Make an initial shape

Make an arc of points around an inital point.

 

'Catch' and yesterday's 'injured' with Nelson's 'letters' gives me 'catch injured letters'; 'L' in a cast and sling, using a crutch. Today’s word was ‘landlord’. I don't know what I want to do with that.

I worked on ‘triangle arc exploration’ yesterday, starting with a hexagon around a starting point. I’d rather make a diamond around an initial point and subdivide the triangles of the quad triangle fan into triangle pairs to make an octagon with eight internal triangles. I can do this with trigonometry or use the dx and dy to make that diamond to the octagon I mentioned. The initial polygon is an arc of points around the origin. You have a point some radius from the origin and the next point is at right angles to the last point and then gets pulled to a distance equal to the radius from the origin.

Make a Hexagon!

I want to do some arc exploration, pushing out the edges on the known parts of our map, starting with a hexagon around our starting point.

I didn’t draw anything this morning but the prompt was ‘injured’ and Nelson’s word was ‘letters’. What I did do was work on my arc exploration scheme again. We make an octagon out of two points, the initial point is the center and the second point is the end of a vector away from that initial point to give a dx and dy from which we derive three more points to make a quad four triangle wheel around that initial point. We can subdivide each of those and push the midpoint out to make that octagon. We now have an arc around some origin. This is the land or sea visible from that point. To explore you move to one of the eight points and ‘look’ out by pushing that point out to make a quad triangle pair with two long edges which need to be subdivided into quad triangle pairs for a pair of triangle pairs, a triangle fan. Then you move out to the edge again and ‘look’.

 

We give these points heights to find out whether they are above or below sea level, whether they are land or sea. The points at sea level are all the same distance, but the points above sea level probably would be further away and I should really take that into account… Then of course we subdivide these triangles along zero height to find a coastline. Rivers which our explorer might be tracing would go from point to point downhill to the sea or uphill away from the sea and may branch or come together with another river or empty into a lake or swamp before they reach the ocean.

I ended up doing a hexagon- https://vincesalienzoo.blogspot.com/2021/11/make-hexagon.html

NOGAS

Name, Occuption, Goal, Attitude and Stake (%)

Event Driven Adventure Design

Something happens, something weird, perhaps some violence, or social interaction. How are these different things connected?

The 28 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'ride' and the last two words from Nelson were 'church'  and 'job'. Riding makes me think of a motorcycle and I don't know what church and job make me think of... How about a biker crashes into a church service. He needs help!

I’ve been watching an English guy (a gay guy named ‘Guy’, actually) who has a you-tube channel about how to be a great GM… I know some great GMs, so he’s got some nerve! 8-P But the thing I just watched and want to try, for writing characters, actually, not just RPGs, is NPC AI, called OGAS: Occupation, Goal, Attitude and Stake. Occupation isn’t just your job, but it’s what occupies your life and a goal is the thing you want. Obviously there can be several of either, but keep it simple, dumbass! 8-P Attitude is the character’s attitude towards everything, angry, affable, loving, kind, apathetic, resentful, etc. Stake is their investment in the first three things, how important keeping their job, achieving their goal or being kind is. Again, this doesn't have to be the same, but for our purposes it is…

Greg the biker has to get an item of great power to a sorcerer to stop an eldritch horror. Greg hates everybody but he hates this thing even more because it took away ‘his Linda..’ and he will die to get it all done! He will literally ride through hell.

Something happens, something weird, perhaps some violence, or social interaction. How are these different things connected? 

1. A horse throws a shoe and we need it reshod

2. Two merchants we're guarding start to fight, with knives!

3. The goat's milk sours

4. A landslide takes out 1d6 pack horses, 1d3 laborers and maybe a merchant, even odds

* a gremlin is having a great time!

One-Eyed Bob is a ditch-digger who wants to buy a new shovel. 'Life sucks, but at least I have a ditch to dig...' He's got a 20% stake in things, will easily give in and give up 8-(

What If?

