Dicey wildcards. tabletop game players and makers

[Sorontar]

It will certainly be interesting how much long term damage this does to Hasbro's image, given the popularity of D&D and the Magic the Gathering competitive card game. While Hasbro hasn't actually done anything yet, they have made so many mistakes in what they have said they will do. Paizo and its Pathfinder (v2) system is its main rival (but is nowhere as powerful) but there a number of alternative systems. The problem is that systems like Blades in the Dark or World of Darkness are popular, but niche-based. DnD and the elements covered by the Open Gaming Licences 1.0 and 1.0a are usable in a broad range of games, including modern and science-fiction-based scenarios. There needs to be broad alternative systems (like GURPS) that gain popularity and strength under a license like that proposed for ORC.

I have just been looking at the GURPS rules for Bunnies and Burrows, a gaming concept from the 1970s that works on the themes of intelligent rabbits from Watership Down etc (rabbits that can do Bun-fu anyone?). There have been attempts over the years to develop games that have characters playing animals, but they tend to either be specific to a campaign setting (like Mouse Guard) or a novel/series (Redwall), only use European or North American animals, and automatically assign animals to good or evil baskets (cf. Wind in the Willows and Redwall considering Badgers as goodies and weasels as baddies). A better system needs to be able to expand beyond this. It also needs to decide whether the animals are humanoids (and wear clothes and use tools) or just beasts (and thus will only have natural weapons).

Sorontar

[RJBowman]

The root explanation for what's happening at Hasbro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uog-f-YAt6k&ab_channel=RollForCombat

It seems that one of the largest toy companies in the world, established over a century ago, which makes all the Star Wars and Marvel toys, and all the Nerf Guns, and most of the board games you can name, is getting more than half it's profits from the little tabletop gaming company that they bought 20 years ago.

And this was just brought to the attention of the stockholders, who now want to know why Hasbro can't squeeze some more cash out of it's biggest division...

...which is like demanding that Coco Cola sell more soda.

[Sorontar]

The problem is that they have realised that most of the WOTC DnD products aren't useful for all players. While the core books are needed by players, the adventures and expansion tools are only used by the Dungeon Masters. The related products that players do use are Virtual Tabletop tools (VTT), like online gaming tools that help people play the game, and Hasbro/WOTC doesn't really make those. Therefore, they want to have greater control over what DnD-related products other companies can make and what Hasbro can monopolise. They want to make everyone rely on the Hasbro attempts at VTT systems, so they can charge players for subscription and DLC (downloadable content). Therefore, they want to change the "open gaming license" they associate with DnD elements to make it less open. Legally, it might be possible to change the license for all future DnD products, but legally it is ambiguous what in fact they can restrict beyond copyrighted publications and trademarked terms. There are legal experts who challenge whether they can in fact restrict other companies copying how DnD works in their own gaming systems, or publishing products that are "compatible" with the DnD system.

Sorontar

[rovingjack]

they tried all this before. 4e was an edition they wanted to incorporate more digital integration for, they built a different lisc for it called the GSL, it was pretty draconian. And nobody used the GSL the game got little to no traction amongst players. And a company that used to publish content with WotC was essentially terminated... that company went to the OGL that existed in the background and reworked the game system that WotC had abandoned for their new 4e. That became Pathfinder, and during the few years that 4e existed Pathfinder took the throne from D&D. D&D tried to get back in the lead, but ultimately had to abandon 4e as a system, and created 5e. In the creation of 5e, they not only went back to a game model that wasn't as video-gamey, they reentered the OGL arena and even contracted with 3rd party publishers to provide the first adventures and setting books for them. They had to rebuild their brand, and the community good will.

They've had an absolute boom since then thanks to the fosterinng of a great ecosystem for tabletop RPGs, but they still don't understand it as a game system, ecosystem or community. Some data suggests that WotC amounts to about 70% of hasbros asset value. The rest of the company isn't pulling the weight that D&D is, and in typical corpo thought process, they see money coming in at one place and start drilling there to try and strip mine the site.

They're about to learn this lesson all over again. As the community will be relocating to avoid the companys grasping hands. Only this time I'm starting to think they won't be able to pull a reversal with a 7e because the company has attacked the community twice now and inbetween attacks they apologise and try to mullify, once is a mistake, what we're starting to recognize is a pattern.

