so good. I was able to magically port over my Spotify playlists (I still have an account, I just don’t use it or give them money) with Soundiiz, although they did not magically become better organized.

My blog is up to three whole comments! All by one commenter, though.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.4: So who are these mysterious envoys and why are they setting puzzles for Jinshi/his mysterious advisor? Also, I feel like the mirror should allow us to date when the show is set, but Wikipedia is only giving me “later than the 1500s” since although metal-backed glass mirrors were available in Italy at that time, they were less than a meter square.

Read (novel): Broker vol 2 (Derelict Presence): The continuing adventures of trying to save the world despite superpowers and dungeons and monsters having spontaneously appeared to disrupt everything. It looks like most of the people who were monsters in MC’s future are pretty monstrous even early on.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (game design): 118:

This would bring back minimum costs, since to buy the equivalent of even
1d6 Blast from 6E, you’d also have to buy up range from melee to hex to
few hexes to many hexes, buy up sustainability from “does lethal damage
when used” to “does nonlethal damage when used” to “will tire out user
eventually”, buy up targets from “one target ever” to “can spread”,
penetration from “stopped by any amount of defenses” to “reduced
penetration” to “normal”. Okay, this isn’t going to work. Most powers
are far from the greatest limitations on multiple axes, so merely being
at the default level takes up a lot of points and a lot of space
on a character sheet. Bah.

Pretty sure leaving your aura behind when you go for a ride is a second level D&D spell.

I was on call for the middle of the day, so I had to drag my work laptop with me, but I did succeed in buying shoes and going grocery shopping and reading a new chapter of Maidens of the Fall. I also worked on the project that was due Friday, and made some progress despite with Sage’s help.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.1-3: Picks up right where the first season left off, with Jinshi and mushrooms and murders and conspiracies. Also the great literacy project.

Read (novel): Snake-Eater (T Kingfisher): It is very Kingfisher, despite being about roadrunners. Also about the desert and awesome old ladies and getting away from shitty men. There are some scary bits, but it’s not actually horror, I would say.

Read (graphic novel): Leap (Simina Popescu): Roommates at dance school in (not very queer-friendly) Bucharest try to deal with gay romance and unwise gay crushes and burnout and familial expectations and being 16 and everything. They do not end up dating, they do end up being great friends.

Written (game design):

One of the arguments for ranks is that it makes adjustment powers
easier, but they aren’t that common. Maybe they would be if they were
easier in play, though. Also, the problem of adjusting a power that has
multiple dimensions is still there with active points. If I spent 12
points making my Barrier wide and 19 points making it tall and 9 points
giving it more Def, what happens when someone Drains 13 active points
from it? 6E just says to apply the increase or decrease as
proportionally and reasonably as possible, which seems like a lot of
work to do in the middle of a combat round.

I’ve been picking on Barrier, which has five different aspects you have
to spend points on (length, height, thickness, Def, Body) in addition to
possible adders. Even if we collapse the three dimensions into a single
size rating, and Def and Body into a single toughness rating, it’s still
two dimensions that have no particular reason to be correlated. Change
Environment is just as bad, with size and strength of effect, without
even getting into the possibility of multiple effects. Does the number
of ranks give the area, and the cost per rank the power? Or vice versa?
How does that square with area being an advantage on most powers? 6E has
some powers where you buy size directly and some where it’s an
advantage, but should it? Or should we throw out advantages and make
them ranks, so your 12-rank power has 8 ranks of effect and 4 ranks of
area?

That sounds more promising than doing advantages as cost per rank, at
least in general, but it’s not very adjustable. It would be back to
removing ranks proportionally and reasonably, but that’s easier with 12
ranks than 67.5 active points. Although limitations were more of a
problem than advantages, and this doesn’t help that at all.

Yet also Day of the Imprisoned Writer.

Not being imprisoned, I went grocery shopping. I didn’t even have an ankle monitor.

Watched (anime): Apothecary Diaries 1.22-24: Lakan is still not great, but now we have a version of the story where he’s not so bad, and he did pay for his screwup, although it didn’t fix much. End of season! Still no word on whether Maomao and Jinshi are ever going to kiss!

Read (manga): The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor vol 5 (Anko Yuzu, Sarasa Nagase, Mitsuya Fuji): Preincarnated MC is trying to keep her emperor from losing SAN due to isolation and becoming a monster, and maybe it’s working? Also they’re kind of cute, although not too romantic since she’s still in her 10-year-old body.

Writing (game design): 293:

Making the -2 penalty per action beyond the first the only limit doesn’t
work, because then even Jane Normal can do an unlimited number of things
that don’t require rolls. In a human-scale game, the GM can set reasonable
limits and everyone can agree on what a person can do in 6 seconds or
whatever, but what about superspeed? And we don’t even have just one
kind of superspeed; every speedster has their own special effect.

We could say things that “don’t require a roll” are actually 17- (18 is
always a failure), so trying to do two things makes them both 15- and if
you fail the first you also fail the second, but that’s still pretty
likely to succeed. We could increase the penalty to -4 so it’s 13- even
for things that don’t normally require a roll, which is still fairly
good odds but more of a risk. Also it would make multiattacks much less
viable out of the box.

Alternately, we could make a new Superspeed power, or Speed
characteristic, that’s how much non-attack stuff you can do in a phase.
Or rather, how many steps more on the time chart a phase counts for, for
purposes of doing noncombat stuff/making skill rolls that take time.
It’s still going to be a GM call in a lot of cases where you’re limited
by equipment (keyboard only accepts so many WPM) or whatever, but it’s
reasonably quantitative without having the kind of number that suggests
you should be getting 4 or 32 or 250 attacks in a phase.

