Tag: office

But what are you going to tell me?

Went to the office, it was full of coworkers, ate some beef stroganoff which was far from healthy but which I haven’t had in years, sat on a customer call for hours.

Read (manga): Bloom Into You vol 1 (Nakatani Nio): Two high-school girls who thought they would never find but also never really miss love, one suddenly declares her love for the other, they are in the student council together. I only read two volumes of this back in the day, but have like four more, so I put it in the TBR before sending them to the used book store.

Read (manga): Dra-Q vol 2 (Chiyo): Pako is definitely a werewolf now, which poses all sorts of problems (some of which may have been made up), Amelie is incredibly pure and innocent for a decapitated vampire, little brothers are obnoxious, everything is a mess.

Written (game design): 291:

Not all saves happen as a result of attacks; some are from environmental
hazards. I think those are handled as hits with +0 on the wound die: no
HP, because you avoid the hit by not going into the dangerous
environment.

The other use of saves in (modern) D&D is to determine when an effect
ends, but that has to be part of the rules for poison/disease/curses,
which will be utterly brilliant as soon they get written.

Save vs Falling isn’t ignoring gravity, it’s holding onto something
(the cliff you were just pushed off, the train you’re riding on the
outside of, etc), which is almost like an action but too simple to be
worth having the full mechanics. Also it seems like it should be
affected by Strength and Size, which otherwise don’t affect d20 rolls.
Is it just a special case of Get Over There (which covers climbing)? It’s
probably not worth it’s own special mechanic, but it’s a reaction, not
an action.

Save vs Restraint is in the same boat. It could almost be an action of
its own, Wriggle Out, but it’s not really enough. Maybe it should be
part of Get Over There as well. I think that’s more justifiable than for
Save vs Falling, but that leaves Save vs Falling still orphaned.

I don’t know what to do with this, and I should. “I try to not die” is a
valid and even common adventurer action. Maybe it’s enough to have a
nonspecific save based on luck (which is not currently a mechanical
entity, so just a die roll)?

I haven’t had any today, but I hope to enjoy vanilla ice cream on many days this summer!

Went to the office, ate some tacos, did some work.

Read (novel): Firebreak (Craig Schaefer): Second volume of highly sus magic school in Schaefer’s multiseries universe, our heroic lesbians continue to be awesome but also have teenager problems to go with their magic problems. Very cliffhanger ending, since this is supposed to be I think five books.

Read (manga): Dandadan vol 13 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Now we understand Vamola’s backstory, so it’s time for the heroes to rally!

Written (game design): 520:

Wait, how could I forget about the stochastic variant of door #3? Save
vs Ambush or lose half your HP! Or possibly lose all of them, or the
attacker gets the bonus attack dice. Anyway, this is pretty much exactly
why I thought of Save vs Ambush in the first place.

How do saves even? They’re for situations where the player might
avoid a bad outcome, so dice are appropriate, but it’s not really
an action. They feel like they should be d20 rolls, but are they
like actions? Is there a Difficulty? How would it be set? What does
a failed die do? For saves, failure and consequences are the same,
so that part of the action mechanic doesn’t really apply. Are saves
always D1, so they’re simple pass/fail? Or higher difficulty, to
allow for more granular outcomes like 1d6 attack or one round of
paralysis for each bad die?

How does this interact with HP? Earlier I had a bunch of saves
besides Ambush/Traps (Poison/Sickness, Curses, Possession/Compulsion,
Restraint, Falls, Influence), but where do the saves come in as opposed
to hits at 0 HP? I said earlier that I want to have effects actually
take effect, not fizzle, so a save up front isn’t right. Still thinking
about spell attacks going against MP, but for now let’s say every attack
goes through HP until it gets a hit.

Save vs Ambush or Trap isn’t about taking a hit (in D&D it would be the
Perception check against the hidden pressure plate or the ninja sneaking
up behind you) so it’s fine as-is. Save vs Influence is for resisting
social skills from NPCs, which probably don’t go against HP, so that’s
okay too. The rest I’m not sure about. Would it be nice to have
characters with varying levels of resistance to different kinds of
trouble? I think it would, but are save ratings the way to do it? Maybe they
instead have varying amounts of “armor” to subtract from the wound die
when they finally take a hit?

No, I’m wrong, a save isn’t the correct mechanic for resisting NPC
social skills. This isn’t a game where only the players roll, so the NPC
makes their action, and if they succeed, the PC target gets a bribe of
experience points to play along, which they can turn down if they really
want to. This also works for Possession/Compulsion, but because it’s
less of a choice for the character, they get some negative effect (maybe
just a wound) if they decline the experience points for playing along.

The other saves aren’t about things that affect character behavior
directly, so I don’t think the bribe mechanic fits. Modifying the wound
die is better for those.

