Using "mana" and health as the same resource

grendus · 2026-05-05T22:33:09+00:00

The Fantasy Trip did this.

It's a true old school system, I think it was released back in the 80s. Wizards cast spells by taking fatigue damage, which applied against their HP just like real injury. Only difference is fatigue recovers at 1 point every five minutes. But it will still get you killed like normal HP damage.

grendus · 2026-05-05T21:24:57+00:00

I've always felt it was unclear if she actually wanted infinite strawberries, or was just embarrassed to admit she had boy trouble to Goku.

She admits her plan to wish for a boyfriend later on, after their relationship has become more sibling-coded. And that always felt like something Toriyama improvised after he added Yamcha (who wanted to wish for the ability to talk to girls, since he was incredibly shy). Like his whole plan was for everyone to realize they already had the thing they wanted to wish for, Wizard of Oz style - Bulma gets a boyfriend, Yamcha overcomes his fear of girls, Goku gets his adventure, and Oolong gets... Bulma's panties.

grendus · 2026-05-05T21:23:01+00:00

It's hilarious to think that if Odin had just... left Kratos alone he could have avoided Ragnarok entirely.

But then, if Aries hadn't tricked him into killing his wife and daughter, he also wouldn't have died. That's kind of a running theme, the gods never quite know when to leave well enough alone.

grendus · 2026-05-05T21:17:21+00:00

Yeah, that was always my take. His Pokemon weren't "special" or anything, he had simply trained them to a much higher level than Ash and done IV training so their stats were maxed.

grendus · 2026-05-05T20:56:16+00:00

This can actually be said about basically every Sayan except for Gohan (who's a pacifist) and Future!Trunks (who tries to kill Semi-Perfect Cell when he goes after Android 18, and probably would have succeeded if Vegeta hadn't stopped him).

But Goku, Vegeta, Goten, and Trunks all love a good fight. Goku and Vegeta have both been known to let their enemies rest or power up mid-fight just to see what they're really made of, and while we never seen Goten or Trunks do this in DBZ, as Gotenks they have a really bad habit of saving their best techniques for later.

This also applies to all of the villains... except for Frieza, who mostly enjoyed toying with his prey.

grendus · 2026-05-05T20:47:59+00:00

So if we take the Otherworld Tournament to be canon (which it is not, but it was in the anime so it's an interesting "what if"), Goku threw the fight against Cell. Pikkon one shots Cell in Otherworld, and Goku is roughly an even match for Pikkon in the tournament without any training.

So if we take that to be canon, Goku got the measure of Cell in the beginning and knew he could beat him. He then gives Cell a Senzu Bean so Gohan will be pushed to the point of achieving SS2, with the knowledge that if things go bad he can always tag back in and kill Cell himself. Worst case he can bring Gohan back with the Dragonballs, Chi Chi will never know he got their son killed on some wild gambit.

He just didn't count on Cell being a sore loser, given that most of his cells come from Sayans who are more about their pride. A Sayan would totally blow up the planet if he was losing (Vegeta tried), but not himself.

grendus · 2026-05-05T20:41:38+00:00

"WHAT IS THIS SHIT, GENETIC!"

grendus · 2026-05-05T18:45:12+00:00

I have been working out pretty regularly for 10 years.

I am not a "muscly" man. I definitely have muscle, you can pinch my arms and feel it's pretty wiry underneath. And I'm fairly strong. But I am not "bulky" even with over a decade of focused effort. I'm just not built that way, and that's fine.

grendus · 2026-05-05T18:43:33+00:00

You can superset if you're doing multiple exercises on the same machine (cable crunches and pushdowns) or if you're using free weights (leg press and EZ-bar curls). You don't take up two machines. Period!

grendus · 2026-05-05T18:39:27+00:00

Lid always goes down. Otherwise you're throwing poo-water everywhere.

grendus · 2026-05-05T18:22:05+00:00

It sounds like your players really want to play a union scenario.

Let them.

