So far so good...
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Sexy Cladograms?
You know how they make these things which show the evolutionary family tree...
...of various species, or sometimes all species, or sometimes just a species and subspecies?
Anyway--they used to look awesome. Now I can't find any good ones.
Anybody know of any?
...of various species, or sometimes all species, or sometimes just a species and subspecies?
Anyway--they used to look awesome. Now I can't find any good ones.
Anybody know of any?
Stupid DM Tricks
Got a game tomorrow.
I'm going to sleep now.
In the morning I will write a D&D adventure incorporating every single idea you all leave in the comments between now and when I wake up in 8 hours. (noonish Pacific Standard Time).
Then, a few hours later, I will run the girls through it (unfilmed, so no royalties for good ideas). (and please don't be a douche and link to some long thing that's already all written out)
Anyway, have fun.
Good night.
_____
(8 hours later)
Times up. Stop posting. I am getting to work.
I'm going to sleep now.
In the morning I will write a D&D adventure incorporating every single idea you all leave in the comments between now and when I wake up in 8 hours. (noonish Pacific Standard Time).
Then, a few hours later, I will run the girls through it (unfilmed, so no royalties for good ideas). (and please don't be a douche and link to some long thing that's already all written out)
Anyway, have fun.
Good night.
_____
(8 hours later)
Times up. Stop posting. I am getting to work.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Omnipresent Inspiration Hypothesis Day...3 is it?
Just got back from NYC. The art got shown and sold and all that. At some point soon I may be able to settle back and resume the regular broadcasting schedule here.
Anyway: still testing the hypothesis.
So I just saw Zach Galifinakis interview Bruce Willis and made me think of this player-skill-test mechanism:
NPC (or magic talking box, or communed with deity or whatever) asks a question. If the PC hesitates, horrible things begin to happen.
Unlike the Python "Name/quest/favorite color" gimmick, it's not just a binary answer-or-get-fucked-over situation, it has to get progressively worse the longer the player fails to answer and the player has to know it.
Also, I wouldn't go with a riddle, I'd just go with something that you have to think about for a minute.
Like the cleric goes "Oh, Mighty Vrogthrot, guide me in my hour of need!"
Vrogthrot: "Then tell me, holyman, what is the finest meal you've eaten since you left the Brass Forests of Klee Ten Krhome?"
Cleric: "Uh..."
DM: "You lose a fingernail"
Cleric: "What?"
DM: "Tik tik tik. You lose another. Off your thumb."
And then if you lie, things of course get much worse.
Alright, there you go.
Anyway: still testing the hypothesis.
So I just saw Zach Galifinakis interview Bruce Willis and made me think of this player-skill-test mechanism:
NPC (or magic talking box, or communed with deity or whatever) asks a question. If the PC hesitates, horrible things begin to happen.
Unlike the Python "Name/quest/favorite color" gimmick, it's not just a binary answer-or-get-fucked-over situation, it has to get progressively worse the longer the player fails to answer and the player has to know it.
Also, I wouldn't go with a riddle, I'd just go with something that you have to think about for a minute.
Like the cleric goes "Oh, Mighty Vrogthrot, guide me in my hour of need!"
Vrogthrot: "Then tell me, holyman, what is the finest meal you've eaten since you left the Brass Forests of Klee Ten Krhome?"
Cleric: "Uh..."
DM: "You lose a fingernail"
Cleric: "What?"
DM: "Tik tik tik. You lose another. Off your thumb."
And then if you lie, things of course get much worse.
Alright, there you go.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Swashbuckling
Been very busy on account of having an art show opening this week. Squeezed a game in with a gazillion local friends*.
It was a pretty simple concept but it went over well including with like 4 people who'd never played so I'll lay it out here in case anyone wants to steal it:
PC's are shipwrecked in a barren and icy land (with their gear). Lost, hungry etc. (or otherwise desperate)
They espy 8 ships navigating a nearby fjord. The flagship is in the middle and is flying a flag some may recognize as that of some famous pirate. 7 fearsome frigates surround him.
The 3 most obvious ways the PCs can access the ships are:
-across the ice
-through a wood to a cliff (where they can drop down onto a frigate)
-and by water (they have a not-terribly seaworthy lifeboat left).
Each frigate has a crew of 4-10 pirates on deck ready to repel intruders.