It me.

I’m backup on-call today, as I often am, but today I used it as an excuse to lounge around home and be completely useless. I supported local business by getting takeout Chinese lunch, I guess.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 1.19-21: I think we have now had enough revealed that we should understand Jinshi’s ancestry and position and general endealment, but I don’t get it. I also don’t get what’s going on with that guy who sucks. Did he think Maomao was not going to figure it out? Was he surprised she took so long and got hurt?

Read (manga): 7th Time Loop vol 3 (Touko Amekawa, Hinoki Kino, Wan∗Hachipisu): The princess combines a few of her many past-life classes to impress people, engineer a better society, and reform someone’s warped personality. Little if any progress on the central mystery of the whole affair, though.

Written (game design): 222:

One other way I just remembered to reduce dice rolling is to only roll
the first up to N dice and the rest add a flat 3.5 Stun and 1 Body each.
I’d make N something like 4, so the normal human range stays variable
but the superheroic range is faster to play. Something like this could
also help with adding extra dice for movethroughs and such for the
previous two ideas, but I don’t think it’s enough to save them.

Can we make a system for beating people up that isn’t hit points?
We only kind of succeeded for the fantasy game, and as said earlier,
superheroes probably need even more abstraction. On the other hand,
nickel-and-diming the brick over multiple turns, while possibly
“realistic”, isn’t that much fun.

As far as getting beaten up goes, the statuses are unhurt, stunned, knocked
out, dying, dead. Plus the intermediate values between unhurt and
knocked out, and unhurt and dying, where you aren’t worse off but it’s
easier to move you to the bad status. This isn’t considering
transformation attacks, mental attacks, entangle, mental paralysis, etc,
etc, although perhaps we should be trying to unify physical, mental, and
presence attacks (which is, yes, getting back to conditions, because I
am a filthy story-gamer).

Exactly what kind of person is scared of anti-fascism?

Slept in excessively, but still went to the protest. The newspaper was saying 10k people in San Jose, 7M nationwide. That’s like 2% of the entire country!

Also managed to run a couple of errands including haircut.

Watched (anime): Apothecary Diaries 1.13-15: Recap episode! New credits! (I liked the old OP better.) Back to the skulduggery, this time including fuel-air explosions to go with the poisonings.

Read (manga): Devil’s Candy vol 2 (Rem, Bikkuri): Still rereading what I originally read as webcomic. There is an ongoing plot now, but it’s still extremely ridiculous. Not as fluffy as TFOS, but still that energy. More characters are getting spotlight, but Pandora is still great. Ricket is also great.

Written (catgirl): I finally deleted the stuff I commented out, and also added a little more, so technically today was 1445, but that number feels extremely bogus.

Not sure how to explain that Cephalopod Awareness Day and World Animal Day are the same day, otherwise.

Got up not horribly late (only very late), did some shopping. It was not as good as usual because not only do I have no Katalepsis to read, the sandwich shop’s microwave was broken so I had to change my order, and the bookstore is pupating for its transformation into a Barnes & Noble.

Watched (anime): Apothecary Diaries 1.10-12: Intrigue! Murder! Medical issues! Mass layoffs! Welp, back to the brothel. Surely Jinshi won’t miss her.

Read (manga): I Belong to the Baddest Girl at School vol 1 (Ui Kashima): The delinquent girl thinks she asked the hapless boy out, the bullied boy thinks the terrifying girl has impressed him into servitude. One of her minions knows what’s going on but is too amused to straighten them out; the other is different but equally confused. Those are pretty much the only characters with lines.

Written (catgirl): 236.

Excellent day for outbreaks of phasmophobia.

Successfully shopped for stuff and also other stuff, and um, that’s about it.

Watched (anime): Apothecary Diaries 1.7-9: More deaths in the concubine palace, then our detective gets a home visit where there are, you guessed it, more poisonings! Also we see where she gets it from.

Read (novel): Regent’s Mate (Glynn Stewart): The wayward princess king candidate finally makes it home with everything she has left after the last three books, and resolves the betrayal in time to actually save someone. Of course then she finds out why the betrayal happened, and that’s multiple more cans of worms, plus all the worms she already had.

Read (manga): UQ Holder vol 1 (Ken Akamatsu): Sequel to Negima!, but much less interesting. It’s okay for the main character to be OP, but he should get there through on-screen struggle and suffering, not just by inheriting all the levels the MC of the previous series accumulated over 30+ volumes.

Written (game design): 342.

Do I emit gibberish? You be the judge.

Also National Pepperoni Pizza Day, for Non.

Did the usual Saturday stuff, but could not shop for manga very effectively since there was an event happening and the store was all rearranged.

Watched (anime): Apothecary Diaries 1.4-6: Our poor apothecary keeps getting more and more attention, and also revealing more and more abilities. She’s kind of scary. I mean, more than she was by episode 3.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 1 (Shinichi Fukuda): He’s a loner apprentice traditional doll-maker, she’s a popular extrovert who has just found out he can sew and needs someone to help her with cosplay for a deeply sus eroge. This would work better if she were less hot or he had any experience whatsoever with girls having bodies in his vicinity.

Read (novel): Exordia (Seth Dickinson): A severely traumatized Kurdish woman sees an alien in Central Park, finds out about soul-based ultratechnology and the mysterious remnant from before the Big Bang that’s lurking under her hometown. I didn’t know gnostic hard SF was a thing, but it is now. The ending seems to indicate we’ll see more in this universe, which I would like, because it is Weird.

Written (game design): 127.