Save vs Ambush is not like any of those, so it should be a different
mechanic, probably integrated with however we roll initiative.

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Went to the office, train was delayed, did some work, ate some Impossible sausage, along with improbable mashed potatoes and entirely plausible sauerkraut.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.8: The one where Parker is on her own and down a limb, but solves the problem anyway because she’s the best.

Read (manga): Ogami-San Can’t Keep It In vol 7 (Yu Yoshidamaru): They made it! Not without more worries, but they get all the way to an epilogue where Ogami says she wants more sex.

Read (manga): The Tiger Won’t Eat The Dragon Yet vol 3 (Hachi Inaba): Tiger and Dragon continue the quest for reduced mortality and encounter various beasts, including the ones they really didn’t want to meet again. Also a cut to Boy Tiger and the cheetah cub he adopted. This manga is kind of nerve-wracking, since I don’t care if humans get eaten by hyenas, but would be very upset if Baby Cheetah did, and they still might.

Read (short): “An Easy Mistake” (Glynn Stewart): Vignette to draw people to the newsletter, as is apparently the custom in our social-media-blighted dystopia of 2025.

Written (game design): 336:

I was thinking about how I want to have black powder guns and
grenades as non-magical counterparts to the big-damage limited-use
spells, but what even is “non-magical”? D&D has a fake-historical
setting with “magic” stapled on top, but it’s a distinct thing,
which leads to spells of detect magic and dispel magic, and even a
god of magic, when it’s the gods themselves that should be magic.
(We continue to reject the false dichotomy of divine vs arcane
magic!)

But is magic invoking the gods, or powers bestowed by the gods?
Maybe secret knowledge granted by the gods? Performed by servitors sent
by the gods? Are there even gods? Earlier I talked about MP being
attunement to the flow of the cosmos, and maybe that’s all there is; the
“gods” are just humans putting faces on different parts of it? Not that
means they aren’t real.

Not sure where I’m going with this. (I say that a lot, don’t I?)
We already knew all of D&D magic can be tossed out, but this isn’t
getting us closer to knowing what to replace it with. If we do have
guns and bombs, then magicians don’t have to be literal artillery
and can fill some other roles.

One thing I like from some OSR games is the “cleric” being the prophet
of some weird little god. There can be also be priests of big important
gods with temples and vestments and established rites, but the prophet
is directly connected to something that is highly specialized and not
even slightly good at dealing with human stuff. The quote I remember is,
“Whoops, you didn’t want to give birth to a thousand live snakes through
your mouth? Sorry, it was an honest mistake!” This is somewhere between
magic-by-invoking-the-gods and magic-powers-granted-by-the-gods, but
presumably part of being an early prophet is establishing the rites so
the later priests can have magic-spells-revealed-by-the-gods or
whatever.

Also, maybe I want black powder lasers. The equipment list is fair game
for worldbuilding!

Friend noodles!

Went to the office, did some work, ate some dumplings, sat on the phone with a customer but contributed nothing. Also made a dumb mistake trying to help another customer, but did get it sorted.

Marith gave me some of her vegetable vegetable vegetable vegetable chicken so I wouldn’t die. Look, vitamins!

Read (manga): I Wanna Be Your Girl vol 1 (Umi Takase): She’s a trans girl who is publicly out for the first time now that she’s starting high school. She’s her childhood friend who is addicted to getting mad on behalf of others and also is in love with her. Together they fight crime gender norms and make friends. Is it just me, or is Yankee flirting with Anger Goblin?

Written (game design): 385:

I was thinking about doing things to enemies in combat besides scoring
hits to wound them, and wondering why you would bother to do that after
taking the trouble to chew through all their HP, except in very special
circumstances. I might be falling into the fine-grained D&D paradigm,
though. In D&D, if someone hits you with a special attack that knocks
you down, you remain motionless on the floor, with the Prone debuff, while
somewhere between 0 and N-2 other units activate, after which you can
spend some of the few footsteps allotted to you to stand up, move to
another square, swing your sword once, etc.

If I haven’t yet been talked out of having a round be a larger chunk
of combat and actions be simultaneous, though, then getting knocked
down is just a thing that happens during the round, and you can get
back up without having to account for every muscle contraction to
the Time and Motion Consultant. Knocking someone down, or throwing
pocket sand in their eyes, or whatever, is just Aid Another, if
it’s much of any action. I think.

Or maybe the key is that rolling your attack die against somebody you’re
engaged in combat with isn’t an action. You’re in weapon range, you get
to just roll your die (but so do they). Your action is something more
interesting like “keep them away from the wizard” or “push them off the
cliff”. I’m dubious about there being a “fight this guy harder” action
even if it’s not clear what else you would do in a one-on-one duel, but
“fight all these guys” so you can attack more than one of them is
probably valid.

