Thursday February 15th, 2024. 8:08 am 59° F (15° C). Austin, Texas.
Postcards!
So on postcrossing cards are sent from other parts of the world. You have to opt-in to receive cards from your own area, which I have not done.
This card, though, is from an American territory and so it was shipped with a US domestic “forever” stamp. This is the first time I have received a card with US postage.
Postcrossing uses a very simple ID system for cards. When you are assigned a card to send you receive a code which is two letters and then some numbers. The letters are the country code and the numbers are a card count.
This is to say the first card sent from the US had the code US-1, the second card had US-2.
It is easy to get a feel for how many cards a country has shipped based on this ID.
This is how I know that Guam has sent about 5,000 cards and now one of them is in my collection.
Neat!
Speaking of American territories, I would love to visit Puerto Rico sometime.
Yesterday, Wednesday the 14th I also sent a postcard to Japan.
This bobcat picture always makes me laugh.
This looks like our cat Keanu who always has a grumpy look on her face.
The recipient of this card mentioned having three degus as pets.
I am pleased to know just a little bit more about life on this planet thanks to this postcard.
As for gaming, I finished reading and taking notes on how to use Mythic Game Master Emulator second edition and I have two thoughts about this.
1. I didn’t need to purchase the cards, this is an alternate version of the system and
2. I’m not even sure if I need other RPG rule books.
The focus of Mythic is to push through the story rather than to interact with the rule system of a game.
I believe a setting and a theme are needed and that an RPG book can supply this, but the rule system of the game is pretty much tossed out the window.
My first instinct is to use Mythic the same way I create adventures for Index Card RPG which is to use random cards and character traits to determine what happens.
Roll a d6, it lands on 1. The first trait on a character sheet is strength, so the first challenge will be strength related. Draw a card. Jail door. So the players need to get out of a situation where they’re locked up with a show of strength. Right, so they’re in prison, but they notice that the locking mechanism of the door has been worn down with time. It seems that the door could be pushed open, but it would need at least three people to push in unison a few times while also not getting caught by the guard for the noise. At this point Mythic would step in and help to understand what happens next.
There are two benefits that I see to this.
1. I would not need to make a full adventure with branching paths as each step of the adventure would be generated on the spot and
2. This keeps the focus on the story and avoids any “grind.”
Any pen & paper RPG players probably recognize that that second note is flawed and that a good gaming session should not have grind, but what I am saying is that the risk of unintended grind is lower.
The flip side of this is that the joy of loot may be diminished with this system. Then again, Index Card RPG has a great loot table.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that this feels more like DMing than being a player, but I am cool with this.
I prefer to create adventures than to play them.
I do think it might be fun to try to solo my way through Ptolus with this system.
Check out this honking game book.
Speaking of games, I learned to play Wingspan last night.
My partner Lauri has been playing a ton of it on the Nintendo Switch and she found a copy of the physical game that was on sale at Target recently.
Delightful game, though I should spend less time on build up as it is a short game.
Lauri beat me by ten points, but in fairness she’s probably played 100 rounds and I have played exactly one.
Maybe we should try to get folks to play TTRPGs with us again.
We used to do this a lot, but people move and we slowly drifted away from this scene.
Keanu says “Hi.”
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