And the thing that more people are becoming aware of, we don't need them. Their OGL didn't give us anything we didn't already have in some degree. Basically you can't copyright methods and mechanics, or ideas and themes. So a fantasy adventure tabletop story telling game can be made without their permission and is legally safe. And the game can have hit points and str, dex, con, wis, int, and char. you can have bards and rangers and druids and clerics. Goblins and Orc, and Halflings, elves and dwarves. Dungeons and wizards and magic weapons. and you don't even have to obfuscate any of that through name changes or using a thesaurus.

None of that needs the OGL. Literally the US copyright law says all that is free to use. You only start to enter the grey area when you start to question where mechanics end and story begins. does a halflings luck feature in game qualify as mechanic or worldbuilding lore?

Those grey areas likely fall in the realm of ideas and concepts that are not protected by copyright. but the question is still there enough that it may have to be proven in court. Which Hasbro can afford, and most small creators and publishers can't (especially if hasbro lawyers purposely drag things out to take as much time during which the other party can't make any money from their creations while racking up legal costs).

That was the only thing the OGL really granted, in exchange for agreeing to some additional restrictions than what the law says we really are bound to abide by, they wouldn't sue anyone using the OGL. But now they are saying they won't abide by any of those agreements anymore, and their current proposed agreements are so predatory as to drive as many people out of the arena as possible. While preventing anyone from continuing to use the agreements that were built as perpetual agreements in place on which the foundations of many a small game company built their games and system (most don't even need to use the OGL, but did so in order to make their own content open and because they had been assured it would always be there, and it meant that WotC wouldn't target you as competition. It was a sort of declaration of allies). But we see now that that promise isn't one they will abide by, and so there is no insentive to agree to use it, and we move back into a territory of US copyright is what people will build on now. And maybe an increasingly desperate Hasbro will try taking swings at a few big names out there, and even bury one or two in legal costs, but it won't be as easy as they think, in part because many of these smaller guys are backing each other up now.

[rovingjack]

I'm not sure how it happened but it looks like somebody with some sense realized that this thing that was doing better than ever, and supporting a majority of it's parent company, had been mortally wounded and in a desperate attempt to stop it's death, they walked away from their aim to deauthorize the 1.0a OGL. But further, they are putting the 5.1 SRD for 5e D&D into Creative Commons (CC-BY-40). Because I think they know that we will no longer trust what they say after one of their latest attempts promised something using a word that people said they wanted, but the redefined the word to not actually follow what people wanted.

It really feels like there are two factions within the company, and some among one faction isn't pleased with the others self destruct taking everything with it.

Some of this is likely looking at the D&D beyond unsubscriptions (literal 10s of 1000s of subs, to the tune of millions walked away from them) and they got scared about what it's going to mean for book, digital content, merch and movie purchases in their recent venture to expand the brand beyond just game material.

It allows some smaller creators and publishers to not have to worry that they are being forced out of business now, but I suspect it to late for D&D as a brand. They drove people away, and past that they really came across as an abusive ex- with a lot of 'baby I didn't mean it, it was just a draft' on things that they were strong arming people to sign before a deadline, and 'we were just looking for feedback' on things we would have never seen if they hadn't been leaked. We rightfully don't trust them anymore, and we will be skeptical of anything going forward, and that is not a good foundation for anyone to build upon. So those that started putting work into shifting away from WotC will continue to do so, and D&Ds hold on the lead spot in the TTRPG sphere will wither now due WotCs own actions.

Pathfinder managed to sell 8 months worth of books in a few weeks. Kobold press is starting playtests of project Black Flag, and the ORC Lisc. has already seen hundreds of big TTRPG publishers getting on board. With many also having installed their own open gaming lisc in their own games, like Cypher and Mork Borg.

It will be interesting to see what results from all of this.

[Sorontar]

The big problem is still that WOTC/Hasbro hasn't made any commitment towards what it will do with future versions of DnD (ie. OneDnD/6e). In contrast, Paizo et al has promised to start using the as-yet-unseen ORC licence. It might just be words but it is more than Wizards has done.

