Saturday, October 3, 2020

An Asemic Dungeon: A Cut Up or Something

I have said these days that I've internalized so many dungeons, so many room descriptions, so many awful terse prose prompts for play that when I think "dungeon" it is fair to say mine looks a little like yours, probably, but maybe more 4-bit, more hard-edged, less organic and impossibly cluttered with other peoples' ideas. Reading a great deal of surrealist/dadaist things and of course, im no magician. my dungeons look like the hellish pits beneath Alpha Complex wherein sulky robots go to fret about irrational numbers and their unhappy inability to taste things. Above, the infrared citizens go about their dull routines and every so often an adventurous young clone peels back a ventilation grill and vanishes into... the aether? Ur-Space? The Dungeon Dimension? the arthaus Ravenloft's weird sprawling undercity? Yes. all those places 

HEY HANDSOME IF YOU CAN HEAR ME COME TO SECTOR 3, SUBSECTION 8 AND LETS MAKE OUT. I miss Holloway, I guess. Really I do.

I cannot escape what is mine and what is theirs and so I have but a scratching of some of mine into the machine and i press GO and I hope for the best. Mine would be tedious and so these are tedious, but at least I cannot be held accountable for what a machine produces (for example .various automated car manufacturers would deny culpability for deaths caused by their algorithms and so I declare myself not responsible for the deaths of any PCs or NPCs that may venture into a thing I might make with this code). There is no sense or plan, only whatever semblance you inject. I named it the first interesting thing that it made, and so let that be your guide.

 THE HELPFUL SHARD DUNGEON

LEVEL ONE: PLEASE GENERATE YOUR OWN MAP

  1. There is Whistle of Helpful Shard and antique coins worth 325 GP concealed here, in stone caskets.
  2. The room has a patches of green slime. The trap is attached to a stairs up.
  3. Strongly flowing air, here. There is also a lantern.
  4. Mostly empty and clean, this room smells dusty.
  5. There are 4 Morlock Warriors and an elevator, in this room.
  6. It is very dusty, here. The dust is recently disturbed.
  7. There are sproutings of luminescent fungi, here.
  8. There is a pit - it is effectively bottomless, or else the bottom goes to Ethereal Plane and hidden Potion of Philter of Love and 10 Black Opal 1000gp, here.
  9. There is Scroll of Treasure Map (Value 2 gems, 11 jewelry) concealed here, loose.
  10. There is a rotten flesh smell in this room.
LEVEL TWO: PLEASE GENERATE YOUR OWN MAP OR NOT

  1. The room has a Nausea Gas. The whole party makes DC 13 Constitution save or roll -2d for initiative and -1d for Actions for 1 turns. The trap is attached to a seemingly-innocuous hook.
  2. There is a parking lot with 8 rusted-out automobiles or skimmers. The entry-gate is non-functioning. puddle of liquids that is probably infectious and hidden antique coins worth 818 GP , here.
  3. There are sproutings of luminescent fungi, here.
  4. Dretch, a relief, and hidden treasure antique coins worth 1088 GP .
  5. A Blinding Gas. The victim is blinded for 4 turns, DC 20 Constitution save keeps the antique coins worth 427 GP safeguarded.
  6. There is a rotten garbage smell in this room.
  7. Worg subtype T-Virus, a manger, and hidden treasure A Nickel Silver nosering, worth 600 gold coins.
  8. There are Shocker Lizard and a chest, holding a needle that never bends, in this room.
  9. There is a trash disintegrator unit. The party can receive 5 gold/AL in antique coins for worhtless items here.
  10. This small room includes a shelves of supplies.

LEVEL THREE
PLEASE TRY MAYBE DONJON.SH or SOMETHING
HERE, the map spreads out into immense caverns dotted with laser-hewn rooms and laboratories, with flickering overhead lights and coolant pipes

