Tag: office

Went to the office, listened to management talk about how well the company is doing, did some work, ate some falafel and olives and assorted Mediterranean bits, learned little Kubernetes but some jpath.

It’s a good thing Marith doesn’t live here any more, because she probably would have died from seeing the giant bug in the bathroom. The cats were definitely freaked out by it. I’m pretty sure it was an outside bug, because I haven’t seen any smaller ones like it in the apartment, and hopefully it has returned there on its own, because I could not catch it.

Read (manga): This Monster Wants to Eat Me vol 6 (Sai Naekawa): All about the mermaid’s horrifying past.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 202.

Went to the office, did some work, ate a chicken tikka masala burrito instead of any kind of macaroni, poked a Kubernetes with a stick.

Read (manga): I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 6 (Yutaka): Finally, they admit they love each other! Not that either of them has any idea what to do about it, but the male lead definitely doesn’t like that people are noticing the female lead.

Read (novel): The Princess Knight: Dimensional Shift (Invayne): A teen genius accidentally isekais herself, takes over the body of someone who just died, becomes immensely OP in every way, attends maid school, etc. Does not advance the genre or even show the most adequate of it.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 160.

Went to the office, did some work, ate some corporate barbecue, didn’t learn any Kubernetes.

Read (manga): After God vol 8 (Sumi Eno): Mmm, drugs.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 203, but maybe it’s all bad and needs to be redone.

And yet, the Earth continues to support both life and data centers.

Went to the office, ate a burrito and some birthday cake, did some work, learned no Kubernetes.

Read (manga): After God vol 7 (Sumi Eno): Well, now we know what his deal is. But everything is still terrible.

Read (novel): Unaccounted For (AE Dooland): A heroic search-and-rescue butch in Australia accidentally becomes famous and gets stuck with an infuriating goth PR consultant. They have differently-terrible families and very different risk tolerances and yet there is still smooching. Also intrigue, crime, emotional conflict, and more smooching. I liked Under My Skin better, but this was still pretty good. Also, Froggy.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 125.

Went to the office, did some work, ate a chicken tikka masala burrito, reviewed some Kubernetes troubleshooting.

Read (graphic novel): Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend (Alys Arden, Jacqueline de Leon): An origin story for Zatanna as the daughter of a stage magician at Coney Island, not apparently related to the Galaxy books and also unnecessarily heterosexual.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 141.

Went to the office, did a fair bit of work, ate some falafel and hummus and rice, finally succeeded at the kubernetes thing. When they said, “we’re going to do X” I thought they meant, like, on that first page of the test. But no, they only wanted the very first steps done on the first page. Instructions and prep scripts for all the rest of what I was trying to do were on the later pages.

Read (comic collection): Supergirl: Being Super (Mariko Tamaki, Joëlle Jones): An origin story for Supergirl, in the small-town Midwest. I have no idea how it fits with any other canon, since it’s modern (smartphones) but Superman appears to be also pretty recent. Whatever, a foolish continuity is the Green Goblin of small minds, as they say. At least acknowledges the existence of the question of where Kryptonians get all that energy.

Read (novel): The Calamity Queen Saga vol 1 (Calder Finnix): An extremely OP MC headbutts her way out of the Abyss and is promptly declared a world boss by the System of the comparatively fragile world she finds herself in. Overwritten angst, friend adoption, supervillainy, database crashes, and widespread destruction ensue.

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 156.

Went to the office, did some work, ate some chickeny stuff in a box, failed at kubernetes again. Do I know what I did wrong? Maybe!

Read (manga): Yotsuba&! vol 16 (Kiyohiko Azuma): Augh Yotsuba is going to be in first grade soon! Also, cameo that suggests terrible things about book 17!

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 206.

Went to the office, ate the lunch I successfully ordered, watched some training videos, flailed pathetically at kubernetes again. I think I need to learn to take notes.

Read (graphic novel): Galaxy: As the World Falls Down (Jadzia Axelrod, Rye Hickman): The same purple alien transbian Galaxy as in The Prettiest Star, now in Metropolis with the intent of going to college, but there’s this world that needs saving, and Superman can’t do it, so… (But he can give superheroing advice.)

