First, sorry if the last post was a bit scattered (I did spend several hours composing it). Second, a close read of Chris Kutalik's pointcrawling posts is in order because much of my thoughts on connections and such, he'd already covered 2 years ago. Third, check out these links Talysman shared in the comments of our discussion:
A method of terrain generation from Central Casting Dungeons product.
And his own Last Minute Hex Crawl Tables
Fourth, while this wouldn't be of help to the sightless, check out this post as a method of generating pointcrawls using routes.
Fifth, I think the biggest issue for a blind person with generating a pointcrawl is not going to be the generation but keeping track of what they generate, which is basically what a map is, an efficient way to store positional data in 2-d. The method that might work is to treat points like the locations in a choose-your-own-adventure book. Number all of them, and number the exits from each location with the number of the location that route is leading to. Then you could store these numbered points anyway that was convenient to you, text file list, database.
Sixth, some fresh thoughts:
All that jazz about biomes is probably not very important in randomly generating terrain for a pointcrawl. Minecraft is an infinite flat plain, so gradients of temperature and moisture matter more. In fantasy worlds even slightly like our own, terrain will be relatively similar unless the distance between the points is huge. What I mean is, temperature is mostly tied to latitude, so the farther north you go the colder it will be. But that takes miles and miles of travel to really manifest itself.
It seems like most terrain generated will be like that you just left, maybe the only variation is in the surface features. Is there a lake here? Is there a forest?
So, elevation might matter much more as the variation you would see in local features. Is there a hill here? A canyon, a pass through these mountains?
Another thought, the problem with randomly generated anything is that information about the generated place is very local, it's difficult to make more big picture patterns or connections until you've already finished generating a big area, look at it and then do so. What I mean is, if there's a pass through the mountains, is it the only pass? If it is it might be very important and have different encounters. Is this bit of forest a small grove or just a point hidden in a vast swath of forest? Most random generating systems are not going to help with that.
With that in mind, the best bet for blind players or DMs, would probably be to take something like Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms and convert it into a point crawl and record the points in the numbered location method I mentioned above. That way all the "big picture" knowledge could be captured for the points. Then point 54 can let you know that it is a small grove far from civilization but near trade route heavily used in summer.
Of course, that requires someone to make a whole world which is the creative work a random system is trying to replace. But maybe someone could use a random system as a work aid, generate a ton of points, look over them and apply logical, big-feature information to the points, and then share them with folks.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Thoughts on Hexless Random Wilderness Generation
The Hill Cantons blog has a very interesting question about how to randomly generate wilderness for a hexless pointcrawl. I think an unspoken requirement is that the terrain makes some kind of sense as well. Here are some thoughts on the problem.
Pseudo-Realistic Terrain
First, how do you randomly generate terrain and not have deserts next to swamps? If you think of terrain as fitting into hot-cold and wet-dry continuums, with a chart like this:
You can generate terrain that will always be one step away from the temperature and moisture of the terrain you were in. Imagine a position on the graph which represents the features of the area you are in. Like this:
If you roll a d10, 1-8 will show you what heat and moisture the new area will have. Rolling a 9 or 10 could mean you stay in the same box, or if you wanted to 10 could mean you hop two boxes to indicate a larger shift. But this might just be introducing a difficult visual record keeping in lieu of a hex map. Maybe we could just track it abstractly by using the letter/number code and this little chart:
So, for example, J1 (and clusters of letters/numbers near it) would correspond to tundra and whatever features you pre-define tundra to have.
The second possible way to handle this is to generate features on the fly with some component charts. For example:
Size
If we aren't keeping track of strict units like hexes, we could more loosely determine the size of the piece of land we are in, like this:
Keeping Track of Points
But, none of this gets at how you would keep track of points in a pointcrawl without using something like hexpaper. I think the answer is in the connections. This topic made me think of my long time project of trying to randomly generate catacombs with hexes. You can see some examples if you scroll through my hexes label. Doing generating based on connections is easy with hexes because you can roll 1 d6 to tell you how many exits a hex has and 1d6 for each to find the position of that exit. That still requires hex paper for easy record keeping, though.
Some of these combinations of exits have shapes like a "T" or a "K." And that might be a possible approach to keeping track of things. For example: You come to a large forest with several roadways, they take the shape of a "K" and you have entered at the bottom straight leg of the "K." So, just using the letters of the alphabet or the shapes of numbers to evoke connections to new areas might be a way to generate and record connections.
Another idea that comes to mind, is to record the connections in relation to a clock face. Kind of the way fighter pilots talk about incoming bogies. So, for example, You come to a grassy plain with roadways continuing into the distance in the direction of 2 and 10. A d12 would tell you a direction and maybe a d4 or d6 could tell you how many connections.
