Balthazar and Bork in the Wastelands

 Alas, if you did not attend, much hilarity was experienced by

Joseph

and

Eli

The Misadventures of Balthazar and Bork

Being a Comedy of Homelessness, Chitin, and Inheritance

Part Dieux: Electrix Boogaloo

So, the party (Bork played by Joe and the Junker Balthazar VVVMVF played by Eli) alighted on the shipping platform of Mesa 4, which Balthazar's Ancient Family Heirloom indicated was his own personal property and filled with Treasures Beyond Compare.

Jacques, the dirigible pilot who brought them, indicated that they ought to signal by Wrist-O-Com when they wished to escape the premises, and Jacques always gets payment up front which of course drained the Junker's coffers compleatly. Being a bit of a drunkard and Anarchist (not Antifa because O NO You DINT) Bork often took payments in rum, and a good thing, too.

So, within the delivery hangar they were greeted by a cloaked group of spindly ghasts, who immediately sniffed Balthazar's genetic rights to the Mesa and begged of the party to send paychecks retroactively for hundreds, thousands of years, and when it was determined that Bork (now CEO) was carrying RUM, the unnervingly polite and totally undead fiends drank deeply of it and wobbled off, tipsy, to darker climes, directing the party languidly down Maintenance Hallway 4. After nigh on a millenia with no fermentables, their tolerance for alcohol was very low and so they passed out somewhere off camera.

Continuing down the hallway, the party encountered the old "Jiggling Doorknob" problem, which Bork promptly nullified by kicking the door into smithereens and unleashing the masked, blank-faced Monstrous Centipedes within. A short tussle ensued, but the vittttleorious party found, to their surprise, an Ancient and Untouched Cache of Meals Ready To Eat in various unsavory flavors (I did not tell them they missed a collectible limited edition Candwich) but eyes lighting up with dollar signs they signalled to Jacques to return, and meantime they stuffed the carcasses with as many MREs as they possibly could. This effort left them with (perhaps hundreds!) of MREs and a mere 12 minutes or so to explore the remainder of the Mesa, because Jacques has no qualms about abandoning stranded explorers of haunted laboratories and mesas.

Down the hall, they encountered a Security Droid (somewhat malfunctional) who requested access clearance, and of course since Balthazar is the rightful heir a single drop of blood suffices to gain them entrance to Laboratory 4, containing row upon row upon hideous row of shrivelled, Partially Viable Super Psychick Fetal Clones which (although tasty) are well-suited to becoming an anti-establishment Psychick Army to destroy some lower quadrant of Bastion whilst the Junker Balthazar plays fruitless games in Parliament. The drone delivery devices of Mesa 4 only needed their address in Bastion to deliver White Hot Death to the new chairmen of the Junker's (Evil? Misguided? Doomed?) corporate headquarters. It is amazing what paradigms can be busted when you think outside the box.

Ahhh, the joys of Pseudo-Random Generation (by Tablesmith) and fast-and-loose rules systems (Into The Odd) with no expectation of continuity nor clarity! It is good these nanites in my blood have broken the RPG dam that held my heart back in some sense. It has been heavy with serious matters of late...

Perhaps more picaresque scenes, later, G*d willing, if you compleat the requisite forms, of course.

Noah's Knot, Redux

metaphor for the code, and incidentally a room in the dungeon!

When I was in 5th grade, in our BASIC programming class, Mrs. Dempsey saved my project as NOAHSKNOT because I had too many badly-nested GOSUBS. This project is a lot like that one was! It changed the course of my life, I think, because until then I programmed my C64 with aplomb and joyously - if badly. So, I don't enjoy programming much, today. Hence, I was having a problem with the code for the Tablesmith funhouse dungeon-maker. That being: it's got so much random good stuff in it that it becomes a heaving mass of good ideas all entangled into a heap which doesn't make sense.

Here's from the file's header where I keep track of changes. The wish list is large, but not un-doable. The guys on Tablesmith.io asked a question that pulled back the veil and now I have more intimate knowledge of how I was mucking it up before, and so new and better features must inevitably arise - I think I can do almost all the stuff I was wishing for. Further! I can use markdown to just take the whole chunk of stuff and send it right to GMBinder for custom-made .PDFs of Goodness +2. I'm talking custom page styles, random illustrations, random maps that may even have some sense to them, hyperlinks to NPCs, the whole Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine Hellish yards of it.

## Feature wishlist

## 1. Geases and quests, maybe with a call to an outside table (seems improbably easy but unnecessary)

## 2. Difficulty of some traps and saves scales with dungeon level via variable (done!)

## 3. Integrated personalities of some generated NPCs (probably unnecessary but doable!)

## 4. Standardized formatting for monsters (bold), treasure (italics) - (done! - new wish: markdown output for generated monsters right to GMBinder - probably easy! Could even spit out SRD documents to an appendix but that's for later)

## 5. Re-rollable via link options for some non-sensical entries (Done!!)

## 6. Room sizes (Done!), with larger rooms containing larger features (not done, but now imminent)

## 7. Random chance of adding a template to a monster - the templates are included - note added kludgy version on June 19,2020

## 8. Better treasure the farther down you go, maybe like the random treasure system in DMG1e (this is a whole 'nuther table and the current one suffices)

## 9. Lair treasure vs. Carried Treasure? (not wished for any longer)

## 10. More Steam, Electricity, Magnetism, Flooding, and Wild Organic zones? (highly desired feature!!! - n.b. now ludicrously easy - the level will be broken into zones of d6 rooms sharing certain features)

## 11. Lairs/Settlements of humanoids with leadership, for allies and trading. Pretty easy, actually. Single line of code.

