Minecraft - Then and Now

I played Minecraft off and on over the weekend, and fell into my usual trap of poking around on various projects with no specific goal. I tend to get distracted when I play this game, and this leads to me starting too many projects and not finishing them. Sunday I decided to clean up some loose ends.

Random - Creature Generator

I recently added a new set of tables to the random generator. This one produces short descriptions of mundane creatures, predators, herbivores, and such. It's loosely based on the Traveller creature encounters tables, but the results should provide some fodder for the imagination. Here are some sample results. The first two lines in each entry are the generated value, the rest are my notes.

Image Inspiration

Just a short note today: this tumblr feed right here is absolutely full of inspirational pictures of underground places, cave entrances, and catacomb-type locales. If you need an idea for a dungeon entrance, underground combat scene, or similar, it's a great place to start.

New Belgium - Dig

This is a spring brew from New Belgium, who have become one of my favorite brewers. It's a very crisp pale ale with a very Spring-friendly hop profile. Lots of citrus, a hint of flowery, and a nice sharp and clean finish that leaves just a hint of malt behind. This is a great example of a well-hopped beer that doesn't fall into the OMG MOAR HOPZ trap. Pours clear and coppery with a floral / citrus aroma and a thick, creamy head that sticks around for a while, leaving moderate lacing. All in all a very nice brew, crisp and light enough to drink on warmer spring days, and with a great profile to pair with, say some good BBQ.

Minecraft: Walls

This is a short one. I've been working on a wall design for the perimeter of my base of operations. These are the two best efforts (so far). What do you think? Both these images are huge, so click to enbiggen.

Stone topped

Wood topped

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Minecraft: Dig It

I've been playing a bit of Minecraft off and on over the last couple days, mostly working in and around home base, finishing off the greenhouse (really!), and doing some other construction. I've decided on a pretty organic building strategy. Using the hill as a base and expanding from there. There have been a few changes.

Daruna - Alchemy

My Daruna game is a low-magic setting. In the distant past a magical cataclysm corrupted magic, making anything beyond minor spells dangerous to the caster. Despite the threat of permanent corruption, the benefits and advantages granted by even minor spells make such usage an accepted part of society. In addition there are two magic-like spheres on knowledge that are intrinsic to the setting, Alchemy and Artifice. I'm going to talk about Alchemy today, since one of my player's has actually expended character points into learning the skills involved, granting me the opportunity to go down the 'complex system no one but me will ever see' rabbit hole.

Minecraft: Build Mode

• Greenhouse: Check
• Wolf named Sarge: Check
• Giant torch beacon: Check
• Base blown up by a creeper: Check

Minecraft: Day Five and More

I've spent the last couple days grinding on a new layout for my other web site (the beta site is here if you care), and I'm ready to do some Minecraft. I think the one day per post format is a bit too restrictive, since I find myself pausing play to write or take screenshots fairly often. From now on I think I'll just play a while and write what happens.

Side note: I put up an index page, which I'll try to keep up to date as I write new entries for this series.

Minecraft: Day Three/Four - Greenhouse

After a night of consolidating the junk I picked up on day two, the sun comes up on another beautiful day in Minecraft. Unfortunately I can't see it, there's a hill in the way. Instead I get to listen to burning zombies and skeletons. Time to start work on my greenhouse.

Minecraft: Day Two - Hunger Games

After waiting out the first night in my little hovel, it's time to face day two! During the night I added a little more space to my hole in the wall shelter and put together a few more tools, including a sword and some extra torches. Today I need to find some food. Since I don't have any string, I can't fish or make a bow, and I'm not sure I want to start growing wheat just yet, so I'll probably try and kill some cows, pigs or chickens for meat. We'll see what the day brings (other than a creeper hovering outside the door).

Minecraft: Let's Play - Day One

A new day in Minecraft. It's been several months and a couple patches since I've played any significant amount,  so I thought I'd start a fresh game and share the experience. If you don't know what Minecraft is, I put together a brief starter guide a while back. Enough chatter, let's get digging!

More Character Portraits

Time for a few more portraits from Eve Online's forums stolen borrowed for RPG goodness. As usual they're a mix of good, bad, and indifferent. There's a long standing tradition of What's the avatar above you thinking? threads on the forums, these were all taken from one of those threads.

Are you sure you want to do that?

Apparently I ask this question too much. I was cleaning up an old mailbox from my Moria game and came across one of the email post-session discussions we had. In the context of figuring out why the group sometimes took a long time to decide on a course of action, my use of this phrase came up. One of the players said it pretty much stopped the group in its decision-making tracks. I was pretty surprised by that reaction, and came back with why I used that particular turn of phrase. I usually say it for one of three reasons:

Random Tables - Update

I've been adding more tables to the random stuff generator. I figured it was time for a full listing of what's there. Most of these are pretty complete. The ones in need of the most work are the demonic creatures generator and the modern residences generator. Here's the full listing:

• Modern Vehicles - Cars, motorcycles, trucks, and various oddball things you might see on the highway. There are generators available for individual vehicle categories or a random selection from all types.
• Modern Residences - Brief descriptions of houses, apartments, condos, and other homes. Each includes a few notes about the interior, exterior, and / or locale. Useful for on the fly scene setup.
• Demonic Creatures - Nasty beasts with fangs and fish heads and tentacles and... well you get the picture. Just descriptions for now.
• Dungeon Doors - Doors, complete with locks and traps.
• Dungeon Junk - Random bits and pieces of garbage to give some color to that empty room.
• Dungeon Noises - An assortment of random creaks, groans, and squeaks. What was that?
• Card Hands - Sets of four five- and seven-card hands dealt from a standard deck of playing cards.

More to come.