Ask yourself the what if? question

I drew Lipton this morning. The 27 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'coat', and I'm at Cliff and Lynn's, we're going to go pick up some furniture. Things went pretty good, although it wore me out quickly. Luckily my niece Molly was there to be the muscle when her decrepit Uncle Vinnie wasn’t getting it done… A sweet neighbor cat, ‘Hammie’ slept on the wicker couch on the front porch the whole time and deigned to let Molly  and scratch her head. She was unconcerned by all the humans emptying out her ‘other’ home.

Campaign Builder!

Campaign creation... Usually I set out to answer the reporters' questions here. Who are the player characters and what are they doing? When and where does this all take place? What is the story problem? Why is is their problem? How can it be resolved, Good, Bad or Twisted?

I didn’t draw a sketch today. The 26 Inktober 2019 prompt was dark and Nelson’s word is ‘Walmart’, so I didn’t feel inspired by a dark wally world. I tried to give blood again today but my hemoglobin was a little too low again, 12.5 below 13. The second time I’ve been turned away this month. I had to cancel on a third appointment a week and a half ago because I had a little bit of a cold, so I’m a three time loser! 8-(

The two things I’ve been working on are list-taking and other role-playing applications, like a campaign or adventure planner, with a campaign being merely a fractal expansion of an adventure idea? 8-P The other thing being a way to make maps, bits of land and see as the marching triangles of a triangle mesh inside of complex polygons. I can make a triangle from a vector, and a vector from two random points in order. We make this initial triangle by pushing a new third point out to the right, and any further triangles out from the left, defining, creating and saving the points, or the indices of the three points, in a list of triangles. We can also push out the points, the vertices or corners of existing polygons. Pushing a point out from an edge makes one triangle, but a pushing a new point out from an existing  point connected to two adjacent points makes a pair of triangles or a quad, which may collapse down to one triangle if the two edges define a concavity, or subdivide further if the new edges are two long...

Polygons with internal triangle meshes of land or sea bordered by a ring of contrasting sea or land triangles. I think I’ve found a way to separate my landmass jumbles, per-maybe-haps.

 

https://vincesalienzoo.blogspot.com/2021/10/plz.html

 

Make A Random Table

Make a list of items and randomly pick one.

Start with a triangle!

Build yet another Oval World Map! I want to make triangles into the by now familiar oval-shaped polygon world map.

The 25 Inktober 2019 prompt was "tasty', so I drew a tasty burger! Happy Thanksgiving! Nelson's word today is 'pen’. The turkey is very done; it came out of the cooker in a half dozen pieces, the largest of which was the two breasts! 8-P

What am I thankful for on this Thanksgiving 2021? That Covid-19 was not the end of the line, merely a harbinger of more to come… call me ‘Doomer’, but the shortages which we’re complaining about right now pale in comparison to if the world-wide network had collapsed. Not the end of technical civilization, but near enough as to make no difference! We need to be energy-independent and source all critical production to the continental US, possibly including Canada and Mexico. The latter would be a lot more realistic and the former is not nearly as threatening as what they already have, providing southerly big brother with resources and the occasional high tech.

So what would that be like? For one thing, since we’re going to have to bribe the corporations to do the right thing anyway, and Slippery Joe Mansion (no, Google Docs, I don’t want to use that losers’ actual name, he deserves worse than to be mocked and nameless, but let it go...), tax and land grants in west virginia and the rust belt to get additive manufacturing rolling in. We need to get started prepping for climate change anyway and the rust belt looks to be the part of the country which just might ride out the worst. At any rate, do something for the working poor, the rich can take care of themselves and will manage to make money off of it anyway!

This is ‘twenty minutes in the future’, a setting about a generation from now when my buddy Dan Newton’s new-born son will come of age, the twenty-forties. Coastal cities will start to be abandoned (Boston has already started in places, perhaps New York, too) as the sea encroaches in low-lying parts, like subways, places will continue to dry out, stay warm longer, and, if we don’t learn better, continue to become less and less fertile as we destroy the topsoil instead of building it up and stashing organic carbon away in it instead of releasing it as CO2. Probably re-wilding as we turn to cheap vat-grown meat versus factory-farmed, plus fruits and veggies in greenhouses tended by robots. Or turning those former farms into permaculture forests harvested by robots is an idea which has been kicking around for a little while, too. The yields might even be better, after you consider that we are currently making a lot of our food indirectly out of petroleum in the form of fertilizers and poisoning ourselves with pesticides. Ugh. Rant over…

I made a page which lets you make lists of items and then randomly pick one. I need to figure out some way of modifying each list item, including removing it. I’ve created to do lists and modified them into the dead simple character generator, but they were all about adding things and removing them, not revising text which I entered...