Written (Geometry for Mutants): 136.

With triple-entry bookkeeping, of course.

Went to the office, calculated that it’s only 120 steps to the seventh floor which is nothing and yet I still can’t do it in one go, attended an all-hands and heard news that is probably very important to investors and other people who think they can control the future, forgot to finish submitting my lunch order and had to eat leftover breakfast burrito, did the mandatory anti-harassment training that should be obvious to anyone and yet, and doinked around with some Kubernetes. That sounds like a lot, but most of it was sitting down.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Written (second rewrite of Geometry for Mutants): 325, which pretty much eliminates the first draft. There are a couple of lines left as notes for later, but that’s all.

There’s one right behind you!

Went to the office, experienced the new ticketing system which in a surprise reversal of standard corporate practice really is better than the old one, ate a deconstructed chicken samosa, tried to learn some Kubernetes.

Read (graphic novel): Colossal vol 1 (Rutile, Diane Truc): Originally a French(?) Webtoon. A young noblewoman in a modern-ish setting, who really needs to marry well for the sake of her family, has no interest in being femme or meeting vapid boys when there’s lifting to be done and sick gains to be had. Probably heteronormative, although I hold out hope for the rival noblewoman.

Written (second rewrite of new project): 158.

Honestly, it’s probably One Piece.

Went to the office, tried to meet with customers but failed, ate a burrito, did some work, learned some kubernetes.

Read (from the shelf): FAIL.

Read (novel): The Faith of Beasts (James SA Corey): The humans are kind of fitting into the imperial alien ecosystem, but that doesn’t stop them from getting into trouble and learning things that are surprising and possibly upsetting to them. More upsetting than everything else in the galaxy, that is. Interesting idea for the “deathless enemy” of the imperial ecosystem.

Written (anything): FAIL. I did catch up quite a few days on my journal, which doesn’t count but is what I was doing all evening.

Went to the office, ate some miscellaneous Asian food, did some work, learned no Kubernetes.

Read (manga): A Bride’s Story vol 9 (Kaoru Mori): This volume is mostly about Amir’s friend Pariya and her boy and the fifteen years’ worth of embroidery she has to redo before they can get married. Do you think the manga-ka might like drawing fancy embroidery?

Written (new project): 178.

Probably an Angry Birds tie-in.

Went to the office, did some work, ate some garlic noodles, learned some Kubernetes.

Read (graphic novel): Forgive-Me-Not (Mari Costa): The princess is abducted by a strange butch and told she’s a fae changeling, and things go downhill from there (but in a mostly adorable way, with only some stabbing).

Written (game design): 111.

No, not like that! Well, maybe a little like that. No beaver-shaming.

Went to the office, ate too much falafel hummus shawarma pita, didn’t do too much work.

Read (graphic novel): I Am Not Starfire (Mariko Tamaki, Yoshi Yoshitani): In fact she is Starfire’s round, gay, goth teenaged daughter, who is not dealing that well with having a famous mom who doesn’t entirely understand Earth culture. I’m not sure I really support the way the end went, but okay. At least there were girl-smooches.

Written (game design): 175.

Went to the office, climbed some stairs, ate some spicy pork dumplings, did not eat any pecan waffles, spent all day working on TLS certificates.

Read (novel): Jett Jamison and the Secret Storm (Kimberly Behre Kenna): A middle-grade book about being a survivor of sexual assault and books about being a survivor of sexual assault and censorship of books about being survivor and also how much American “Christians” suck.

Read (manga): A Bride’s Story vol 1 (Kaoru Mori): It’s been a long time since I read this, but the fabrics and landscapes are still just as amazing.

Written (game design): 282:

Going off on another tangent, from the idea of conditions having
levels, the ultimate condition is Dead With a Body. (Dead Without a
Body is barely worse than Knocked Unconscious.) But does it have
levels? Does the Wounded condition turn into Dead at level 4? That’s a
lot like hit points, although to be fair, having 4 hit points when
attacks can do up to 4 damage is a lot different than having 200 hit
points when attacks can do up to 20 damage.

