Tag: monkeycat towers

Hey, maybe that’s what Sage was yelling about! I sure don’t know what else it might be.

I just missed the bus to go shopping, so instead of waiting half an hour, I walked to the store. I really need to do that more when the weather is suitable (ie, not summer).

Lady on the street corner by my apartment was with a sign about increased ICE in San Jose, handing out fliers for the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network. The number is 408 290 1144 if you see any anonymous masked kidnappers.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.15-17: And now all the plot threads are coming back to life at once! Conspiracy! Betrayal! Eunuchs! Genetics! That one guy!

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 1 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Trying to make the move to reading manga on my pad. It works well when I remember to do it, although I have to hold the pad in landscape mode, so maybe I should get used to doing all my other timewasters that way too. Anyway, the anime follows the manga very closely. There is a translator note when Gaoshun starts calling Maomao “Xiaomao” which tells us that the “xiao” means “little”, so he’s basically calling her Mao-chan, which is pretty adorable.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL. But if I can stop adding more paper to the shelf, that’s good, right? Except then I feel like I’m betraying my buddy Doug at the bookstore by not buying anything in paper.

Written (game design): 112:

Now we have three ways to deal with opponents: find their
weakness/overcome their strengths, talk them down, or just punch them.
But, by the nature of dominant mechanics, alternate approaches can’t
coexist: if grinding down their hit points is an option, that’s the one
most players will take unless the other options are so much better than
the complexity is worth dealing with, and then one of them will be the
preferred one. Even if they’re mathematically equal (unlikely,
especially since different opponents will probably have different
susceptibility to each), there’s probably going to be one that looks the
best to players.

Not to buy in to the “dominant mechanics” theory uncritically, but that
does sound a lot like how players work. Having them carefully work out
which approach is best in each scene is also not ideal, since there’s a
bunch of pondering and calculating, and then only one approach getting
used. Although I guess as long as it’s not the same one approach every
time it’s not that bad? But a combination would be better.

It’s an important part of Hero that NPCs and PCs are made using the
same rules, but that means the NPCs should be working on overcoming
all the aspects of the PCs, who also have only 1HP (each? between
them all? hardly matters). This doesn’t work as well because the
GM has only one brain against all the PCs, instead of many brains
against one villainous plot (even if it has many individual villains).
On the other hand, it’s also unfairly easy for the GM because while
every villainous plot can have at least somewhat different obstacles
to overcome, while a team of PCs generally stays very similar from
one adventure to the next (if they’re like typical Hero characters that
have most of their points spent on their own capabilities that can’t be
changed quickly).

Another difficulty is that whatever the GM prepares needs to provide
something for every character to do, or else the players have to be able
to define enough of the situation that they can make opportunities to
stick the opposition with quills.

I guess that’s using AI instead of paying for a support contract.

Monday is a holiday, so I’ll do my shopping for next week then. Unfortunately, this means I had no reason not to let the cats keep me trapped in bed until noon. I spent the afternoon reading journalism about Neil Gaiman (fuck that guy) and his Scientology-spawned abuses, which is probably not any better a use of time than slowly dissolving into mulch.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.12-14: The romance plot isn’t going anywhere, but it’s more of a big deal that it’s not. Also, the hot springs bath episode. We passed the halfway point of the season, so there are new credits, and Shisui (bug girl) is a lot more prominent…

Read (manga): Adachi and Shimamura vol 3 (Moke Yuzuhara, Hitoma Iruma, Non): S still has no thoughts of romance, but that doesn’t mean this childhood friend isn’t competition!

Read (journalism?): The Cuddled Little Vice (Elizabeth Sandifer): A side piece to the author’s main current work, which is a metaphorical(?) description of Alan Moore’s and Grant Morrison’s comics careers as a magical war a la Crowley. Neil Gaiman (fuck that guy) came out of that same British comics scene and was a big deal, so he also gets a long piece on his works (mostly Sandman) and also how shitty he was. I read it all, because my ability to not read things is very weak, but I don’t feel like it has improved my life to read such extensive commentary on Sandman even though I liked it thirty years ago. I also do not feel compelled to read the rest of the larger work, although I bet there are people who find it right up their alley.

