Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Has it been two weeks already?

This breaking waves project has been tedious, not only taking a long time to get through all the calculations, table consults, and recalculations, but also putting out some not-ready-for-primetime numbers, requiring me to go back through and do some eyeballing and smoothing out.  I probably should do some more smoothing out than I have, but I can feel it coming on...if I don't finish soon, it'll get backburnered and I won't finish at all. 

I did make an entry to the One Page Dungeon contest this year, and I see no reason not to share it, although I don't think anyone really looks at this blog yet, and most people that look at it this year will probably find the URL on my OPD entry, so this is pretty ass-backwards.  But here it is anyway.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3lpDs7zrq1nSDJkZml3YjlycE0

I made the wandering monster chart using the old 1st Edition AD&D monster books, but I'm reasonably sure most of the monsters could be found in most versions of the game.  Ask for conversion help if you need it.

Monday, May 9, 2016

The Hidden Messages of Colonial Handwriting

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-hidden-messages-of-colonial-handwriting

This is a pretty interesting article.  Honestly, most articles I've seen from Atlas Obscura are interesting enough, one way or another, and anyone involved in any kind of world-building (ie most game masters) should be scouring their website for ideas.  But back to this particular article...

So, if you didn't read the article yet, the gist of it is basically that different handwriting styles (fonts if you will) were used in the 17th-18th centuries by different people and for different purposes.  One type of script was used for religious documents, one for legal documents, merchants used fairly showy but quickly written script, high-born ladies used showy but very slow-to-write script (they had time to kill).  And the game-related light bulb that flashed on in my head said that this might form some sort of clue in an RPG mystery.

A PC cleric might recognize an anonymous written threat as being in the ecclesiastic script, obviously coming from some priest or monk used to copying prayerbooks or whatnot.  Or maybe an NPC who is supposedly a cleric writes a note to the PCs using an arcane script suited for magic-user spellbooks, showing that he is not who he seems to be.  Clerics would recognize religious scripts, magic-users would recognize the arcane scripts, characters with noble or merchant backgrounds would recognize others of the same background, and thieves would know about them all.  Oh yeah, they're all about forging documents and translating maps and dusty old books telling of lost treasures; handwriting analysis of this type is right up a thief's alley.  Fold it in under their Read Languages ability, if nothing else...probably with a bonus, because if you can follow along in a book of legends from halfway around the world, picking out a rich merchant's handwriting from an impoverished scholar's in your own native language is a cakewalk.