Random Diversions

Tiddlywiki - Nifty Trick

2012-02-22T11:13:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of Tiddlywiki for GM notes, something I've mentioned of before. I'm currently doing some work for my next Daruna game, and in the process of creating a couple stat blocks for some standard fighter types, discovered this little trick.

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An Author You Should Read

2012-02-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Michael Van Rooy's two novels, An Ordinary Decent Criminal and Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal. If you like books of the action / crime genre, you owe it to yourself to read these two. I picked up the second book at the library on a whim, started reading, and finished it in a day. Then I went back for the other volume and did the same thing with that. Sadly there aren't any further novels forthcoming, since the author died suddenly in 2011.

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Diablo III Beta

2012-02-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

I've been playing around in the beta for about a week now. Here are some thoughts in chronological order, oldest first. I culled these reactions from email messages I sent to friends as I was playing. To anyone that's been following other sources, there are probably not many surprises here. Just the viewpoint of a grumpy old video game player.
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Split Pea Soup

2012-02-01T07:49:00.000-08:00

A quick recipe I threw together this weekend that turned out really well. Split pea soup is usually a love it or hate it kind of thing. I happen to love it. Here you go:
Ingredients

4 strips bacon - diced
2 andouille sausage links - diced
1 medium onion - diced
2 large carrots - diced
1 sweet pepper - diced
2 1/2 - 3 quarts stock
1 lb. dried split peas - cleaned according to package instructions
2 bay leaves
Salt and black pepper to taste

Process

Cook bacon and andouille sausage in a large stock pot over medium high heat, stirring frequently, for about 6-8 minutes.
Add onion and continue cooking and stirring until they become translucent. Bacon should be cooked but not crispy, andouille should be nicely browned.
Add carrots and sweet pepper and cook about one minute.
Add stock and split peas, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to maintain.
Simmer 30-40 minutes until peas are cooked. That's it!

Notes

Total time: about 1 hour.
Tastes great with a good sharp cheese and fresh bread.
Makes about 8 good-sized servings.

I used half ham stock and half vegetable stock when I made this. My Mom gave me a couple quarts of ham stock she made using the bone from our traditional Christmas country style ham. This is effectively delicious salty liquid bacon, so I used a quart of it with a quart of vegetable stock. I added no salt, but about 3/4 tsp. black pepper.

Dice Roller Preview

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick preview of the main screen in the Android dice roller I'm messing about with, showing roll entry and the history of previously processed rolls. This shot was captured from an Android virtual device running on my development PC.

Dice Roller Preview

I still have some work to do, including implementing some additional error checking (allowing d10s to explode on a roll of 3 or higher is bad, m'kay), adding a clear button to reset the entry field, creating a real set of icons, and getting some translations done for the limited number of text messages in the app. Still, not bad for a couple days work in a programming language I don't actually know.

Dice Descriptions

2012-01-25T12:13:00.000-08:00

I've been spending some time programming over the last few days, delving into Android development as a way to teach myself Java. As my first project I'm building a dice roller. Originally I was going to use the same text descriptions for rolls that I use on my web based dice roller, but after implementing them I decided I could do better. I'm trying to cover as many rolling mechanics as possible, so I thought I would throw out the roll definitions here and see what other folks thought.

Traditional dice: XdY
Roll X dice with Y sides, sum their values. Y can also be F, indicating Fudge dice, or %, shorthand for d100.

Dice pool: XpY
Roll X dice with Y sides, treating each die as an individual result. As with traditional dice, Y can be F or %.

Modifiers
These can be appended to the base descriptors above. N below is a numeric value.

+-N - A numeric modifier to the roll. The value is added to or subtracted from the final total for traditional dice, or applied to each die in a dice pool.
EN - Exploding dice. Any dice roll greater than or equal to N generates another die roll. In traditional rolls the result is added to the total. In a dice pool it is added to the original exploding die's result.
LN - Drop the lowest N rolls. The classic example is D&D character generation using the roll four six-sided and drop the lowest method, which would be written as: 4d6L1.
HN - Drop the highest N rolls. Not sure if any game would make use of this. I guess you could make some very lame D&D characters with 4d6H1.
SN - Count successes. For traditional dice, a total result greater than or equal to N is a success. For a dice pool each die greater than or equal to N is a success.
FN - Count failures. For traditional dice, a total result less than or equal to N is a failure. For a dice pool each die less than or equal to N is a failure.