Distance between Points
Without a regular grid of some sort another issue will be determining which points are farther away than others. Are simple sizes above could help here. If the terrain you're in is huge it could add a certain amount of travel to get to any point. And if you determine the size of the terrain you're moving into it would tell you how much longer until you reached the point of interest.
Encounters and locations I leave for someone else, but hopefully the ideas here will be interesting to folks.
Pseudo-Realistic Terrain
First, how do you randomly generate terrain and not have deserts next to swamps? If you think of terrain as fitting into hot-cold and wet-dry continuums, with a chart like this:
You can generate terrain that will always be one step away from the temperature and moisture of the terrain you were in. Imagine a position on the graph which represents the features of the area you are in. Like this:
 |
| The black square is pretty temperate, roll a 1 and things get colder and dryer |
Roll to check the
next chunk:
- colder / wetter
- colder / dryer
- hotter / wetter
- hotter / dryer
 |
| This graph has the axes opposite of mine |
The second possible way to handle this is to generate features on the fly with some component charts. For example:
Natural Features
Roll for each:
- Elevation
- Vegetation
- Rocks
- Water
- Lack
- Great lack
- Abundance
- Great Abundance
Size
If we aren't keeping track of strict units like hexes, we could more loosely determine the size of the piece of land we are in, like this:
Size
of this chunk of terrain:
- tiny
- small
- big
- huge
Keeping Track of Points
But, none of this gets at how you would keep track of points in a pointcrawl without using something like hexpaper. I think the answer is in the connections. This topic made me think of my long time project of trying to randomly generate catacombs with hexes. You can see some examples if you scroll through my hexes label. Doing generating based on connections is easy with hexes because you can roll 1 d6 to tell you how many exits a hex has and 1d6 for each to find the position of that exit. That still requires hex paper for easy record keeping, though.
Some of these combinations of exits have shapes like a "T" or a "K." And that might be a possible approach to keeping track of things. For example: You come to a large forest with several roadways, they take the shape of a "K" and you have entered at the bottom straight leg of the "K." So, just using the letters of the alphabet or the shapes of numbers to evoke connections to new areas might be a way to generate and record connections.
Another idea that comes to mind, is to record the connections in relation to a clock face. Kind of the way fighter pilots talk about incoming bogies. So, for example, You come to a grassy plain with roadways continuing into the distance in the direction of 2 and 10. A d12 would tell you a direction and maybe a d4 or d6 could tell you how many connections.
Distance between Points
Without a regular grid of some sort another issue will be determining which points are farther away than others. Are simple sizes above could help here. If the terrain you're in is huge it could add a certain amount of travel to get to any point. And if you determine the size of the terrain you're moving into it would tell you how much longer until you reached the point of interest.
Encounters and locations I leave for someone else, but hopefully the ideas here will be interesting to folks.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Lich Paraphernalia
Found on and around powerful users of magic, especially those long dead:
- Parchment Sash - Spells cast near it are captured in writing and can be copied.
- Blood Pearl - If a dead mage's body is rendered-- through a laborious, time consuming process-- one of the spells still uncast upon their death will seed into a red, misshapen pearl. Consumption of it will grant knowledge of that spell and allow copying or casting.
- Flesh Forks - Tuning forks of different sizes, each with a bladed end. They resonate when spells are cast in their presence (fork size corresponding to spell level). If the blade is stabbed into a wizard's neck, the vibrations will transfer understanding and allow casting that spell once.
- Jade Worm - Placed deep in the ear, it whispers a list of the spells present in the minds of any magic users nearby.
- Milky Orbs - Varying in diameter and fragility, they shatter when a particular spell is cast within a particular radius.
- Slow Lime - Painted on a surface, this greyish paste stays damp for months. Any spells cast near the lime will leave tracks and patinas in colors that can be read like a story by a wizard of sufficient level.
Friday, October 17, 2014
4 XP Monsters
Trying to think of monsters that treat xp as an attack vector for players. Wights are the traditional monster for this but I was interested in giving players a warning-- like losing small bits of xp over time to freak them out, rather than screwing them over quickly to just make them afraid of wights in future encounters.
Wight Flies - Tiny, moisture seeking-- they suck away memories as they drink from eyes, wounds, or open mouths (1xp per round per fly, DM's prerogative on how many hundreds appear at any location). They leave fragile, ivory-like structures in corpses. If eaten, these will grant the memories of past victims (100 xp per handful).
Grey Mold - Fine, sickly grey, it can grow anywhere-- on men, dragons, liches-- and is difficult to get rid of. Anything in its presence is filled with a hollow sense of despair (lose 10xp per round x your level). If you are hit by something infected by it you will likely be infected too (make a save).