Written (game design): 158:

Back to emotional damage! Letting an opponent be defeated by filling
either of two damage tracks is a strong incentive to focus on one,
although which one depends on what the players think that particular
opponent is weakest against. Depending on how much variation there is in
that, PCs might specialize in one track, and let’s face it, that’s
always going to be punching.

Even when a villain gets talked down, there’s often punching first, so
maybe both tracks have to be filled? Although there are plenty of
villains that need only punching, or only talking, so maybe one track is
sometimes zero, or very small. But now we’re back to the players guessing
what the GM set as the way to defeat the villain.

So is there just one track, emotional damage counting the same as
clobbering damage? But then there needs to be emotional Def and
emotional Res, and this is getting further and further away from Hero.

It me.

I did two whole shoppings today, wheee.

Watched (anime): The Apothecary Diaries 2.9-11: Is the romance subplot finally getting somewhere?!

Read (manga): The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All vol 1 (Sumiko Arai): High school girl with taste in music gets a crush on the ccool assumed-boy at the music store, not knowing that it’s actually the girl who sits next to her in class. The secret is revealed by the end of vol 1, but neither of them is thinking about romance yet. Printed with acid-green backgrounds, for extra cool artisticness.

Written (game design): 280:

Using the (1+A)/(1+L) system inevitably leads to fractional values,
which means rounding (unless you keep all fractions, which I have no
intention of doing), and rounding 7.5 to 7 is a lot more of a bonus than
rounding 15.5 to 15, never mind 32.5 to 32. Obviously this is just math,
but psychologically it seems like even more somehow. Do we like that?
Maybe not.

Leaving that aside for now, since we will definitely return to it sooner
rather than later, I was reading theory blogs on being mindful of what
kinds of activity a game supports, because players are going to do the
thing that has firm mechanics. Superheroics (or action
movie heroics) is never not going to have punching, but we should have
other ways of solving problems as well. At least Hero has Presence
attacks, which is a lot more than most systems. It might be nice to have
even more support for moral suasion, though. You can’t talk Doom out of
exerting his rightful authority over the whole Earth, at least not
without a lot of leverage, but apparently you can dissuade Galactus from
eating the planet. (And of course criminals are a cowardly and superstitious
lot, but that’s mostly covered by Presence attacks.)

I might be basing this too much on the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, but it
seems like the main ways for a superhero to defeat a villain are
straight-up punching (especially for agents or minor villains), talking
them down, or finding their weakness/coming up with a clever plan to get
an advantage. Hero combat is usually only the first, and very rarely the
last since unless the GM specifically prepared a gimmick fight, it’s
very difficult to have any tactic be more effective than hitting them
with your main attack. (If you only paid for a 10d6 attack, why should
you get to do more than that? And if they paid for 40 Def, why shouldn’t
they always get it?)

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.

I had to work today, but skipped out early to take the bus over to Monkeycat Towers for the traditional fondue of our people. Dave is still out of town, and Marith was too overcome with the horror of having to be at work at 5:00 tomorrow, but we had Earl and Cat and also Jus’s current girlfriend and one of their friends. They seemed like nice kids. They helped us eat cheese fondue, but then they had to leave so we old people (and Jus) got all the chocolate. There was conversation and friendship and rainy fireworks and it was a very nice evening and everyone was happy.

Read (manga): A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow vol 1 (Makoto Hagino): A girl moves to a remote town and meets another girl. There’s an aquarium and possibly chemistry, but not really a lot happening.

Written (anything): PARTY.

But not actually Newtonmas because he was a weird heretic of some kind.

Went to Monkeycat Towers for Christmas dinner. Gave few presents, got slightly more presents. I think this chocolate may be too good for me. It was all very festive and nice, though, so I am happy. Everyone is alive and plans to reconvene for New Year’s Fondue.

Read (comic collection): The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vol 3 (Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Rico Renzi, Clayton Cowles): The time travel run. 60s fashion and violent grannies!

Read (short): “Castle, Anima” (CE Murphy): A short story several years after the Urban Shaman series. Joanne defeats completely unexpected evil magic while severely handicapped.

Written (game design): 197.

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).

Pretty sure a pastrami cheese melt counts.

