Tag: vacation

In case you need to intimidate Monty Python, I guess.

Still on vacation today. It’s like a mix of Saturday (shopping), Sunday (impending work), Monday (laundry), and the Tuesday the calendar claims.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 94. More time is spent at King Mark’s court, but not much more is learned. Hopefully everyone now has a good impression of Theophania and crew, though. Since Jack of All Asses has already butted in, Lily takes Everett and his friends to a good diner to meet her boyfriend. Apparently she has a type because her boyfriend is (big reveal music) Everett’s fetch. Bogglement ensues. Both of them are Everett, though, so they sit down and calmly discuss having a shared legal identity and how taxes will work and when they diverged. In the meantime, Thessaly, who was interested in Lily and then wanted to set her up with Everett and she’s dating Everett’s FETCH, and Siddy, whose fetch is known to be out there living her life with her family, flee outside for some therapeutic wailing and gnashing of teeth. Eventually, Theophania calms them down enough to go back inside and eat fries and fume while watching to make sure Everett and other Everett don’t explode like matter and antimatter. When Everett-2 has to go back to work, the real Everett goes off to have feelings on his own, and the rest head back to the warehouse to have their own feelings.

Read (manga): I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 8 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): Everybody already knew who was gay, but there’s a lot more coming out in this volume!

Read (novel): The Demon’s Due (Deborah Wilde): 5th and final book, MC and her boy get together, the world is almost destroyed but then saved, etc. HEA!

Written (game design): 306.

There’s one that takes some explaining to the youth!

I took today off to go to Roseville but then that fell through, so now I’m just useless all day.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage Redemption 1.7-8: The one with the privacy-destroyer and the one with The Mastermind.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (game design): 532:

Other ways to have magic that people know but don’t understand are a
dying earth setting (arguably a subset of post-apocalyptic), which I
like generally but am not leaning toward in this case, and magic being
just plain beyond human comprehension: if you exactly follow the instructions
laid down by the Great Seer in antiquity, you get the miracle, and if
you change them at all, you get somewhere between nothing and disaster.
Incomprehensible magic is arguably what D&D has, since “work with the GM
to make something new that you hope isn’t broken” isn’t a rule. There’s
no question that unalterable menu magic has its advantages, but
admitting that’s how it works in-character is meh for worldbuilding.
(Merely pretending it’s not, as D&D kinda does, is meh in general.) If I
were smart, I would be able to make up multiple magic paradigms and how
each one explains the other, and then everybody could feel not only like
they understood magic but that they were smarter than those other guys.
In the real world, however…

I never explained how people turn into monsters or how monster powers
work, because I have no idea. so at least I’m not as explainy as I could
be?

Leaving this to ferment for a while, back to Actions. I realized that
although I was thinking of the thirteen moves (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) as
analogous to Dungeon World basic moves, but they don’t have to be.
There’s always Act Under Pressure (maybe needs a better name?) for when
somebody doesn’t have a specific Action. But having the specific Action is
better (in ways to be determined, besides probably getting a higher
rating).

Is this our equivalent to classes? Just like you pick a couple of Traits
based on your ancestry, you pick a couple of Specialized Actions, away
you go with your niche protected? Seems like it could work. Actually,
there might even be Specialized Actions from ancestry, although most of
the ones I can think of are just narrative positioning (if you don’t
have a small body, you don’t have the werewithal to wiggle through the
tight opening, have some +D.)

There could of course be even more specialized Actions with the
regular SAs and appropriate backgrounds as prerequisites, for more
esoteric magical or psychic or martial arts or detective or whatever
abilities. These would include some narrative permission to do the
thing, so characters of vastly different specialties might not even be
able to roll Act Under Pressure for them.

Do we need to split Act Under Pressure into a couple of still very
general Actions? Do The Thing and Find the Clue? But the GM should just
give out the clues, right? Maybe Spout Lore? But I’m not sure Remember
Pertinent Facts Under Pressure needs to be broken out. Maybe Think Under
Pressure in general? How often would that come up? I have no idea!

Every day is Chocolate Day!

