Friday, May 29, 2020

Tablesmith Retro-Kitchen Sink Dungeon

I dunno. Like, the question is: If I tell the pseudorandom generator to make me a couple of dozen rooms of a dungeon, if I steal all the bits from 10 different places 'n' gussy it up with whatever I can from my own head, does that mean I made the dungeon? Or did I just author the code? I don't know. I can't tell anymore, but after generating a thousand thousand rooms, checking this code for glitches and undesirable bits, jiggering numbers around, editing links and all the other minutiae, here is a thing that comes burbling to the surface of my screen, which you may have, if you promise to NOT drink that 5th cup of coffee. It's empowered by the 3.5 DMG, the 1e DMG, Ruins of the Undercity, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Mutant Future, Gamma World 1e, I don't know what else... this is 10 rooms of weirdness for you.

  1. The entryway to the dungeon is: a broken collosal war machine, will Dimensional distortion - Height/Depth - seems larger than maps suggest (multiply dimensions by d10x100 feet) if awoken, hidden pre-historic coins of plasticrete worth 367 gold, and a trap: yellow mold.
  2. Hidden treasure, here: 140 gold .
  3. This room was once a well. Within it, there is a chute and an animal nest.
  4. 8 Chicken Wolves, a screen, and a trap: Undeath Glyph - Awaken all undead, turn nearby recent dead into zombies.
  5. This irradiated Cleric still has its chainmail hauberk on and a Staff in its hands.
  6. There is a pillars of scrutiny: if diverge from some particular random Alignment, then judged and causes Door, resisting - needs a DC 17 Strength check to open here, and a trap: Door, resisting - needs a DC 17 Strength check to open. (I didn't say it was perfect! far from it)
  7. This room is spotlessly clean and free of dust. In the corner, there is a grinder.
  8. 3 Tcho-Tcho guard Mirror of Life Trapping and antique coins worth 585 gold .
  9. An abandoned storage area, with Cryo-tube, containing possessed Necromancer.
  10. Mostly empty and clean, this room smells of ozone.

I'd play it. I guess some dismal part of my brain has played it a couple of times, now. It only doesn't make sense if you think too hard about it! My plan is to generate a hundred or so of these a week for a while, and then edit it into some reasonably playable thing (the above is pretty raw)

Fight the Power

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Pulling a Fast One

So anyways, the Blogger interface just changed, so that's not great because change is bad. Yuck. Looks like an early-aughts UI for a dead Android phone

Moving on, I made this for you to pass around to your friends. Maybe jank a copy of Holmes in there or or Labyrinth Lord quickstart in there, if there is one, or OSE or maybe whatever is your favorite. Mutant Future? Cool. GW1e? Terrific! Toon? That would be a literal prank. Maybe stuff in there a moderately-altered Chick Tract and your work is done, comrade

Looks like this (see below), if you print it out on card stock you can wrap it around a booklet print and turn the h8ters work against them, long after they wandered off this mortal coil

I think (speculative merely) my 6th grade computer teacher might be related to Dempsey who was a co-author of the thing back in the day, but there could be a bunch of Dempseys in S. Florida in the 80's. She more than anything made me fear work in the computer industry! She's probably gone now -- the ogress! -- but she left an indelible mark on me of computing as subversive when she critiqued all my great and useless and badly-reiterative programs (fucking GOSUBS man, make no sense when I'm 11)

Adobe identifies the title as done in a font called Ironwood (I wonder if the author lifted it from this, which would be a laugh) Ironwood is great, and I have it in the pile, but I thought that simply chopping it out and doing it digitally would take away some of the charm. Also, I must say, I love the mostly-illegible dragon for his clear face and squishy innards and body? Like maybe it's a trace from a better source but who can say? Maybe some expert

Go out, Be Crimes, Do Gay, Give Your Creations Away

After, For Your Amusement

Original, pretty janky in a design sense but I'm no expert

Find the PDF outcheea