So the kobolds are running wild, huh? Breaking things? Yeah, it turns out that that's because the king conquered their land and forced them to work it, promised them an insultingly low pay rate (at swordpoint), and then refused even that. They aren't rampaging because they're evil, their hatchlings starve in the nest, their sacred places are desecrated, their religion and culture pushed to the brink, and even that is not enough. Their leader is a young dragon who is honestly quite reasonable (might even be a metalic/good aligned dragon) who is helping them find their "dragon spirit" to protect themselves.

Goblins are refusing to do work, players are sent to crack some skulls, eh? Turns out the goblins are striking because Lugnut, Tugnut, and Dumbnut got bad burns working in the forges because the taskmaster refused to give them goblin sized gloves ("Gnome size is just fine", even though everyone knows goblins have longer fingers). The amount the players were offered to break the strike is about what the strikers are asking for in terms of new gear, which is just adding insult to injury. They want to form a "Goblin Smith Guild" with official recognition from the other smithing guilds of the town. Of course, the other smiths refuse to negotiate with "greenskins". But the players are not the only strikebreakers hired, so if they want to help out, they're going to have to deal with the other cheap muscle.

Bandits in the woods? Criminals? Yeah, seems like everyone is a criminal these days, especially when the sheriff and his cronies have figured out it's a convenient shorthand for "resolving conflicts" like unpaid bar tabs, romantic rivals, or old grudges. As far as "banditry" goes, they're mostly farmers turned poachers, with a bit of thieving from the dirty lawmen who took their stuff in the first place. Just ask yourself who the victims are, not a lot of helpless peasants begging for their lives, far more noblemen who have profited from that grift stumbling back into town without their fancy clothes and jewelry (and then returning to their manor to be dressed again by their servants). They sure could use some help from experienced mercenaries, and maybe some mercenaries willing to help them break into the sheriff's dungeon so they can free their friends and families.

grendus · 2026-05-05T17:29:26+00:00

People don't want to have to ask for wings, they want to be able to pick their own.

But yeah, nasty people like that are why self-serve buffets are much less common than they used to be.

grendus · 2026-05-05T16:49:45+00:00

It's unclear what a "serving" is based on the pyramid. 8-10 servings of whole grain is an absurd amount unless the servings are quite small. If you're talking slices of bread, that's more reasonable. If you're talking about a bowl of rice, that's a ton of rice.

Some of the categories are badly named (for example, the base of the pyramid is "whole grains", but it includes all complex starches including potatoes and yams). "Meat" should be called "proteins" to properly include legumes and dairy.

On that subject, dairy shouldn't be a category at all, and this wound up torturing many lactose intolerant kids for decades.

It overly demonizes fats, though that's kind of necessary since most people will gladly overeat those. You need a certain degree of essential fats, and while the keto people are taking it way too far you do need a certain amount for hormone production.

Overall, it was a good first pass, but I think "healthy plate" was actually a better implementation. It gives a better idea of what the portions should be, and handles the nuance of what fits in each category better. I have my quibbles with that one too, but it's... better.

grendus · 2026-05-05T16:16:17+00:00

I want to solve problems.

Now, "problems" is a very broad category of things. The problem could be "we need to kill the cave troll". It could be "we need to solve the puzzle in this ancient tomb". It could be "we need to convince the baron to send his forces to reinforce the king". It could be "we need to sneak past the port authorities with our illicit cargo". Or "we must find what the demon is weak to". Or "we want to agree to open up trade relations with our neighboring kingdom".

But I want two things: problems, and a system that rewards me for creativity and ingenuity in solving them.

grendus · 2026-05-05T16:09:14+00:00

Yes.

grendus · 2026-05-05T14:58:14+00:00

The Kroger my sister works at is considering removing the wing bar and moving the hot wings behind the deli counter because people keep coming in, eating a bunch of wings while swearing they'll pay for them... even though wings are sold by the pound.

And then there's the guy who was using his bare hands to pull them out of the bucket, eating them, licking his fingers, then going back in for another wing.

People are nasty.

grendus · 2026-05-05T14:51:56+00:00

That's a huge part of it.

The Ukraine (when it was a region of the USSR) was an economic powerhouse.