It will be interesting what people do now that terms like Strahd are in Creative Commons, even if it has no real definition (because images and character definitions are not in the document). Strahd's Spicy Sauce anyone? Strahd's Sweets - once you start, you will always want more?

Sorontar

[von Corax]

Coverage of this issue continues in Hackaday.

[rovingjack]

I've dabbled a bit with AI in the area of D&D uses. I've dabbled with Midjourney, Bluewillow, dreamlike, chatGPT, and bothe sound draw and mubert for music generation.

So far I can't say the music generation has created anything useful for gaming, but it's hard to say because it's easy to end up using the free trial, just figuring out the systems.

Chat GPT I've only really managed to try NPC creation, for it to then ask me to create the character (race, class, level, background and personality notes) and it then made a more prose write up for the character.  But there is an interesting twist I'll get to in a minute...

Art creation is a bit hit or miss sometimes. None of them seem to know what a dragonborn, Kobold, or some of the more unusual beings. monsters are kind of no good either. it just doesn't seem to have the frame of reference for things that are not clearly a human or and animal.

But funnily enough I had chat GPT create a half orc rogue, halfling paladin, gnomish barbarian, even a harpy ranger with her falcon companion, and fed those descriptions into Bluewillow and it made each of them. Blue willow kind of get what a tiefling is and makes a sort f suit of armor 'warforged' when asked. annoyingly you used to see mermaids but internet pervs tried using that to get around nudity restrictions and now you can't use mermaid in your prompts on blue willow. Tried to make a mermaid barbarian on dreamlike... and laughed my butt off as it gave me something that looked like a grizzled and bearded viking upper half with bulging hairy muscles and a pretty fishy tail. Guess in AI context all barbarians are male.

They all pretty much suck at making anything dungeon like... buuut I may have figured out a cheat code. "top down, interior floor plan, pen and ink drafting diagram, of a 8 room office building, all in frame." it never gets the number of rooms right, and sometimes there is a bed with pillows or a garage in the office (you can also replace the word office with other building types, but be aware if you use church or something like that it will instead give you a facade and no floor plan... also it loves the symbol for doors that open it puts them literally everywhere.

[rovingjack]

I have been playing in my setting design. And as part of that I have been making map outlines of the continent for one of my settings. I'd learned about the Game of Diplomacy as a good way to think of Factions and world politics. Thinking that a variant map for Diplomacy set in my setting would help inform the setting a bit, I went looking for inspiration for creating a Diplomacy map variant. I took some inspiration from England and Scotland, Norway and sweden, and Japan. using a fuedal japan diplomacy map that I stretched and deformed to mark the various provinces and territories.

[rovingjack]

former housemate had me over for his 8yr old son to run a game of heroquest for myself and the former housemate. It was my first game of heroquest. it was kind of fun, though more hack and slashy than I usuallly go for in my rpg games. very light on the story elements, and there's a fair bit of the magical hand waving things that don't really make sense for the sake of a fast and simple game.

we talked about homebrew rules and game design strategies while we played, in the spaces where the story would go during another game.

I played a barbarian named Jimbo (after the late former landlord at the place where we were housemates) and the elf which I dubbed Sans Nom when asked what his name was. Housemates wizard died on the steps in the first round. but his dwarf was the only one to survive the whole dungeon and the battle with "big chungus" the fire mage at the end.

It was nice.

[rovingjack]

some of my recent explorations include a random world builder, and more recently a random treasure generation set of table that expand my  tables i used for Advent-your:Person place and magic thing, in December.

the treasure tables include hoard, carried by an enemy, and harvested from beasts. and built some scaling, so that a campaign that runs through all the levels would have a variety of treasure that fits the scale of encounters at certain tiers of play. I will be using it to generate a  sampling of treasures, to go along with NPCs, dungeons and other stuff.

the random map generator is a trickier endevour. but also kinda fun. meant for my 8-bit themed RPG game. I keep making variants to fiddle with and seeing what kind of maps it creates. I'm also working on dungeons and city/town map makers for this. and am very enthusiastic for the idea of being able create whole worlds with continents, cities, dungeons, NPCs. magic items, traps and puzzles. to the point I could maybe just play a game by myself and generate it all randomly.

