My weekly thoughts post. Hopefully, by making these posts I can force myself to get into the habit of creating content again. I’ll probably release posts consisting of compilations from these more meandering posts that focus on a particular topic.
This Week: Alot of Getting Things Done, What makes a setting good for adventure, and why I got stuck on the dungeon creation step of the gygax 75 challenge.
Monday 1-23: What makes a good setting for adventure?
Last week Orbital Crypt made a post about getting ready for a post-apocalyptic campaign. In it he makes mention of what makes for a good adventure setting.
The selection process helped me crystalize what kind of setting works best for this kind of campaign. You need a big world with soft borders, one with enough people around to provide many opportunities for trade, conflict and faction play, while still leaving a whole lot of map open for monsters and dungeons to live in. You also need cool stuff lying around, and a reason for why all the cool stuff hasn’t been looted yet – either because the existing civilization isn’t strong enough to grab it all, because something is constantly creating more dungeon, or because The Mandatory “Fall Of The Great Civilization” event happened too recently and the world is still in the early days of recovery. The last one is probably the most convenient, because it needs the least justification; if the new world is young, you don’t have to explain why it is so bountiful. As an added plus, the shackles of a greater, more organized civilization have yet to fall upon the land and render it more ordered, safe and lawful – things that don’t make for a good adventuring realm. Instead, lines are more naturally drawn between many smaller and more local powers (which are in turn more easily messed with by individuals, such as the PCs).
Orbital Crypt
– Post: Apocalypse – A Gamma World Analysis & Sandbox Prep Megapost
He points to Against the Wicked City’s classic post “OSR Aesthetics of Ruin“. Now this is some great stuff, but my mind wonders how one could create a great sandbox setting that aesthetically moves in the opposite direction.
- A small world with hard borders
- Generally few people around
- Not alot of space for dungeons or for monsters to live in
- Not alot of cool stuff just lying around for the taking
- Nothing is actively going around making cool things or something made cool things but is no longer around
- A central power controls most civilization making it generally ordered and lawful.
This whole thing smells like an O’Neil Cylinder in transit between worlds. Relatively small, no real “wilderness” because your borders are extremely empty space. Few people around could be because they’re all in hibernation or because the cylinder is meant to be filled once it arrives. Everyone left is thinly distributed around on maintenance projects.Very little gets built because there’s few excess resources. The whole thing is probably under close central control of whoever runs the colony.
So how does one make this a good setting for adventure?
- Perhaps the PC’s are opposed to whatever org maintains control. If this is an AI, then maybe having multiple AI’s that work in conert might be a good idea. Friend computer, Hal 9000 etc. I’d personally draw inspiration from this excellent Wayspell Post. If it’s people I recommend making it a counsel rather than an individual.
- Whatever “monsters” you do want to use has to be something that is either impossible to defeat permanently or has to have excellent means of escaping.
- If the space is enclosed then there should be some variety in the terrain. I imagine most of the area will be urban or Agricultural, so having botanic gardens might be a good idea. Maybe crib from the Book of the new sun and have space be bent in the gardens so these areas are larger than expected.
- I expect this to be a very social game so don’t make combat the main focus. If you do want combat then I think utilizing something like a colosseum (Virtual? AR?) would be a good workaround.
Tuesday 1-24: Getting Things Done – Chapter 1
Ch 1 – The stated problem the book is trying to fix – We are stressed and unproductive, feeling like having too much to handle and not enough time to handle it in. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. In addition the work advanced “knowledge workers” do tends to be nebulously defined, requires cross team coordination, and often changes without notice. I definitely fealt like that at college, probably because I kept filling my time with video games and DnD.
The stated “promise” or thing you will have gotten by applying the book and fixing the problem? More time in a state of flow.
The Principle behind the changes that makes to promise possible? Effectively managing ones commitments, especially the “open loop” ones you make with yourself results in less stress and more productivity. To do this, you have to identify them, capture them on a system outside your mind, clarify what it is you have to do toi make progress, and keep reminders of them in a regularly reviewed place. And you have to this consistently.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you have something on your mind It’s because
- The intended outcome isn’t clear
- The next action step hasn’t been decided
- Reminders of the outcome and action isn’t in a system you trust
…you can’t do a project at all! You can only do an Action related to it.