Some things I think I'm missing, but I'm not sure if they're useful.

Imploding dice - rolls below a certain value generate an additional roll that's subtracted from the first.
Savage Worlds - Wild Dice. I don't play Savage Worlds, can someone throw me a clue?
Exploding dice that don't continue to explode.

I'm sure there are a bunch of methods I've forgotten or ignored. Anyone know of a concise list of RPG dice mechanics published anywhere?

Well That Was Unfortunate

2012-01-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

The long silence here was not by choice. My main computer imploded shortly before the holidays, so I had the joyful experience of shifting all my stuff from my old sort-of-working-but-only-if-you're-lucky system to a new box. Lessons learned:

An external hard drive for backups is an excellent investment.
Five copies of your music library is probably too many.
Keeping your data organized is a good thing.

I took the move as an opportunity to consolidate a bunch of duplicate data and eliminate a bunch of stuff I really don't need.

Gaming related: I was planning on switching from Firefox to Chrome until I discovered using TiddlyWiki with Chrome requires the TiddlySaver Java module. Not sure if that's going to be a pain or not. We'll see.

Now... back to work!

Daruna - Session Report

2011-11-23T12:30:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I ran the first of hopefully many weekend-long games set in Daruna, my latest campaign world. The session was also the first test run of the Class Free 2.0 system, my home-brew game system loosely based on d20 and 3rd edition D&D, and the first trial of the corrupting magic system I wrote about in a previous post. Aside from the usual goal of seeing my friends and having fun with RPGs, I had three main goals for this session:

Shake out the bugs in CF2.0. I wasn't terribly concerned with this aspect. Everyone knew it was a new system and that there would likely be changes to the rules.
Get everyone up to speed with the new system. A bit of work, as the majority of my players were diehard AD&D 1st/2nd edition players. But they're game, I'm game, so... forward.
See how corrupting magic affected play balance. This was the biggest potential fly in the ointment. I was (and still am to be honest) particularly concerned about healing, since ablative hit points assume a robust healing mechanism.

TiddlyWiki - A Minor Tip

2011-10-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I use TiddlyWiki for pretty much all my campaign notes these days. The combination of hyper-linking and a single self-contained file (minus images), makes it a very useful tool for my style of GMing. I went so far as to write a couple of brief tutorials on using it in my old RPG Dumping Ground blog:

One of the things I mention in part two of the tutorials is transclusion, a feature that allows you to insert a tiddler within a tiddler. Today's tip is an extension of that feature.

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Daruna - Corruptive Magic

2011-10-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

Wow. This place is dusty. Guess I need to break out the vacuum.
I'm finally doing some work on my Daruna campaign again. We're scheduled to play the first session in a few weeks. One aspect of this game is a bit of swords and sorcery feel, with powerful magic a tool of the big bad guys rather than the player characters. To reflect this I've been working on a system of magical corruption. The how and why follow...
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Grimrock

2011-10-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well this looks interesting in an old school kind of way. Party based dungeon crawler on the PC? Grid dungeons? Quasi-turn based combat? I'm in.

The GM Problem (mine)

2011-07-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

I was browsing my youtube favorites the other day and found a perfect example to illustrate why I end up writing so much material when I start up a new campaign.

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Eve Online - Deleting Threads Won't Help CCP

2011-06-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Copy of an internal email message concerning recent Incarnageddon update. This was originally posted on the official Eve forums, then deleted and the poster banned. Oppression wins you no friends CCP. Message purportedly from CCP Hilmar, leaked from the same source as a previously leaked and confirmed message. Maybe authentic, maybe not, but preserved for posterity in any case:

We live in interesting times; in fact CCP is the kind of company that if things get repetitive we instinctively crank it up a notch. That, we certainly have done this week. First of we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry. We have communicated our intention here internally in very wide circles through the Virtual Economy Summit presentation at the GSM, our Fearless newsletter, sprint reviews, email lists and multiple other channels. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable. That is not saying nothing will change, on the contrary, in fact we know that success in this space is through learning and adapting to _what is actually happening_ and new knowledge gained in addition to what we knew before and expected.

