beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Today's dream ended up with me convincing Lena Luthor she was wasting her potential trying to sell things for money and she should become an interstellar diplomat.
Or trying to, anyways.
In the dream she was running a small department store, and ignoring the AI whose job it was to run it.
Which doesn't seem like a sound foundation for dealing with the multitude of minds that think differently but just as well.
Still, diplomat is a necessary task, and diplomat that can fix the spaceship would be handy.

Also today I used the eye type scatter on one of my Bartons, but I forgot you can't really see the eyes on that species anyway. I went to the scrying page and checked and you can kind of see Fae or Coatl but mostly the only species with visible eyes are Spirals. So that was a waste of a scatter. But Barton's eyes are Unusual now. Multi eye, primal, or glow would have shown up on other species, but most of the possibilities aren't ever going to. Bit of a rubbish update really.

... I am still playing the dragons game even though the whole appeal is 'I wonder what this dragon will look like' even though if I scry them up they can look like anything. So, update likely to appeal to their core user: make more options. And make them random so we cannot breed for them. Market goes wild.

*sigh*

ANYway, today was a bit boring due to just sleeping through it. Tomorrow likely same. I may have to declare a laundry emergency and run the machine at night at this rate. There are several hours of evening left if I get organised enough.

... shall see.



Much more likely plan: sit in this recliner and read for the forseeable future.

Went to Norwich with mum. Task list was: return library books to library, try and sell books I don't want, donate what wouldn't sell (which was all of them in this market), buy some Doctor Who DVDs that are unaccountably gaps in the collection right now. Tasks all achieved :-)


On the way in we went into Debenhams because I saw a very good coat in the window. Red coat with buttons. So we went in and went up the lift and went looking for the coat. Which I found, in both petite and ordinary varieties. 18Petite didn't quite fit, but a regular size 20 will actually button up on me. ... I'm not a size 20 all over, but only Bravissimo sizes things by Super Curvy. Bravissimo has curvy coat but only light blue, not so stylish nor as long. 20 is the biggest that Debenhams coat goes up to, I just looked on the website, where it is out of stock in that size. It was in the shop today though. But mum is not convinced the very good coat is in fact any good. Too dull red, she says. Not the right shape for me. And granted, many things are not the right shape for me, since short and round is not fashionable, but I spend much time looking for coats and not finding, and that one seemed pretty okay by my standards. Also, mum kept going round the shop some more to find the one from the window, but that was the one from the window, it had the same name and everything. So that was just helpful. Mum not agree.

I might have to go back and buy the coat. It seems like a pretty good coat to me.



Mostly we went to the Forum for the last chance to see the Dragons.

Dragons are excellent.

I bought a very small dragon, a Draco that has stars and constellations on it. At least that's what the box says, due to very efficient packing and sellotape I haven't got it out to check yet. Stars dragon is best dragon. Mum thinks skeleton dragon was best dragon, and I like that one too, but I only bought Draco. Because they're proper moneys each.

We got a raffle ticket to maybe get a medium sized dragon. But I didn't try and bid on a full size dragon. Because I'd only have to leave it outside and no dragon good enough to bid on is bad enough to inflict that on it.

After we did my tasks list we went to Country & Eastern, which is full of all the things mum likes. I liked that it had elephants painted on many things, but the shop made me sneeze and then cough, so I ended up standing outside. Also by the time we got there I was Very Tired already in the feet especially and ended up on the stairs having a sit down while mum did her shopping. We're not very good at staying together. She walks faster than me and when we went to look at the market she vanished, though she claims she was staying the exact same place the whole time, but I was looking in the exact same place and she wasn't in it. Also she stopped to look in the place without saying she was stopping anyway, so that was vanished the first. So that didn't work best. And I know that's half me not keeping track, but I am disabled and also I was the one leading the way. Still, needs more practice.


I got tired out abruptly and we ended up coming home on the bus with all the school and sixth form students, so that was a bit crowded.

But all in all that was a pretty good day.

Or, Ugh, several days of assumptions all wrong, I make error.

GURPS Magic rules are more fiddly than I thought and have more than one spell for changing shapes.

Shapeshifting is specifically for *animals*, which in GURPS rules are things with an IQ of 5 or less, ( Read more... )


I guess a streamlined and simplified system of magic isn't going to appeal to the kind of RPGer who likes GURPS. And making it game balanced is tricksy. But for story purposes I'd rather have a handful of good tricks and make my characters work to apply them well.


using GURPS usually just makes me decide where the bones are on whatever idea I'm actually having.
the bits I won't bend on are the things the idea really needs.



... it's still embarrassing to have read the books so many times and still get the spells wrong.

So, I was thinking about dragons, born human, having to learn how to change themselves into dragons.

GURPS Dragons does have a chapter on dragons and magic, but it basically assumes that their ability to shapeshift is the Shapeshift advantage, innate and not learnt. If you want to make it a magic spell there's just this really helpful paragraph that says "GMs can define a new version of the Shapeshifting spell" ( Read more... )



Time spent learning magic: I had forgotten this, but levels of Magery take 10% off the time to learn a spell. So Magery 0 has the full 200 hours teaching per point, Magery 1 only needs 180, Magery 2 takes 160, and Magery 3 only requires 140 hours per point of spell. ( Read more... )




I'm sitting here grumbling about how unsystematic the magic system is. Same words used to mean different things! Elemental colleges progressing different ways! Why it's almost as if magic is not a science and, being made up out of whole cloth, doesn't need to obey any rules.

:eyeroll:

I can make up my own chains of spells, and standardise them if I want. Loses some flavour that way.



If I use the GURPS rule that says you need 6 spells before you can learn to shapeshift, I get diversified dragons, with interesting social norms and traditions. ( Read more... )




... just to be clear, I am aware it's all made up rules meant to mostly support people pushing small figures around a hex map while they roll dice.

But as a writer it's far more interesting to try and imagine a world where the implications play through.

You'd get very old mages simply because they had better things to do than study magic.

Or you might get very young children that learn the song that lights the candles, but haven't learnt the one to put them out again yet...

I kept on waking and sleeping last night (the plumbing in one of these flats has turned into some sort of air horn) so dreams kept on elaborating. It was pretty cool.

The one where I was stuck in a very small lift with a potentially cute guy I think I'll keep for next time I get stuck in a lift anxiety dreams. It was way more fun than usual. The walls closing in is easier to cope with when it turns into hugs. Unusually for me it was also about someone from reality, not just TV or actors. I feel vaguely like my brain did RPF without asking me. Embarrassing.

I also dreamed we were shapeshifters. I turned into this awesome dragony pteranodon thingy called Kiai. ( Read more... ) and while dragons are bulletproof, I didn't know if the bomb was going to be too much for me.

So, you know, basically pretty awesome dream.

Plus it could totally work as an urban fantasy plot bunny. I don't think I've read any about shapeshifting dragons yet. And it had the romance built in, with mating flights and everything.