[rovingjack]

redesigning my treasure tables already.
I like the idea of a 1d4+ your level table. It scales a single randomiser table to follow you through the whole game. So a roll of 2 at first level gets you sample treasure number 3, but that same 2 rolled at level 7, gets you treasure sample 9. I suppose it more a measure of the monster level than the players, so that it's possible for players at higher levels to take side quests of levels beneath them to get treasures that are maybe not at their level but are more assured victories.

I'm still not decided on the hex flower lay outs for my map generators. or best assortment of dungeon rooms for the dungeon generator (might choose hex flower for that too).

[Sorontar]

My party and DM have been discussing alternate crit hit/miss tables and whether the consequences should get more risky as the PC level increases. For instance, a low level character might have a crit miss that slightly injures themself at a prescribed damage (regardless of weapon) or just misses the target. A medium level PC might also have possibility of it damaging themselves according to the damage roll for the weapon, or dropping the weapon 5 foot away. A high level character might also have the possibility of getting full damage from the weapon, or breaking/destroying the weapon. It doesn't mean that the higher level PCs don't have the possibility of having the same result as lower PCs, just that the range of possibilities increases. Of course higher level PCs probably have better weapons as well, so this will mean that there a risk of more damage just from that.

Sorontar

[rovingjack]

My party and DM have been discussing alternate crit hit/miss tables and whether the consequences should get more risky as the PC level increases. For instance, a low level character might have a crit miss that slightly injures themself at a prescribed damage (regardless of weapon) or just misses the target. A medium level PC might also have possibility of it damaging themselves according to the damage roll for the weapon, or dropping the weapon 5 foot away. A high level character might also have the possibility of getting full damage from the weapon, or breaking/destroying the weapon. It doesn't mean that the higher level PCs don't have the possibility of having the same result as lower PCs, just that the range of possibilities increases. Of course higher level PCs probably have better weapons as well, so this will mean that there a risk of more damage just from that.

Sorontar

I'd rate low level crit fail as giving an opponent advantage until your next turn, like you've left yourself open. tier 2 crit fails might be giving any opponent a sneak attack against you. tier 3 crit fail could be an entrapped weapon or disarmed with the condition restrained, and tier 4 could be broken weapon with taking some damage from the break.

just my thought on what makes the most sense to me. it seems like a low level could leave themselves open by over extending a swing, while slightly better might not over extend as bad but could still expose a vulnerable spot to an attack, while even better could not over extend or open vulnerabilities but might lodge their weapon in a pillar or get disarmed by an enemy, and a pro might just snap their weapon and sprain a hand or take splinters or peices coing off the weapon back at them to get small injuries and being left with either a broken improvised weapon left (club for wooden handle, knife/shiv for bladed wepons etc) or unarmed.

finished my coins treasure random table. the resulting coins in lair treasure are a bit less volatile in their variance but also don't have as high highs. so it should be similar to if not a little less generous than 5e standards, hopefully reducing the gold bloat higher levels can suffer from.

Also amused myself when figuring out 100cp = 10sp = 1gp fits well enough with the us penny, dime and dollar coins (dollar coins are also gold colored here. PP would be a $10 coin. And further play shows me that in 1974 when D&D came out $1 would be eqivalent to $6.15 in todays money. So using that as a formula the D&D beyond equip. list says a battle axe is 10gp. or $61.50 today.

A quick look to see buying prices for Battle axes on Amazon.com Shows cheapo mall ninja (goblin grade) battle axes Start around $40 and go up to $130, soo $60 is kinda about right. Which suggests that we can use Amazon to price items for our D&D games. and the buy used option could tell us what a shop owner might pay a player for their used items. lol.

Amazon middle range prices/ 6 = GP cost for item

[rovingjack]

now have a completely custom treasure hoard generation system. 4 tables (2-24, roll 1d4+level). Coins, Gems and jewelry, art objects, and mundane and magic items. the 1d4+lvl mechanic lets a single table scale up with players as the advance.