I slept way in (and had more dreams than when I was sleeping in Roseville, which suggests I need to fix something here) but did manage to go chocolate grocery shopping and read Katalepsis. Should probably have done more shoppings, but whatever. There’s always tomorrow.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 1.9: We thought there were ten episodes, but nope, looks like the end! Also, Dr Mensah has reached the levels of badassery she started with in the books.

Read (manga): The Ancient Magus’ Bride vol 20 (Kore Yamazaki): Yay, finally a new volume! It’s mostly recovery over Christmas vacation for all the characters after the last plot arc, plus small talk with the gods of Britain, foreshadowing of doom, mistletoe smooches and talk of romance, etc.

Written (game design): 366:

One thing I noticed about Pathfinder that’s probably not as annoying as
the others is that you have to recalculate every number on your sheet
every time you level, because level is the most important aspect of your
character. It would be unseemly for a 1st-level character to get more
than +1 in any bonus type, but by mid-levels, you have to be able to
stack bonuses to roll skills at +30 or +40 (or so I hear). Over here in
the land without level-appropriate encounters, we don’t need
ever-increasing target numbers–hey, we don’t even have target
numbers!–so do we even need levels? There are two things that come with
levelling up: bigger numbers, and more/better abilities. And I guess more
uses of abilities, which is a combination. Since we have a single value
for magic points instead of different trackers for every ability, the
equivalent would be reducing the cost.

Since spending MP is doing damage (to your own soul) I was thinking
it should always be random; costs are d2, d3, d4, d6, etc. It’s
magic, you can never be certain how much you can use without hurting
yourself, or whatever taking a hit from overspending MP is. (It has
to be painful, so casting a spell for 1d4 MP when you only have 2
left is a hard decision.)

It’s hard to quantify some aspects of how much D&D characters improve
from level 1 to level 20. Since NPC numbers improve as the
appropriate level for the encounters improves, the chance of success on
a skill or attack doesn’t change much (until you get to things like
expertise in 5E), but they get about 13-15x in HP and something like
5-10x in weapon damage (spell damage is just a mess with area effect vs
various groups, damage types and resistances, etc), which seems like a
lot. HP (Defense? Guard?) and attack dice are more a measure of skill,
though, so I guess it depends how many regular soldiers a hero is
supposed to be able to hold off for how long.

Watch me agonize about how much characters should improve and then end
up recreating the D&D curve.

How is Josh that old?!

Ate butterbraids until my arm robot told me to switch to bacon, watched people play Race for the Galaxy, splashed my feet in the pool, met Jus’s friend Seth who now lives in Sacramento somewhere, played a lot more multicar disasters with the toddler, ate some good chili and also some birthday cake. Kate showed up, which she usually doesn’t do until after we leave. So many people!

Played (board game): Monty Python Fluxx. Only half a game, I did terribly, I couldn’t have won because I had the Knights Who Say “Ni” for the whole time. It’s Fluxx, it doesn’t have to make sense.

Played (board game): Lords of Waterdeep. We had both Kate and Ayse, which was nice. I came in second, but I feel like I actually earned it instead of everyone else dragging each other down, so that was also nice.

Read (manga): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

Can’t really celebrate Independence Day until we shake off the tyranny of Russia.

For no explicable reason, I am the toddler’s favorite for “Come. With. You.” I would rather hear people talk about gaming, but what am I supposed to do when I’m needed as a backstop for Matchbox car disasters (“Uh oh. Oh! No!”)?

Engaged in important summertime activities like splashing my feet in the pool (forgot my swimsuit, but actually sitting and splashing was pretty nice), eating grilled skewers and potato salad, and watched fireworks.

Marith reports that the cats got into a cupboard and flung some bowls onto the floor. As cat crimes go, this is pretty minor, but sheesh.

Played (board game): Sagrada. As always, I thought I was doing okay at the beginning but ended up with blank spaces and a terrible score.

Read (manga): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

I guess I did okay at staying out of the sun today, since I was mostly riding in vehicles and then lurking inside a house.