## 12. Zones of 2-4 rooms of various sizes that share qualities (fairly easy to implement with Loop command - I think this is the same as 10, above)

## 13. Maybe room contents depend on room size? Not likely since that gets complicated... n.b. would require a minor re-write but not too bad.

## 14. Trap triggers (implemented in another table, but needs weirding)

## 15. Factions of humanoids are the main populants of each level - up to 3 Factions would be cool

## 16. Room numbers - Should be pretty easy, actually. Having troubles with the variable (problem resolved - now FIXED!)

So, I haven't implemented it, yet, but here is the somewhat-less repetitive but MOAR CHAOTIC and less-sensible output of the generator, now, for a 30-room, 1st level dungeon in the Lair of The Robolich. I'm pretty sure I've figured out a way to send back the number of generated monsters in each encounter to the main generator for... reasons. 

1. The room has a patches of russet mold that is activated by false switch. The trap is attached to a steps.
2. There are Mimic subtype Frost and a winch and pulley, in this average-sized room.
3. A Slowing Gas. The victim is slowed for 4 turns, DC 18 Constitution save keeps the Potion of Poison and 17 Native Amethyst 250gp safe.
4. A Essence Displacer that shift the soul/consciousness of the target into the 1-Astral 2-Ethereal 3-Positive 4-Negative 5-Shadow 6-Alternate Reality that is activated by psionic magnet keeps the antique coins worth 3261 GP safeguarded.
5. There are Displacer Beast and a broken furniture in this room.
6. A 10 lewd voxel sculptures. They activate an animated information provider, containing 2216 GP. The treasure is divided into small coffers and safeguarded with spring darts firing up from inside bottom of container.
7. The room contains Vampire Spawn subtype T-Virus and a Hail Of Needles. It deals 10 attacks per PC as fighter of Level 4 doing 5 damage each that is activated by psionic magnet.
8. Owlbear, a charcoal bin, and hidden treasure antique coins worth 2154 GP .
9. 2 Large Monstrous Scorpions subtype Nega-, a spinning wheel, and hidden treasure 28 omnium nuggets.
10. 3 Troglodytes subtype Mutant guard 30 Black Opal 1000gp. The treasure is held in metal urns.
11. Janni, hidden Antitox Functions on 1-8 in 20 loose, and a trap: Sprayer soaks entire party with dirty water.
12. 4 Ghouls, hidden 51 Amber 100gp locked in iron trunks, and a trap: patches of green slime.
13. There is a maintenance area. There are Mop and hidden 40 Moonstone 50gp, here.
14. There is a planetarium projector - if disturbed then laser attacks at d24 on each party member for 1d10 damage and hidden A Hastelloy aigrette, set with star rubys, worth 100 gold coins, here.
15. An abandoned storage area, with 30 larval spider-demons, twitching but dormant in egg-sacs.
16. 1 Lizardfolk subtype Arachno, a stuffed beast, and a Quark bender will alter victim's alignment by 1 step 1-3 Law/Neut/Chaos or 4-6 Good/Neut/Evil that is activated by low frequency sonic motion detector.
17. It is dusty, here. There is also a spike.
18. Hound Archon subtype Crystal, an overhang, hidden 2618 GP, trapped with Spring Loaded Chute, which will eject a PC into an oubliette that is activated by false switch.
19. 3 Androids subtype Space guard 11 omnium nuggets. The treasure is stuffed into sacks.
20. There is antique coins worth 3935 GP hidden here.
21. This room has an office supply storage facility. 1d100 suspicious 40 gallon drums, marked as biohazard (1d8: 1 tar-zombies, 2 ooze-like mutagen, 3 movement sensitive explosive, 4 distilled water, 5 Synthetic Fire Flower juice, 6-8 surfactant/sanitizer).
22. Minotaur subtype Steam, a manger, hidden 4738 GP, trapped with Cold Glyph on a cauldron, full of mutagenic fluid, forcing a DC 19 Constitution save or 8 that is activated by video motion detector.
23. A Large Spring Loaded Chute, which will drop the party down 1d3 dungeon levels that is activated by pressure pad keeps the 54 Native Red Coral 100gp safeguarded.
24. 4 Grimlocks subtype Nega-, an arch, and hidden treasure A Cast Iron bracelet, set with a thulite, worth 600 gold coins.
25. 1 Lantern Archons subtype Ghost, hidden 3462 GP stored in pottery jars, and a trap: Rust Glyph, forcing a DC 18 Wisdom save or lose all non-magic metallic items.
26. There is antique coins worth 5061 GP concealed here, nestled in huge chests.
27. This modest room includes an a pit full of broken worker robots.
28. This modest room includes an is half-flooded with waist-high water. The next 2 rooms are also flooded.
29. This is a food-supply store room, with a few scroungeable rations and some potable water..

30. This room has a 3 shipping containers containing 111 wrench,pipe.