I'm thinking of making a milestone variant for level ups. Where I distribute 54 treasure hoards over 20 levels, you have to deal go through that many lair encounters to advance to the next level.
(something like 1,1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4)

I've got npc random generators for standard D&D, dark sun and ravenloft (though I could use some more gothic horror fantasy races to that one)

I'm a bit behind on my dungeon 23 variants:
started on new year-
a dungeon/lair a day for the year.
a 7 hex flower a day for a year.
a city section of my settings capital a day for a year
started on chinese new year-
a trap a day
a NPC a day
a treasure a day
a reworked spell a day

a quest a week
a puzzle a week
a domain of dread a week

[rovingjack]

I've really gotten into making generator table sets.

I have ones for:
NPCs
treasures
magic items
traps
puzzles
quests
locations

and I've got a few map generation methods from small building/lairs all the way through dozens of rooms, continents, and travel routes.

I'm now sorting things into groupings based on week days:

Dark Sunday: where the dungeon, NPC, magic item, and a trap are designed for the dark sun setting
Mondays: generic fantasy NPC, Trap, Treasure, Quest and dungeon
Tuesday: generic fantasy NPC, trap, dungeon, and artifact
Wednesday: a Ravenloft  domain, NPC, trap, dungeon, magic item (wednesdays child is full of woe).
Thursday: generic fantasy NPC, trap, dungeon, and artifact
Friday:  generic fantasy NPC, trap, dungeon, treasure, and a puzzle
and on Saturday: an NPC, trap, dungeon, magic item, for my homebrew setting of Avarrah (lands of the first mothers).

I'm debating if I will make puzzles and quests generic, or if I will cycle through the 3 settings and a generic fantasy.

I also fought the urge to use settings for every day. I was thinking of star wars 5e conversion, cyberpunk 5e conversion, Eberron,and maybe dragonlance. in part because it restricts the usefulness to those settings instead of providing generically useful things that people can use.

by the end of this project I should have 50+ domains of dread, 50+ puzzles, 50+ quests, 50+ NPCs (and magic items) for each of the 3 settings, 65+ cities, 100+ artifacts, 200+ generic NPCs, 300+ dungeons, 365+ traps, and two campaign progressions of lair treasures (over 100 treasures generated)

I feel like that would be a great collection of books I could make available for either sale or as a subscription through patreon or something.

next year I might do domains of delight, monster a day, maybe swap dark sun and ravenloft for star wars and cyberpunk, and maybe some subsettings within my homebrew multiverse Avarrah setting.

[rovingjack]

I think i've decided on doing 1 week of daily video posts with the days creations all together. followed by the dark sunday, woeful wednesday and saturday for my homebrew setting for the rest of the month videos 3 times a week.  We'll see if I continue the videos after that, I might do blogs posts with more the Dark Sun and Ravenloft themed stuff each week going forward. While maybe doing my own setting as weekly videos. and shift over to the more generic fantasy contents to collections that can be either patreon monthly content or downloadable or even maybe print on demand content for sale online.

There's a bit of play that's needed to be done around making content for Copyright works. I think with the Dark Sun themed stuff it's much more difficult for me to make a knock off generic version of it that I could get away with selling my stuff for, while still sharing my love for the setting.

the Ravenloft Domains of dread however if literally just small regions of horror themed fantasy settings with Villains as sorts of Roman Lares who are so inextricably bound to their territory that to some degree they effect the environment similar to some of the lore of how dragons can influence the lands of their territory. I can see ways to do this that are distinct from Domains of dread style (I'm thinking that the equivalent of the raven queen is at the heart of the realm, and Ravens like Huginn and Muninn help inform the idea of the realm being where the memory of a being persists after all those who experienced them are gone. And that opens the door for realms not solely based in dread and woe but also delight and wonder to fall within the Raven Queens domains).

Next years content ideas might have to change, I still kind of want to play with the creation of Avarrah content and would like to have a supply of domains of delight to match the dread.

oh, almost forgot, I was thinking of doing a monster a day next year too. for fantasy. So maybe shelf the Scifi until the year after. Doing monsters instead of npcs, Domains of delight instead of dread, more exploration of my setting of Avarrah, and only changing up the Dark Sun setting for another... maybe trade in the trap a day for daily spells. The puzzle and quest each week could be swapped out for other types of content too.