Specifically, Dave and I rode Amtrak to Sacramento and then Al picked us up and drove us the rest of the way, and then we hung out admiring the cute toddler and his lack of proper indexical usage (tug tug “Come. With. You.”) The other usual suspects were there, we ate Chinese food as is the customer, and then Dave introduced a select few of us to his new favorite game, Daybreak.

Played (board game): Daybreak is by the same designer as Pandemic, but it is simpler, shorter, and a lot more winnable, because humanity could actually solve the climate crisis. It also has pretty nerve-wracking elements, like the tipping points and mystery problems every round, so I can see why Ken considers it too stressful to play, but we won on round 4 with three n00bs.

Read (manga): VACATION.

Written (anything): VACATION.

It’s certainly not my fault it’s Friday the 13th! It’s my fault I’m on vacation today, though, since I volunteered to work on Juneteenth.

Took some books to the used book store, Got some tasty Thai lunch, did some shopping, bought a blood pressure machine.

Read (manga): Murciélago vol 4 (Yoshimurakana): Absolutely no one was surprised by how Kuroko succumbed to the lesbian cult’s brainwashing, but it was surprising that Yakuza Princess went to some lengths to get her back. Maybe she actually likes her!

Written (game design): 255:

That’s simple actions sorted, but what about opposed rolls, social
skills, NPCs rolling, etc? NPCs do get to roll, this isn’t a completely
player-facing system. We’re not going that story-game. But *mostly*
player-facing is fine. Since there aren’t target numbers,
directly-opposed rolls or using the opposing skill as the target number
or whatever isn’t viable; the GM sets the Difficult as usual. Most
social actions will often get the +1D for having someone working against you
because a lot of people are ornery and self-interested, maybe more if
you’re being extremely unreasonable.

What about when the NPCs try to bamboozle the PCs? Save vs Influence!
Rolls are mostly player-facing, so you make saves instead of opposed
rolls. We could do Fortitude/Reflex/Will, but that’s
not as interesting as the old-school named saves. The names could be a
little less opaque, though, so we have something like
Save vs Influence, Save vs Ambush or Trap, Save vs Poison or
Sickness, Save vs Curses, Save vs Restraint, Save vs Falls, Save vs
Possession and Compulsion. Or maybe some other way of dividing up the
vicissitudes of the adventuring life, but those seem to cover most
things and it should be obvious which one to use for novel problems.

None of these saves are “miraculously take half damage from the fireball
while standing still at ground zero” because I don’t think that should
be a thing. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the area of effect!

I have a whole lot of bad ideas about combat.

Except fear itself, of course.

Meant to take another load of books to find new homes, but failed. Meant to get cat supplies, but failed. Did not manage to do much of anything.

Read (short): “Our Dead Selves Lie Like Footsteps in Our Wake” (Jeff Isacksen): Wizards contend with the mess life makes of all young dreams, and also with patriarchy and ablism.

Read (manga): Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon vol 1 (Shio Usui): She pays attention to fashion and presentation to get a good son-in-law to make her parents happy, she has given up all hope of romance because everything is for her little sister’s sake after they were orphaned, together they have no idea that they are going to be in a workplace yuri story.

Written (catgirl): 194. I think most of this last bit is filler that can be expunged, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

No, not “happy”.

A holiday is like Saturday, so I did my usual shopping and lunch and reading Katalepsis, and also my usual being very useless. Monkeycats came home today, so I didn’t have to visit the cats, but they just got home from an expedition today so there was no anime.

Read (novel): Necrobane (Daniel M Ford): Second book about the necromancer who gets assigned as the sheriff of a frontier village where someone has just woken up all the undead left over from the recent war and also maybe Tom Bombadil. Nothing that can’t be solved with a lot of magic and a daring heist– oops.

Written (catgirl): 332, which is a lot for present me, but really next to nothing.

Turtles are good.

I am on vacation, because I didn’t retract my request for days off even though I am not worthy to go to Roseville.

Slept in until forever because I stayed up too late reading last night, then took some books to the used book store. They didn’t keep as much this time, but on the other hand I was finally able to move a bunch of stuff from the couch onto shelves. Not sure those couch shelves will ever recover, though.