Tried to take books to the used book store, but the Internet said it was likely to rain and I can’t make my wire granny cart full of paper bags of books at all rain-proof, so that will have to wait. Did the usual shopping, got many new volumes of manga to read because I still haven’t converted to digital for that.

Ayse is sick again, so no cake this week. Maybe next week, if she can recover her health.

Watched (anime): Apothecary Diaries 1.16-18: Maomao solves a puzzle with Deduction instead of PS: Apothecary, then some more of her mysterious past gets dug up (although she doesn’t know it yet). That one character really needs a lingering, painful, and incurable accident.

Read (manga): Monster-Colored Island vol 1 (Mitsuru Hattori): She’s never been off the island and has no friends. She’s just run away to this remote island and is a total tsundere. Together, they awaken a mysterious supernatural force by making out in front of its shrine.

Written (game design): 347. Making a Hero 6E character reminded me of all the things I want to fix in Hero.

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.

Specifically, it’s Marith’s party!

We celebrated with the traditional bowling, although there were only four of us because everyone else was sick or busy or introverted. I was not the absolute worst at bowling, at least! Then we went back to Monkeycat Towers to see Ayse and Jus and Non, and eat DoorDashed Cheesecake Factory and choco mousse cake. Jus was on her way to HoCo (that’s how they say Homecoming this year) and looked very nice. All that took so long that Marith had to go home because tomorrow is work, so although it was happy, there was no anime.

Read (manga): Evil-ish (Kennedy Tarrell): Villains who are not necessarily evil in a modern/fantasy world, kind of like Nimona. Our nonbinary protagonist tries to join the organization of villains, because it’s way cooler than being a potion barista, and succeeds through an improbable series of events, along with the annoying person who has actual magical power. It’s not as great as they hoped, and they have to face the consequences of their actions and their friend’s past and ancient curses and everything.

Written (catgirl): 144.

 

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.

I guess this was the wrong day to wear my pro-procrastination shirt.

Slept way in but then was able to save some time on shopping because there probably haven’t been any new books delivered since Tuesday.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.11-13: more villains who have always existed yet were written into existence days ago, finally someone willing to monologue about the villains’ plan, but then the end of the season! Although this is 13 episodes and where we should be at the midpoint, so it’s probably annoying marketing splitting season 4 into two.

Read (manga): Spy Classroom vol 2 (SeuKaname, Takemachi, Tomari): The girls still have not gotten one over on their teacher, but it’s time for the suicide mission anyway! After hearing about the great spies who failed at it before.

Read (novel): Any Minor World (Craig Schaefer): Same setting as most of Schaefer’s books, a hardboiled private eye gets mixed up with the criminal cartel that tries to control the multiverse and a dame who is already entangled with some of the less pleasant parts of it (think Gotham but with more supernatural horror). Colorful villains, desperate chases, redemption, betrayal, subway trains to hell.

Written (game design): 409:

My bullshit definitely includes people becoming able to use magic
after getting exposed to the supernatural or otherwise traumatized,
and this coming with some kind of curse that makes normal people
not want them around so they’re pushed to the edges of society. At
least part of the curse is susceptibility to turning into a monster,
either through one’s own wickedness or through being cursed or
whatever. (Note that meeting a vampire’s cursed eyes is definitely
exposure to the supernatural, so one is immediately vulnerable.)
Every person is equally susceptible to this; there’s no lineage
that has more or less magic than any other, although in-world that
may not be apparent. In fact, I’m pretty against any plot tokens
being passed down by blood, even if characters want to be weird
about it.

PCs can have whatever role in society they’re permitted, but
fundamentally they ain’t right and are going to end up, sooner or later,
as the ones dealing with problems that ain’t right. So what are those
problems and where do they come from? Monsters that used to be people,
obviously, and monsters that are still technically people (the wealthy
and powerful, insert Leverage intro here), and sometimes the two working
together. I mentioned interdimensional incursions as a source of
monsters before, and still like strange creatures from the higher realms
(although I’m less sure about PCs being able to do much about them,
because, higher realms). Living dungeons are also good, although they
need some kind of different spin than in 13th Age. A good source of
problems, though, possibly as good as pre-apocalyptic ruins? Also
there’s probably something about dimensions trying to invade and
corrupt each other with vacuoles (completely independent of anything their
inhabitants might want).