I can postone the Sci-fi content for the next year, when I can do cyberpunk on mondays for cyber mondays, a custom sci-fi setting, and star-wars content, with the surrounding days being generic sci-fi content. with npcs, traps, quests, puzzles, treasures and devices to go along with the 'dungeons', hex maps, and cities. and maybe the year after that doing sci-fi monsters/enemies, and a variation on sci-fi magic, and whatever I slot in for 24 puzzles and quests replacement.

[rovingjack]

some of my favorites I've recorded in videos already:


characters-
Captain Maggie Hale, a yoewoman whose life course was changed one day when complaining to the gods about the rich trading company profiting off of the poor peasants of the region, she was overheard by a wealthy man who sought to impress her by buying her a drink and telling tales of places he sailed to back in his sailing days before earning his wealth and position managing a trade company base. What she really learned was how to steal the man's ship from where he'd retired it. And so began her legend of robbing from the rich and giving to the peasants, assembling a crew of characters, and ultimately thwarting the cruel trading company barons and seeing the return of the government for the people, not the companies... and being charged with a series of labors to earn a pardon for her outlaw ways..

Dray(magically created dragon people) knight, Vahdryn a dray of the first generation whose limping gait and right arm with fused joints doomed him to never sever in the forces of Dregoth, belittled and abused by the Dray of the second generation who he labored for as drudge and slave. When caught behind enemy lines with a few survivors of a Dray unit, they granted him a knighting into a full member of the unit to take up the duty of lost members. A charge he takes very seriously and is deeply committed to like 99 from clone wars, only his unit is the one that goes rogue against dregoths madness, for him to serve noble heroic causes and give a chance to those treated as drudges and slaves.

Davon Baysup, A fisherman run aground in a fog only to find themselves nowhere near the waters

Kraylor, a Dusk elf. A legend is told in many of the domains of dread about an elf who can travel between domains, due to an assortment of trinkets that serve as 'keys' to other realms. He takes great joy in raiding, vandalizing and otherwise disrupting the plans and systems of power in the various domains he has access to. He can sometimes be found at taverns belting out drinking songs and recounting his actions against various lords and ladies.

domains of dread-
Lord Callistor Tyrsgrod, obsessed with a woman who rejected him, killed her and threw her body over the cliffs into the lake beneath his manor. Unwilling to accept he couldn't have her, he worked a ritual to recreate her. He's convinced he will have her as his.Finding versions of her from the town on the other side of the lake to abduct, determined to have her for himself. Ultimately killing them when they fight or try and escape, and casting their bodies into the lake that is the only source of water for the town. The bodies of the victims spread the curse that recreates her through the water and crops irrigated with it, so that those who drink or eat in this realm change slightly each meal. (Like eating fey or hades food, consuming uncursed food and water for long enough will gradually reverse the transformation).the people born in the realm all look like the same woman, using hair style, makeup, and clothing to distinguish themselves. People who come to the realm from somewhere else may be at various degrees of being transformed.
Men trapped in this realm in particular have been known to nearly starve themselves, try stealing from new arrivals, try buying food from outside from Vistani, and risk hunting and gathering from the woods above the lake. Food and water from the forest above the lake does not contain the curse, but require venturing close to the Lords Manor and risk encountering the lord and being abducted.
To defeat him, contaminate his food supply and have him transform into the woman and fall prey to his own mindless minion used for capturing her or fleeing into the dark when attacked and being herded over the cliff.

Mesozoa valley, A giant crater with concentric rings of land and inland sea with a temple palace at the heart of it. The Temple is the home to the Dark Lady Ichtisa an evolved Saurianoid who survived the end of saurian dominance in the world by the misfortune of having been petrified by a proto-basilisk and was disgusted by the rise of the filthy mammals, she sought to bring back the saurians with magic and half succeeded, the creatures created were not feathered and were more primitive than her own people where. She sent the carnivorous saurians to committed genocide against the mammals and takes her anger out on the dinos for not meeting her standards. She uses ancient artifacts and arcane powers the world has not seen in ages to subjugate the Dino people and eliminate any mammals that appear in her realm. The Dinos resemble lumbering reptiles. Though they have developed a human level intelligence they are not humanoid in form. They have learned some of the dark ladies secrets and can tap into ancient artifacts and arcane secrets to help a secret resistance in overthrowing the tyrant Queen. the most common arcane secret they have given to each member of the resistance is the ability to summon familiars through the mists into their realm, often taking the form of humanoid adventurers. (planet of the apes/ dinotopia/ gullivers horses)