Pot Boy - A thin, sickly looking boy clutching a small crockery. The pot is covered in a filthy bit of rag. If you see it (fail a save) you will no longer gain experience until something is done. Telling someone about it will spread the problem to them (if they make a save they don't see it). Legend tells of whole cities in the dull thrall of a single pot boy-- learning nothing, forgetting, merely existing.
The Gentle Double - A doppelganger that asks permission. If you say yes and allow it to take your form, you receive a portion of the memories and experiences of it's current form (500xp x your level). It then precedes you in cities and rural areas spreading good will and promises of aid. Also called a Vardøger. Scholars are divided on whether it is a truly good creature-- pressuring you to do good with its promises, or a chaotic one-- making promises that it never expects to be kept.
-----------
The last is not attacking xp, but using it as a reward to give players an interesting choice.
Wight Flies - Tiny, moisture seeking-- they suck away memories as they drink from eyes, wounds, or open mouths (1xp per round per fly, DM's prerogative on how many hundreds appear at any location). They leave fragile, ivory-like structures in corpses. If eaten, these will grant the memories of past victims (100 xp per handful).
Grey Mold - Fine, sickly grey, it can grow anywhere-- on men, dragons, liches-- and is difficult to get rid of. Anything in its presence is filled with a hollow sense of despair (lose 10xp per round x your level). If you are hit by something infected by it you will likely be infected too (make a save).
Pot Boy - A thin, sickly looking boy clutching a small crockery. The pot is covered in a filthy bit of rag. If you see it (fail a save) you will no longer gain experience until something is done. Telling someone about it will spread the problem to them (if they make a save they don't see it). Legend tells of whole cities in the dull thrall of a single pot boy-- learning nothing, forgetting, merely existing.
The Gentle Double - A doppelganger that asks permission. If you say yes and allow it to take your form, you receive a portion of the memories and experiences of it's current form (500xp x your level). It then precedes you in cities and rural areas spreading good will and promises of aid. Also called a Vardøger. Scholars are divided on whether it is a truly good creature-- pressuring you to do good with its promises, or a chaotic one-- making promises that it never expects to be kept.
-----------
The last is not attacking xp, but using it as a reward to give players an interesting choice.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Imagining a City
As you learn to DM there seems to be several stages you go through. First, you master the enclosed space of a dungeon. Then you have to figure out how to handle a bigger "wilderness" area, whether it's underground or a true wilderness. And, at some point, you need to figure out how to deal with the "City."
If you've followed my blog you've seen my long process of learning those first two. Recently I've been struggling with the City.
I was born in a suburb 45 minutes north of LA. So when I think of a city I think mostly of freeways and off ramps. It's hard for me to envision even a pseudo-medieval city.
Nidus
My first city when I started gaming a again was Nidus, the Shifting City. The premise was that this chaotic place had stalls and shops that moved every week if not every day. There was no map. There was no ruler. It was me trying to have the conveniences of a city for my players without having to deal with the difficulties of mapping and then peopling a place with tens of thousands of inhabitants. And it worked pretty well. Players had their own reason to go there - buying and selling stuff- and I had a very big "encounter" table that they rolled on each time they ventured into the city. The encounters weren't dangers or adventure hooks, just interesting stuff you saw. And yet, there was nothing to keep players from making them into dangers or adventures.
I can't make every city a chaotic, bazaar, though. So, when faced with my players visiting a city recently, I was stumped at how to proceed.
The Problem with Cities
One problem with cities is that the assumption seems to be that players will get entangled in various plots and intrigues. But unless players are really high level this is very unlikely to me. It's as if I were to drive into LA and all of a sudden the mayor is asking me favors.
Another problem is that cities are busy places with lots of factions and lots of plots and events going on. But how do you get players involved without railroading them.
A third problem is that, more than any dungeon, cities are about sights, sounds, and bustling scenes. And conveying that kind of sensory stuff through description is always difficult especially if you are trying to do it off the cuff.
So I guess, if you were to boil it down the two big ways I needed, and still need, help with DMing a city are 1) how to make it about more than a place for players to shop (without making the players seem unrealistically like rockstars with all the attention on them) and 2) how to make it feel like a busy, bustling, populated place.
To do this, I think I can take some cues from what I've already learned about sandboxes, some cues from how video games handle cities, and add in some things that are unique about cities.