Living dungeons don’t have to be interdimensional. Maybe the ancient
layer of fallen heavenly palaces is rebuilding itself upward. Maybe it’s
just the regular D&D Underdark expanding upward in search of water or
plants. This might be the kind of thing that needs a list of 1d12
anticanon possibilities.

There’s a particular kind of player (I heard, from a friend) that will
want to play a monstergirl from a living dungeon. I should probably
figure out what to do about that.

This answers the question of whether to apocalypse, at least. We have
weird stuff from other places, not other times, at least mostly.

They aren’t real whales, but they are real sharks!

It’s Saturday, but I don’t have work for ages, so I didn’t do any weekly shopping. I did get a sandwich from the very crowded deli; it was pretty good. I did not accomplish anything today

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.9-10: Yosano’s backstory, and a lot more doom that we know was conjured out of nothing.

Read (graphic novel): Doughnuts and Doom (Balazs Lorinczi): A witch who’s bad at magic and a hopeful rock star get off to a rocky start over cursed doughnuts, but band together (SWIDT) to defeat bureaucrats and obscurity and lack of smooches.

Written (game design): 155:

(Every time I see a module that says “easily compatible with OSR
systems”, I wish I could come up with a system I liked that used those
same numbers but in a different way. This certainly isn’t it, though (AC
-> Readiness? Meh, and OSR is all about the stats anyway). Maybe
someday, but probably not.)

Every time I see a game with a post-apocalyptic/ancient world fantasy
(Worlds Without Number, Godbound, Numenera, Ex Tenebris, so many) I
think “I want to do that” but it’s just because I like the aesthetic,
not because I have anything particularly brilliant to do with it,
certainly not compared to those games. On the other hand, apparently
there’s a reasonable demand… On yet another hand, it does have
potential problems with the setting making sense, but that’s nothing new
for fantasy. Argh! I have no idea where to go from here.

Happy happy Ken-day!

I did some regular shopping, but then we went out for an early dinner at a restaurant Ken likes, saw the rare and elusive Non-beast, went back to their place so Marith and Dave and I could watch some anime while digesting, then had cake and very bad singing and very good friendship.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.7-8: Oh, right, they’re being framed and hunted, but all of it may be the result of reality manipulating artifacts. Not that that helps.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (game design): 243:

I consolidated most of the actions mentioned earlier into:
– Act Undetected
– Analyze Something Complex
– Befriend Someone
– Build, Repair, or Sabotage Something
– Influence Someone
– Mingle with the Crowd
– Patch Someone Up
– Read Someone or a Situation
– Scour a Place for Information
– Scramble Around
– Spout Lore
– Travel to a Different Place
– Work Magic

Analyze and Read could be consolidated, but technical vs social may
be a distinction worth preserving, so we’ll leave them separate for
now. Scour is also in that space but again, distinct enough we’ll keep
it for now. “Go shopping” doesn’t need to be an Action; looking for stuff
is Scour, haggling is Influence or Befriend, buying things from the
standard equipment list at the listed price is whatever. So that’s
thirteen Actions, plus Act Under Pressure.

“Spot trouble before it strikes” isn’t an Action because it’s reactive,
based on Readiness. “Make a daring escape” is mostly a combat Action, so
maybe it’s time to think about those.

– make a daring escape
– strike at a weak spot
– stand in defense of someone
– block passage
– stop someone in their tracks
– recover and reorient
– push through an obstruction
– strike from ambush
– snipe from a distance
– blaze away
– team up on someone
– terrorize someone into flight or surrender
– stop the fight to parley
– take cover
– duel someone one-on-one
– form a shield wall
– push someone around
– use the environment as a weapon
– take out a bunch of mooks at once
– blow up an area
– curse an enemy
– bless an ally
– move around while avoiding attack

I’m sure there are more I’ll think of later.

Loving homes for all rescue animals!

Did the usual lazing-in and shopping and reading Katalepsis and watching anime at Dave’s place.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.5-6: Rampo wraps up the mysterious murder of the murder mystery, and gets a clue for the next plot against the Armed Detective Agency, which turns out to not help very much against them being completely framed.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (game design): 128:

Oh, right, Last Breath. That definitely establishes something about the
setting, but I’m not sure it’s inconsistent with everything else we
want, so we can leave it for now.