Another list that we need: actual actions while fighting somebody.

    • Defend a person/place/thing
    • Push your opponent back or otherwise position them
    • Open your opponent up to attack by your ally
    • Also attack another opponent
    • Intimidate your opponent (force a morale check)
    • Seduce your opponent (got to draw in those Thirsty Sword Lesbians players…)
    • Play to the crowd
    • Knock something away from them
    • Strike at a weak spot

These are the things that you’d roll for if there end up being
combat action ratings; some obviously use another action like Issue
Commands to intimidate or Put On a Show to impress the crowd.

Every day is kitten day, for every nation! [gavel emoji]

Went to the office, had a chat with New Boss² A (he did most of the chatting), had a chat with Newish Boss³ M, ate a Beyond Meat wrap, finally made progress on the thing I’ve been putting off. The explanation for Former Boss² B’s dismissal was kind of sus, but I don’t know enough to refute it.

Beyond Meat sounds like it should be delivered by TARDIS from the far reaches of the continuum.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.10: Despite all the changes made for TV, it did end in the same place as the first book, so that was good. There may have been Feelings. Also, set design! I hear a second season has been approved, although no idea when it will come out or what it will cover.

Read (manga): This Monster Wants to Eat Me vol 3 (Sai Naekawa): Rival girl monster makes a strong showing with the dramatic gesture!

Read (short): “Hart-Struck” (Murphy Lawless): It’s an entire Virtue Shifter novella compressed into one scene!

Read (manga): Lonely Castle in the Mirror vol 5 (Mizuki Tsujimura, Tomo Taketomi): The dramatic conclusion, in which we find out what everybody’s personal deal was, and also what the deal with the castle was, and what happens when there’s a wish and everything. The End!

Read (short): “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” (Martha Wells): A non-Murderbot (but ART) story, somewhere between Artificial Condition and Network Effect, where we see what kind of stuff ART’s crew gets up to and also maybe ART has a feeling.

Written (game design): 372:

Other magic I don’t like, even though it does something instead of
plusses, is remove curse/dispel magic. A proper curse should take more
than a single generic spell to get rid of. Likewise, unenchanting
something enchanted should take more than a single abracadabra. We spurn
the level-appropriate adventure, negative (or positive!) consequences
don’t have to be gone by the next morning to keep everything calibrated.

I also dislike detect magic, although that might be a matter of
presentation. We need more enemy mages appearing as hundred-handed
god-monsters in the astral realm and fewer color-coded arrows, but that
may be a lot of work for the GM.

Related to remove curse, I want to unify curses, diseases, and poisons
conceptually and mechanically, but I’m not sure how. It’s either a minor
issue that can be put off, or a key to the entire system.

For that matter, I don’t even know exactly what to do with the kind of
wounds PCs are expected to accumulate. When the enemy’s attack roll
exceeds your remaining Hit Protection, you take a hit, but what does
that mean? Are you out? Do you go through some degrees of woundedness
before being taken out? Should there be something like a roll modified
by how much attack exceeds HP, so that a better attack hurts more? I
like that because it offers the possibility of varying the results based
on whether you’re a huge dragon, or a slime zombie with no vital organs,
or whatever.

A lot of OSR systems have Dismemberment & Disfigurement tables, or
something named very similarly, to roll on when you take a serious
wound, but I may be too attached to my characters being cute to go for
that. We are assuming some kind of healing magic, though, so temporary
disabilities are fine.

I don’t think I want healing in combat, but that opens up the whole can
of worms about what magic is available and how fast it can be cast. It’s
not fantasy adventure without fireballs, but ritual magic is overall
more interesting.

Alas, I am old and useless and only have fictional horizons.

Went to the office after vacation, discovered that Boss² T was gone (which I had expected) but also Former Boss² B, which was not expected! He was my favorite! Bad company! I am not sure what happened there, but I do not approve! Nothing I could do, though, I have no power and am on a different continent. Ate a burger, did a small amount of work.

Read (light novel): I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level vol 2 (Kisetsu Morita, Benio): Our MC accumulates more cute and powerful girls in a way that is not explicitly gay but is suspiciously homoerotic and definitely ridiculous.

Read (novel): The Void Ascendant (Premee Mohamed): Despite the ending of the previous book, our main character is still stuck with existence, and fate isn’t done with him yet, as he will soon discover. Further interdimensional shenanigans ensue, until reaching an even more definitive conclusion than before. Probably.