Watched (live-action TV): Murderbot 3: Not a lot happened in this episode, or at least it didn’t have an arc. Not sure what Gurathin’s deal is, but I don’t think he’s just being pointlessly creepy.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.17-18: Season finale! The one with Nate’s dad and the patent office and the return of the guy from before (who sucks). I thought this was the end of the original series and was bummed that there was no OT3, but actually there’s a whole season yet.

Read (manga): Sachi’s Monstrous Appetite vol 1-2 (Chomoran): Middle-school boy discovers that the high-school girl next store he has a crush on is actually a giant whale(?) monster and he smells delicious to monsters. Together, they fight crime keep the local monster population under control and have feelings.

Written (catgirl): 271.

D’oh, I completely forgot!

Randomly took the day off work, since I was owed a day from working on President Day. Meant to get up and listen in on Friday morning training anyway, but completely failed and ended up sleeping in until I felt bad about not feeding the cats. Then I was moving so I fed myself with Pakistani-Indian Fusion Cuisine, spicy chicken qorma and less-spicy samosas and butter garlic sesame-seed naan. It might have been sufficiently celebratory.

I could possibly have done something useful, but mostly I cleaned up browser tabs, quite a few of which were short stories I had been meaning to read. Watched some TV with Marith, who is sick as well as having no computer. Probably I didn’t catch her cold. I hope my computer didn’t catch anything either.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.7: The one with shady funeral home family, where Parker has an honest-to-something feeling.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 19 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): A bunch of one-chapter stories. Kuro tried to star in one, Rikka played a horrible prank, assorted yōkai caused trouble.

Read (short): “Victory Citrus is Sweet” (Thoraiya Dyer): A spacer who is actually kind of a jerk gets himself and his apprentice in trouble by cutting corners to show somebody up.

Read (short): “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” (Caroline M Yoachim): A future in which the current American medical system is still in place. Story in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure.

Read (short): “When the Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story” (John Scalzi): Definitely a different spin on the “enough computers together form a mind” trope.

Read (short): “Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor” (Grady Hendrix): Did you want your AI to be useful? Sorry, your timeline stems from the Trump-Musk presidency, you only get a chatbot.

Read (short): “Wikihistory” (Desmond Warzel): Everybody who gets access to time travel does it, then some long-suffering admin has to revert their changes.

Read (short): “In the Forests of Memory” (E Lily Yu): A sad story about an old lady in a cemetery of holographic grave markers, living off the offerings.

Read (short): “Presence” (Ken Liu): A sad story about an emigrant visiting his dying mother in the old country via telepresence.

Read (short): “The Thief of Memory” (Sunyi Dean): What is identity but memory? Also not a happy story, although you can’t blame a desparate teenager for making a rookie mistake.

Read (short): “The Dark House” (AC Wise): A haunted house, a haunted photographer, haunted photographs.

Written (game design): 136.

Yes, a World Day of Peace would be a great idea! Not going to get one in the next four years, though.

Slept in until 12:30, flopped around, went for another walk and considered whether D&D is actually moribund because 5th ed was mostly a regression to 3rd, and there isn’t a 6th. I should probably inform myself on the changes in 5.24 or whatever it’s called before making any declarations, though.

Watched: Jentry Chau vs the Underworld 4-6: Field trips to set more of Texas on fire! Skullduggery! Smooches! Social pressure! Fire!

Read: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! vol 10 (Satoru Yamaguchi, Nami Hidaka): New characters and new doom from the sequel game, but how is she getting this information?

Written: 172. Starting a new year!

To celebrate, I ordered two hats. One is more outdoorsy, one is more fashiony.

Went for a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health, thought dumb things about D&D.

New Year’s fondue was very nice. We didn’t have Vivian, but we did have Earl and Cat, and Marith for a while. We ate cheese fondue, more cheese fondue, and chocolate fondue, searched for the lost art of conversation, and at midnight went out to admire the fireworks. Then we dispersed to our various beds. Friends are nice.