The other basic moves are arguably the core of Dungeon World, and I
already ripped them off. The whole melee fighting/running to block
somebody/shooting somebody that I spent so much anguish on come directly
from Hack and Slash, Stand in Defense, Volley. We kind of reject Discern
Realities in favor of the GM just telling the players stuff. Not sure
about Spout Lore; maybe it should be automatic like Discern Realities,
but in accordance with “draw maps, leave blanks” maybe it’s fine as is?

None of this feels like it’s getting anywhere with XZQJY. Bah.

Humans, huh? Seem sus to me.

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.2-4: End of the flashback, Rampo has triumphed and the detective agency can be formed. Back in the present day, Kunikida’s in jail because of the girl who exploded, and the enemy has a paranormal specifically tuned against Rampo. I suspect this will not avail them.

Read (manga): How Do We Relationship? vol 2 (Tamifull): Well, they figured out having sex, but there are still a lot of people who may not be cool with lesbians, because Japan, and also there’s jealousy and a new friend with a loud voice and no filter whatsoever.

Written (game design): 390.

Happy happy Rachelday!!

Went to Rachel’s party, it was full of people I know to varying small degrees (or not at all) and also food. Told some people about my brilliant plan to combine hit points and initiative (although not the person I imagined explaining it to, because he would have mocked it), did not find any new gamers for after the Bertanis abandon us. Mostly talked to Dave.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 24: Dumplings! Also a plan for dealing with Falin’s problem, but it’s the end of the anime, so you’ll have to go to the manga to find out if it works!

Watched (anime): Bungo Stray Dogs 4.1: Flashback to when the president and Rampo were starting the agency, with almost-monochrome art so you know it’s The Past.

Read (short): “Sharp Undoing” (Natasha King): What if headware, but with as much security as electronics have today?

Read (manga): Cheerful Amnesia vol 3 (Tamamushi Oku): Further life of the horny amnesiac airhead and her girlfriend who she doesn’t remember sleeping with but is overwhelmed by. Also incidental characters, who often try to help, but she is so beyond help.

Written (game design): 295:

The main mechanics at this time are:
DOING THE THING
– Difficulty starts at 0 if you have all of
– Appropriate background
– Proper tools and materials
– Ample time
– Trouble-free work environment
– Difficulty increases by 1 or more for each that you’re lacking
– If Difficulty is 4+, you can’t do the thing until you address some of
these problems
– Otherwise, roll d20s equal to Difficulty and compare to Action rating
– 1 die above Action rating: fail OR succeed with consequences
– 2 or more dice above Action rating: fail with consequences

TBD: opposed rolls

FIGHTING THE GUYS
– Start of round: everyone rolls Readiness dice (d8s)
– From lowest to highest roll (later reductions don’t matter):
– Declare action – attack that guy, defend this guy, steal the
maguffin, etc. Can move one zone to do it, or two zones if running
(halve Readiness)
– Anyone who hasn’t declared yet can declare to help or interfere
– Once everyone has declared, resolve it all
– Assign each of your attack dice to somebody you were engaged with this
turn and roll it
– If somebody attacks you, you can (and probably should) spend your
Readiness 1-for-1 to counter the attack
– If you counter it all, great!
– If there’s any attack left, roll the Wound die (d10). Add the remaining
attack, subtract your armor
– If 1+, take a wound
– If 11+ take 2 wounds
– Wounds go into your inventory, possibly displacing gear
– Every Wound is +1 Difficulty to all Actions
– At 2+ Wounds, spend Harmony every round to not pass out

TBD: ranged attacks, stopping someone with ranged attacks, pushing and
shoving, spells, area effect attacks, Wound die on non-animals, special
effects of weapons

I dunno, manne. Maybe instead of taking D&D out of D&D, I should have
taken D&D out of Dungeon World.

Blehhhhhhhhhhhh.

Took four more bags to the used book store, but got almost two bags back. On the one hand, I am starting to scrape the bottom of things they want, but on the other hand, I think the new buyer both rejected more and paid less for what they did take compared to what the regular buyer would have done. Not sure if I should bring these books back when the regular buyer returns, or just store them with the rest to dispose of in some other fashion.