Written (game design): 176:

Before I digressed, I was going to say that it’s lame for magic items,
or spells, or magic in general, to give plusses. Magic should give
narrative positioning, so you can do things you couldn’t otherwise
(which if we stick with the system from earlier, is expressed
mechanically as dice of Difficulty). As a
side effect, maybe they can give you a higher action rating for
something, but as previously mentioned, it should be a flat value. In
summary:

BAD: this item gives you +2 to Scrounge for doing the thing
MAYBE: this item raises your Scrounge score to 15 for doing the thing
BAD: this item removes 1 Difficulty when you do the thing
GOOD: this item serves as the tools needed for doing the thing
GOOD: this item lets you read any language needed for doing the thing

I guess that’s how languages work now, just +D on social tasks if you
don’t share a language.

Sadly, all piloted by the Loch Ness monster. In further depressing news, it’s Second Half of the Year Day, which means we are now and forever more closer to 2050 than 2000.

Went to the office, ate some scallion pancakes rolled around meat and veggies and some sesame balls, did some work, got notes in everything that might become active before next Wednesday, set my email and Salesforce to OoO.

Watched (live-action TV): Slow Horses 1.5: There seem to be a lot of guns around for the UK, but I guess most of them are coming from the government thugs. I have definite hopes for who gets shot next.

Read (short): “Finer than Silk, Brighter than Snow” (Shveta Thakrar): The power of stories, and also snakes.

Read (novel): The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands (Sarah Brooks): Another in the recent subgenre where part of the world goes weird, in this case Siberia, although it has a Great Train running through it to have steampunk capitalism vs mystic landscape.

Read (manga): Failed Princesses vol 4-5 (Ajiichi): Love confessions all over! Apparently there’s only one more volume in which to get everything sorted.

Written (game design): 329:

D&D combat is very much putting all the pieces, whose rules are
public knowledge, onto the chessboard in plain view of everyone,
each in their own square, and then taking turns moving exactly one
piece at a time from square to square and applying one of its rules.
There are definite advantages to doing it this way: when the sorcerer
takes her turn, the barbarian is absolutely in this square and the
evil pharaoh is absolutely in that square, so there’s no question
about who’s in the nine squares of the thunderwave. Easy for newbs,
consistent results, no need for judgment calls. But there are board
games for that, some not even explicitly based on D&D.

I want something that’s slightly more like being in a haunted cave
while a giant worm monster and its pet sewer cannibals try to eat
your face. It’s still a tabletop game, it’s not going to be that
much more, but some would be nice.

Instead of having each unit activate, take its turn, and then freeze
again, we can separate declaration and resolution. From worst initiative
upward, each character declares what they’re doing, but they can declare
they’re getting involved (either for or against) in something that’s
already been declared. Then everything gets resolved more or less at
once, which may involve some judgment calls on the part of the GM as to
how far the human charging toward the wizard gets before they get
intercepted by the war bear, or what have you. This does want a new
initiative roll every round, so we might not want to have everyone
do double-digit addition ever time. My hope is to make a round a larger
chunk of the combat, though, so a heavier end/beginning of round
procedure might not be as bad.

Positioning should be looser, not down to the minimum space a
medium-size combatant occupies. I don’t know whether we want to be
as loose as 13th Age, which has zones of one standard move, and
then combatants can be engaged (adjacent) if they’re in the same
zone, or at a specific point like blocking a doorway, or just
somewhere in the zone. Maybe like 10′ zones, so anyone in a zone can
interact with anyone else if they want without having to take a move
action? That might still be too finicky, though.

Hopefully includes air conditioning for our friends on the East Coast!

Went to the office, the train worked out okay going but I need to change it up on the way back, ate some meat and veggies and rice and tea egg, did some work, told other people how to do work.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.8: Uh oh, Murderbot has a plan. And yeah, I thought we hadn’t had the name reveal until now!

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.5: The one with the cheerleaders and the federal government. It seems pretty obvious what Nate’s plan is, but we don’t know his motivation yet and there’s probably a twist.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 7 (Yoshimurakana): The unwholesomeness from last volume is still going on in the background, but now Kuroko has an entire terrorist organization to murder, so that should keep her occupied for a bit.

Read (manga): I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 3 (Yutaka): Oh no, someone else has noticed that our heroine is smoking hot and apparently also bi!

Written (game design): 320:

Leaving the primary spell-casting classes aside for the moment, what
other combined classes do we need, if we need classes? Fighter,
barbarian, and ranger are basically the same, they just have different
combat feats/fighting styles. (D&D rangers have spells, but I think
that’s just shoehorned in because as previously mentioned, everything is
spells. Two-weapon fighting and animal companion are more central to the
class.) Paladin and monk are more magical, but again, it doesn’t have to be
spells. Innate powers seem just as fitting, and possibly there’s not a
difference between those and advanced combat feats. Again, I’m okay with
nobody being able to claim punching through a brick wall isn’t magic.

