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)

INCALCULABLE SYSTEMS

PROBLEM: When a system is too open and simple, it can be 'solved' by examining its state and mentally calculating all possible outcomes.

SOLUTION:
- Make sure that there are too many outcomes to calculate (see SPATIAL COMPLEXITY, COMBINATORICS, and UNKNOWN OUTCOMES, as-yet undefined patterns)

BEAUTIFUL HEURISTICS

PROBLEM: When a player deals with an INCALCULABLE SYSTEM, they will inevitably rely on heuristics, or 'rules of thumb', in order to navigate the system. These heuristics are emergent and may be derivative, distasteful, or simply boring.

NO SOLUTION IDENTIFIED

(...I need a way to deal with these 'unfinished patterns', but I think this is a great and important one.)

The systems in Rift Wizard are complicated and lush, enough that I need to rely on heuristics in order to hold the system comfortably in mind. The problem is that these heuristics aren't interesting to me... I think this is helping me come to a very interesting conclusion. This is a mindset I've sought out before, but the larger patterns in games like this are just too abstract and not narratively/thematically interesting anymore.

"Lightning chains between enemies"

Also, just on the systems side, the thing that frustrated progress enough that I think I might be done with the game is the SHIELD mechanic... maybe there's a way through it, but it feels like it's just there to counteract certain strategies. With a game that's 24 floors deep, I'm not particularly interested in running into 'just another counter to my current strategy' ten more times, each one taking me twice as long (or longer!) than the last to resolve.

Hmm. So there's a couple patterns here but I guess I'd call them antipatterns so I don't actually want to write them down. what can i learn from this?

The spells and skills are all parameterized. This means... they can be modified. Spatial mechanics are also a sort of 'parameter' (this is not quite right) which increase the interaction- and modification-space. The mathematical complexity. What is the pleasure of interacting with a system like this? I think Jack called it a certain type of play, that of predicting/calculating the outcome.

Oath, Spiritfarer, Pathologic, Etrian Odyssey, System Shock 2...
Unavowed (our card game, not the adventure game)...

Games that evoke something strongly.

SNKRX
Nuclear Throne
Probability 0
Rift Wizard
SERPENTES
31 unmarked games - Dec. 9
Cinco Paus

How can I even describe this?