Pg 21
There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.
pg 24
Work bottom up, from whats in your inbox, not on a big planner.
That was a very dense 26 pages. Overall it seems to make sense to me. When I was in college I once created a checklist of what I needed to do and I did well in that class as long as I was keeping up with the list. At work, I got a lot more efficient and happy once I was able to get all the information onto step-by-step how-to lists and into a central cheatsheet with the exception to the standard rules.
Thursday 1-26: Class Warfare
After all the hullaballoo with the DnD OGL I decided to expand my library in a few directions in order to have more options to show people for when they ask “What should I Play besides DnD”. My order has now arrived. First to read is class warfare. It’s a supplement for Dungeon world intending to allow one to design your own classes/Playbooks, one of the main restrictions on Dungeon world.
The Book starts with a basic deconstruction of what makes a Dungeon World class: 3 powers, a racial ability, and a few details. there’s a neat breakdown of the default classes on how these fit into the basic construction and then it gets down to how you construct a class. Class Warfares system has you pick one class core, pick two or three specialties to get the powers, choose a racial power, set hp damage and load, and then continue with character creation as normal based on those choices. Overall it’s not a lot more difficult than typical class construction. There is some advice and an example given of making a prebuilt class instead of a character, most of which strikes me as good sense, but good to have stated plainly for people who don’t read RPG theory every day.
The rest of the book beyond this point is a massive list of Specialties, and spells from which to construct your characters/classes. Here a few of the standout bits.
Adventurer
- OK all these specialties have sections in them describing what someone needs to do to gain the option to take that specialty as a compendium class. I can absolutely imagine a game where you start with no specialties and pick up specific compendium classes as one adventures.
- The fool specialty is unlocked y doing something so dumb everyone is stunned and speechless. Imagine this happening at a table. you do something dumb and everyone is sitting there in silence and then the DM goes “Fool compendium class unlocked”. Lol
- There is a specialty for being the owner of an estate or business. Their core ability? The ability to request something from the estate, possibly causing the estate to fall into disarray until you do something to put things back in good order.
- Theres also a different one for being a landed noble that literally puts your settlement on the map,
- Another one for having a permanent entourage. One of the entourage’s weaknesses can be that they’re dead inside.
- Another one is for owning a shop. Adventurer is just the class for those who want to specialize in non-adventuring stuff. honestly, these work better as compendium classes rather than something inbuilt into a regular class.
Disciples
- Power of will and faith in something. I like that it says it doesn’t have to be a god. That was a good 5e innovation to the paladin that works well here.
- The Avatar of a god specialization gives one extra domain, one of which bloody conquest. This is the build a God class.
- The Exorcists Tagline? “Who ya gonna call?”
- The Empaths tagline? “Captain I sense Hostility”
- I like that a lot/most of these are not spell casters. it makes it easy to get the divine without making every divine related character just a different flavor of wizard.
- The Impervious is all about playing the pacifist and enduring hardship. Combined with the Sacrificial lamb and you can get a real peaceful christlike figure going.
Magicians
- Subtitle – the color of magic. GNU Terry Pratchett
- The Dominator specialty is dark. you literally have to break someones will and make them your slave to get it. Not for all tables.
- The image for the shadowmancer is a completely black page. The opposite of a ghost in a blizzard is a shadowmancer in the dark.
- All the Psychic specialties appear in this section. This makes a certain kind of sense.
- There’s an option for a full Vancian caster and a 5e-styled “Prepared Caster”. The difference? Vancian casters lose their spells upon casting but can memorize twice as many, while prepared casters keep their spells but can’t memorize as many. Is the trade-off worth it?
Rogues
- The body thief is pure horror.
- There’s basically the full oceans 11 team in here and I kind of want to run a heist game where everyone has a different rogueish specialty.
Warriors
- The two page spread for the arsenal is metal.
- I like the captain as the leader of men kindof class.
- The Standard bearer is a neat bit of design. Your main ability is focused on not attacking yourself but on aiding others.
- The gorgon is a bit of an odd one as it’s entirely focused around one particular enemy. Probably the least broadly applicable class.
Friday 1-27: Getting Things Done – Chapter 2-4
Ch 2 – Getting Control of Your Life: The 5 Steps of Mastering Workflow
The general steps one takes
- capture what has our attention
- every open loop must be in your capture system and out of your head
- have as few capture buckets as possible
- empty them regularly.