Read: Gamma Draconis (Benoist Simmat, Eldo Yoshimizu): Occult conspiracies across France and Japan, reaching to the highest levels of corporate power. Proper occult, too: it starts with stealing the shewstone of John Dee, so the hermetic secret society can contact intelligences from higher dimensions, etc.

Written: 185.

 

I’m not really celebrating this one today, although I certainly expect to do so at various times during the coming year.

Since I had no work to do today, I let the cleaners in, went shopping for cat supplies, made a big order from Target, waffled about what hat(s) to get, and was generally useless. When I tried to be useful by downloading the past year’s books from Kobo, I blew up my ADE installation and to reinstall from scratch. I did get about a quarter of the backlog into calibre, though.

Read: Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You vol 3 (Jinushi): Nope, he still doesn’t know.

Written: 164.

Hopefully panettone counts.

We actually managed to gather to play boardgames during the holidays! No Kelsey, but we had Brooks and Vivian (who is less imposing than I expected, but very cyberpunk) and delicious posole, and played Terraforming Mars and Poetry For Neanderthals and a new game called Inhuman Conditions about trying to figure out whether someone is a replicant. I am not a robot, or at least Professor Herman T Schnitzelweiner isn’t. It was fun!

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 9 (coolkyousinnjya, Johanne): Mikoto backstory.

Written: 135.

But what do they drink in other countries on this day?

Had to work the first half of the day, because someone has to. It was dead.

Went for a stupid walk for my stupid mental and physical health. Tried to also do some shopping, but failed.

I tried to get Chinese takeout for Marith and myself, but OMG it was so crowded! I did eventually get the food, but it took over an hour. I have definitely made better plans in my life, but also worse ones.

Watched: Ranma 1/2 (2024) 1.7-9: The rhythmic gymnastics fight with Kodachi with the famous line “Use of brother: valid” and then the skater pair and “I can win anything if it has martial arts in the name”.

Read: My Clueless First Friend omnibus 1 (Taku Kawamura): It’s not chunibyo if you’re in 5th grade! Declarations of eternal friendship are not romance if you’re in 5th grade either, at least if you’re as clueless as this boy.

Read: How to Survive at the End of the World vol 4 (RC Joshua): Now everything that was accomplished in book 3 is in danger, because the universe is just like that. I’m not sure about how the System is depicted in this one.

Read: Heart Gear vol 1 (Tsuyoshi Takaki): Centuries after WWIII wipes out humanity, an inexplicably surviving young girl activates an ancient robot and ends up going on a quest through the dangerous world of leftover robots to save a friend.

Written: 121.

 

 

Hurray for genetic diversity!

The calendar says it’s Monday, and I did laundry, but I also got trapped in bed by cats until forever and went grocery shopping like a Saturday. Then I got very many kittysnuggles.

Read: I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 2 (Yutaka): More shenanigans, also the main character gets to look hot in fancy dresses and encounter more people in the male lead’s life who treat her like somebody instead of nobody, if not exactly positively.

Read: The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen vol 2 (Bunko Matsuura, Tenichi, Suzunosuke): Our reincarnated tween otome heroine saves the day, which is not entirely well-received. She keeps trying to lift people up instead of dragging them down, even though she doesn’t know if she’s going to be forced to be a villain later, as is traditional for this genre.

Written: 305, mostly notes on the space school project.

 

Literally, “Day of the place in the other direction from bears”.

All vacations must come to an end unless you’re rich, so we drove back to San Jose this morning in the haze and glare, and only got slightly lost around 80/Business 80/50. Got home around noon despite Dave’s attempt to kidnap me, adored my cats who Marith took very good care of, delivered a cooler full of leftovers to Marith because Sherilyn found the right containers to actually fit the cooler, replenished all the cat nourishment, cleaned all the cat litterboxes, went to buy more cat supplies, paid my rent, sent email to my doctor, and caught up here.

I think this is the energy I’m supposed to bring to work after a vacation, but I like my cats more than I like any customers.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.11: Wow, there is actually some kind of consequences to blatantly and repeatedly breaking the rules. I wasn’t sure there was ever going to be. Time for Octavia to overthrow Hell, I guess!

