Punters and Pushers

I did eventually finish rereading Dresden Files Storm Front.
It did not change my opinion of the main character or the book.
Slimy.

Also I am just very bored with the style of story where they only ever find anything out when it tries to eat them. They lurch between murder attempts and figure out who dunnit because everyone else is dead. It is tedious.

I did get stuck for a while in the middle of yet another fight sequence
remembering a plot bunny for Legends of Tomorrow
visiting my home town.

It sort of doesn't have a punchline or payoff yet, but you get half a dozen characters exploring one place you know pretty well, you find half a dozen angles to see it from and at least half a dozen interwoven communities to have them connect with. You learn more about the characters and the place they're visiting. Do that whole 'a stranger comes to town' and stress test reactions.

... in Legends the reaction usually involves crime and bar fights so far. two seasons isn't long to have that come up this many times, and I haven't finished the second season...

If it is someone playing defence on their own territory the story has to keep on coming up with reasons to introduce a new bit when the point of view character knows it real well. Either you get their opinions straight up, which for Harry seems to mean him saying wizards aren't very smart but treating non wizards like they are deeply stupid, or they have to go around doing the sensory detail thing and describing things a lot. It makes them sound weird about clothes, or the people in them, to keep trying to convey data through physical elements, and really I'm not sure how much telling the fashions are going to manage. Sometimes the clothes are a symbol set adding to the story, but the connotations have to derive from somewhere first, and if it isn't shared *persistent* pop culture by the time you read it then either meaning gets lost or the book has to tell us what it's own symbols mean.

Duster and staff is a strong set of images but imagine Westerns as a genre fading out of pop culture, or coming back in with a different point of view, and suddenly the story hasn't adequately explained itself.

I was thinking about it because magic items on Pathfinder's Golarion can be ten thousand years old and still work, albeit with a possibility of quirks. Thassilonian stuff turns up in several of the adventure paths I've read but it also does some fun weird things by now. But the art from the books and computer games has to pick a visual style to go with the magic objects, and with the change in visual assets since Kingmaker, you get at least two visually distinct styles of common magic items in cultures that pretty much share a border. Individual makers have distinct styles even. And then they color code the bonuses. Half the time I use the Prestidigipainter just to make the look in the vague ballpark of unified.

Adventurer gear gets very visually busy.

I've thought about Adventurer's Aposematism where the flashy warns off the less well equipped, but consider, you can't really afford to throw a magic item away just because it is, for instance, Ancient Osirian, when you are not even modern Osirian. You could end up with clashing visual statements covering longer than Earth human history.

Your magic items would contain stitching older than Earth humans had writing.



And then you need to just pull off that visual ensemble with some kind of panache
while at the same time being aware that even your shirt and cloak are Adventurer practical enough
they count as Going Equipped
for some fairly large tasks
even at the scale calibrated by a hundred years of war.

... there's a bit in Dance of Masks where these tiny little first level NPCs get aggressive and go red for enemy
and then just drop dead.

It actually took me a while to figure out that's because there's two items the party were wearing that do damage to all in range enemies.

They were only wearing them to add some elemental damage to end regenerating enemies.

But that tiny smidge of damage by the standards of adventurers that can afford those clothes is
all the hit points and then some
for a first level NPC.

Which is wild.

The plot relevant characters have different maths on Just Not Dying.

Adventures sure do make some Choices.

ANYway.

In a story you wear a specific visual statement meant to elicit a reaction from the expected audience.

In an adventure you wear whatever makes number go up when the number in question is your chance of survival.

It sort of speaks less but screams more.



I still do not recall why I have a shelf of these particular wizard books.


They are giving me that I Can Sneeze Better Book Than This feeling.



... if and only if I actually write it down of course...