Yet Another Oval World Map!

Build yet another Oval World Map! I want to turn the 'X marks the spot' offset into my world map and eventually into the by now familiar oval-shaped polygon world map.
Click the 'X' to start.

X

 

Nelson's word is 'boss' and the 24 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'dizzy', so I tried to suggest a dizzy boss with the swirl above his head and grabbing the shelf. I was not very successful at this… I need to come up with some prompts for December. I’m also a couple of days behind on my ‘character a day’. I was looking at this again just now and maybe that failed dizzy ‘glyph’ above the boss’ head is actually an open wormhole, about to dump something? 8-P

 

The 23 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'ancient'. I thought of an ancient artifact, like the winged bull that the bad guys smuggled the nukes inside of in 'True Lies'. I had a note on the page I wrote yesterday about being on the road between ruined cities, so i wrote up an archeologist/tomb raider- (44/43) Ancient Civilizations- 44 and Forgotten Languages- 43, (46/45) Arcane Rituals- 46 and Art Appraisal- 45 then finally Poetry and Songwriting- 13.

Monday 22 November 2021- The 22 Inktober 2019 prompt was ‘ghost’ and Nelson’s word was ‘sister’. A very scary spook… Ghost sister, sister Ghost? THe ‘Ghastly’ I drew sure ain’t Caspar! Perhaps this is the scary suicide from ‘Ghost’ who insists he was pushed. I’d like to think that that guy eventually got where he need to go.

Game Builder!

I want to run a game!
Brainstorm some elements.

Continents and Oceans!

Work your way through oceans and continents. I would map this to a world div, growing each bit as the user adds new bits... I set the bits up to 'roll' up chuncks smaller than Australia and larger than Asia

World Area

I was looking at a couple of stories set in my old Big Damn Space Opera campaign-

Old Comlications:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M1B6ZpHkkdWOBAhYyNWrB_kunFwrt9oHVWU0nkSjcsQ/edit?usp=sharing 

Marianne:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mWRXTJWfmlHbx7qzyH7QlKwy0w9DRFqDONBFqrfZZPU/edit?usp=sharing

The 21 Inktober 2029 prompt was 'treasure', so I drew a treasure chest, a sword and a little pile of (big!) coins. Nelson's word this morning is 'teacher'. Treasure chest implies pirates,”Argh!”. Teacher and pirate makes me think of a ship being attacked by pirates and the pirates grabbing the teacher for some reason, such as the Pirate Queen wants her (I just found out the teacher is a woman) to teach her three children... Constance O’Leary, Origami- 4, (37/37) Teaching- 37 and History- 37, (29/28) Sewing- 29 and Singing- 28. I’ve been reading my old stories; I really should finish Barbara Wednesday’s Treasure-

http://vincesalienzoo.blogspot.com/2011/06/barbara-wednesdays-treasure-1st-1600.html

River

Taking 'vines' and making rivers... We're making the fourth point 'wrong', need to use dx and dy properly, but this is a decent first pass.

Nelson's word is 'pastor' and the 20 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'tread'. Pastor tread softly? Tread Pastor Roberts? 'A good pastor walks where angels fear to tread, for there is his flock.' So I used the dead simple character generator to come up with the following traits (as always, this is just where I start; if I was to use any of these characters they’d be heavily revised! 8-P)- (37/37) Minister to the Sick- 37 and Convince (con?)- 37, (48/47) Vanquish Eeee-vile! 48 and Smite the (Merely) Wicked! 47, then finally Make Tea Time Conversation- 44 (I’m thinking of Father Brown, I guess).

I want to draw a river network branching out from a central point. Splat out a dozen points and then find the two which are closest together to start with. Remove these two and then look for the point among the remaining points which is closest to these two, forming a line from this third point to the point which is closest to it to the remaining point. This list is my initial river network. The two endpoints run ‘downhill’ to the middle point and the network is actually a list of line/river segments which ‘run downhill’ from a point not yet in the network to a point already in the network.