Locations
So, like sandboxes I think there should be locations that players know about and can visit or not. You can prepare subsytems ahead of time and these locales will always be available to be looped into some plot or happening going on in the city. Here are some ideas of some I want to make for my current city:
Events
This idea comes from Jeff Rients' awesome, crazy, parade. If I can come up with more events, these can be like temporary locations-- things going on in the city that everyone is talking about and that players of any level can get involved but don't have to. If they don't get involved they can still affect the whole city going on in the background kind of like a sandbox "happening."
This is probably obvious to you, but a city only exists through it's encounters. The size of it, the tone of it, the flavor of life in that place will mostly be conveyed by things players encounter on the streets. I should have known this from my great experience with the Nidus encounters. But for some reason I thought I was only using those because I didn't have Nidus fleshed out in a way that a normal DM would flesh out a city. So, these encounters are not encounters in the traditional rpg sense that they are dangers that will spark a combat. And they are not encounters in the traditional (if infrequent) video game sense that they are waiting to give you an adventure hook. These are just groups and clumps of people- buskers, locals, pilgrims, delivery wagons-- that will be the city to you players. I need to make one for my current city.
As I get time I hope to flesh out these locations and events in separate blog posts.
If you've followed my blog you've seen my long process of learning those first two. Recently I've been struggling with the City.
I was born in a suburb 45 minutes north of LA. So when I think of a city I think mostly of freeways and off ramps. It's hard for me to envision even a pseudo-medieval city.
Nidus
My first city when I started gaming a again was Nidus, the Shifting City. The premise was that this chaotic place had stalls and shops that moved every week if not every day. There was no map. There was no ruler. It was me trying to have the conveniences of a city for my players without having to deal with the difficulties of mapping and then peopling a place with tens of thousands of inhabitants. And it worked pretty well. Players had their own reason to go there - buying and selling stuff- and I had a very big "encounter" table that they rolled on each time they ventured into the city. The encounters weren't dangers or adventure hooks, just interesting stuff you saw. And yet, there was nothing to keep players from making them into dangers or adventures.
I can't make every city a chaotic, bazaar, though. So, when faced with my players visiting a city recently, I was stumped at how to proceed.
The Problem with Cities
One problem with cities is that the assumption seems to be that players will get entangled in various plots and intrigues. But unless players are really high level this is very unlikely to me. It's as if I were to drive into LA and all of a sudden the mayor is asking me favors.
Another problem is that cities are busy places with lots of factions and lots of plots and events going on. But how do you get players involved without railroading them.
A third problem is that, more than any dungeon, cities are about sights, sounds, and bustling scenes. And conveying that kind of sensory stuff through description is always difficult especially if you are trying to do it off the cuff.
So I guess, if you were to boil it down the two big ways I needed, and still need, help with DMing a city are 1) how to make it about more than a place for players to shop (without making the players seem unrealistically like rockstars with all the attention on them) and 2) how to make it feel like a busy, bustling, populated place.
To do this, I think I can take some cues from what I've already learned about sandboxes, some cues from how video games handle cities, and add in some things that are unique about cities.
Locations
So, like sandboxes I think there should be locations that players know about and can visit or not. You can prepare subsytems ahead of time and these locales will always be available to be looped into some plot or happening going on in the city. Here are some ideas of some I want to make for my current city:
- Great Library
- Mysterious Oracle
- Guild Work Board - jobs they can take or leave, I can have mini-dungeons attached to these.
- Arena - Maybe not the typical arena, which is very swords and sorcery, but some place where players know they can go to compete. The possibility of competing as a group would be even better.
Events
This idea comes from Jeff Rients' awesome, crazy, parade. If I can come up with more events, these can be like temporary locations-- things going on in the city that everyone is talking about and that players of any level can get involved but don't have to. If they don't get involved they can still affect the whole city going on in the background kind of like a sandbox "happening."
- Auction - I did this already and it was fun and a great way to introduce powerful faction members.
- Trial- there is about to be a big, show trial in which several blag dogs are tried for witchcraft.
- Parade - I have an impending parade of religious barges on the river that runs through the city called the Regatta Gloriosa.
- Wedding
This is probably obvious to you, but a city only exists through it's encounters. The size of it, the tone of it, the flavor of life in that place will mostly be conveyed by things players encounter on the streets. I should have known this from my great experience with the Nidus encounters. But for some reason I thought I was only using those because I didn't have Nidus fleshed out in a way that a normal DM would flesh out a city. So, these encounters are not encounters in the traditional rpg sense that they are dangers that will spark a combat. And they are not encounters in the traditional (if infrequent) video game sense that they are waiting to give you an adventure hook. These are just groups and clumps of people- buskers, locals, pilgrims, delivery wagons-- that will be the city to you players. I need to make one for my current city.
As I get time I hope to flesh out these locations and events in separate blog posts.
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