Tag: hazbin hotel

No idea what that might be. Maybe aliens will bring it to us when they invade.

Went to the office, ate vat sausage and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, did some work.

Watched (animation): Hazbin Hotel 2.7-8: Season finale! Clever plans were executed, we got revelations about some characters, the day was saved, there are still plot threads unresolved, and of course a cliffhanger to keep the fandom buzzing until next season drops. Charlie shaped up a little, but still not great.

Read (manga): The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 21 (Kore Yamazaki): “Hey, Chise, can you help us investigate the mysterious dragon that appeared a couple volumes ago? You know about dragons, right?” And that’s how Chise became Red Dragon Queen of Wales.

Read (TTRPG supplement): SLIME beta (Mikey Hamm): Beta version of a Slugblaster supplement. Includes signature “devices” that are actually alien biology (including Monster Out, which reinforces my opinion that Slugblaster is the new TFOS), a few monsters, a few possible runs, and an all-purpose slime table.

Written (game design): 184:

We calculated that Def should cost 7 per point, but how about Res?
It’s like Def but only stops Body (which hasn’t been compressed)
so 1, but each point of Body is a bigger chunk of the whole, so
maybe it’s more like 2. (Should Def’s cost be changed? It’s based
on a ratio of 3.5 for Stun, which is roughly right, so it’s fine.)
That gives a brick who spends 60 points on defenses something like
7 Def (49 points)and 5 Res (10). A 12d6 attack can still do a little
lethal damage if it rolls up, which seems fine even if it wasn’t that
way in the old system.

Those costs are in old points, of course. If we make points bigger, then
it would be 3 for Def and 1 for Res. But I still don’t know if that’s
the right way to go. Which I guess means we should try it and see if we
run into problems later.

I still don’t know about ranks. It is an idea I really like, but
it makes converting some existing Hero powers hard. Maybe this is
a sign that those powers are poorly implemented? The ones that seem
like they would be most difficult to convert/need the most improvement
are Barrier, Change Environment, Clairsentience, Darkness, Enhanced
Senses, Entangle, Flash, Images, Invisibility, Shapeshift, Summoning,
Teleportation. That’s the ones that can be improved in multiple
ways independent ways, and the ones that deal with senses and sense
groups. (Senses and sense groups are another Hero thing that’s good
if you want to be micromanagey but not if you don’t.) I definitely want
to fiddle with Barrier to have better support for both forcewalls and
real objects, which may or may not require splitting it into two powers,
and as already mentioned, I want to make Change Environment more able to
change the environment, like making zero gravity regions. It may combine
with Darkness and/or Images, and we might also have to change how
environments are implemented outside of powers.

Isn’t that missing the entire point of nachos, though? You need the cheese and sour cream!

Bus was late even though it wasn’t raining. Went to the office, heard through the grapevine that Former Coworker T was fired for poor performance, which is a) bullshit and b) possibly grounds for a lawsuit, ate some green curry chicken, did what seemed like a lot of work. Train was late on the way home.

Watched (animation): Hazbin Hotel 2.3-4: Wow, Charlie is just relentlessly imbecilic. I think Marith’s right that this is the season where she’s going to drive everyone away. Also, Alastor backstory, much less sympathetic than I expected, and also full of mystery. No songs as good as “Gravity” but the Pentious/Cherri remote duet was nice. Jus will be glad that her waifu Velvette gets more screen time.

Read (novel): Into the Labyrinth (John Bierce): This is the series that Jeremy is stealing heavily from for our current campaign,but he also stole lightly from it for the previous campaign (the book Great Library is cooler, alas), so it keeps giving me flashbacks. It’s very heavily about the magic system. The main character is a boy with low self-esteem, which, yeah, relatable to likely readers, but did we have to? I think this is the same guy who wrote The City That Would Eat The World.

Read (manga): After God vol 6 (Sumi Eno): Still in the non-Euclidian palace, more Obikawa tragedy, some Tokinaga revelations, even some Waka backstory.

Written (game design): 349:

This finally brings us back around to the question of rolling a huge
pile of dice for effect rolls.

On the pro side, we know it’s playable, it produces the 3.5:1 ratio
of Stun:Body we’re used to, and it’s not complicated. It also produces
quantitative (or “quantitative”) numeric damage which is easy to apply
to anything, animate or inanimate.

On the other hand, it’s a lot of rolling and adding (movethrough!) for
results that aren’t particularly distinct, as is usually the case with
hit point systems.

There are a few ways we can approach this. Obviously the downsides aren’t
a complete dealbreaker, so we can just accept them in exchange for the
upsides. Roll between 2 and 30 dice, add up Stun and Body, away you go.

Second, we can try to come up with an easier or at least faster way to get
results in the same range, even if we don’t get every possible result.
(Does it actually matter significantly to gameplay that a 10d6 attack
could do either 37 or 38 Stun? Probably not.) EG, we could roll at most
3d6 and use a table lookup or some other operation to expand that range
of results to a reasonable range for more virtual dice. For bonus
points, we could combine this with the success roll, so 3d6 tells you
everything you know. EG, have a base Stun and Body per virtual die, and
then add a certain amount per die for every 1 you roll on the dice for
the success roll. (Or for every 6; maybe you should only get the extra
effect if the success was easy enough you could roll badly and still
make it.)

Or, we could change what an effect roll does (and probably how it’s
rolled). This probably comes down to conditions instead of hit points,
or maybe a short track of statuses. We need to keep some aspect that’s
strongly but not perfectly correlated with the number of dice (or ranks,
or however we rate an effect) for things like escaping from grabs and
maybe knockback, as well as the usual lethal and non-lethal damage.