Belowdecks on each ship there's a microdungeon containing a fearsome captain, a treasure or otherwise weird thing, a trap or two, and whatever else your sense of verisimilitude demands be belowdecks on a ship. (I based the 7 fearsome captains on the 7 Dwarves and the 7 things in the 7 holds on the Bela Bartok version of Bluebeard but I only had a couple hours to prepare so you can probably do better than that. I had Bluebeard and Snow White celebrating their recent wedding on the flagship.)
My group had a sea elf (Mandy) who was able to do a little reconnaissance on the frigates, and so I let them pick which target to attack first based on what little she could glean (one ship was unnaturally quiet, one had a garden inside, one had a lake of tears inside, the others were hard to read).
The real fun comes from the fact that as soon as anyone in the convoy is alerted to the presence of the PCs, the frigates will begin to maneuver so that they:
-put as many frigates between the PCs and the flagship as possible, and
-save the treasures on all the allied frigates.
And of course the whole thing happens in a narrow fjord, allowing for all kinds of channel-blocking and sea-to-land-to-ice-to-sea shenanigans.
This makes the whole set-up into a moving dungeon with interchangeable pieces. For extra swashbuckledom, have the PCs be attacked from behind by wolves, arctic stirges, or polar worms during their initial attempts to make contact with the pirates.
__________
*to: New Yorkers reading this who weren't there: joethelwayer, etc.--I would've called you but it was already over-capacity--my sister brought a ton of friends who'd never played. We should hook up later.
It was a pretty simple concept but it went over well including with like 4 people who'd never played so I'll lay it out here in case anyone wants to steal it:
PC's are shipwrecked in a barren and icy land (with their gear). Lost, hungry etc. (or otherwise desperate)
They espy 8 ships navigating a nearby fjord. The flagship is in the middle and is flying a flag some may recognize as that of some famous pirate. 7 fearsome frigates surround him.
The 3 most obvious ways the PCs can access the ships are:
-across the ice
-through a wood to a cliff (where they can drop down onto a frigate)
-and by water (they have a not-terribly seaworthy lifeboat left).
Each frigate has a crew of 4-10 pirates on deck ready to repel intruders.
Belowdecks on each ship there's a microdungeon containing a fearsome captain, a treasure or otherwise weird thing, a trap or two, and whatever else your sense of verisimilitude demands be belowdecks on a ship. (I based the 7 fearsome captains on the 7 Dwarves and the 7 things in the 7 holds on the Bela Bartok version of Bluebeard but I only had a couple hours to prepare so you can probably do better than that. I had Bluebeard and Snow White celebrating their recent wedding on the flagship.)
My group had a sea elf (Mandy) who was able to do a little reconnaissance on the frigates, and so I let them pick which target to attack first based on what little she could glean (one ship was unnaturally quiet, one had a garden inside, one had a lake of tears inside, the others were hard to read).
The real fun comes from the fact that as soon as anyone in the convoy is alerted to the presence of the PCs, the frigates will begin to maneuver so that they:
-put as many frigates between the PCs and the flagship as possible, and
-save the treasures on all the allied frigates.
And of course the whole thing happens in a narrow fjord, allowing for all kinds of channel-blocking and sea-to-land-to-ice-to-sea shenanigans.
This makes the whole set-up into a moving dungeon with interchangeable pieces. For extra swashbuckledom, have the PCs be attacked from behind by wolves, arctic stirges, or polar worms during their initial attempts to make contact with the pirates.
__________
*to: New Yorkers reading this who weren't there: joethelwayer, etc.--I would've called you but it was already over-capacity--my sister brought a ton of friends who'd never played. We should hook up later.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Stuff I Found...
...while looking through this years' sketchbook.
(I have a show in about a week--thus the light posting.)
There's a page of notes on the Gigastructure...
And here's...mmm...I think I was writing an adventure and trying to mark off every monster I'd already used...
Here's some pics of something I'm working on for the show...
that's a little bit of it (8x10")--it just keeps going...
I actually have the parts that go where that fucking wall lamp is, but I'm too tired to move the whole piece to a new wall right now.
(I have a show in about a week--thus the light posting.)
There's a page of notes on the Gigastructure...
And here's...mmm...I think I was writing an adventure and trying to mark off every monster I'd already used...
Here's some pics of something I'm working on for the show...
that's a little bit of it (8x10")--it just keeps going...
I actually have the parts that go where that fucking wall lamp is, but I'm too tired to move the whole piece to a new wall right now.
