Nothing new this week

Thanksgiving occurred this week, so I have not put any work into this blog. I did start up a post on festivals and how to implement them into a game setting though. Most of my time has been dealing with a few life issues, and making a Christmas present for a friend. I'm nowhere near close to finishing said present despite all the time off I've had from college this week, yet it has made phenomenal progress. I will have the current form posted below for those curious. Essentially the friend likes two things a lot, Pusheen and Dragon Age Inquisition. I will not be able to contact them during Christmas time, so the art will be given to them on their birthday [1st December].

Reference Image:

Current Status of my Present:

Only outlines, sky, and rock faces are completed.

Asteria Rising: Update 9

Work has at last commenced on tables. For those of you confused, Asteria Rising is prototype science-fiction (sci-fi) table-top-role-playing game I'm making. It initially started as a sci-fi homemade campaign for some of my players. I decided to mark done some of our household rules, the things we do and don't do in regards to the official Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) rules.

A major theme was to better encourage exploration and fear of the wilderness, things that rarely happened with my players but were all highlights when it happened. As such, I have been meaning to create a series of tables to help randomly generate environment, non player characters (NPCs), alien creatures, et cetera.

I will admit, not very much has been accomplished with the tables. They need to begin a small prototyping phase. By that I mean, "rolling dice on them to make things." It is the only way to ensure the tables will be intuitive and comprehensive enough for my needs, and any other game master's needs. So far there are two tables.

The first focuses loosely on a 1d6 die roll to determine a general classification of the animal. This one will most likely change, possibly being expanded upon. The second table, is about the creature's disposition toward the party. Docile would be willing to come close to the party, and would not attack them. Think like livestock or pets, they will attacked if provoked but they will be comfortable around the party.

Neutral is more wary like a deer, bird, or squirrel. It will be cautious of the party, perhaps flee from it, but generally not take the first attack. Hostile can be best thought as territorial creatures, such as a wild boar or bear. This disposition means a creature will fight the party whether they intend to fight the creature or not. Predatory is a creature that tracks the party down like a pack of wolves or pride of lions. These creatures are the most dangerous as the party will have to kill or go leagues out of their way to avoid.

I'll have to add tables for size, features, attacks, and so on. Next I'll need to decide what on the tables are meant to go toward stats for the creatures [mechanical weight] and what tables only affect the narrative [Role-play experience]. There is no Challenge Rating (CR) like in D&D, but I might have to come up with a rough guidelines for building creatures and encounters that aren't too dangerous for a party of players. I know I wouldn't want to accidently kill all my players.

Tables focusing on environment will be fairly simple. There will be overarching features such as biomes (desert, mountain, et cetera), then probably more unique features (strange rock circle, magnetized, et cetera). Tables about NPCs will mirror the tables for the same thing in the Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D. That will give rolls for personality, features, skills, mannerisms, et cetera.

My hope is that the next update post will have more on the various tables, or I'll be able to give a preview of the three player classes I've been working on.

Until then, have a great day.

Writing Process: Part 4 - Revision

Revision is crucial when creating content. Player's will not run into the need to revise beyond perhaps changing the direction for their character. A game master (G.M.) will, for they need to come up with a general outline for their campaign. The amount of writing done will depend on a G.M.'s particular amount and form of preparatory work. As such, I will go over the general act of revising.

Revision means to alter or change. In terms of writing, revision refers to large changes to the overall piece. Fixing a few spelling errors or removing a sentence is more in-line with editing rather than revision. To change the content or to alter multiple paragraphs in a piece would be revision.

It is a loose definition; therefore, in Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) revision could be used when the G.M. needs to alter an encounter at the end of a session because the players reached an area of the dungeon they were not supposed to. Revision could also be the players consistently getting off track and going to deal with another task, so the G.M. decides to begin tying that content in with the overall story or simply join the players in abandoning the original story.

An example would be with my first campaign. The players were initially meant to be hired goons for a noble, but they continually decided to focus on building a cult to the cleric's god. As such, I tied their attempts to create a cult into the story by having the more established religions of the area attempt to hinder the players. I revised the campaign to include what they wanted to do.

Within the same campaign, the players kept doing murder-hobo (just mindless killing) acts. I changed their alignment (morality in game) and put them on a new story line where they would become villains. In this instance, I revised the campaign by doing a massive change of the story.

Let's consider revision for my first post in this serial—Writing Process: Part 1 - Rambling. The post was shared—see Writing Process: Part 2 - Sharing—for the comments made on it. Based off the comments it needs to be considered how the piece is improperly organized, which makes sense from it being a freewrite. What will help in organizing will be the exclusion of  some of the questions posed.

Two big topics I discussed were, "what does immersion mean in D&D," and, "making a webcomic to go with this site." These are both topics worth exploring; however, they are too different to include in a single post. For this part of the revision, one has to be picked and the other excluded.