- Clarify what each item means and what to do about it
- Items can be:
- Trash: non- actionable and no longer needed
- For Incubation: non-actionable and might be needed later
- Reference: Non-Actionable but handy for reference later
- A Project Action: Something that needs to be done relating to an “open loop”
- Do It Now – If it takes less than two minutes
- Delegate it – If it’ll take more than 2 minutes but it’s better if someone else handles it.
- Defer it – If you’re the right person and it’ll take longer than 2 minutes, stick it on your “next actions” list
- Items can be:
- Organize the results which presents possible options
- Items can go Into:
- The Trash – for trash
- A Someday/Maybe List – for items you might like to get to
- A “Tickle” System – reminds you of Incubation items at a later date
- Project SPcific Storage/Files – for materials and plans
- Calender – for Actions that have to be done at specific times/days. Appointments. To-Do’s do not go on Calender.
- A Next Actions List – for “Defer it” next actions. once you hit around 50+ you’ll want different lists for different categories of things. It’s suggested to categorize by location you do these things.
- Waiting for list – reminders of what you’re waiting on.
- A Reference System – for Reference items. Obsidian?
- A Project – Any desired result that can be accomplished within “A Year” and that requires 2+ Action steps.
- Items can go Into:
- reflect on the options that presented themselves once we organised
- Review Weekly: Your Calender, Your next actions lists
- Review occaisionally: Projects, Waiting For, and Someday/Maybe Lists.
- engage with the option we chose
- 3 models:
- For choosing actions in the moment “Four Criteria Model”
- Context, Time Available, Energy Available, Priority
- For Identifying Daily Work “Threefold Model”
- Doing Predefined Work
- Doing Work as it shows up
- Defining your work
- For reviewing your work “6 level model”
- 5: Purpose and Principles – The Big Picture view.
- 4: Vision – Your projections for 3-5 Years in the future.
- 3: Goals – What you want to be experiencing in 1-2 Years
- 2: Area of focus and responsibilities – The roles you fulfill and the obligations you take on
- 1: Current Actions – all the actions you need to take
- For choosing actions in the moment “Four Criteria Model”
- 3 models:
Ch- 3 Getting Projects Under
Horizontal focus – assessing multiple projects across an equal level.
Vertical focus – examining multiple levels within a single project
The natural planning model
- defining purpose and principles – why the limits/standards for acceptable means and acceptable outcomes.
- outcome visioning – what
- brainstorming – how
- Capture ideas – mind mapping
- Don’t judge challenge evaluate or criticize,
- go for quantity not quality
- Put analysis and organization in the background.
- organizing – who and in what order.
- Move from. Informal structure to formal.
gantt chart? - Basic steps
- Identify the significant pieces
- Sort by:
- Components
- Priorities
- Sequences
- Detail to the desired degree
- Move from. Informal structure to formal.
- identifying next actions – decide for each moving part, decide when to continue planning if needed, clarify whose next steps it is.
- When more clarity is needed, shift thinking back up the natural planning scale. If more action move down.
Thus far everything has been common sense and yet it’s oddly gratifying to see it laid out so cleanly and nicely organized. I’ve often heard portions of this stuff individually or on its own but it’s like I’ve been seeing the trees and now I’m being shown the forest.
Saturday 1-28: What the Devil is Due – Session Report 4
Aka: That time I got Reincarnated as a Tiefling and went to Hell
Possible Spoilers for Dragon Heist, Tomb of Annihilation,
The Cast
- Atlan Gran (Me) – A Human Wildfire Druid, recently reincarnated into a Tiefling. Pyromaniac and general troublemaker.
- Harrow Tench – A Human investigative rogue who just wants to retire but keeps getting pulled back in.
- Gaelia Ernst – A Half-Elf Land Druid
- Nemry Oakwish- An Eladrin Fey Warlock whose mode and powers change like the seasons.
- Asami Fulmina – An Air Genasi Storm Sorceror working with the Grey Hand of Waterdeep
- The GM – Has made it clear that he’s going to be throwing everything and the book at us and to expect a high body count.
Last Session we had made a deal with Lady Zarael of hell to get three items and deliver them to her. We fought some insectoid demons and rescued a green thing named bazit from the pit of Schumach. He tells us He tells us that the man at the obelisk in the distance is not to be trusted and that those who seek the star will be burned with the frosted wings.