 

Oracle!

Random Bits!

Work your way through oceans and continents.

The 19 Inktober prompt was 'sling' and Nelson's word is 'photos'. I fed that to Google and got stock pictures of arm and baby slings, so that’s what I drew. No character, yet, but maybe soon… A party of adventurers hears a baby crying, searches finds him (male) in a basket up in the crook of a tree where three or four spreading branches have cupped him (the tree looks to have been cropped at some point to get this sort of effect and that the woods here about look to have been managed at least at some point, but a growing wild without the hand of a forester now). There is some blood and the party can eventually track down some remains down by a stream, a young woman foraging with her babe set upon by wolves. She hid him up in the tree and led them away before they tore her apart.

The rogue ties a blanket or old shirt as a sling and carries the baby. “I’ve done this before…”

A Pick-Up Game Worksheet

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B38sUusc114SZl9qM3JYczVTUE85Q2VSZ0Z0SlVZdw/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-31vnujnYGauifC5B6X3OrA

I don't remember where I picked this up, just found it again in my notes

Answer the Reporters’ Questions, Who, What, When, Where, How and Why?

The PCs are a random collection of people on a train

The conflict or problem? An experiment gone wrong strands them on another version of Earth where all they have is the section of train car that came through. There were casualties and gruesome deaths, but the climate is more or less the same as they left behind, a little cooler but the same season, similar flora and fauna… People?

Others? There are 2d6 survivors, some of whom are the PCs; in fact, divide up the train survivors between the players so that they’re playing multiple characters. Folk are probably going to die!

All of this takes place in? An alternate US state, perhaps Ohio or PA

Places- The wreckage from the train, the nearest stream, pond or lake. This is forested. 

How can the conflict or problem be resolved, Win, Twist or Fail? 

Epic Win- Best Outcome

Twisted Result- Something good, but something bad, too 

Epic Fail- Worst outcome

Why are the players involved (and individually)? 

Risks & Rewards- Conflict is resolved with dice as needed, and each contest or feat represents a risk and a reward, as proposed by the player(s). Frame the contest with a desired outcome, the reward, and a risk, something bad, then roll for each. The reward die will show a 'high', for success, 'low' for a fail, or a 'middling' for a mixed result; likewise the risk may be successfully avoided on 'high', dealt out and resolved on 'low', or remains hanging over your head on 'middling'. 

The risk and reward should be similar; perhaps we let the dice decide and roll d%, getting a 78. The risk is high, but so is the reward... Roll against the 78 and the higher the better for reward, the lower the better for the risk. Roll 76, a near miss so you get some reward, but you roll a 17, way under for risk and take some fearsome consequence. You could run a GM-less game for a few players where the group suggests things and uses the dice to randomly decide events with this system of risk/reward. Is there a chance animals will bother them in the night? If the players agree there is, how much? Roll versus that and come up with a risk, fearsome predator, versus a reward?

Timeline Generator

Type something in as a timeline event and press enter!

18 Inktober 2019 was misfit and Nelson’s word yesterday was co-worker; today’s is 'president'. A misfit co-worker? Literally a misfit, a missed fit for their world or work role? Like the elf who wanted to be a dentist? The Christmas special was about finding the island of misfit toys, so it was about misfits, coming and going… Clarence is a patchwork construct like an Igor or Frankensteins’ not-monster. He currently works in a warehouse with other odd-balls. (29/28) Packing- 29 and Finding Stuff- 28, (30/30) Sportscaster- 30 and Coach- 30, (32/31) Writer- 32 and Paramedic- 31, and, finally, Fight- 5. He doesn’t want to fight you. He wants to write your story, fix up your paper-cut, coach your terrible basketball team, broadcast the game and make you guys sound good, find your lost item and pack it up to send it to you! He works in the warehouse but his three hearts are not in it… Why three hearts? Haven’t you been paying any attention?! He has a lot of things which he loves! 8-P 3 <3s... 

Number of Triangles in a Polygon

There are at a certain number of triangles in each land or sea polygon...

