Idle Cartulary
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Minimalist Lore
I can’t speak for the Dark Souls games, but in Sekiro, which I’m told is similar, story is told obliquely, through torn off pages, off hand mentions, and item descriptions. We were talking about this on a discord this morning, and I was thinking about how it worked, so I’ll use an example from the… Continue reading
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Preparing for a mega dungeon: Dungeon23 themes, characters and factions
The first post was my prepping templates and principles to make the day-to-day participation in #dungeon23 easier. This one is about preparing the overarching yearly and monthly arcs of the dungeon, so I’ve got some more levers on days that are too much, and so it’s somewhat cohesive overall. This has the more challenging post,… Continue reading
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An extra-dimensional dungeon
I’ve been listening to the Wheel of Time audiobooks, and thinking of the extra-dimensional dungeon that Mat enters to face the Snakes and the Foxes, this worlds’ version of fae. This dungeon’s layout is asserted to follow rules alien to the human heroes that enter it. One example is following a hall that turns to… Continue reading
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Preparing for a mega dungeon: Dungeon23 templates and principles
As has been widely discussed, Sean had a good idea: For me, life is hard, but this seems an achievable task so long as I set the expectations: That last point is what this post is for. How do I make next year as easy as possible? What needs doing this year: That’s not too… Continue reading
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Fantasy post-apocalypse western? Part 2
I posted recently about spaghetti westerns, chanbara, and Red Dead Redemption 2, and I came up with a list of what I called themes, but could be considered aspects or something else I guess. In this post, I’m going to think about how to take those themes, and how I’d implement them into a Dungeons… Continue reading
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Fantasy post-apocalypse western? Part 1
I was thinking about the themes of traditional westerns, spaghetti westerns, chanbara, and Red Dead Redemption 2, which I’m playing again, largely because I love the wildlife. I’m not an expert in any of these by any stretch, but I’m interested in the assertion that Dungeons and Dragons is a western in the Manifest Destiny… Continue reading
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Treasure smithing by Magic
Continuing to muse about oracles and campaign building. Nick started these thoughts, and I’ve done dungeon rooms, hexes and NPCs. What about treasure? I think the best take on creating interesting treasure recently was Ty’s Treasure Squares. I’m going to iterate on that here. I want to see if I can get that system to… Continue reading
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Character sketching by Magic
Continuing to muse about oracles and campaign building. Nick did work on adventures, I’ve done dungeon rooms and hexes. What about NPCs? I think of NPCs progressively detailed sketches. Begin with name, description, and catchphrase. Then asset, trait, need or agenda. Then approach, false visage, obsession and weakness. Things at the end are only important… Continue reading
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Making hexes with Magic
I’ve even pondering my and Nick LS Whelan’s thoughts on using Magic the Gathering as an oracle. Nick was saying on twitter that he doesn’t use it anymore because MTG cards skew towards violence. m I’m thinking: What if we didn’t use it to generate adventures, but rather locations. I considered generating a county, but… Continue reading
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Wierd oracles and punnett rooms
I’ve been going through my games shelf (honestly, I’m not playing most of what’s on there). and I found a few oracles I haven’t really looked at before. One is Rory’s Story Cubes, which are dice with symbols on them that are freely available in toy stores. I also found these Intuiti Cards, which are… Continue reading
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