Since I wanted to do a new redesign, make a new blog, and in general do a full “rebrand,” I needed some way to keep track of it all. Given that I only need something for my own tasks, I wanted something simple and free that I could manage anywhere, thus I turned to Trello.

For those who may not be familiar, Trello is a simple task management tool that simulates the “Kanban” style of workflow: In this case like note cards moved around on a board, with what column they’re in representing their status.

For my board, any new task goes under “To Do,” and tagged with a Label (those colored bars on the card) indicating category (e.g. which blog it’s for, if it’s for real-life, or important). The things that I am to have done in the next day or so gets moved into “Doing” so I know what my short-term goals are. Once they’re done, they get moved to the next column and stay there for a week.

The final column, “Last Week” isn’t very necessary, but does give some perspective. Every week, I’ll move all the tasks that I got done over one column to the final one. This way, I can see both what I accomplished, and how it stacks up to the current week’s status. This helps me to stay motivated to complete these sort of “intangible” tasks, where there’s no concrete benefit to doing them.

Having some way to stay organized is really important so that tasks don’t get lost. Trello works well for me, but I’ve also found Google Keep useful if you need more of something that’s easy to put into a checklist, or a Calendar app if there’s a lot of tasks that have to be done on a timed basis.

If you have an old link, you may be confused: “What about ‘Yeah, But Hats?'” I’ve decided that name didn’t work for a number of reasons. Namely, somewhere around the tenth person to look at the web address in all lower case and ask: “Yeah But That’s?” Oops.

So! Here’s the new web address. It better reflects my professional role now, as I have been steadily branching out to cover more gaps in a small team. As such, this blog will start getting posts more in line with development and workplace subjects.

If you’re new here, welcome! I appreciate you taking the time to visit me here and see what’s going on. If you’ve been with me for a while, thanks for sticking around through the rebranding, and I hope you’ll find the new content worth reading.

Today begins a three-day Jira training, run by Steve Terelmes of Expium. I’ve spent a lot of time digging through various settings and configurations in Jira but, while I’ve discovered a lot of what it can do, thought it best to do an actual training. This way, we have a fully-trained (and possibly later certified?) person that can spread knowledge to the rest of the company.

The morning was mainly focused on high-level user management, including groups and permissions and adding admins. Then it moved to customizing the Jira instance visually, changing the image or colors, and really just how to set it up to make it your company’s Jira instead of just Jira.

Later in the afternoon, we moved into workflows, most of which I’ve already learned, but some information about the correct way to do it (statuses are where people do work, transitions are where Jira does work). As well as how to set up and configure the projects.

What I learned today

• Difference between the Jira Projects
  Mainly that Jira Software and Jira Service Desk are the main important ones
• Announcements on Jira
  Theoretically useful, but I’m not sure how useful I’ll actually find it
• Proper naming conventions/thought processes for workflows
  I’d figured out most of how workflows work already, but having the proper guidance on the best was to use them, namely where to put the “verbs,” did help.
• How to avoid making so many extra schemes everywhere
  This one’s the most important. When making a project, you can choose “Create with Shared Config” and then build out your schemes from there.

Overall, not a lot learned today, but its good for getting everything to a solid baseline. I expect the next day to be a lot more informative, but only because I have figured out most of today’s topics on my own already.

The last post talked about initiative systems. I’m going to use the same systems to talk about how actions shape encounters, so here’s a quick recap:

• Ironclaw: Team-Based. The team that initiates goes first. Each team chooses the order of characters to act.
• D&D: Character-Based. Order of characters to act is randomly chosen for the combat.
• Shadowrun: Character-Based. As D&D, initiative is per round and higher initiative characters can have multiple turns in a round.
• Arcanis: Active Time. Characters are on a clock, and actions advance that clock. Characters at the current “time” act.
• Paragon: Active Time.  Characters have a priority, that actions increase. Lowest priority characters act before higher characters.
• Mouse Guard: Declare and Resolve. All sides declare their actions secretly, then actions are resolved.