artifacts-
A medium shallow chest that is unlocked, inside the chest are three keys of different styles, if one of the keys is put into the chest lock and turned the chest opens to a chest filled with other things that contain more than the chest should be able to hold. To get the empty chest with extra keys back you have to close and lock the chest with the key again. Each key opens another chest with other contents. More chests can be added by having a new chest crafted with a lock and key in a similar size to the existing lock and keys. The key for the new chest must be placed inside the artifact chest when it is locked and a different chest is opened. Once they are linked the new chest can be left behind and be accessed from anywhere with the artifact. Chests in other locations cannot be open on both sides at once. So to prevent the artifact opening a linked chest it can be left open, likewise the artifact can prevent another chest linked to it from being opened by having the artifact linked to it and open.

Cloak of winter - A hooded cloak of blue and white silk that is warm in the coldest weather but twice a long rest it can coat the user's skin in protective ice (Stoneskin spell) and does 1d4 frost damage to people who touch the wearer while the hood is pulled up..

[rovingjack]

For the latter part of octoberween I might try a solo playthrough of De Profundis, and if I can figure it out a solo playthrough of 10 candles. the first is eldritch horror inspired epistolary Role Play. the latter is a tragic horror that you start playing with the knowledge that the characters don't survive the game.

but I was also reminded today that the end of Dungeon 23 is nigh, And that some might be doing Dungeon 24, this coming year.

I think for certain I will be doing Monster24, Spell24, Wonderlands24,and what I'm calling map24.

I may also try subclass and pc race/lineage options on a weekly basis.

basically a monster a day, a spell a day, and a map a day.
While 2023 has been one page dungeons each day, and then world hex mapping 7 hexes a day, and then 1 part out of 365 of my settings capital city each day;

Map24 will be expanding my world of Avarrah start the month with a continent map, and then city maps for the first week give or take a few days, then dungeon and encounter maps for the continent for a week or two, then world maps for worlds connected to those for the following month (Urta, Mira, Olien, Cirra, Folya, Vola).

I'm also speculating on maybe doing a fantasy faith project where each month is creating a faith or pantheon for a fantasy world or group. I'm not sure if that will be 12 different worlds worth of cosmology or if I'll do some as regional and cultural/racial variants (like norse, egyptian and aztec are from the same world but different pantheons). My Avarrah setting handles the topic very differently and thus doesn't fit the project which is fine, since half the fun is making something new.

and along those lines I'm also debating doing a whole worldbuilding24 project too. making a world each month, with creation story, higher powers/faith, word maps (perhaps even solar systems), history, races, magic/tech, etc.

and ideally this will be a bit less of a load to work on, allowing me to do a second pass over this years things. Turning the 54 domains of dread into something like a zine series, artifacts and magic items as cards, etc.

[von Corax]

... allowing me to do a second pass over this years things. Turning the 54 domains of dread into something like a zine series, artifacts and magic items as cards, etc.

Once you have something you feel is publishable, you might consider putting it somewhere on the wiki.

[rovingjack]

I've had a lot of fun making random generation tables often on a whim. A friend wanted to get together to draw monsters in the park before halloween, in an hour or so I made a set of tables for each of the dice in a D&D set (7 dice d4-d20) that creates prompts for monsters. generating things like: winged, mechanical, leafy, humanoid, camoflaged, fantasy, spirit... which I interpret as: little fairy dolls made of sticks and leaves, that blend with the foliage, and are animated by the spirits of lost children.

and since it's nanowrimo, I built a story idea generator. all d8 tables for some reason, just worked that way. getting results like:  horror, cosmic horror, vengance; in a world of famine/pestilence, the street urchin protagonist changes the status quo, by stealing or free something or some one, to kill, but can the overcome a lack of needed resources or item, opposing them through pestilence, and the twist or setback is failure of some kind... which I turned into a street urchin, in a world of famine sets out to free the chosen one predicted to kill the thing from beyond the stars destroying the food and water supply, making the quest through wasteland the urchin forges through without enough supplies for them both to make it back planning to pay the price to release the chosen one to enact vengance ... only to find the chosen one was already killed. But the urchin came all that way and tries and changes the status quo in a last desperate attempt at vengence.

