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.

Happy birthday, Nonny!

I had to get up early for bonus meetings, which are actually a feature of every normal Tuesday now but that doesn’t make me like them any more. I had no brain, I did some work, I read some more GLOG stuff, I coughed up a bunch of mucus, I read an essay about how Tolkien orcs and D&D orcs are in fact still racist no matter how much you say “it’s right there on the page they aren’t human” or “Professor Tolkien would never”. It also convinced me that D&D-style stats are bad, even if you manage to avoid racial modifiers (which hardly anyone does). All the “natural ability” or “innate potential” type stats are like thinking your IQ is what matters, instead of what skills and decisions you actually make with it. This does affect my game design thoughts, since I was already tending toward BitD-style actions or Castle Falkenstein-style skills for the Champions thing.

Played: Nothing. Not only is Ken busy with Nonny’s birthday, Vivian got her brain electrified today.

Written: FAIL. Too many snuggles, not enough free hands.

 

Today I took time off work to eat buffet and see KITTENS with Ayse and Jus and Nonny. We ended up having to wait an hour for the kittens, because pandemic, but after a lot of escalators I got to pet a grey tuxedo kitten named Vixen, and had my fingers almost chewed off by a a kitten named Madden, and also petted a sleepy void kitten who never came out of their cave to let me read their collar. There were many fewer kittens this time than over the holidays, which made the visit less exciting, but it’s good to know so many kittens got homes.

Read: The Promised Neverland vol 20 (Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu): The end! Also substantial denouement. Sometimes a redemption arc only takes a few pages.

Words: 875 kitten words. Also more scripting.