Nelson's word yesterday was 'sunset' (his word today is 'co-worker') and the 17 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'ornament', so I drew a sunset disk on a necklace. This is the religious symbol of an NPC; (33/33) Priest of Sunsets- 33 and Counseling- 33, Crafting - 3 (not very good…), (42/41) Smite Evil- 42 and Heal Wounds- 41. Who is the God of Sunsets and what does this god control, besides presumably sunsets? Hmm… Sunset is the precursor to the darkness of the night and Sunset protects from creatures of the night. Sunset fights a holding action against the darkness and rests in the morning when his sister, Sunrise, takes over. Sunset protects and provides knowledge and his favorite animals are dogs and owls.

Grid of Heights

Fill a grid. Generate land and sea from the heights at each grid point.

Nelson’s word is ‘sunset’ and the 16 Inktober 2019 prompt was ‘wild’, so wild man flipped to wild woman. My drawing is extremely messy, with deeply inset eyes and a head covering and scarf because the weather is pretty nasty. Three rude fire hardened sticks for javelins and their llama… yeah it was gonna be a doggo, but this looks more like a llama. Like I said, this is a pretty messy drawing, even more so than usual!

The wild woman and a sheep instead, a ewe? So she has a source of milk and to make cheese. I’m thinking she’s all that’s left of her village and the ewe is all that’s left of their flocks, the ewe wasn’t even hers, but belonged to a family she ‘worked’ for; not a slave exactly, but she was kept by a family as an extra hand and wasn’t treated too badly.

Except last week bandits took everything they could grab, including people and killed anyone or anything else, destroyed everything they couldn’t carry off on the backs of their new slaves and beasts. The woman got away along with the ewe and she salvaged a little, burying her friends. There was no possibility of rescuing anyone else and she hid in the hills, because the bandits will be back someday and the place has bad memories for her.

The shepherdess has a few skills; (32/31) Herd Sheep- 32 and Hunt Small Game- 31, (43/42) Make Cheese- 43 and Keep A Camp- 43, and Sing- 1 (badly). Eudora knows exactly how badly she sings and lets her, anyway. The wild woman’s name is Wyoming. Why? Wyoming not! 8-P

This is a plot hook and the players are probably not going to simply offer to go fight her enemies. But they may have tangled with these bandits already, they may already be on the hunt for the bandits and she has information, knows where they are (so she can avoid them...). She wants revenge and she probably wants other things, too. She can be a wild card, a new problem.

Random Plot Hook!

The players encounter someone somewhere who wants them to do something.

The 15 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'legend", so I reached back and drew on the legendary journeys of Hercules, who looked blind so I fixed him…

Nelson’s word is ‘bed’. Legendary Bed?! 8-P Strongman hero finds a bed on the road, by the road? I’m watching the dungeon dudes talking about how to start an adventure and this is intriguing. An old woman and a baby are in a bed abandoned by the road. Why? Who and where? What are the players going to do about it?

Maybe it’s about the past and the future, maybe slavers robbed a family on the road and abandoned the old woman and the baby in the bed… which is weird because beds are very valuable and the young bravo who showed a little mercy screwed this up. The boss is on his way back with the beat up bravo and some men to get the bed and will attack if the players dither!

This is the classic ‘Trouble On The Road’ inciting incident or adventure hook. A good GM should have more than one so that he or she is not left scrambling, much, when the players turn down the adventure the GM actually had planned. If the players are heartless bastards, what is another option? Perhaps the players actually made short work of it and left the old woman and the baby at the next little village, along with a little silver and some locals hired to get the families back? Yeah, neither one sounds heroic, do they? Railroading sucks coming and going sometimes.

