Thursday, March 29, 2012

Treasure Generator Update

I updated the random treasure generator I've been working on today. It now has at least some data for all entries and is generating a wondrously random range of weird magic stuff. I also rounded out the armor and weapon tables, so entries should be functionally complete.

I also threw together a small collection of other random generators: modern vehicles, fantasy map descriptions, and modern residences (WIP).

Let me know what you think!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Randomness Revisited

A few days ago I wrote about the random treasure generator I was working on. This is just a brief followup to let folks know it's mostly done. Mostly.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Randomness

A long time ago, I had an Amiga 1000. Being both a gamer and a programmer, I spent some time playing around with various game-related programs. One of them was a text processor that read various table-like files and produced randomized results from them. Time moved on, and the Amiga went the way of the dinosaur and dodo, to be replaced by a PC running Windows and another running FreeBSD. Once again I did a bunch of messing about with table-driven randomizers and ported the old Amiga code over to new OSes and new languages.

The latest incarnation is written in PHP, and I just finished the beta version. The first test page is now up, a random treasure generator for D&D-like fantasy RPGs. If you have a few minutes, please stop by and give it a spin. Feedback welcome of course.

Link: http://www.pbegames.com/treasury/

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Natural Beauty... OF DEATH

Saw this posted up on G+, figured I would share. Five awesome, deadly sites that you can visit in person, and die.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19705_the-5-most-spectacular-landscapes-earth-that-murder-you.html

Time to build a nice set of outdoor scenarios for these.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

IT Public Service Announcement

We've just passed the start of Daylight Saving Time. Usually this is when you see public service announcements about changing batteries in your smoke detectors or, if you live in Indiana, irate letters to the editor complaining about getting up in the dark. Here's another reminder: clean your computer!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Tiddlywiki - Stat Blocks

I've been toying around with stat blocks in Tiddlywiki, trying to come up with a better way to lay them out without creating too many tiddly-related headaches with formatting and such. I'm still not sure I've gotten it right, but here are three work in progress versions of the Akinak, primordial minions of Anamika. These are screenshots taken from Firefox, so they're pretty much what I see at the table.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Anamika - The River Guardian

Anamika is the river primordial my players encountered during the last session of our Daruna campaign (so keep out guys). The stat block that follows is for my own class free version of D&D, but adapting it to other flavors is pretty trivial.


Monday, March 12, 2012

Daruna - Shalish Area Map

I like maps, but not being any kind of artist, I seldom post them here. Nevertheless, here's a regional map of the Shalish area I did for my Daruna game. This was done pen and ink, then scanned and size adjusted.
Shalish Area - Daruna Campaign
Why yes, that is a HUGE river running southwest to northeast.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Character Portraits

A while back I mentioned Eve Online had a new character creator, one that could be used to build some fairly nice looking, science fiction-ish character portraits for use in RPGs. Later I mentioned you could find characters through the Eve forums. Oddly these minor articles get quite a bit of regular search traffic. Apparently there's some demand for character portraits, so... have a few. I picked a few random portraits out of the forums to give you some idea what's available.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Tiddlywiki - Minor Issue

I generally wax positive about Tiddlywiki as a GM tool for campaign notes, but the session I just ran uncovered out a couple flaws with using it. Neither is a deal-breaker, and both have potential solutions.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Magic Item: The Sun Globe

This magical object is a three-inch globe of polished amber, shot through with twisting veins of some deep blue stone. It emits a faint radiance at all times, and once its secret is unlocked it can be commanded to do any of the following:

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Daruna Session Notes, Part II


The continuation of the session notes from my most recent Daruna game. This is part two of two. Part one can be found right here. At the end of part one the party had just recovered the icon missing from Anamika's shrine and restored it, allowing the ferry across the Chungal River to start running again.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Daruna Session Notes, Part I


This is part one of a (hopefully) two part series covering events at my last Daruna campaign session. I posted up the teaser last week. Things took a few interesting twists, including a couple major distractions from the main rescue mission plot line.