Isabella's Mochi Donuts charges $20 for six donuts. They are pretty unique donuts (mochi?!), nicely decorated, and they have great flavours constantly rotating in and out.

On Christmas, they increased the price to $25 / six without a reason or warning (as far as i could tell!) and it really turned us off of buying more donuts there.

Things I've noticed about Oath:

The player who is behind always has options.
* Search the deck(s) for a lucky draw
---> Early on, this is a vision
---> Later on, this is a chance combo piece, or something to counter someone else
* Influence the result of the game
---> Due to Oath's legacy nature, I might not be able to win, but I can change who is the Chancellor next game
---> or change which denizens are in the winning player's Sites
---> Or, I might be able to knock the lead player down out of the running.
* Sow chaos among, or team up on, the top players
---> If everyone else sees someone in the lead, we can work together to drag them down.
* Become a Citizen, maybe? Strike a deal?

2022 Jan 3
Played the first official game of Oath with the crew.
The turn order was D, me, R, M, and J.

It was a bit rough going to start out with - the game is hard to explain! But as the afternoon progressed into evening, everyone started to get the mechanics and warm up to the whole thing. I think the last rule we explained was the rule that prevented M from taking the Darkest Secret from me... but he took it some other way.

The rule makes such beautiful thematic sense. It doesn't explain itself but I feel the need to explain for it. Fascinating stuff. I don't know how lucky we got with this game or whether the game itself is just incredible, but there were moments throughout when someone seemed to be getting the upper hand, and was a real contender for winning. Truly incredible.

Anyway, it helped that most of the time nobody was terribly concerned about winning or losing. Of course we tried to win, but the attitude around the table was jovial. We all were telling our little stories about the world, not just playing extreme tactics.

the slowest, subtlest vampire film i can imagine

about love, i guess, but

[spoilers, of course]

at the end of the day i feel like what it's doing

is portraying love between very old people

who are also, still, monsters

so old and experienced and yet still living and breathing and carrying on. sustaining. pursuing passions, but in an ancient, patient way.

the film itself is just as ancient and patient.

i can't tell if that's a good thing.

I don't wear a white shirt under my jacket because it gives me -1 to Suggestion, and I want to be able to Suggest well. But I don't really feel in tune with the world, making this decision
 It's a stretch.

Made using these precise instructions & bacon fat. Turned out perfect. Also! The bacon fat didn't SPIT at all. Weird! Great!

(Think I'm done with Wildermyth, incidentally.)

Procedurally generated content in a replayable game seeks to offset this, but so does a massive amount of content - see Hades or Wildermyth. Poetic empty space can only go so far, but anything can only go so far.

As I get older and see more patterns emerge, will life seem less & less real as I see things repeated more & more?

It's not the fact that life never repeats, but it's true that a video will repeat in a more perfect/unnatural way as compared to things I would observe in reality...

WHEN SOMETHING REPEATS EXACTLY, THE HUMAN BRAIN REACTS DIFFERENTLY.

What implications does this have for deja vu and also the fictional ideas of time travel and precognition? If you see something exactly the same way twice, the brain has a deep reaction. How many times does it take for this repeated thing to lose all sense of reality, and is that the fundamental/deep change or is there a different, more higher-order effect?

Didn't do it! Here are some reference tables from this site

for 1 pound of beans, how much liquid?
4 cups liquid: Best for beans that you don't plan on straining, like the pinto bean side dishes you get at Mexican restaurants.  Less water means a flavorful, thicker, and more starchy sauce
5 cups liquid: Best for beans that you want to be less starchy and infused with flavor even after straining some of the extra liquid.  This is perfect for Mexican food fillings, salads, salsas, and refried beans
6 cups liquid: Best for beans that are hardly starchy and only mildly seasoned.  These are perfect for bagging and freezing

how long to cook?


how many cans of beans will it make?
"Use these helpful average conversions and general rules of thumb to measure dried beans:
2 cups of dried beans = 1 pound of dried beans.
1 pound of dried beans = About 6 cups of cooked beans."

A big Unico can of black beans = 540 mL = 2 1/4 cups
So, 1/2 pound of dried beans + 2-3 cups liquid = 1 can of beans (ok, a little more than a big can of beans, but i like a few extra beans).

Not so great with 2 players - primarily the rounds are too short and involve shuffling small, awkward cards between them.

I'll write about the game later too. Cute, but nothing to gush about? I like the bell.

Alt. Pattern: Only Answer Questions

Every word is a pattern... that is, a relationship between smaller patterns. A relationship between questions and facts.

When I think about the word CHANCELLOR, I have a sense that they are in a position of power, but aside from that I really have just one big question: "What do they do?"

When I think about the word PRESIDENT, I have a much clearer set of expectations... but I still have questions: "How did they come into power?" "Do they actually do anything?" "Can't they just do whatever they want, since they only get voted in/out every 4 years?"

(This is a quick, throwaway example! This is not about how to simulate accurate presidency. It's more like a lens -- we can look at something through the questions people ask about how it functions.)

PATTERN: Only Define the Undefined

PROBLEM: A concept that is too abstract invites definition but has no connection to the world ("The circle moves 2 spaces forward"), while a concept that is too familiar cannot be easily redefined ("The high school moves 2 spaces forward").

SOLUTION: When defining rules, fill out the Undefined Space of a concept, and only define any particular space once. How does a dog move? Answer that question once. If the dog needs to move in multiple different ways, contain them all as subsystems within one system.

--

I don't have any good examples for this

Examples:

Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile - The Chancellor's relationship to the other players and the game at large is described primarily through its rules (and rules text). There is no lore about how the Chancellor should act or what their relationship is to the other players; they simply have certain powers and restrictions, and these are described in the rulebook.

Pokemon - Shedinja, the 'Shed Pokemon', is created when Nincada evolves into Ninjask. The bug pokemon 'sheds' this ghost pokemon as it evolves into its adult form.

-

Through writing these examples, I realize it's not particularly clear-cut... In Oath, rules are written out as text, and some lore certain comes through in the rules text. Doesn't this count as text-based lore?

PATTERN: Rules Express Lore

PROBLEM: Games that describe what is happening in great detail, or describe things that are not happening, do not have a certain feeling. (clarify if possible?)

SOLUTION: The text, sound, visuals, and other media should communicate a less complete picture, and the rules and play should clarify that picture -- rather than the other way around. The mechanics and dynamics of the game should give the most important look at the lore.

LARGER PATTERN: To draw attention to any sort of 'form,' it should be central. I suppose in an ideal world we might say that all art 'forms' should be equal in a given work. In this case, the larger pattern could be called "Specialty Expresses Lore": whichever art form you are most confident in and most interested in should communicate the most important concepts.

But maybe the problem I'm having is not with the game design so much as it is with the thematic design(?). The narrative of Rift Wizard is not interesting to me. Full stop. It's unfortunate but true. Beyond the confines of the game design itself, I don't care about a story about a wizard going 24 floors down with a book full of spells etc etc blah blah blah. I don't care about it. I don't care about the character, or the setting, or any of it. Why should I care how it's communicated to me, then? (i.e. via a game)