Read: I Can’t Belive I Slept With You vol 3 (Miyako Miahara): The secret past meeting is revealed, everything is okay, lesbian smooches forever, the end!

Read: The Hunters Guild: Red Hood vol 1 (Yuki Kawaguchi): A young boy whose village is threatened by werewolves defeats them and joins up with the organization that hunts monsters with cleverness and special weapons. The art and worldbuilding remind me a lot of Soul Eater and Jing: King of Bandits and probably other shōnen manga from that period.

Written: …20…40…60…VACATION

Pretty sure Thanksgiving food is not the route to longevity.

Everybody except Dave and I went back to San Jose today, because they have to prep the kids/be prepped for school on Monday. Dave and I stayed to play Martian Rails (I am so bad at Crayon Rail games) and Waterdeep with Undermountain (again), which meant we got to see Kate. I forgot how great Kate is, she pretends my jokes are funny! Went to bed around midnight again.

Read: VACATION

Written: VACATION

I did some of that! Also I bought nothing (possibly because I was far away from the computer I use for shopping, but it still counts).

Ate way too many waffles, admired Non’s racing game tracks (because it’s 2024 and kids can just construct 3D environments on their notepads), played Everdell with the tree replacement expansion and Settlers of Catan and Lords of Waterdeep (again) and Holiday Fluxx, ate too many leftovers, played SPANC again because Ayse didn’t get to play last time, managed to get to bed not long after midnight. I’m sensing some themes to this vacation.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There was a lot of cooking, which I was completely useless for, but I did some of the eating. So much Thanksgiving food! Also played Takenoko and went to bed at a sensible time.

Read: Beware of Chicken vol 4 (Casualfarmer): We finally get backstory on the major conflict of the setting, but also a lot of coziness.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Turtles deserve loving homes too!

I was inept so we didn’t get going until after 9, but it was still early enough to miss the vast majority of the traffic and make it to Roseville by noon. Yay friends! Yay toddler!

Played Lords of Waterdeep with Undermountain, and SPANC (which I got a new copy of after having lost my original copy on a train platform many years ago), ate the traditional Chinese food, visited the gaming store which had only corporate and vintage RPGs, went to bed by midnight.

Read: VACATION.

Written: VACATION.

Good grief, why am I so useless?

Slept way in again, ran a few errands, ate a Thai food for dinner, snuggled a cat, wrote a journal, did a little packing.

Read: I Can’t Belive I Slept With You vol 2 (Miyako Miahara): Tenant is still doing “favors” for Landlady, but she really doesn’t mind and might even be catching feelings. After the first volume I thought the favors might have stopped short of third base, but no, definitely steamy.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.10: Millie is the best, so great she can even make Blitzø suck less! Also apparently she can kill anything.

Written: 210. I’m now over 30k total, which should be somewhere between a full story (novella) and a big chunk of story (novel), so apparently I need to go back and take a bunch of words out to get a higher density of story.

It is the anniversary of the day Sage and Nightvale came to live with me. Many of my life decisions are questionable, but this one was good.

I have to go to work tomorrow, so today I had to do a bunch of shoppings after Sage let me get up. Annoying, but now I have the things.

What did I learn from running games this time? Definitely that railroading is my friend, and I don’t even need very many stations on that line. This time, after character creation, we had the announcement of the quest, pootling around in Lizard Bay looking for information, and then about two places on the Cursed Isle. Character creation should probably have been slightly shorter, but that wouldn’t have recovered enough time for a whole other scene. There were also only about five NPCs/encounters, counting all the old people in town and the mermaid and her pirates as one each.

A less welcome lesson is regardless whether I was ever smart enough to remember all the things, I’m not now. I definitely needed a checklist of things to take to the con, because I forgot several of them, even ones that are basic to any running-a-con-game expedition. I also needed better notes of both game setup (I completely spaced on mentioning the X-card in the second session) and specific important information for the PCs to appreciate the shape of their doom. Just winging it from vibes is not the way to get everything covered!

Even with my decrepit brain, it did go well enough that I must do it again next year. I might even remember these lessons.

Written: 262.