Probably a lot of conditions can take out the target, or severely
disable them at level 4, although if lower levels reduce the relevant
defenses, then it’s a death spiral. Possibly lower levels of Wounded
or Battered don’t impose any penalties general, because we are
heroic and full of adrenaline, and also just beating on people is not
what we want to encourage.

Even without a death spiral, if every die of a powerset is also 1
point of defense, then with a 9d6 or greater powerset, it’s possible
(though very unlikely) to inflict a level 4 condition against someone
defending with a 9d6 powerset straight up. Against someone undefended,
5d6 is enough to potentially-but-practically-never do it. This
doesn’t seem right; surely Xd6 offense vs X defense should produce
the same range of results, regardless of the value of X? Perhaps we
need Feng Shui/Nexus die minus die, or FATE dice, or something else
0-centered.

If all conditions were invented for the specific situation, we could
dismiss the notion of a condition coming in multiple levels, but if we
have to have a finite set of conditions, that’s a natural way to
categorize them. The effects don’t have to scale linearly with level,
though, so level 1-3 can be penalties but 4 can still be “completely
____”.

Walked up some stairs, did some work, ate some falafel and hummus and eggplant even though they tried to hide it from me, learned kubernetes until I died.

Read (manga): I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 10 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): They’re well into the plot part of the game, so MC’s knowledge is helping her a lot, if not as much as it could have.

Written (game design): 106, because I am stupid and also I had to go to bed.

No, not like that! I mean, unless that’s your thing, no kinkshaming.

It turns out the building keycard lets me into the stairwell from the bottom, so I took the stairs instead of the elevator. That’s a lot of stairs, but I did eventually make it. Did some customer meetings, ate some freekeh with falafel, learned some Kubernetes.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 9 (Shinichi Fukuda): What? How dare bodies change?

Written (game design): 196:

It’s not like we won’t have a bunch of different ways to remove a
condition, or different circumstances under which a condition can be
removed. Automatically at the end(?) of the next turn, with a free
action as soon as you get a turn again, with a free action if you make a
roll or an action if you don’t, with an action, with an action if you
can make a roll, with an action from somebody else, after some noncombat
length of time unless somebody has an appropriate power, after ending
enough turns, … I’m not sure we’re actually simplifying anything here,
although since we are placing more emphasis on conditions, we do need
more structure.

Does getting rid of a condition depend on what level it is? It seems
like it should, but is, EG, the “Strength” of a grab or the “Body” of an
entangle based on the level of the condition, or the dice of power (or
environment) inflicting the condition? Or a combination of both, but how
so? I think we’re back to wondering whether to-hit rolls have any place
in this game.

Lame bagpipes can be left behind, or thrown willy-nilly into the cargo pit.

Went to the office in the slightly-less-illuminated morning, had some meetings, did some work, ate some tiny pies for Pi Day (Observed), ate an emergency brisket sandwich, learned some Kubernetes. The pies were from a place I walked past on my way to the train, which seems silly, but Car Culture is like that.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 8 (Shinichi Fukuda): Conclusion of the Cultural Festival arc, Cosplay Gal successfully crossplays as a girl passing as a host despite being notably not boy-shaped, she has it bad for Doll Boy.

Written (game design): 201:

We can mitigate the first problem by saying that a duplicate condition
(same type and level) doesn’t do anything. If you’re already Lightly
Electrocuted, getting lightly electrocuted again doesn’t do anything;
Zapstress has to somehow get to 3 above your defense to make you
Moderately Electrocuted. That way at least it has to be a variety
of conditions to nickle and dime someone. For the second problem,
maybe you can buy extra condition slots as techniques, that only
take appropriate conditions? They would have to be pretty expensive,
and maybe it’s not worth implementing. If you should be tough against
something, buy the technique that lets you use your full defense
against it or whatever.

Not sure how to handle removing conditions from the bottom or middle of
the stack. We can’t have conditions just fall down to the lowest open
slot, or rolling up and getting a level 3 condition on someone right off
is meaningless. Maybe it only triggers when a condition is removed? Or
we keep track of the level a condition was originally at before it
rolled it, and it can only fall down that far? That’s more notekeeping,
but maybe not unworkable?