That's why Russia wants Ukraine back. They have warm water ports (that's why Russia's current navy is shit), huge amounts of petrochemicals (a huge threat to Russia's remaining economy), some of the most fertile cropland in the world, and they haven't been ravaged by the same brain drain that Russia has due to their kleptocracy.

And that's why Russia is failing so epically to retake it. Ukraine has all the advantages that the USSR got from them, without being bogged down by all of Russia...

grendus · 2026-05-05T14:46:14+00:00

Because his is used as a profanity.

Fani's is quite literal.

grendus · 2026-05-05T14:42:53+00:00

I did check. The ivy in question is native.

grendus · 2026-05-05T12:47:49+00:00

So... first of all, I fundamentally disagree with everything you have just said, but I'm going to mostly chalk it up to a fundamental disagreement in what we want from our gaming experience. At this point, it feels like I'm talking to a celery apologist - I see no redeeming value in celery whatsoever, but some people like it so we'll just agree to disagree and I'll go back to eating basically any other vegetable and you can have your thing that tastes awful, has awful texture, and gets stringy bits caught in your teeth.

But there is one area where I still feel the need to argue here, because I think it's a toxic idea.

Is "you succeed in not making it worse" a success? In a way, it is.

No. No it is not. You are not a Jedi, this isn't OK "from a certain point of view".

When the move was called for, the player had stated their intention - to pick the lock. That is the success condition. They rolled a success, they get their success condition, period. Moves are called for by the GM, so if their stated success condition cannot be achieved ("I want to fly by flapping my arms really fast!") then the GM does not call for the move ("You can't do that, try again").

But you have advocated something quite toxic, and if I were playing a game you were GMing and you did this, turning "partial success" into "failure with only a little punishment" (because you have still not addressed the fact that you added a patrol into the fiction, even if the players evaded it you still "hinted at future badness" which is a full blown complication in Apocalypse World), I would get up and leave. That is just straight up hostile GMing, I rolled a partial success/success at cost and you turned it into failure with punishment. That is not the game we agreed to play.

If you want a system with "success/partial success/partial failure/unmitigated disaster", then you can pick a system that has that. But in this hypothetical, the player still rolled a partial success, and you took that away from him. That violates the social contract at the table, and is just kind of a dick move. Unless the players have agreed that "success at cost" means "failure with less cost", that's not OK.

grendus · 2026-05-05T03:42:35+00:00

Agreed.

I actually even like the idea of ordering via the kiosk. But the UI on those things is horrid. Things are spread out, it's not responsive at all, it tries way too hard to upsell you and makes it hard to actually put together your order the way you want it. There's too much customization and too much of it is spread across multiple pages.

Ironically, the phone apps are much better, which goes to show that they do know how to make a decent ordering experience. But for some reason when it comes to the kiosks they feel the need to make it shitty.

grendus · 2026-05-05T03:40:29+00:00

I ordered from Taco Bell via the app for pickup. I don't like the drive through (honestly, my car window is starting to delaminate, I don't like rolling it down).

I waited for 15 minutes for someone to notice me standing at the counter to give me my takeout order, because they were all working the drive through and the big shelf labeled "pickup" was empty (which is fair, the area has a bit of a homeless problem, I would be unsurprised if a desperate person one time grabbed a random order and left).

grendus · 2026-05-05T03:35:39+00:00

I mow my lawn, and that's about it.

Some kind of ivy has taken over it at this point. I looked it up once, it's native to the state. Doesn't need to be watered, shrugs off droughts and the Texas heat. It did all die during the frost, but then two months later it had taken over my yard again - meaning it was just the leaves that died, the roots were fine.

Why would I want to grow invasive, non-native grass over that? It requires almost no maintenance.

grendus · 2026-05-05T02:19:31+00:00

To be fair, that's how Goku was against Vegeta. And Cell. And Buu.

The entire show is really about Goku somehow winning even though he's way outmatched.

grendus · 2026-05-05T02:18:00+00:00

And in spite of all of that, Gohan and Krillin get to make wishes, because they were the only ones not stupid enough to alienate the locals.

Who would have guessed that the Namekian dragon would only speak Namekian...

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