More importantly, it’s National Black Cat Day in the UK, but neither I nor Nightvale is there.

Between fan noise and two nights of games ending early, I was much more alive this morning than at this point last year, which is good because I had to pack up and then run a game in the first slot of the day.

Ran: Perils and Princesses. In a turn of events that was only surprising because I did not know he came to BBC, one of my players was the designer of Princess World, but fortunately I am not prone to fangirling. He played Clik-Clok the daughter of the Tin Woodsman, so that was cute. This time I got things moving along well enough, but somehow the antagonists were not creepy enough, and the princesses almost let them get away with it, but someone remembered they had a dodgy mushroom in their inventory and used it to contact their fairy godmother who only appears in dreams and visions and ask for better instructions. The day was saved! They used the same solution as the second test group, so that was reassuring in some way.

Played: A magical girl search of terrible things to fight in Wandering Crows. Along with a half-merperson deathly afraid of water and a necromancer who could only bear to raise animals, she wandered a world recovering from fifty years of war and deprivation. We were hired to escort a box of paprika to a partially-underwater city than had been deprived for two generations, which involved keeping loud-mouthed cops from starting a paprika riot and fighting through gangsters (our merperson Squid literally barfed a lizard gangster to death), but turned out to be only half the job. The priest of the temple we were delivering to needed the paprika for a specific ritual in a specific, dangerous place to save the city, and we had the choice of going through paprika thieves or necromancers to get there. We chose necromancers, which our necromancer defeated by laying their zombies to rest instead of having a massive undead battle. As a reward for maintaining the life-support system of the city, we got information about our personal quests, a huge favor from the important temple, etc, but most importantly, the ancient dinosaur priest threw off his robe and flexed for us. (No, really, rainbow feathers!) Wandering Crows is a card-based that’s intended to be simple and portable, but it’s also a little abstract for me. I would prefer what you write on your character sheet to be more than flavor text. I should send a comment to the designer.

And that was it for Big Bad Con 2024! I did not play all lesbians all the time this year, but close enough, and I only played games I’d never played before. The games I ran went much better than last time I ran two years ago, because I was ruthless about railroading. Will I run Perils and Princesses again next year? Maybe! But maybe something I like more will come along.

I managed to resist buying any dice in the dealer’s room, despite the many beautiful colors on offer, because I do not need more dice. I did buy a bunch of games in hardcopy (Ryuutama, which I might already own but couldn’t find at home; Follow, ditto; For the Queen; CBR+PNK; The Lost and the Jammed; Sapphic Space Pirates, Rebels of the Outlaw Waste because the PDF doesn’t have the stickers for character advancement; Cloud Empress and some adventures) and a small plush squid with eldritch sigils (their name is Devil Squid and they are Baby Lizard’s friend).

Criminal Cat Onion’s human was allegedly at the con, but I did not manage to meet her.

I just made the train home, and my cats were there and I fell over dead.

Written: VACATION

Played: A pseudo-Islamic knight with a giant chicken (actually a Southeast Asian jungle fowl) in Gubat Banwa. A rich king hired us to pillage and/or kill the idealist king who was stealing his excessive wealth to fund an artistic community, but when we found out from a captured minion that they used to be close until the falling out, we had to drag him back and force them to repair their relationship. Gubat Banwa is very board-game-grid in the manner of D&D4e, but the part between battles seems cooler, and also you don’t want to kill random spuds because it’s better to have them beholden to you. Hurray non-European fantasy!

Ran: Perils and Princesses. Somehow, despite forgetting character sheets, of all things. Fortunately, there was a printer in the hotel and I still had the files on a thumb drive. Once we got past that, it went okay. I failed to deliver all the important information in a timely manner, and the princesses were so entertaining that I forgot to move the plot along and we had to resolve it in a rush right before our time was up, but it did get resolved, and people appeared to have fun, so I’m willing to count it as a partial success. The laminated handouts were handy for character creation, although I think there may have been too many of them. If I did this again, I’d probably move some things from random generation to pregen or player choice, although I don’t know what.

