Derik Badman's Journal

The days continue apace. One of my current work projects requires me running some heavy sql so I'm having to do it at off-hours for our US region (which means off-hours for my schedule). I started playing Immortals Fenyx Rising on PS4 while waiting for queries to run. It's by the Assassin's Creed: Odyssey team but instead of the more realistic/historical type it's a lot like Breath of the Wild. It might be a little too much like the last Zelda game. The designs are more rounded and cartoony, and setting is mostly bright and simple. There are very few other characters to interact with and when you do it is all scripted cut scenes. The humor is... attempting to be humor. The mechanics are very much like BotW with the stamina bar that decreases as you climb or swim or glide around (in this case on Icarus' wings), less crafting though (no cooking). It's light, not something to play obsessively, but something to visit every now and then. It will do to kill some time while I run queries and while I wait for some better game to come out (like the Mass Effect remaster coming out next month which I am excited to (re)play).

Still reading JR (almost halfway through) and still really enjoying it. Laughed out loud a few times yesterday at some humorous dialog.

I feel behind on everything else, if there is anything to be behind on. I really need to start or return to a project of some kind. I've been doing a little bit of refactoring on one of my code projects (a random table for rpgs thing), trying to make it all ES6 modules, but also realizing all the places where it needs work to actually work well. But it's more a learning project than a thing I expect to see use.

I also took a few notes for a (sigh) set of simple RPG rules. Been reading more of these "Free Kriegsspiel" articles/rules/examples and thinking about simple rules but ones that still include player dice rolls. Also thinking about what would work for our group, some of whom don't seem to care about rules at all and some of whom really like to think about rules and dice rolling. So I started taking some notes patching together things from various other systems/people. The 2d6 roll for success/complication/failure from the Apocalypse World games, the "you have it or you don't" attributes from the various Better Games rules like Crimson Cutlass, which is a lot closer to the Free Kriegsspiel style than a lot of games. They call it "free-style role-play." Long long ago (I was probably... in junior high?) I somehow stumbled upon an issue of "Space Gamer" when Better Games was publishing it. At some point I wrote to them (for something?) and for free out of nowhere George Rahm the (co)author sent me copies of all the Crimson Cutlass books and even a Tarot deck (which they us in the game for generation of scenarios/encounters/etc). He must have been able to tell I was a kid from my letter (or whatever I sent). I never did get to play the game, but I've always wanted to. Now I'm realizing early exposure to those rules have always colored my evaluation of rpg systems.

Anyway that is also an inspiration for these notes I'm taking. Not that I think they'll go far or even if/when I'd ever use them. It's probably more a theoretical exercise than a practical project.

Maybe it's time to find a comic to review or to return to the fiction I was writing.