  1. This room has a server room with 27 humming server machines and 6 artificial intelligences.
  2. Footprints, barefoot..
  3. Cold air, here. There is also a mop.
  4. This room has a matter replicator device.
  5. The room has a Falling Ceiling Block. The 1d3 unluckiest PCs get a DC 14 Dexterity save or take 2d12 damage . The trap is attached to a stairs down.
  6. This room has an office supply storage facility. Fire extinguishers, long-expired.
  7. This room has a hypersleep sauroid pen with 8 Large Dinosaurs in stasis.
  8. A Lowering Ceiling. Find the mechanism with DC 17 Intelligence check in 4 rounds or everyone will die keeps the antique coins worth 1410 GP safe.
  9. 6 Mants subtype Cyber, hidden 1031 GP in sealed sarcophagi, and a trap: Retractable Laser Turret attacks as Level 3 Magic Missile.
  10. 2 Spider Swarms guard scale(lbs.) Functions on 1-19 in 20. The treasure is locked in iron trunks.
  11. There is a broken collosal war machine, will place victim in temporal stasis for d10 turns if awoken here, trapped with Retractable Laser Turret attacks as Level 3 Magic Missile.
  12. There is 2445 GP concealed here, in aluminum gear crates.
  13. 2 Androids, a wall basin, and a trap: Retractable Laser Turret attacks as Level 3 Magic Missile.
  14. The metal surfaces of this room are well-polished.
  15. Harpy, a recess, and a trap: Arrow Trap. The party sustains d20+5 attacks with 1d6 damage.
  16. Janni guard coins worth 623 GP. The treasure is locked in iron trunks.
  17. The room has a 40 foot deep pit. The trap is attached to a stairs up.
  18. An abandoned storage area, with Cryo-tube, containing a possessed Necromancer.
  19. The party can encounter 3 Spider Swarms, here.
  20. Displacer Beast subtype T-Virus, a loom, and hidden treasure 1456 GP.
  21. Graffiti here says BEYOND THIS POINT, 2 Night Gaunts ATE Edgar Glitchon in luridly colored-paint.
  22. There are Gargoyle and a tapestry, in this room.
  23. 12 Gamma Meerkats, an ore smelter, and hidden treasure Potion of Oil of Slipperiness and coins worth 492 GP.
  24. The lights flicker on and off above a stretch of cubicles. There is also wide-screen video monitor.
  25. There are 4 Skum and a stairs up, in this room.
  26. There is a small plasmic energy core - the room is bathed in low-intensity radiation here.
  27. This average room has Phantasmal Killer, forcing a DC 14 Wisdom save or Die, but if passed the victim still gains Paranoia. The trap is attached to a ledge.
  28. There is a hypersleep sauroid pen with 4 Large Dinosaurs in stasis and hidden 2460 GP, here.
  29. The room contains Young White Dragon subtype Chaos and a patches of green slime.
  30. The room has a patches of russet mold. The trap is attached to a seemingly-innocuous BEYOND THIS POINT, Janni ATE Euphemia Bumpstone in luridly colored-paint.
  31. The room has a Vacuum Chamber - within 6 turns, the breathable air from this area and nearby 2 rooms is evacuated. The trap is attached to a elevator.
  32. A patches of shriekers and violet fungi keeps the 1035 GP safeguarded.
  33. 2 Ghouls subtype Shadow, a platform, and a trap: Poisoned Caltrops, which must be avoided with a DC 14 Dexterity save or party members 1d6 damage and 1d4 Constitution damage poison.
  34. A magic mouth recites a dire warning in several languages and telepathically, containing antique coins worth 2090 GP . The treasure is floating in trillium-laced caskets and safeguarded with poisoned needles in handles.
  35. Gargoyle guard Identity Card Functions on 1-16 in 20. The treasure is loose.
  36. Janni subtype Corrupted, hidden Scroll of Treasure Map (Value 3 magic items, +1 potion) and antique coins worth 1545 GP tied in bags, and a trap: yellow mold.
  37. A patches of green slime keeps the 355 GP safeguarded.
  38. A patches of shriekers and violet fungi keeps the 18 Amber 100gp safeguarded.
  39. The room contains 1 Sporers subtype Mecha and a Mummy Rot Powder. The party must pass DC 13 Constitution save or all be cursed as per a mummy.
  40. Minotaur Zombie subtype Frost, an altar, and hidden treasure paint brush Nonfunctional.
  41. A dusty maintenance area, with Napkins and wet-naps, from previous decade. Various franchises.
  42. There is antique coins worth 2335 GP concealed here, in aluminum gear crates.
  43. There are 2 Lantern Archons and a recess, in this room.
  44. This cavernous room includes a 37 high-strength storage barrels full of stale ale.
  45. The party can encounter 4 Grimlocks, here.
  46. There is Scroll of Treasure Map (Value 1 magic item) and antique coins worth 1617 GP concealed here, loose.
  47. The party will encounter a Centipede Swarm subtype Toxic, in this average room.
  48. This giant chamber has Falling Stones. The victims take 2d6 damage each. The trap is attached to a seemingly-innocuous broken glass.
  49. Ethereal Marauder guard antique coins worth 1689 GP . The treasure is stuffed into sacks.
  50. The party can encounter 3 Ghouls, here.
Trillium is an alloy that negates approximately the same amount of volume of mass in the calculation of an object's weight. It is not dense, and so a trillium-inscribed object, or an object with trillium workings, will weigh much much less than normal.