Started reading The Horror From the Hills (Frank Belknap Long) while waiting for my books to be processed, because it’s allegedly an important Cthulhu Mythos work, but it was so horrifying racist I did not want to spend even a couple of bucks on it.

Also shopped for groceries and read Katalepsis and got sweaty and stupid.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 22-23: Senshi’s backstory, at long last! Also mushroom transformation shenanigans.

Read (manga): When the Villainess Seduces the Main Heroine vol 2 (Kasai Fujii): Our loving couple continue to be absolutely mad for each other, and also meet a couple of other beautiful women who incidentally have beef with them. Still ridiculous.

Read (novel): Dungeon Spiteful (Melissa McShane): LitRPG from the perspective of a local companion of the isekai’d Earthling, who at least also has her own stuff going on with getting a class that everyone thinks is useless. She figures out its utility in just a few chapters, which makes me think the people of this world are not that bright overall. First book of a series but I doubt I care.

Written (game design): 404:

So magic, what does it even? Or rather, since we’ve established
that there is no distinction between magic and non-magic, what does
an adept get in exchange for falling out of sync with the universe,
or abrading their soul, or whatever? It’s definitely how they can
slice a giant tree in half with a single sword stroke, or absorb
the impact of any fall by rolling once, or walk on new-fallen snow
without leaving footprints, or any of that stuff. What about wizards
(spell-casters? magicians? sorcerers?)? We don’t need them to throw
death rays or fireballs, at least not primarily, since we have guns
and bombs and aren’t even measuring a character’s worth by whether
they can meet the damage-per-round quota. (At least, I hope we’re
not, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking.)

Even setting aside damage-dealing spells, most D&D spells are for
casting in combat, taking just a single eye of newt and a few seconds
of abracadabra and lasting for seconds or minutes (maybe hours if
we go back to 3E). Some buffs, mostly to combat power; lots of
debuffs likewise; reshaping the battlefield (durations mostly too
short to be useful otherwise); healing both HP and statuses;
transportation; and utility spells to get rid of obstacles (locked
doors, darkness, uncooperative NPCs, etc). How much of this noncombat
stuff we want available to PCs affects all the earlier blather about
resource limits: when a wizard can duplicate the effects of any normal
tool with magic, allocating inventory slots to tools is less
interesting.

Are we starting with already too many assumptions? Do we want wizards
who cast discrete spells, each with a specific effect? Or ones that
have more free-form control over an element? Summon creatures to
do things? Nothing but telekinesis? Only enchanting objects, nothing
on the fly? Do we want them to do it with a quick abracadabra or
harsh look, or full magic circles with candles and lunar phases?

Digressing because there are too many options for wizards and I
can’t pick one or even a finite number: is “adepts” a good name for
people who can spend MP? It reminds me of Earthdawn, which uses it
pretty much exactly that way, so could be either good or bad.
“Magic-users” is taken, alas. “Initiates” since being initiated
into a magical society is the socially-acceptable way of becoming
one?

I used paper bags to take books to the used book store, but then had to take more than a quarter of them back home. Used reusable bags for grocery shopping and taking watermelon snacks to anime.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 20-21: The party tries to integrate Izutsumi the ninja, with limited success, but then they get to the Heart(?) of the Dungeon(?). Not sure how they’re going to end this, since this like volume 6 of the manga and we’re almost done with the season.

Read (graphic novel): Huda F Are You? (Huda Fahmy): Autobiographical story of a hijabi Muslim girl who moves to Dearborn, which despite being full of Muslims is not any less horrible, because being a teenager always sucks (Had time to read all of this while waiting for my books to be processed at the used bookstore, so I didn’t buy it, but not bringing a book in is as good as getting rid of one, right?)

Written (game design): 343:

Do we need a list of actions? (Eventually.) Do we need a better name for
them? (Absolutely.)