Turns out Bhazit doesn’t have coins (Shocker!) but he has information on the fortress of Bel, former archduke of avernus. He says that the former lord of the fortress can be ressurrected by damming(Heh) the tributary of the river styx that feeds the green goo in ther Pit of Schumach. In exchange for this ionformation we free him from the cage he’s in.
While settling down for a long rest we see a red light in the sky, which coalesces into a flaming horse, running across the sky. Nemry casts scry on it. The Horse seemed to be following the path back the way we came and it appears to be exhausting itself in it’s hurry. Following up, he decides to scry on mooncolor, seeing an “unholy contraction”, with electricity blazing between two prongs, with a ball of unholy light in the middle. In the distance he can see a red star. At the base of the contraption is a blocky humanoid with large hands, reminiscent of an efreet. A fined running away from other fiends in the distance is fried by a blast of energy from the device. Looking around in the distance we are able to see the device far off in the distance.
After arguing what to rename the Demon Grinder (Rosebud, Battlewagon, Fiortnite Battle bus) and coming to no consensus we set off towards a tower in the distance that looks like it’s made of metal red blue white black and green strands like sickly DNA. It sits near a mountain sized demon skull. Diverting at the last minute towards the skull, we enter between its teeth.
A low rumble permeates the spaced in the skull, and Asami notices that the rumblings are actually words, speaking of revenge, escape, kingdoms and other stuff.
While in the skull our Nemry tried to scry on the speaker causing the earthquake words. After a second we We hear a deep melody, the word “DOOM” and the back of the cave begins to glow. We hightail it out as the cavern collapses around us. Harrow tries to Millenium falcon us out but fails at the last second trapping us inside. Nemry tries to cast tiny hut to protect us but it’s burned away when we are hit by the light. We take some damage but survive, before the light burns away.
Nemry hears a voice in her head. “Who disturbs the tomb of our lady and queen” . After replying it was from those who seek to revive the queen, the cave/skull opens enough to let us out. We are surrounded by 50 white abishai(Dragon fiends), a minotaur who has opened the cave, and a tortle with a skull-adorned staff. This escort, “guides” us toward the previously mentioned tower.
As we approach the tower we see a translucent dragon circling the tower, and then descending towards us, with more Abishai moving out of the tower to meet it. Thank heavens none of us are using characters from the Dragon slaying game. Out of the tower is a red Dragonborn with obsidian weaponry and armor and one arm, the other being occupied by the HAND OF VECNA. Nemry cites our “diplomatic immunity” and indicates we would like to make a contract and we are ushered into the tower. We step into a septagram of privacy with the tortle, the Dragonborn whose name we learn is Ashardalon and the minotaur.
After some negotiation, we made a deal: We get the hand of Vecna, and we will have to teleport the army somewhere some other time. on our way out we take a look at some alternate vehicle options but opt to keep our own. We are escorted back to the demon grinder.
Sunday 1-29: Why I’m Stuck
Some time ago I decided that, as prep for a future campaign I would do the Gygax 75 challenge. I thought that by following this I would be able to quickly get myself in the right headspace and get prepared. All was going well until I sat down to write an adventure. I did things out of order and made things harder for myself. Too hard in fact. So hard that I kept putting it off. What made it hard?
- I didn’t start off with a strong vision and it made it difficult to make decisions.
- I had made the decision to make this a pointcrawl which I was inexperienced with
- I decided to format it in the formal style of Into the odds “Iron Coral” starter dungeon.
- I decided to make the whole thing inside WordPress instead of writing in an external editor and then copying it over for a final formatting pass.
- I made it for a system I was less mechanically familiar with.
So what am I going to do about it?
I’ve been reading Getting Things Done and I have access to the Mothership Wardens Manual. Paired with a recently posted conversion guide on the OSR discord I’m going to take a stab at finishing it. I am committing to finishing this before my next weekly post goes up.
Wish me luck.
Cool Things I Found
Gundam the witch form mercury had a strong first season but the music was out of this world
The Menu Movie was Fantastic
The Netflix Matilda Musical is quite good
I Quite enjoyed Puss in Boots 2: The last wish. Never saw the first one.
Freefall continues to be excellent
Some Anime Openings
Gaius Invictus 