Or of course we could just not have conditions roll up. If you want to
take somebody out, you need to take advantage of the effects of
conditions to inflict a level 4 condition straight up. Or maybe you can
boost a level 3 condition to level 4 with a maneuver or a technique
that’s good enough to inflict another level 3? But either way, it
doesn’t roll up automatically.

As always when I have an idea, it’s time to stop and look at whether
we actually need this time. Hero characters can get grabbed,
terrified, set on fire, blinded, etc, but without a unified system
for conditions. The mechanics are scattered all over the book with
the powers that are likely to inflict them, which is possibly more
organic, but means there are a lot of different rules for these
conditions and how to get out of them, like a grab having anywhere
from 1 to 24 Body that you need to overcome with your own Str, Flash
absolutely removing a sense and sticking around until a certain
number of segments have elapsed, being prone reducing your DCV by
exactly half until you spend a half phase, etc, etc. Again, charmingly
old-school, but is that better than having a unified system? I mean,
maybe it is! That’s why people like OSR, right? [citation needed]

Went to the office, ate a bowl of food, had a meeting, learned some Kubernetes.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 13 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Bathhouse episode of appalling nakedness, and ice cream.

Written (game design): 280:

I had been thinking that inflicting a condition the target already has
but at a lower level would increment the level, so they can’t just tank
hits forever, but maybe we should limit that to only happening if the
difference in levels isn’t too great. That way, if the attacker can’t
up their game enough to get within X of a disabling level of the
condition, they can’t take the target down by spamming that attack.
Since we want conditions to be actual effects, not just colorful hit
points, a condition that doesn’t reach the level of disabling could
still open up possibilities for other conditions that could.

Which still leaves us trying to come up with either a set of generic
conditions that cover everything possible, or a set of usable guidelines
for making up new conditions on the spot without them seeming
ridiculous. Is what we need a list of possible ill effects, from the
smallest penalty to a skill roll through being taken out of the fight to
being turned to the enemy side, and how much effect (in the sense of
Body rolled on the dice minus appropriate defenses) it takes to get each
one? Earlier we considered what kind of penalties using a
maneuver might cause as a trade-off, and some of those might apply here
as useful things to force on an enemy, but that’s just a start.

Also applies to other forms of plagiarism.

Went to the office, ate some noodles, did some work, learned a little kubernetes. Boss³ commented on how I looked at my phone a lot, so I should probably work on staring blankly at my monitor instead.

No anime, Marith is full of mucus.

Read (manga): My Dress-Up Darling vol 2 (Shinichi Fukuda): Cosplay Gal and Traditional Doll Boy go to a cosplay event. Photography and heat exhaustion and lack of modesty, oh my.

Written (game design): 256:

This brings us back to the implicit multipower, I guess. 12d6 Cold
Powers is the “pool”, and then you can pay a few points for each
specific application you can reliably use: make ice manacles, shoot icicle
spears, stomp around as a glacier mecha, whatever. If you want to do
something cold-based that you didn’t buy, then the GM has to agree, and
you may have to take extra time, or make one or more skill rolls, or
find something appropriate in the environment (EG, water if you want to
make things out of ice). The base power is explicitly not Energy Blast:
doing damage is an application like any other, or maybe multiple
applications if you want to do damage different ways, like the standard
energy projector multipower with plain energy blast, AoE energy blast,
AP energy blast, etc.

Is there a distinction between effects, that in Hero would be different
powers, and maneuvers, that are more like advantages? Sticking with our
cold powers example, do you buy being able to freeze things solid
differently than being able to spread your powers out over a larger
area? They seem like different categories to me, and they can be
combined in different ways, but can we do that on the fly, or do you
have to buy each combination explicitly like a multipower slot? Or even
worse, do you have to buy each application or maneuver individually to
have access to them without a huge penalty, but still have a smaller
penalty if you haven’t bought the specific combination? That seems both
harsh and complicated, but it lets players spend points on a lot of
things. Can we somehow make it optional and only very very slightly
advantageous? Or is that too much like designing for a different
audience?