There’s a school of thought that holds that D&D jumped the shark
when thieves were introduced. Suddenly, there’s a class that has
Climb Walls, Read Scrolls, and Backstab on its sheet, which means
all the other classes don’t. 3rd ed somewhat reversed that by
making most of those things skills that any character can have, but
the idea that you can do what’s on your character sheet and can’t
do things that aren’t was pretty firmly embedded.

The major thief ability that didn’t get turned into a skill is Backstab,
which has also gotten progressively genericized until now it has nothing
to do with stealth or surprise or distraction, and just gives a damage
bonus if the thief has a buddy nearby. This is as lame as calling them
“rogues”. It’s not that great to make only one class able to get an
advantage from ambushing people, though. Stabbing your enemies in the
back is a basic tactic, not a superpower. So, thieves are part of the
fighter superclass, differentiated only by the feats they take.

That’s another thing we need a list of, or several lists, or a tree or
something.

Not sure I have anything witty to say about vitiligo.

Finally went in to the office, ate a barbecue sandwich, did some work.

I have not been gastrointestinal since not shooting up on Sunday, so I need to contact my doctor. Ugh.

Trains are weird for at least the rest of this year. I should probably figure out how to take the bus up to the other train station, even though it will probably require me to get up even earlier on commute days. Ugh.

Read (novel): These Lifeless Things (Premee Mohamed): Decades after the stars were briefly right, a young academic reads the journal of someone who lived through those years and tries to find evidence to corroborate it. Humanities researchers get no respect.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 6 (Yoshimurakana): Yikes, that was very unwholesome and completely lacking in redeeming social value!

Read (anthology): Cooties Shot Required (ed Scott Gable, C Dombrowski): Anthology of stories about children in very unusual, often horrific, situations where adults are of no use. Mostly fantasy/horror, some SF. Not all end well.

Written (game design): 298:

Probably due to my exposure to Champions at an impressionable age,
I’m leaning strongly toward building characters (point-buy etc),
but I have an unreasonable fondness for the idea of discovering
characters (random generation). I also like the idea, don’t know where
it started, of using the same rolls that generate, eg, hit points (more
on those later) inversely to generate starting stuff. Like, if you roll
a 1 for HP, you get a giant clockwork dragon to eat your enemies, but if
you roll a 6, you get only an unsightly duelling scar. This needs a
table for every rolled attribute, for every class, so it would be
impractical here with a dozen or more skills times an unknown number of
classes, and it’s not even what I want here. Or rather, I can’t have
everything all at once. Probably.

I’m not sure how many classes we have. D&D has to rigidly structure
classes to make sure every character of a given level can defeat the
same level-appropriate encounter by expending 25% of their resources or
whatever, but if we give up on that, we don’t have to care as much.
(Maybe not none, but definitely less.) Is everyone who learns spells
from some kind of patron the same class regardless of whether the patron
is an ancient tree (druid), a demon (warlock/wizard), or an ineffable divine
presence (cleric/bard)? I would tend to say yes. Then everybody who has
innate powers can be the same class, but are they even that different?
I don’t see why you can’t have a mix. Probably need some way to keep
everyone from becoming a useless generalist, but otherwise maybe we
don’t even need classes.

That’s every day, for humans!

Went to the office, did some work, ate a torta or at least picked out the insides.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 2 (Yoshimurakana): More horndoggery, more crazed killers, a murder mansion, still no redeeming social value.

Read (short): Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells): Murderbot solves a murder mystery and is still the best.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.5: What’s up with this new character?! Marith and I suspect different things about them, which could both be true.

Written (catgirl): 270.

Insert mockery of the current regime here.

Missed my train stop but still made it in to the office, Coworker D is on vacation, ate some popcorn chicken, had my first 1:1 with Boss T.

Watched (live action TV): Leverage 5.3-4: The one where Nate doesn’t listen, and the one where Eliot helps Parker have an emotion.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 1 (Yoshimurakana): A mass-murdering lesbian horndog kills criminals the police can’t handle in a city named R’lyeh. It’s over-the-top action-horror, not cosmic horror despite the Lovecraftian words scattered around, and all the monsters are nominally human, but it’s not surprising SAN is in generally short supply. Very unwholesome, zero redeeming social value.

Read (novel): Shroud (Adrian Tchaikovsky): It’s not a Hal Clement novel, but probably as close as we get in 2025. Two unfortunate explorers from a von Neumann corporate dystopia are stranded on a world that’s a cross between Venus and Titan and have to trek across the alien terrain full of alien creatures to get off. It’s more xenobiology and xenopsychology than chemistry and physics, though.

Written (catgirl): 198. Oh, that’s what was behind that door.

A pink flamingo is a well-fed flamingo full of brine shrimp!

