Also Embrace Your Geekness Day, which is very fitting.
Failed to get up early or be energetic or organized, but somehow made it to Mike’s birthday party in the depths of Palo Alto, saw some people I had not seen for 1d12 months or so (and some people I saw yesterday), ate some party food, watched a game about dragons, eventually got a ride back to San Jose with Ken and Jus.
Jus came up to my apartment and started to make friends with Sage (she received a voluntary sniff!), but Nightvale was not at home to visitors.
Read (novel): Stone and Sky (Ben Aaronovitch): Peter, Bev, and the entire crew including Abigail and her favorite fox try to vacation in Scotland, which of course is full of oceanic skullduggery. Peter opens with “Before we continue, I’d like to point out that a) none of this was my fault and b) ultimately the impact on overall North Sea oil production was pretty minimal.” and that basically covers it. Also Abigail is still the best.
Read (manga): Komi Can’t Communicate vol 33 (Tomohito Oda): Sports festival, a very strange college admissions test, various tangential friendship bits. You can do it, Komi!
Written (game design): 464:
That’s actions (which still need a better name, maybe Moves if the PbtA
baggage isn’t too unwieldy?), what about backgrounds? I see three types:
professions, social circles, and regions.
Professions, or maybe better called occupations, since they don’t have
to be profitable, are straight-forward. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor,
Spy, Huy Braseal Civil War Reenactor, Woodsman Woodsfighter,
Courtier, Courtesan, etc. Not sure about things like Monster Hunter or
Dungeon Explorer, but that’s a matter for individual campaigns. As
mentioned, this is susceptible to the “Occupation: Literally Batman”
issue, but because it doesn’t give bonuses, only avoid penalties, maybe
it’s not that bad. Alternately, we could make a list that people have to
pick from, but that seems like work. An occupation background is
appropriate for doing the things that occupation does, knowing about
famous practitioners of it, assessing the things it works with, etc.
Social circles are any group where status carries the same markers
and the same jargon is used. Depending on the campaign, this might
be Nobility, Criminals, Horse Tribes, etc, or it may be broken up
more: Nobility of the Central Kingdoms, Nobility of the Coastal
City-States, etc; or even Nobility of This Specific City-State,
Criminals of This Specific City-State, Horse Tribes of the Grey
Banner, etc. The more fragmented the setting, the smaller the
groupings, mostly. A social background is appropriate for dealing
with members of that group socially, recognizing other members of
the group and assessing their status, etc. It also gives you whatever
language is used in that group, or maybe a couple.
Regions are similar in that how much a background covers depends on the
campaign: could be Forests, Forests of the North, This Specific Forest.
Cities also fall under this, but are pretty much each their own region
unless they’re very close. A region background is appropriate for
wayfinding, hunting or otherwise gathering resources, knowing what
resources are available, knowing what threats are there and how to avoid
them, etc.
A starting character should get one of each, and probably a couple of
extra slots to reflect complicated backstories.