I didn’t even make this one up!

Went to the office, ate some yellow chicken curry, did some work, tried to learn some kubernetes but with limited success. Finally managed to get my prescription filled and picked up, go USA.

In case you can stand finding out about the world around you.

Read (manga): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 14 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): More magic ninja causing trouble because there aren’t any demons and now the humanoids have to cause their own trouble.

Read (novel): Neverthorn (Shannon Mayer): It’s like one of those dreams where you have to go back to high school even though you’re an adult, only the highschool is like Hogwarts with a blatantly evil headmaster and all your bullies are now teachers and the dark lord is coming any month now. Also, het romance subplot.

Written (game design): 259:

Of course the advice to game designers is not to design games for people
who will hate them, and I guess that has to apply even when I’m trying
to take over the position of an existing game. I’m sure there are people
who both could and would make a game even more accounting-conscious than
Hero, but I’m not one of them, even if I once would have wanted to be.
I’m more of a filthy story-gamer.

Anyway, even if we don’t need everything to be priced optimally according
to the laws of supply and demand, rating things in small integers makes
them easy to work with, so we’ll stick with powers generating effect,
and every 3 effect over the defense raising the condition by one level.
A full-on superhero has 12d6 in their best powers, which is on average
four steps above the base, so conditions go from 1 to 5, with 4
being incapacitated and 5 also having spillover into long-term effects.
Maybe the levels should have names: Kinda ___, Definitely ___, Severely
___, Totally ___, Overwhelmingly ___. Presence attacks and mental powers
don’t in Hero, though, they just have Characteristic, Char+10, Char+20, etc,
which would be +0/+3/+6/etc now. Although we did mention powers having a
greater or lesser effect, so maybe it’s sometimes +0/+2/+4 or +0/+5/+10
instead, in which case we do want names for levels.

If power usage is limited only by cleverness and special effect, then we
aren’t buying specific powers like Hero any more, it’s just 12d6 Cold
Powers or 8d6 Brick or whatever. We probably want to charge more for
more flexible special effects, though. Or maybe for specific
applications of the power? Like in Champions Now, where if you pay
points for something, you always have it, but if you try to claim you
should get it for free because of your special effect, the GM can say it
doesn’t seem reasonable to them.

Also Random Acts of Crab Racing Day.

Went to the office, listened to the thunder and rain, ate some underheated Chinese buffet for Lunar New Year, got nothing from my scratch-off lottery ticket, did some work, got most of the way home and was betrayed by the bus.

Read (manga): The Apothecary Diaries vol 3 (Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino): Maomao visits home, which has more mysterious mysteries.

Read (short): “Barbershops of the Floating City” (Angela Liu): Classism, unexplained magic hairdressing, generational trauma.

Read (short): “When He Calls Your Name” (Catherynne M. Valente): I figured out what the name was pretty quickly, but still good.

Written (game design): 394:

I see two kinds of maneuvers. One is like Hero maneuvers, where you
modify what you’re doing: charge up your power to get a strong
effect, spread it out to affect more, etc. The other is based on
what you’re trying to accomplish: grind them down, take them out,
disable their abilities, set them up for a teammate, trick them
into doing something they didn’t mean to, temporarily incapacitate
them, etc. These are intentionally broad and like a PbtA move, you
have to say what you’re actually doing. Are you grinding someone
down by getting them to use their biggest attack until they’re
exhausted? Taking them out by machine-gunning a crowd so they faint
from trauma? Et cetera. But the first is mechanical means, the
second is narrative ends, so I’m not sure these even belong in the
same game.

Is it even possible to allow for cleverness instead of grinding hit points
without becoming a story game? It definitely could be if the need for
cleverness was preplanned and rigorously documented as a puzzle to
solve, but when it’s ad-hoc or even based on player input, how are
wargame players going to believe that it’s fair and accurately priced?
Reducing the granularity of points helps by not setting expectations of
careful accounting, but is it enough? There’s precedent for judgment
calls in Presence attacks and mental powers, but those aren’t the
primary way of taking someone out, so it’s not as much of a problem to
have the GM make up stuff on the fly.