Also End of the Middle Ages Day, which is apropos since I was thinking about how D&D is not medieval. (It’s mostly Renaissance, with some Wild West and Post-Apocalyptic thrown in.)

Went to the office, ate German food with vat-grown sausage, did some work.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 5.1: New lair, and Nate is up to something that’s probably self-destructive. The one with the airplane.

Read (novel): Advocate (Daniel M Ford): Frontier town necromancer-sheriff has to go back to civilization to help defend her mentor against trumped-up charges, which lets her use her noble background but also involves a lot of annoying politics.

Written (catgirl): 299.

They have built-in pockets for their favorite rocks, and trade rocks as part of courtship.

Went to the office, Coworker D is on vacation, Boss K is gone, ate a salmon sushirrito, did some work. Had a meeting with new Boss³ M (or maybe he’s only boss² since boss and boss² are currently collapsed into one) to tell him about everything that’s broken and ridiculous.

Read (manga): Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon vol 2-3 (Shio Usui): They definitely have feelings, although so far it’s still a mess. The little sister ships them, though.

Written (catgirl): 148.

Hi Ken!

Went to the office, some coworkers were there, ate samosas and saved my chicken biriyani for later, tried to straighten things up for vacation.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.15-16: the one where they help a rich guy, and the one where Hardison tries to be the mastermind. Only two episodes left in the season, so the guy who shows up at the end is probably going to be important for the finale.

Read (RPG): Under Hollow Hills (Meguey Baker, Vincent Baker): You are a fairy circus that travels around performing and getting involved in fairy shenanigans. Pretty much the opposite of Apocalypse World tonally, yet still very PbtA. Shifting toward Summer or Winter, planning shows, ensuring there’s always someone who doesn’t want you there, attending your own funeral, all the important fairy tropes are covered, in a way that’s generic enough to let players come up with their own ideas of fairy but evocative enough to always be Fairy.

Read (novel): The Devils (Joe Abercrombie): In an alternate Europe full of anthropophagous elves, murder, religious schisms, murder, various forms of holy and unholy sorcery, murder, etc, an extremely hapless monk is given command of a band of monstrous criminals and sent to deliver the lost princess of Troy to her throne. It’s Abercrombie, so it’s the darkest and murderiest of comedy, but surprisingly for alternate-historical grimness, I don’t think there’s any sexual violence. Stayed up way too late finishing it.

Written (catgirl): 171.

Not sure what that one’s about, poetry or body horror or both.

Went to the office, closed some more cases, got official notification that Boss K is leaving, ate a veggie burrito.

Read (novel): The Incandescent (Emily Tesh): Magical dark British academia, from the perspective of a teacher, written by somebody who knows what it is teachers actually do all day in the modern world. Also, did you know that teachers are supposed to protect their students and not use them as pawns? Yes, even the orphans! Plus, a real magic system with suitably alarming supernatural entities.

Written (catgirl): 127.

One of two, and that’s not counting Velociraptor Awareness Day.

Went to the office, spaced out during a long all-hands meeting, ate some rice and vegetables and meat, put up with Coworker R being a libertarian and also engaging in the British national sport of complaining (I have no moral high ground here), closed some cases.

I complained on slack about being ditched for the journey to and from Roseville, so now everybody there can hate me too. They’re right that I could at least look for a taxi if I hate both gig economy and people doing things for me, though.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.14: While the girls were out righting a wrong at a fancy party, the boys were getting into some kind of mobster trouble with an idiot.

Read (novel): Emberstone Farm vol 2 (L Meili): More OP-ness, world events that are alarming to people who think they live in reality, system usage that’s alarming to people who think they live in reality, extremely off-screen sex, nothing like an actual problem for the MC.

Read (manga): Assorted Entanglements vol 2 (Mikanuji): Apparently it’s been two years since I read volume 1, so I don’t remember if any of these are the same characters, but they’re all super gay and somewhat ridiculous anyway.

Written (catgirl): 202.

One for Jus.

Went to the office, metaboss T was there but only briefly, ate some meat and potatoes and kale, closed some cases.

Apparently nobody else is going up on the train to Roseville for Memorial Day after all, so I have to travel by myself if I even want to bother making people put up with me. I’m not sure I should.

Read (manga): Chainsaw Man vol 11 (Tatsuki Fujimoto): Well. That’s one way to make sure a defeat sticks. That’s the end of the arc, but looks like it’s only the first of two or more. Not sure what Denji is going to do for an encore, though.

Written (catgirl): 195

Because fuck Nazis, that’s why.

Went to the office, only Coworker T was there, ate a Thai(?) ground pork and rice thing, did some work.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.13: Everyone attempts to have a night off, but Parker, Sophie, and Tara find a leverage job. As always, nobody can get anything done without Hardison, but the other boys are pretty useless.