All that said, I couldn't be prouder of what we have accomplished as a company, changing the world is hard and we are doing it as so many times before! Stay the course, we have done this many times before.

Trapper Children

2011-05-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

"Awww, poor thing! Do you need help? Are you lost?"

These are usually the last words spoken near a Trapper Child, a half-demonic, half-bestial creature with limited shape-shifting abilities and a hunger for living flesh.
(ID, please ignore: TGGZ5XTSE57)
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Terraria

2011-05-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine gifted me a copy of Terraria via Steam the other day (thanks Melissa!), and I finally got around to playing around with it a bit this morning.

I've discovered one important fact about this game so far:

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CCP You Slay Me

2011-05-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

Say what you will about CCP, the developers of Eve Online, there's one thing I know for sure. They have a great sense of humor! This was their most recent banner ad that popped up on the client login:

Review: The Name of the Wind: Patrick Rothfuss

2011-05-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

Have you read this? If not, you should. Yes it's the first book of a series that's not finished, something I absolutely hate recommending because of what I call the Martin Effect (if you read fantasy I'm sure you can guess what that is). I'll make an exception in this case though, for two reasons:

Patrick Rothfuss actually seems to have a trilogy in mind, and claims that it's pretty much written. All that's left is the editing and revising.
It's a very very very good book.

The Prophecy Urn

2011-05-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

This object is capable of providing potent portents, prophecies and predictions. The Prophecy Urn is three feet tall. It's bulbous, two-foot wide base narrows to a slender neck culminating in a flaring mouth. A pair of looped handles of polished brass flank the Urn's neck. The Urn is made from some black metal, smooth and polished to a glossy sheen, but this material is only visible within the object's neck. The exterior of the Urn is sheathed in a leather and fur casing made from the preserved facial skins of dozens of creatures, both natural and unnatural. Specimens include a sad-looking human, a snarling badger, a tiny praying mantis, a haughty cat, a twisted imp, a scaly lizardman, and many more. Each face is a fine example of the taxidermist's art, eyes replaced with flecks of colored stone or glass, teeth carefully carved from ivory or stone, features given form by carefully placed beneath the skin. The Urn is both large and heavy, moving it requires the efforts of two strong men.
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Humble Indie Bundle Project

2011-04-13T06:39:00.000-07:00

There's a new bundle available from the Humble Bundle folks, featuring several products by Finnish developer Frozenbyte.

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Mandatory Microsoft Madness

2011-04-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

Most people that know me will tell you I don't have a very high opinion of Microsoft. There are lots of reasons for this, but rather than bore you with a bunch of history, I'll tell you about my recently-purchased XBOX 360 that died last month and the humorous and annoying process of replacing it.

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Have You Seen This?

2011-04-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

And by this I mean THIS RIGHT HERE.

Monsters on Post-It notes. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

Dungeon Dice?

2011-03-24T06:18:00.000-07:00

Over on A Character for Every Game, Dyson Logos has started a new project: DungeonMorph dice.

Clarification from Dyson: The project is actually being run by Joe from Inkwell Ideas. Dyson and some other folk are involved in the geomorph designs.

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Shalish - A City of Daruna

2011-03-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

Map Key

Red - Military
Green - Residential
Blue - Temples
Yellow - Market / trade
Tan - Warehouse / storage
Purple - Government

Shalish is the largest city of the Shalish Alliance, and is the capital of the province that bears it's name. It is smaller in terms of population than Daruna or Loshma, but significantly larger than any other known city. The city and surrounding lands are ruled by King Lahkim Dashen II. Dashen's nephew, King Anda Kamase rules Goba as a vassal state loyal to Shalish, the result of a successful invasion by Dashen seven years ago.

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Eve Online - CSM Voting is Open

2011-03-09T05:03:00.000-08:00

Make your voice heard.

For those that don't play Eve, the CSM is the Council of Stellar Management, a player feedback organization set up by CCP to represent the player base to the developers. They've done some good stuff.

I need two of those "I voted" stickers they give out at polling locations here in the US.

Starlight

2011-03-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

Blog posts have been taking a back seat to other writing lately, with my time being divided between working on Class Free rules, filling in my Daruna campaign setting, and running a play-by-post sci fi game. I've talked a bit about Class Free and Daruna, but haven't said much about my PbP game, so...
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