[rovingjack]

I rolled on the generator to create my story idea for Nanowrimo. my results:
Dual Genre of Wuxia fantasy and Steampunk adventure
Puzzle story type.
In a world of ordinary chinese fantasy setting,
a culture war is brewing.
A young noble, must assemble a group of extrodinary individuals from around the kingdom to weaken the forces of change and confront the mysterious leader of this new way, who behind their mask and humanoid shape is a constructed creature with hooves and scales amongst it's mechanical parts. This leader imprisons and captures anyone that the hero may use to overcome them, and is disruptive to the old ways with it's new technology... but the hero may find along his journey that their opponent might be evil and doing bad things but their cause isn't wrong.

[rovingjack]

spent some time modifying the D&D monster types and damage types, so that they correspond with cold type monsters doing having cold resistance and possibly doing cold damage. this allows for making a pokemon style grid of resistance, immunity, and super effective. then charted a preliminary grid for types.

The types are:
Fel (fiend)
Celestial
cold
lightning
fire
air
earth
water
acid
poison
verdant (plant)
necro (undead)
psychic

fey, dragons, giants etc are descriptors but don't need to be creature types distinct from humanoid or animal or monstrosity (which themselves are all more or less the same thing, and are the base standard against which others are gauged), they can be modified by adding a type: frost giant, fire dragon, forest elf, zombie humanoid etc.
likewise your magic weapons can do fire or celestial damage, or a spell can do acid damage or earth damage.

it let's us know that a wizard casting fire spells at a water type will result in a less effective attack.

I then used these changes to update my monster generator, so that I could have a practice run at monster creating, first as part of an advent calendar style event in december again this year, and then as a daily generation for 2024.

I'm debating whether I should do 3 options this year like last years NPC, Location, and Magic item (person place or thing) options to randomly generate, or if Monsters and Spells are good enough.

also trying to decide on the name of a project where I write a page asking for the person to write down:
a couple dangers (traps, monsters, cave ins, etc), something to solve (puzzle, riddle, secret door etc), and opponents, and boss. As well as the faction name and goals and the reward for beating them. once you use the ones from your groups game, randomly roll each or some of them or come up with your own... you turn the page and read the description of the one page dungeon with rooms 3 and 7 being the dangers, room 5 being the riddle locked door, and the Name of the dungeon and boss monster and his forces guarding the item you seek.

It's Mad-libs but for one page dungeons. I was thinking Map-Libs, but Mad libs is already a twist on Ad-lib, and a twist on a twist gets a bit twisted.

This style allows for reuse of a dungeon that will become an entirely different dungeon each time you answer the questions or random generate responses.

[rovingjack]

don't know how I missed it, but in planning out more game creation challenges I was thinking of creating a game world a month in 2024 but I couldn't think of a catchy name. (also felt like a setting a month was lowballing for an easy victory).

It dawned on me about an hour ago as I told myself I should be going to bed. If you make 2 worlds a month for a year you would get 24 worlds in 2024. And can call it 24 worlds.

[rovingjack]

Adding 12 days of Questmas to my hobby challenges.

Anyone wanna have a bit of fun? Wanna try a 12 days of questmas challenge?
1 a one parchment city (a 1 page city)
2 magic spells (2 new spells)
3 setting maps (cast your dice or rice on a page and make some overland maps)
4 calling quests (quest hooks)
5 magic things (magic items)
6 npcs
7 traps a-tripping (make some traps)
8 monsters wandering (create some new monster descriptions)
9 treasures gleaming (random generation of treasures)
10 dungeons delving (simple one page dungeons)
11 puzzles puzzling (riddles, cyphers, etc)
12 domains delighting/ of dreading (one paragraph pitches for domains of delight or dread)
reskins, random tables and online random generators encouraged.