Lack of Inspiration

Sunday, 6 February 2000

I haven't been inspired to write here much recently. I've been doing most of my writing in other places -- rec.arts.sf.fandom for the most part.

I've been attending the usual social gatherings -- had a great time at Moshe Feder's a week or so back, expect to show up for RASSEFF at Le Frite Kot tomorrow. I haven't been spending as much time with Chris as I ought. We should probably get together and see Man On the Moon before it disappears from the theaters. That may be difficult, actually -- it's starting to look like my calendar may be filling up for the next couple of weeks, and then it's off to Seattle for Corflatch.

I spent yesterday at Lisa and Josh's place with Matt doing massive surgery on the combat rules for 7th Sea. We switched to d6 from d10 for the initiative rolls, incorporated an informal system by which combatants are grouped into smaller combats and each sub-combat resolved before moving onto the next (that got me thinking about how to break combat up along dramatic lines instead of mechanical), and excised a whole lot of dice-rolling. We also made it harder to hit people, but increased the amount of damage done if one does hit, which we think makes the combat more dramatic, and cuts down on "nibbled to death by ducks" syndrome. There was also some work done on changing some of the costs in character creation. And we took some time out for a couple of games of Fluxx.