I will pick the question, "What does immersion mean in D&D?" Exploring that topic sounds far more interesting to me. The big issue people run into with this aspect of the writing process is how it restarts the process. Once the revision occurs, a new draft is made that must be shared and examined for potential revision again. The first part of the writing process [brainstorming] can occur during revision too as you will need to come up with new ideas for the piece; it is mainly for large revisions.

It is for this reason the act is termed the Writing Process, for it requires numerous recurring steps to make a final product.

Salutations

Salutations blog readers. I decided on a far more relaxed post this week. I have been thinking about making this blog focuses on games in general or even other topics rather than just Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). It would not be a hard transition considering Asteria Rising went from being a D&D homebrew into its own table-top game. I am not sure what I would add though.  A big part of this want to talk about more than only D&D really comes from a desire to be flexible. You will know my decision once it is made; I am simply keeping everyone up to date.

My academic career has hit a snag. The hours I needed to graduate with my Bachelor of Arts in Professional and Technical Writing were miscalculated. For those unfamiliar with American university, each class has credit hours that are used as to determine the workload of a course. Credit hours are also used to by the university to calculate a student's progress toward their degree. I need 120 hours. I thought I would be done this semester, yet the hours were miscalculated and I will need 8 more credit hours. In American university you also pay tuition, so I've been busy gathering up money to afford 8 credit hours [roughly another $4,000 of tuition at my school]. That is why my last post and this one do not have as much effort put into them.

In less frustrating news, I have been trying to start up a new campaign with some people. Trying is the apt term as they are rather busy. So far, the collection is a friend from work who has never played D&D and her boyfriend who has never played 5th edition D&D. It would be an interesting experience to both teach someone new to the game and watch a more experienced player transfer skills over from the last edition.

Once we finally meet, I will add any lore the campaign generates to the Homebrewed page on the blog. The current idea is to have them be part of a adventure guild or monster hunter group. Something to give them more connection to the world and people in it. I will know for certain once we have our Session 0 [meeting where ideas for the campaign are generated]. I am anxious to get back into the Game Master (GM) seat. I enjoy that position far more than the player seat.

See you next week.

Writing Process: Part 3 - Drafting/Writing

It might seem strange that this stage comes after sharing. The reason is sharing can be done with either brainstorming or drafting. What makes writing a process is the fact its steps are repeatable. You come up with an idea, draft it, you share it, you redraft, share again, and maybe even scrap everything then start from scratch. I freewrite for my brainstorming [first step] because it gets a draft out there right away, but everyone has their own methods. Some people make outlines and others visual aids to get a sense of what to write first.

Drafting in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is important because it gets content laid out on a page. The freewrite [Writing Process: Part 1 - Rambling] is sort of a draft. Writing is a process, yet it is not a linear process. Brainstorming always comes first as the ideas need to be generated. After that comes either the drafting or sharing part of the process. Most of the time I draft my work after brainstorming, yet with D&D I like to talk to people about the ideas my brain stormed first too.

Step 3 of the writing process is simply to have the work written. If you are like me and freewrite for your brainstorming, it is best to implement any comments people made on your work. This effectively creates a second draft. Yes, the writing process will require multiple drafts, but that's a good thing. The more work one puts into their writing the more refined it will be.


*Note to audience: I would have given an example of this serial's first part having been updated but I'm busy with classes. Next update in this serial will be more robust.

Have a great week everyone.

Peddler

To break up the Writing Process serial, I'm posting about a fun encounter I created. I've yet to test it with actual people, yet the concept is interesting. My first play group has been struggling to meet up and get back to our campaign in the Deadlands—map is provided below.

Deadlands requires 4 letter size (8"x11") papers to show.

The encounter is intended to happen in the Haunted temple—located at the most northern point of map. There they [the party] are to reclaim the temple. Doing so will increase the power of their patron Charon the God of Death. In a short 5 page document I made for the party to keep track of new information they learned, I made a throw away superstition of an evil peddler who stalked the roads [final page].

What their characters learned between sessions.

For the haunted temple encounter, I gave form to that lore superstition. In my game, the god of death is a betrayed god of Life/Resurrection; the betrayal made him a death god. I had decided to make the Foul Peddler the Slavon [living member of the Deadlands] trickster god. I had no intention of telling my players that fact, but it helped give a foundation to build the encounter.

Essentially the Foul Peddler is an Avatar of the trickster god Gazember. I made it an avatar incase the party attacks him. God's can't be beaten, not by 7–8 level characters; and avatar is another matter. The avatar would be powerful but much weaker, a puppet the god makes and inhabits. This way Gazember can perform his usual tricks and interactions in the world while not needing a champion or other disciples. Such a loophole seemed appropriate for a trickster god to use, as I don't have the various gods of Akura [the world my players are in] interact directly.

