Shopping. Rar.

[active_apathy]

So, I was shopping for miscellaneous learning supplies, because that's pretty much what you do when it's nearly time to go back to your learning for another fun-filled semester.

And, well, it's never actually fun, because it's so carefully timed to coincide with (a) small children going back to school, and (b) everyone else working on being a right pain. And succeeding.

Seriously, these people all make me want to find some kind of aerosol spray version of necrotising fasciitis¹. You want to block the aisle? Flesh-eating bacteria! You want to hold everyone up to argue about five cents difference on a price? Flesh-eating bacteria! You want to crowd thoroughfares in a cluster of utterly unrelated mobile phone conversations? Congratulations, here's your fasciitis necroticans, enjoy. You'd like to run into me with a trolley²? Come closer, there's enough flesh-eating bacteria to go round⁴. Please, don't shove, otherwise everyone gets microbial death.

So, what news is there today?

Firstly, Borders had Gneil's Don't Panic, which I immediately wanted to buy, then didn't, because I wouldn't have had the moneythingies to do so. However! It will be bought in the not-too-distant future (ie, after Lady Friday is out. And if my opportunity to buy it clashes with the release of White Night, then Don't Panic will just have to wait.)

Which reminds me!

Dear man in bookstore,

it's ok. Really. In fact, I'm happy that you've finally shown to me that I have no need of physical space in which to exist. Certainly, it made my day that you didn't bother with so much as a word before deciding that the only way to transport your oh-so-important self to other bookstore locales was right through that spot where I was standing.

If you're planning a repeat performance, it may even contribute to my happiness to know you'd tried to similarly shove your way past, say, a sugaro cactus. Of course, I'd have to demand pictures for that one; I've never seen an ethereally nonexistent cactus before, and it'd be wondrous to examine a photographic record of your cactaceous⁶ endeavours.

With vanishing regards,
active_apathy

PS: Could I maybe interest you in a nice, fresh vial of necrotising fasciitis?

So, yes. Also, apparently, escalator etiquette in the modern world is such that you only stand to one side when the second half of the escalator has broken down, and thus everyone has to walk up. Doing so in single-file? Actually not helpful, though it would've been good on the part that was still moving.

And then, then there was the psychotic bus driver, whose sole contribution to this entry will be his attempt to crash and kill us all. He was - apparently - unsuccessful, unless I am, in fact, dead, and all the ills of my day prior to that trip were a kind of advance payment on hell.

So, that was my day. About the only good part is that I seem to have developed a new approach for rapid-deployment nakedness, inasmuch that I can successfully arrange my clothes so that the simple act of stopping inside my room (and, sometimes, shrugging slightly) can make them fall off. There are benefits to this approach, not least among which the fact that I get to use the phrase 'rapid-deployment nakedness'.

And now, footnotes, though you've probably already read them all anyway.⁷

1. I'm moderately obsessed with it at the moment, possibly because it has a strangely cute name for something that will do its level best to kill you in no time at all.
   
2. Seriously³. My leg still hurts.
3. ... I blame Shonda Rhimes. At least I'm not (yet?) using "too much water under the thing or whatever".
   
4. And I just looked this up to see whether it was properly 'go around', 'go 'round' or 'go round'. And my source was inconclusive, which means I need to find an idiom dictionary⁵.
5. Oh, yes. They exist.
6. I'm not sure whether I can actually use this as an adverb, but I couldn't find a proper adverbial form for 'cactus', so it was a choice of 'cactaceous' or 'cactoid', and 'cactaceous' sounds much better. Cactoid - to be perfectly honest - sounds like a name for some spiny green superhero whose superpower is standing in the desert for long periods of time.
7. The little superscripted numbers tend to have that effect. Indirectly, this also means that the end of my post is actually at the end of my post. Curious.
   

Comments

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Even starting with one is an improvement over 4dF
In a sense, yes, and in a sense, no. So you have 1 pip. You spend it. Now your actions are completely deterministic AND predictable. Everything comes down to "Is my skill higher? Yes I win no I lose." No variance. Sure, your overall "roll equivilent" average is better with that one pip than straight 4dF, but the gameplay loses out.

The real point behind having a bunch of pips is that the GM also has a bunch too. If you both have roughly equal amounts, then it's statsitially a zero sum game, and you're both equal to having 4dF instead in the long run. Sure, your results average higher... but they still average as equal to the GM, which is the real point.

A lot of pip allocation, refresh rate, and the like also comes down to the difficulties that the GM throws at you. If I accost Kat (Weapons 4) with Inigo Montoya (Weapons 5), then you need to be constantly burning FP to even have a chance. With minimal pips, you may run out very quickly. With a non pips just FP approach, then you're really screwed - unless you burn at least 2 FP per round, you're going to be taking damage and doing nothing to him guaranteed. You need one FP to get past his skill and poke him, and another so your defense is enough to hold him off. Unless you can take him out before you run out of FP, the fight is a foregone conclusion. ANd if you burn all your FP on him early in the session, then you're absolutely helpless in the final showdown later.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, there's the other thing. And the thing that thread needs to do - badly - is to get away from the idea that diceless needs to simulate dice.

A diceless mechanic with metagame currency for improving (or for reducing) a character's performance isn't about playing like the dice. The question that the player has to ask themselves is closer to 'how much do I want to win this conflict?' - which makes life much more interesting anyway.

Still, 35 is a bit too much. If you're going to make pips have some kind of importance, then they need to be reasonably scarce. Not stupidly scarce, mind; just scarce enough that the player needs to keep deciding how badly they want to win. And that keeps consequences and concessions important too.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

The quantity of pips depends entirely on the game environment you're playing in. If it's expected that you'll need to spend 1 or 2 on every task to succeed, then you're going to need a decently large pool to last out a session. If the norm is that you can bypass most challenges without spending any, then a smaller pool is just fine.

Session length is also a huge factor on pip availiability. 15 pips may be fine for a 3 hour game, but my friday D&D sessions were generally 8 hours long. 15 pips wouldn't last the whole night.

The more conflicts you have, the more pips you're likely going to need as well, just because conflicts will spend them faster than simple skill tests.