I am not recalling what a Skum or a Mant is. I think they are from Gamma World.

Go forth. I have some code for maps, but they don't turn out very pretty and so you would best be served with a full-featured random map generator, or somebody like Dyson or something.   

On Parasocial Relationships: a quandary

There are things that are timely. Timely parallels that make us think. I find as the weather cools off, I love to go out at night and just piss freely into the night air, because there is no fear of being seen, no fear of offending, no fear of getting piss on anybody. Somebody could be hiding in the hedge, but if you come sneaking up to the hedge, getting pissed on is (in some places) the least thing you need fear. Other things are timely: I have a reaction to this pearl clutching about decorum and the moral high ground and let me just tell you: decorum is the tool of oppression. They tell victims to be easy, to go gently, to not stir up the pot. Lets not act too hastily, my dear, the guy has always been nice to me and after all, he's the President! If you bring these allegations to the public awareness, they might damage his JOB PROSPECTS so here's a fucktonne of money let's just avoid this whole unseemly business, shall we?

The word sigil... has a long history in Western magic. The members of the Golden Dawn were perfectly familiar with it (″combining the letters, the colours, the attributions and their Synthesis, thou mayest build up a telesmatic Image of a Force. The Sigil shall then serve thee for the tracing of a Current which shall call into action a certain Elemental Force″) and it was used in the making of talismans. The sigil was like a signature or sign of an occult entity.[4]T

Well fuck a bunch of that fucking noise. If you see a bad actor, don't be a broken stair. Say something and say it fucking loud and plain so we can end this MF cycle of intergenerational abuse. 

The same parasocial relationship I have with Trump that I had with Zak: also a manipulative abuser from what i have heard and experienced. I turn and find a sinister intruder at my very pleasant picnic... again... I hustle the motherfucker out  HIT THE ROAD YOU VACUOUS NASTY CUNT...again... I turn and there he is, his dumb rich face and loud fucking mouth leering at me and my friends the way that certain songs on the radio can be cool once or twice but then you’re all O SHIT ITS HOOTIE AND THE BLOWFISH AGAIN LEMME TURN THIS B OFF and you turn the channel and HOLD MY HAND but like it’s titties and blood, or like the windswept entitled loud fake hair of a tantruming 80 year old man who just knows he's right he went to all the best schools LIKE ALL THE all the fucking time on every fucking channel until psychically and spiritually and magickally in a sigil sense like Austin Ausman Spare sense I’m punching his mouth until he’s not in my head and every so often someone comes along and like O MAN HES ALWAYS BEEN NICE TO ME or HES JUST TRYING TO DO HIS JOB or NANCY PELOSI IS JUST AS BAD

But the guy on the radio is like UP NEXT DID YOU HEAR ABOUT VORNHEIM THAT SHIT IS THE BOMB or ZAK IS POLLING AT 73% FAVORABLE SO YOU SHOULD GET ON HIS MF KICKSTARTER LOSER THIS FUCKING BOOK HAS GOOOOOOLD LEAAAAAAAF LETS GO

In my head, some rococo nightmare, octopii, tridents, plunging spears, splayed fig leaves, alabaster, gold leaf, veiny cocks like marble, jewel-encrusted toilets, tiddies splayed widely in some makeup-encrusted mockery of intimacy and youth and romance and fecundity

He comes down the golden escalator, sniffing, high on his own power, encased in an aura of psychotropic alkaloids, giddy with what he has done, with what he can do, the crowd fucking loves him. he doesn't give a fuck for any of them, except that they spread the word and cheer his name. he would just as soon shit on you as look at you, or casually murder your whole family so as to quicken a favorable real estate deal. 

It’s like HOW MANY TIMES CAN I MUTE AWARENESS OF THIS MOTHERFUCKER WHO REPRESENTS A MANIFESTATION OF EVERYTHING I LOATHE BEFORE I JUST COME OUT SWINGING Not necessarily his lamentable ideas that were at issue (gradually revealed to be the underpinnings of malignant narcissism it is alleged but never proved because the evidence has vaporized somehow and noone comes forward) but their OMNIPRESENCE and i watch in horror as otherwise sensible people who i like nod YES TRUMP YES TRUMP GIMME THAT GOLD LEAF AND THAT ABSOLUTELY UNPLAYABLE BULLSHIT ARTHAUS GRANT MORRISON PROTOFASCIST BULLSHIT GOBBLEDYGOOK