The encounter itself is capable of performing in an social or combat interaction. Being a trickster, the peddler likes games. Being a god, the peddler doesn't care how dangerous said games are. The card game is simple, the peddler's deck is like normal D&D's Deck of Many Things, just not as powerful. For those of you who don't know, the deck of many things is an item where the player draws from a prop deck/rolls on a table for a card. Some cards will give great benefits like a free wish [a spell that alters reality] others are negative like losing all your items, property, and gold. The Peddler's deck is a less severe version, but still annoying.

Now, the game isn't to pull from the deck. The game is to sacrifice something of value "[Soul of a Loved One]" is just an example. By sacrificing, the party member can transfer the card over to another party member. This mechanic is meant to turn party members against each other, or sacrifice to give a party member one of the positive cards.

Once the party is done transferring cards between each other, the one with the most amount of cards gets to transfer all negative effects to another member without needing to sacrifice something. It is another mechanic meant to turn the party against itself. A party member who was betrayed by another by receiving numerous cards now has a free means to retaliate. If they don't retaliate, then they are dropped to the beginning experience points of whatever level they are.

The final offer is that if a player doesn't like the outcome they can avoid the cards' effects by doing a small favor. The favor is intended to be that they carry a small card, which I made a prop for, that has runes meant to summon the trickster's avatar into another plane. The party won't know its true effects, but the trickster god knows the party will eventually need to enter the Feywild [D&D fairy realm dimension]. My secret lore on the god's avatar is that it can only be created in one plane of existence, the card creates said avatar. Summoning Gazember into the Feywild would of course upset the fairy folk greatly too.

The above was the social interaction. The combat encounter, as my players are just as likely to get mad and attack the peddler, is unique. First the avatar would use darkness to obscure the battlefield and then use its Divine Eyes trait, which is a reskinned form of the Warlock class' Devil's Eye eldritch invocation. The peddler also has several abilities that can be used outside normal round combat to create a sense of randomness and confusion amongst the party.

Most importantly is how I intend the peddler to act sporadically: constantly shifting across the battlefield, moving up walls, casting darkness spells, doing small cuts to the players, reviving the players if they are near death, and the like. The whole premise is that the players are there to amuse the Foul Peddler. If the players are beaten, he'll offer them the aforementioned small favor. If the peddler is beaten, he'll decay into dust and rags. All of value left behind would be a small prop card, which can never be lost or thrown away. Essentially the players would end up doing the small favor anyway.

Encounter itself

Hopefully you enjoyed the post. Feel free to borrow ideas from this encounter to enhance your own.

Have a good week.

Writing Process: Part 2 - Sharing

My current job is to tutor people in writing at the college undergraduate level. What I've found is that the act of sharing one's work is often ignored. Within the college environment this is partly due to procrastination but more importantly is how one's writing is very personal. In general people don't like to share their writing because, "it's bad, I'm not very good, writing is hard, just edit it for me, I'm scared I'll be made fun of, why bother," et cetera. Look, writing is a process. Think hard on this idea, was there ever a skill you picked up and able to do professionally? Consider it seriously.

When you have a group project at work, in class, at home, or generally anywhere else, how well does running in without thinking work? Better analogy, how well does running face first into an unknown dungeon work? Is it more effective to casually stroll in or have the stealthier characters scout and check for traps? Is it best to create an area to rest or to only search once everyone is out of spell slots? Where you amazing at the game from the start or did it take practice to get better?

As a player creating a backstory or a Game Master (G.M.) creating a sessions it is important to sit down and consider how and with who you can share your work. The purpose of sharing what you have done whether it is a late draft or ideas in a brainstorming session is to gain a second opinion. New perspectives can be crucial in catching or incorporating things into your work.

In regards to G.M.s making a session, find an online forum or chat room where other Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) players congregate to trade information. Better yet, such as with a session zero, discuss with your players what they would generally want or ideas you have that you are playing around with in your head. Player's working on a backstory simply need to do the same with the G.M., so it can better be incorporated into the campaign.

As an example of the second stage of the Writing Process [Sharing] I sent my post on free writing to my university's Online Writing Lab (O.W.L.). The person who reviewed it had no knowledge of D&D, yet their comments are still very useful.

The main thing to understand about these comments is how they give direction for the piece. The first major comment made is about grammar/ sentence structure. Considering how the blog post is meant to be shown in the written word, grammar errors should be fixed.

Notice how the second comment is talking about translations not transitions as the sentence stated. Not all comments need to be taken into consideration, and sometimes a comment is wrong. The third comment queried about table-top-games. This question may or may not be considered. I could state more specifically D&D or any other list of like games, or add "most, general, all" in front of table-top-games to indicate I don't mean any specific ones. The comments are a means of bouncing ideas off another person, where those ideas land depends on you.

My favorite comment was of course the final one where the commenter honestly mentioned they were confused from not knowing what those pronouns I was tossing out were. I think their comments about being confused are even more important because of the confusion. My blog was initially set for G.M.s; however, it should be readable to people not accustomed to D&D. Not every nuance should be explained in great detail for every post, yet there should be some elaboration for people new to this sea of fantasy to anchor themselves.