Read (graphic novel): Fangirl vol 3 (Rainbow Rowell, Gabi Nam): Boy trouble, writing trouble, sister trouble, parent trouble.

Written (catgirl): 169.

Another part of society relegated to the dustbin of history.

Went to the office, had the room to myself, ate Vietnamese rolled beef on noodles, did some work.

Read (novel): Two Necromancers, a Fortress and a Titan (LG Estrella): The OP necromancer Timmy and his OP friends (including some new ones) go to new places, foil new plots of their country’s enemy, and wreak untold devastation.

Read (graphic novel): Fangirl vol 2 (Sam Maggs, Rainbow Rowell, Gabi Nam): Boys are the worst, why would any sane girl date them? But the, why would any sane girl drink that much? Anyway, still follows what I remember of the book very closely.

Read (short): “Traveling Salesman” (Zoe Kaplan): Very short, almost entirely twist.

Read (novel): Overgrowth (Mira Grant): She tells everyone that she’s the vanguard of an alien plant invasion, but is almost as surprised as anybody else when it turns out to be true. This is obviously an expansion of “Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare” even though pretty much every detail is different, so I really wanted to like it, but it was only okay. Also needed an editor to catch the plot holes.

Written (catgirl): 158.

Apparently this is distinct from Superhero Day, probably because he has no superpowers.

Went to the office, Coworker R was back to distract us, ate chicken tamales, did some work.

Read (graphic novel): Thieves (Lucie Bryon): A cute girl, her adorable crush, a house party with too much booze, some objects that aren’t where they are supposed to be, a long-suffering friend, copious smooches, a brilliant plan. Originally in French, apparently, which explains the smoking.

Read (novella): And Put Away Childish Things (Adrian Tchaikovsky): A mostly-failed actor, the descendant of a famous portal-fantasy author from the post-War period (not the famous one), has some strange encounters and it just goes downhill from there. In early 2020 Britain, so even the real world is surreal and horrifying.

Written (catgirl): 150.

Rescue kitties for the win!

Went to the office, ate a turkey and pastrami sandwich, did some work, got my Windows laptop taken away because after IT upgraded it, it didn’t work any more. Fortunately I almost never use it.

Finally got the leaky toilet fixed. Good thing I didn’t have to do it myself, the apartment would probably have burned down.

Read (comic): Everything is Fine vol 1 (Mike Birchall): Spoiler: Not everything is fine. Everybody has giant cat masks. They must forget. Actually, nothing is fine.

Written (catgirl): 144.

If you’re better-dressed than me (which you are), spin around!

Went to the office, ate masaman meatball curry, did some work.

Read (manga): Manhole vol 1 (Tetsuya Tsutsui): Parasite horror, nonconsensual utopian plots, more parasite horror. Points off for the female cop being lame, bonus points for the villain having the courage of their convictions. So many CWs.

Read (anthology): Anagnorisis (Moe Lane): Four more horror or horror-adjacent stories about vampires, haunted houses, demonic possession, and evil books, some with twists.

Read (anthology): Decisions (Moe Lane): Also four stories, about werewolves, the Emperor of California, C19 derring-do, and dating apps.

Written (catgirl): 153.

(It’s a Dr Who reference.) Also the International Day of the Book, International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, St George’s Day/Slay a Dragon Day, and English Language Day.

Went to the office, ate a fig prosciutto brie sandwich, did some work.

Read (manga): PTSD Radio omnibus 1-2 (Masaaki Nakayama): Many small vignettes of unsettling or actively horrifying things that each show a facet of what’s going on. So far, I’m not sure, but it involves hair, an extremely cursed-looking stone outcropping, and a variety of terrifying apparitions.

Written (catgirl): 124. Still not sure about cell phones.

Celebrate by emitting ultrasonic chirps!

Went to the office again, all the usual coworkers were there, ate okra curry and naan, did some work.

Read (novel): The House Witch (Delemhach): Light novel about a witch who has home powers instead of the normal elemental powers, hiding out as head chef in a castle but beset with problems on every side including his own feelings. Het romance, but there’s a gay side character. Very light novel.

Read (manga): Go With the Clouds North-by-Northwest vol 3 (Aki Irie): After the scenic interlude, we’re back to detective work and also the little brother. Now we know what’s going on with him, and it’s not good.

Read (game): Cloud Empress (watt): Heavily inspired by Nausicaa, but the system is based on Mothership because violence is not good for people. The old was swept away, the new world is mostly uninhabitable but there are people in the few habitable areas and also in poorly-maintained flying cities, sometimes giant bugs swarm everywhere and eat the bones of the dead, their shells can be scraped for the substance that fuels magic, ghosts everywhere, etc. Lots of random tables of different things, in the Mothership tradition. It’s a very sandbox game; there’s no overarching plot, everything is in the worldbuilding.