Zak was a sinister force in my opinion and an active part of the dismantling of a nice community I enjoyed, but Trump is infinitely worse because he has real power and no redeeming features whatsoever. Zak is a talented artist, a powerful magician, a superhuman android, and (some friends have told me) he was always nice to me.  Well, not me, he was a bit of a cunt to me personally. But to them. But I react the same way that all people who have experienced trauma react when they get that smell of danger from something of a certain type the heart rate quickens eyes dilate breathing deepens and your LETS GO MUSCLES get up and got up and went and suddenly, suddenly, you're typing at someone at 3:00AM like JESUS FUCK PLEASE I CANT HANDLE TO HEAR OR THINK OF THIS MANIAC ANYMORE PLEASE FUCK OFF OR I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING it's a kind of psychic pressure I don't imagine is easy to convey well

I felt like that all the time at the end of G+ and I feel like that all the time with Trump’s wannabe despotic thrashings and hilariously karmic comeuppance going down right in front of us. This feeling of disbelief like HOW DID IT GET THIS BAD? WHY DIDNT SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING

Now: is the problem my parasocial relationship with the imagos of these villainous persons?, or my inability to protect myself from intrusions? perhaps: My lack of mindfulness about controlling my reaction? Or is it that these insidious motherfuckers have gamed their respective systems so that they are sometimes literally unavoidably present in my otherwise happy-go-lucky headspace? Something deep in the code of social networks makes this worse sound thinking people must agree, yes, but I argue that people ought not to be able to get authority by having bot networks or friend networks increase the “validity” of their ideas by raising the rate of circulation of their ideas which is definitely not the same thing.

Both those motherfuckers understand these concepts at the bottom and that’s why they have perverted our micro- and macro-communities and there’s the rub. When this trying time has passed, if it passes, recognize that conflict of ideas is valuable and can be productive. Conflict for the sake of page hits and money is a scam and how empires are eroded. The difference in knowing how to game the game for profit and playing the game for the sake of play and goodwill toward fellowmen and -women

Don’t fucking believe me? Watch the fucking news. The Empire mirrors the decrepitude of the Emperor until finally everybody bows out - THIS IS NO LONGER PRODUCTIVE SHUT IT DOWN 

Godspeed to Justice for all motherfucking abusers and oppressors and gatekeepers and those who pervert power for their own interests, even if they have gold toilets or went to Yale or claim to be republicans or anarchists or I don’t know just fuck the whole thing. You may say YOU HAVE CONFLATED THESE POOR PEOPLE but yes, it's my fucking website and should I prove to be mistaken in the grand scheme of things, I will retract my comments and apologize and please sir to recognize this is my ART and art is unassailable and beyond critique when it's making an artistic point and nobody can fucking question me: who the fuck do you think you are you little miserable nobody? I'm an artist. An artiste. Look at all the gilding on this page: that's MF art you peon nobody your opinion is shite. I'm drawing attention to useful parallels in the public personae of popular figures with whom I imagine I have an adversarial parasocial relationship and so this is just pissing in the dark and shouldn't be construed as impacting any REAL people, only the hilarious images they present in the ideosphere

Joesky Tax: go fuck yourself, no offense it’s not that kind of rant and I have no interest in salving your wounded ego if this pertains to you but. Man, I was going to talk about sigils and Austen Osman Spare and how to work the works INSIDE THE WORKS and maybe i ought to lay off the covfefe and take my meds, but I got sidetracked. Something about sigils. Sigils. You should check that shit out. It is deep magick and even holds up D&D in a way: you dream a thing and it becomes a real thing for you by gradually taking shape in the world, and the squiggles are there as a reminder until you forget what they were for and why your lovely emerald city situation turns into a bedraggled, rotten, hollow mess and if only we could have foreseen this lamentable situation

Totally not related, here is my anti-trump/anti-cultist rant but like i hung Zak's Trumps dumb persona on it because he was an easy target for me at the time. I freely offer it to you to turn into something for 5e or (better yet) Call of Cthulhu d20. it is chock full of unplayable Grant Morrison artsy-fartsy bullshit which would really make your players THINK and they could jerk off to it in private thinking about how great I am and my bevy of scantily clad sex-workers and how MAN i wish I knew those girls in High School but now I am successful they flock to me like a flock of heavily made-up vestals. 'Cause ART and ART is foremost and fuck goodwill in the community. Also, fuck trump and his whole crew of swindlers

Once again, I'm not attacking REAL people here, only the images of people. I'm sure he's a great guy in person. Plenty of people have said so! A couple of ladies and kooks have said he's a maniac, but nobody listens to them. They're nobody.

Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Are Human Rights. Love is Love. The meek shall inherit the earth. Long live the fighters. power to the people long live the king the king is dead


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