Friday, April 19, 2013

RPG Blogs/Blog Posts of Interest


On fantasy rpgs:
I've been reading about old school rpgs, dungeon delves, mega-dungeons, wilderness hex crawls, etc. and getting inspired to try some solo adventures myself. (whether that will pan out into actual gaming remains to be seen!)
Since part of the lure for me, especially as a solo player, is exploring and learning stuff about the world as I go I don't want to populate a map in advance. In fact, I'd prefer a game where I discover the terrain as I go, too.
To that end, I've been looking into random tables, including ones for generating the maps/terrain as well as encounters, for both dungeons and wilderness. I will create some as needed, but I'd rather not "reinvent the wheel" if I don't have to. I have found some good resources here and there, mostly for dungeon stuff (and taverns, and other things). So far, not so much for wilderness. I'll want ways to generate more permanent terrain and features, ephemera, encounters, tracks and traces, in a way that doesn't produce results that disrupt my "willing suspension of disbelief". I will also probably adjust whatever I find to suit my own tastes and world ideas (like you do).

Here are a few resources I've been inspired by so far:

I found this blog post on http://rpgdump.blogspot.com/2009/08/random-tables.html
in which the author writes about random tables where the first 50% is "nothing special" (or "the usual/something common"?), the next 25% is a minor result (or better than average?), the next 15% is a medium result, etc. Basically halving the chance each time so the lower order things come up more frequently. This makes sense to me for things where you want/expect that sort of distribution which is commonly found in things like demographics (1 large city about twice the size of the next smaller cities, of which there would be 2, which in turn are about twice the size of the next four smaller cities, etc.). It's a rough "rule of thumb", but can give you more realistic distributions. Another example might be if your adventurers/party are looking for a wizard; there might be 8 level 1 wizards in the area, maybe 4 level 2 wizards, a couple of level 3's, and only 1 level 4. Then do a little randomization to adjust the numbers up or down a bit.

http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/
aka Dyson's Dodecahedron
To my reader (if there is one. ha ha), if you're into rpg's, mapping, random encounters, and tons of goodies, and haven't been to this site go now. If you ever get back here I hope you enjoy that site as much as I do (albeit, newbie that I am to it, too).

I also want to recommend http://tabletopdiversions.blogspot.com/ once again. I am enjoying his Ever Expanding Dungeon solo series, as well as lots of other inspiring and though-provoking rpg posts (and comments!).

2 comments:

  1. Interesting post Fitzbadger & some useful links,thanks.

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  2. Somehow I had lost track of this blog of yours.


    -- Jeff

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