I want to talk about Action Economies. Each system has different ways of expressing how a player gets to act when their “turn” comes up. Each system also handles actions differently.

Systems like D&D and Shadowrun lump their actions into different categories. Generally, things like attacking or casting a spell or some other “I do a thing to someone else” action is considered more valuable than repositioning or interacting with an object. Thus, while players can generally “trade down” and move twice instead of attacking, generally this is only done when the “Major” or “Standard” action won’t fit here.

Ironclaw and Mouse Guard give their actions equal weight. All available actions are always able to be substituted for other actions, whereas in D&D you wouldn’t be able to substitute “interact with a door” action with an “attack that guy” action. Here, you can. This causes a new host of balance issues, where every action has to be balanced around every other potential action.

Arcanis and Paragon use the Active Time system, so they’re somewhat locked into balancing actions based on the delay they cause. Someone swinging a sledgehammer is going to take longer to act again compared to someone slashing with a knife. However, Captain Sledgehammer is going to be way more effective if he hits (ideally, slightly disproportionately more) than the knife-swinging slasher.

As a contrived example: The Knife attack may take 2 delay, and do 3 damage if successful. The Hammer may take 4 delay, and do 7 damage if successful. This is balanced. The Knife attacker may do less damage per hit, but has twice the opportunity to do any damage. The hammer user must have stronger hits, but quicker enemies may be able to constantly dart away before the hammer user can act again. Or: consider if an enemy has 9 health. The dagger kills it in 3 hits, which uses only 6 delay, where the hammer user kills it in only 2 hits but uses 8 delay.

This Economy of Actions is what makes encounters interesting.

Action Economics are Fun!

The way in which players decide what to do, what’s valuable, and what’s presently useful is what makes these encounters fun. Is dodging in D&D better than attacking? Maybe! If you’re surrounded by nothing you can disable, it’s probably better to live another round and Dodge and hope your party can assist. Has your monk gotten himself surrounded, again? You probably want to Attack and help him out (again). Shoving someone 5 feet away from you: probably less useful than attacking. Shoving someone 5 feet away from you off a ledge: probably better than attacking.

Where the game designer can shine is the available choices for the party. Sure, trying to Scare someone in Ironclaw might immediately end your turn and make you vulnerable to attacks, but that won’t matter if you terrify everyone into running away. Varying the power (more damage, potential to incapacitate) with the drawback (takes longer, possibility of being vulnerable) makes for interesting choices. Do I want to try and remove this guy from combat, knowing that if I fail I’ll be very vulnerable? It depends.

Players might have different philosophies on how they want to play. Some like high-risk high-reward. Others value consistency. Often, players want to access both. Sometimes the knife user needs an all-out attack to end it now before it ends them next turn. Sometimes the hammer player throws a quick punch to knock someone out so they can get back into the fight quickly.

The types of actions that the players can perform, and how often they can perform them, shapes how the system informs the narrative. The nimble rogue darting in and out slicing quickly with his dagger is more visible in Arcanis (more chances to act) than D&D (Standard action to attack, maybe a bonus action to off-hand strike). The raging barbarian shattering his enemies with raw fury is better shown in D&D (each attack crushing a foe) than Arcanis (more impressive hits, but less flashy due to the slower time).

What players want to do should be what they can do (within reason). The better a system can reflect that, the more the players will enjoy it.

I’m bad at blogging. Last post was a year and a half ago. Since then, I’ve gotten a new job, I’ve started prototyping an RPG, I’ve done a small amount of tools development. Professionally, I’ve been trying to make Good Tools for Good Websites and generally make sure everything runs smoothly.

I’m going to try blogging again. Almost two years ago it was helpful to organize my thoughts using it, and now that I’m working more actively on my RPG I’m going to try it again. The next posts will be talking about tabletop RPG mechanics and why I find them interesting. Occasionally I might post about something like why I like React.js or some other software thing, but I have RPGs on the mind right now.