    • Attune to the Flow of the Universe – see the unseen, recharge MP
    • Craft Something – build a shelter, repair armor, smith a sword
    • Creep Around – hide, sneak, grab things when no one’s watching
    • Get Over There – leap chasm, swim moat, climb cliff
    • Heal an Affliction – wounds, disease, poison, curses
    • Issue Commands – lead troops, interrogate prisoners, orate stirringly
    • Mingle with Crowd – blend in, don’t stand out, pick up gossip
    • Put On a Show – bardic performance, distraction for the ambush
    • Scavenge Something Up – search the room, hunt for food
    • Sway Hearts and Minds – make friends, subtly grill people, seduce dragons
    • Tinker With a Machine – pick locks, disarm traps without wrecking them
    • Wrangle a Beast – befriend wild animal, bait for guard manticore

That’s 12, which is about the smallest number I was expecting, so I’m
probably forgetting something. I could add some for doing fancy combat
tricks in melee/ranged/magical combat, but I bet we could fold that into
the attack roll.

These all have an implicit “under pressure” attached, since if you have
an appropriate background, all the needed tools, and ample time (ie, 0
difficulty), you don’t have to roll and it doesn’t matter what your
rating is.

Another thing that makes no difference when coding the video game
version but could matter to players: does every character have a rating
in every action, or is there a default for everything they don’t
specifically have? For that matter, does everybody have the same set of
actions? Maybe some characters have special ones like “Perform Ritual to
Empower Equipment Against Demons” or whatever their special deal is. We
don’t want those to overlap with the basic moves, though; narrative
positioning to use those in weird ways is the province of abilities
(which also need a better name).

NPCs can definitely have just the important actions and one for
Everything Else, to keep the load on the GM low.

I like tapioca, but I might be weird.

Took four bags including all my D&D3/3.5 books to the used bookstore and got nothing back, yay. Successfully shopped for lunch and groceries and books, which was enough errands for one day. Marith is back from the fjords and also not dead from travel, so we were able to visit people and hear about Ayse’s new job and how humans are the worst part, and also about Jus’s love life and how humans are the worst part.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 19: A new ninja joins the party! Also, dream magic.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (catgirl): 205.

Not sure those two really go together (I said, in a sentence fragment).

Tried to get runs and sets together for the used book store, which seemed to work pretty well.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 17-18: More interparty wrangling with Shuro’a and Kabru’s teams, a big Falin reveal, intraparty conflict with dopplegangers.

Read (novella): Exit Strategy (Martha Wells): Conclusion of the initial plot arc. Mensah is the best, but Murderbot is really the best.

Written (catgirl): 259.

And yet I did not play Perils & Princesses!

I did go to the farmer’s market, check on Ayse & fam’s cats, and eat fresh veggies and cheese with Marith.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 1.1: Rewatched to see who the recurring character at the end of season 4 was. Oh, that guy. Yeah, fuck him. Also, Parker was a lot sexier in the premier. Not intrinsically, but she had more sexy scenes.

Written (catgirl): 191.

Also World Telecommunication Day and National Walnut Day.

Only failed a little at taking the bus to the used book store, and ended up on the same bus as Dave, who was on his way to play board games with people who had suddenly found room in their schedules. Only failed a little at the used book store, but I couldn’t fold up all my bags for the return journy, which was annoying. The bus failed me on the way back, so I was at lunch like an hour later than I had hoped, but it worked out okay.

Marith was dead from mucus or travel or something, so I made my own way to the Eurovision party and we ate many foods and made technology bend to our whims.

Watched (live-action TV): Eurovision Song Contest 2025: There were fae and wacky legs and a Polish lady who sang while dangling from rings despite being 52, at least two performances that had to be bowdlerized, some eye candy for Ken, gender of assorted densities, etc. Israel’s song was so boring that none of us felt bad about booing them, but they came in second anyway. The actual winner was deserving of victory.

Written (catgirl): 135.

Yep, there it is! Still not a velociraptor.

I used the Miracle of the Wheel to take four whole bags of books to the used book store this time, and also set out at a more auspicious hour, so I was able to get everything sorted and go shopping and get lunch without dying despite the busses being all messed up due to some kind of running cult observance.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 15-16: More monsters, more oppression for Marcille, but also the return of Falin’s admirer and his ninja ladies, and a glimpse of the new, improved Falin.

Read (short): “Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare” (Seanan McGuire): Looked this up to tell someone who had read Overgrowth, ended up rereading it. Changing the setting to modern for the longer, more serious, version was probably the right choice, but that means no ray guns.

Written (catgirl): 298. Hey, that’s more than 250!