1. Trouble On The Road
2. Disaster Strikes!
3. Call To Adventure!
4. Prison Break!
5. The Wide World Scenario is the grab bag, sort of all of the above

Another roleplaying thing is sometimes you need to randomly decide something, need an oracle of some sort, just a suggestion, really. So roll a die, or have the page/cell do it for you. Percentiles is good, because it’s fairly easy to understand the percentages. Suppose we have some factions. How much of the local population is with one or another? The most vocal, visible faction has 57% of the population, but 67% are a little lukewarm about it. About 28% of the remainder oppose the majority but are little lukewarm as well, only 27% are hardcore. This means that only about a quarter of the populace are ready to throw down and the rest of them are getting pretty sick of their bullshit…

We can randomly change percentages over time, lowering it if you roll under the percentage by averaging the two numbers, and increasing it by also averaging them, as well. How do you feel about X? Perhaps you hate them pretty strongly, 65%, or love them by the same percentage. This is how likely you are to do something because you hate them or love them. You love the lovable little brotherly player character, but the wizard is annoyed by them, not hate, just inconvenienced?

The usual trick for building a party is to have the players think up reasons they know each other, and would work together, despite maybe a little friction. You might decide that each player must have some link to two of the other players (obviously there are three or more players). Perhaps two things they like about other PCs and one thing they don’t? Like a family where a little brother resents his bossy big sister.

Creating a City or Settlement

1. Why does it exist? Supply, manufacturing, midpoint, defense

2. What are it’s local resources?

3. Who runs things and how?

4. When was it established, and where is it?

5. Wealth of the place and an Oddity

Random Character

Roll up a character!

Random Two Syllable Names

Create some random two syllable names...

Vines!

Going to draw some vines here... We're making the fourth point 'wrong', need to use dx and dy properly, but this is a decent first pass.

What I need to do is get off my fat butt and drag some of the tree Cliff cut down and I fell behind on hauling off to the brush pile, which I didn’t want piled up again, but it got piled up again anyway… Nelson’s word is ‘clock’ and I haven’t looked up the 14 Inktober 2019 prompt yet; ‘overgrown’. An overgrown clock tower, ruins? I like it, but how about an abandoned grandfather clock? In the woods, someplace where a settler wagon lightened the load before going on? More likely it’s a roadside dump which has to be cleaned up and the grandfather clock is in decent shape, just left exposed to the elements and overgrown with honeysuckle. I’ll need to sketch that at some point, but first I want to paste my blog, add a feature to the placeholder code I wrote last night and get out there and haul some branches!!!

I hardly made a dint in it, but I did a little and then went shopping, because I needed cereal and real, plus I was bad and bought a half gallon of fudge ripple… The sketch turned out okay. I should work up a character involving this. The clockmaker and the gardener? Perhaps a clockmaker was maimed by a truly black-hearted bastard, his hands ruined so that he could no longer make his beloved clocks but his healed and twisted fingers were enough to grub around in the dirt. His (former?) patron has put him in a little cottage for reasons and he still has one broken grandfather clock in his little garden, so (32/32) Clockmaker 32 and Engraver 32, Gardener 32, Prosthetics 27. He has begun to rebuild his ‘hands’ and his life with prosthetics, inferior but a vast improvement. He also dreams of revenge and has started to build mechanisms...

I hardly made a dint in it, but I did a little and then went shopping, because I needed cereal and real, plus I was bad and bought a half gallon of fudge ripple… The sketch turned out okay. I should work up a character involving this. The clockmaker and the gardener? Perhaps a clockmaker was maimed by a truly black-hearted bastard, his hands ruined so that he could no longer make his beloved clocks but his healed and twisted fingers were enough to grub around in the dirt. His (former?) patron has put him in a little cottage for reasons and he still has one broken grandfather clock in his little garden, so (32/32) Clockmaker 32 and Engraver 32, Gardener 32, Prosthetics 27. He has begun to rebuild his ‘hands’ and his life with prosthetics, inferior but a vast improvement. He also dreams of revenge and has started to build mechanisms…

That was pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Speaking of ‘overgrown’, I would like to grow some vines and leaves. The vines would be line segments, but since I need to use thin polygons in place of a ‘line’, we can use some of the tricks which I’ve been working on. Leaves start out as diamond shapes around a line segment. These I made last month for my falling leaves. The vine starts with a single line segment, two points. Two line segments have three points, three have four, and so on. There are line segments. plus one, points in a series of line segments. We randomly generate two points for the initial line segment and make it some length in pixels long (with math!). We can also make a line segment into a polygon with some width (I’ve been here before, with serpentine landmass).