Played: A horrible little wrecking ball of a goblin in Wicked Ones in Gaming on Demand. I did okay at biting legs off and overcharging generators, and the fire demon and kobold ninja were also good, but the mad scientist slime demon totally stole the show and also won by getting lasers for our dungeon to fend off the forces of light when they came to complain about the human blood we used to wash off our curses.

I had a burger that was more satisfying than any recent burger, although it was real cow meat, so I probably shouldn’t have.

Written: VACATION

Funny how getting up early to do things I like is more appealing than getting up early to make rich fuckwads richer.

Played: A blue devil sorceress composed of 47% noodles by volume in Broken Worlds. The other 53% was unsupported assertions, but her plan to deal with the giant rolling sphere of hate and gold coming to destroy her neighborhood was in fact perfect, or at least very successful. Also implicated: a mendicant monk, a gang boss, an insufficiently-renegade angel, and an acupuncturist abandoned by her divine mother.

Played: A merchant hurrying out of town after an embarrassing mishap in Ryuutama. There could have been fighting, but instead we were very reasonable and helped the homesick witch with her cafe on the sky island of dragons. It was very Kiki’s Delivery Service. The GM provided tea and cookies, which I had not expected at an all-masking con but was very nice.

Played: Follow is more of a story game than a role-playing game, but I was responsible for the grizzled cybered-up old space dog and the AU space pirate captain. We didn’t make a very good SF story, but we did somehow make it onto the treasure asteroid and not get eaten or enslaved by the slime princess who formed from the slime tribbles, despite the loss of the captain and other characters. There were only three people out of four slots, so we ended early and that was okay. Sleep is good.

I tried eating chicken tenders and fries, because that sounded warm and filling and also celebrated Greasy Food Day, but no, I really don’t like regular chicken tenders any more.

Written: VACATION

I did eat some food. I also worried a lot and packed some. I didn’t make a list, I’ve done this often enough that I can remember everything I need before getting on the train.

Got to the hotel and realized I had forgotten all the office supplies like index cards and blank paper and pens, but that’s not a big deal, I can scrounge substitutes.

Spontaneously interacted with some nice enbies from Boston, ate something called a quesabirria, applauded the opening ceremonies, admired how much of Big Bad Con is dedicated to giving opportunities to people not like me, half-listened to a game show thing run by people from the Internet while reading up on games I am soon going to play, went to bed.

After however many years of failing to sleep in unnaturally quiet hotel rooms and being disappointed in white noise apps, I finally realized that all I had to do was type “fan noise” into YouTube.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 8-9 (Ryoko Kui): Bizarre transformations! Elf shenanigans! Chilchuk backstory! Giant mushrooms! Laios using his brain! Marcille backstory (and disturbing psychological insight)! Buddy dungoneers! Succubus attack! Mystic visions! Elf backstory! Dungeon backstory!

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 10: Horrifying demon backstory to explain why this conflict is happening.

Written: VACATION.

Perfect that square! Square that perfection!

Got all the laminated things from Marith, surely I am now completely ready to run a game.

In the evening, we went to hear Lus in her school production (which was actually a community theater production with high school drama class as chorus) of Les Miserables. I understand we can’t demand too much of community theater, but I would like whoever was running sound that night to be sent to the labor camp in Jean Valjean’s place, because that was WAY TOO LOUD and also somehow screechy even when the manly men were singing their solos. (Jus was fine, of course.) My poor head.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 7 (Ryoko Kui): Ninja bonding! Elf trouble! Senshi’s traumatic backstory!

Written: VACATION.

Use your knees to avoid goose-stepping!

I am on vacation so it’s okay that I’m mostly useless. I did get my flu and COVID shots, though, and pretend to do some prep for the con.

We finally managed to have some Tuesday gaming. Now we’re making characters for Ken’s 90s East Bay Nostalgia Changeling game. I think I have failed. My character, despite having a good name (Tiffany “Theophania” Whitney) is not enough unlike me, so will be terrible. On the other hand, it’s Changeling, so maybe the characters are supposed to be terrible.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 6 (Ryoko Kui): More old friends! More intrigue! More ninjas! More trouble! New quest!

Written: 326.