Written (catgirl): 126 of notes.

I, for one, welcome our mycelial etc etc. Also School Librarian day. We still have those, right?

Went to the office, Coworker D was there, ate beef and gouda dumplings with pickled veggies, did a little work.

Read (manga): Go With the Clouds North-by-Northwest vol 2 (Aki Irie): MC’s best friend from Japan comes to visit, so this is the Iceland Tourism Bureau episode. I do kind of want to go to Iceland now!

Written (catgirl): 134 of notes.

I presume they mean the color, not the performer, but who can say?

Went to the office, had the room to myself because Coworker D is out until next week, ate fried chicken guys, was very sleepy, did a small amount of work.

Read (manga): The Tree of Death: Yomotsuhegui vol 3 (Masasumi Kakizaki): Finally, the boss battle! Also difficult decisions, personality erosion, terrible revelations, etc. The End.

Read (novel): Ghosts on an Alien Wind (Moe Lane): Just a few hundred years before humans developed interstellar travel, everybody in the galaxy was wiped out, leaving dead, hella creepy worlds that could have been full of friends but now have only unknown dangers, nigh-incomprehensible tech, and creeping madness. It’s SF adventure with cosmic horror beneath it, which pleases me greatly. Also the [SPOILER] are real [SPOILER], which is amazing.

Read (manga): I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 6 (Kashikaze): They finally come out to their friends, everything is great, the end!

Written (catgirl): 170.

Went to the office, ate a Mediterranean-salmon burrito thing, did some work.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.8: Conning the Mako.

Read (manga): Go With the Clouds North-by-Northwest vol 1 (Aki Irie): A Japanese teenager in Iceland, using his secret psychometry powers to do detective work while his grandpa picks up on the ladies. Lots of Icelandic scenery, people who make the MC’s life difficult, family trouble. By the same mangaka as Ran and the Gray World.

Read (novel): The City That Would Eat the World (John Bierce): In a world where everything runs on the very specific blessings of myriad gods, a god appeared who slowed aging for members of the city watch as long as they were on the walls. A few centuries later, everyone is officially part of the guard and the entire city is walls (except the interstices where the underclass labor and age, but that’s not important) and doing its best to cover the whole world. A disillusioned citizen and an outsider whose home was destroyed by the city’s extractive industries and general capitalist shittiness get stuck taking a god to the West Pole through this bizarre world full of corrupt societies, and doing their best to not suck along the way. There’s a lot of exposition because it’s a very different world, and the main characters are unfortunately straight, but people resisting capitalism is always good.

Written (catgirl): 122.

Another one that’s illegal now, I guess. Also National Walking Day, International Children’s Books Day, and National Ferret Day.

Went to the office, ate some vegetarian curry and flatbread after figuring out which unlabeled lunch was mine, did a work.

Read (novel): To The Bloody End (Rachel Aaron): Conclusion of the faerie vs blood mage in magic cyberpunk Detroit trilogy. Despite gaining immense power in the second book, our heroine still has to figure out how to use it in nonstandard ways to save the world.

Read (manga): God Bless the Mistaken vol 4 (Nakatani Nio): Conclusion of this story about people in a world where reality randomly changes every day. Although does a slice-of-life story have an actual conclusion?

Written (game design): 125.

I’m not qualified to participate in Good Hair Day.

Went to the office, Boss K is there this week, ate a naan pizza, did a few works.

Read (novel): When the Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi): Suddenly, the Moon is replaced by a Moon-mass lump of cheese. Over the course of a month, this has various effects and humans react to it in various ways.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 20 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): The yōkai finish their locked room game, Kotoko starts investigating a new case that looks mundane, Rikka executes the second phase of her prank.

Written (game design): 179. Not sure how to summarize combat concisely. Not sure if any of my ideas are even viable.

Also Frog Day, Sparrow Day, Storytelling Day, Atheist Pride Day, Extraterrestrial Abduction Day (it was a bum rap), etc.

Went to the office, ate a cold beef sandwich, had to play icebreaker games with the rest of the company, maybe did a little work.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 18 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): The Edo-era kenjutsu style yuki-onna arc continues. As is typical with Kotoko, there are at least two possible explanations at every point in the story.

Read (novel): How to Survive a Slasher (Justine Pucella Winans): An enby whose family was on the wrong side of the serial killings that made her small town famous is just trying to survive high school and their mom’s hardcore anti-serial-killer training and their obnoxious little brother and the yearly serial killer fan convention, which should be more than enough for anybody, when the past refuses to stay past yet again.

Written (catgirl): 142.