FIVE ON FRIDAY - LIBRARY OF BABEL VI

I'll start with my regular shout-out to Froth's Humpday Blog-o-rama and Dragons Never Forget's Great Blog Roll Call. Check them out if you want a more thorough example of what constitutes the vast osr blog-o-sphere.

November 28th: International Mars Day

More weekly recommendations from the Library of Babel listed below. The current emphasis is on gameable content for the table, rather than actual play and theory. That may change in the future...

FIVE ON FRIDAY - LIBRARY OF BABEL V

I'll start with [what is to become] a regular shout-out to Froth's Humpday Blog-o-rama and Dragons Never Forget's Great Blog Roll Call.

20th November was Teacher's Day (here in Vietnam at least). This was a gift from one of my students.

More weekly recommendations from the Library of Babel listed below, now re-formatted so as to be contiguous with the first two post in this series. Emphasis this week, as with last week, is on gameable content.

I fucking hate the word content (noun... the adjective is nice).

FIVE ON FRIDAY - THE LIBRARY OF BABEL IV

Lest we forget - the November theme continues! Commemorate the dead but also let's build a peaceful future for the living;  also, remember that the majority of casualties of war are civilians, not soldiers.

AN EXCLUSIVELY "[the] DISCOURSE" FREE EDITION!

FIVE ON FRIDAY - THE LIBRARY OF BABEL III

Another November-themed image! This one is now a major motion picture! (and a weirdly right wing political pundit)

It's going to be short and sweet today, as owing to work I'm very late with this, but it is technically still Friday on Baker Island in the US Minor outlying islands.

City of Ghosts: Character Generator

Currently working on a character generator using https://perchance.org/ for the ongoing City of Ghosts project. This  is hotlinked below, so changes will update here as they are made.

The main feature at present is the name generator, which I adapted into a vanilla fantasy name generator. The generator below currently just throws up a name, "true" name and the classic six stats, generated using 6 x 3d6.

Day 2, NaNoWriMo (apologies)

2

Jin proved to be neither as calm and collected nor as accomplished a driver as Mylar had originally surmised. The route which Jin had taken through the Steel City undulated up and down, and she seemed determined to drive the mule-rat just as fast on the upward slope as she did on the downward, causing the cart to lurch and jerk and stop and start and - occasionally - to pick up a great deal of speed. Whenever the beast reached the foot of a hill, it would slow down and pant, instigating frustrated lashings from its driver, as the cart seemed to become increasingly unresponsive to Jin’s desires.

Day 1, NaNoWriMo

1

It oozed out in a greyish-green cylinder before reaching a foot in length, whereupon it broke off and fell to the muddy path below with a loud splat. The stench of mule-rat faeces, while not unbearable, was certainly unpleasant, and Mylar wretched as she watched another cylinder of shit emerge from the creature’s anus. For the umpteenth time on her journey, she considered whether it would be more vomit-inducing to continue staring at the cart-animal’s rump or to look away and gag as the landscape around her rolled past at a steady trot. As the crown of yet another turd began to emerge from the mule-rat’s butt hole, she decided that yes, it was time to turn her face away.

FIVE ON FRIDAY - THE LIBRARY OF BABEL II

WHITE RABBITS!

by Ryohei-Hase

You don't follow the  tradition of praising the white rabbit at the beginning of each new month that contains the letter "r"? Well, now is as good a time as any to start: stare at the picture and say "white rabbits" and watch your worries wash away. When you're done, you may have a look at five blog posts I picked out as highlights this week:

MONSTERS AND MANUALS
THE GREATEST OSR BLOG POSTS KNOWN TO MAN
http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-greatest-osr-blog-posts-known-to-man.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MonstersAndManuals+%28Monsters+and+Manuals%29

Okay so one of the entries on my blog list is a list of blogs. What would really make this into a turtles all the way down type scenario would be if Monsters and Manuals then edited the list to include this post, and then some kind of toplogical paradox would be created, causing the internet to collapse in on itself and revert to its primordial form.

Failing that, this is a strong list: note that it contains Bat in the Attic's sandbox building post, which is perma-linked at this very blog (in "sandbox and worldbuilding resources" on the right-hand side), and has been since 2015, which is something like my own petty attempt to obtain some kind of validity in this ever-shifting landscape of creation and destruction.

GUNDOBAD GAMES

Looking for Feedback: Anybody Made a Setting Using My 'Settings with Strata' Method?

https://gundobadgames.blogspot.com/2019/10/looking-for-feedback-anybody-made.html

Speaking of sandboxes, Gundobad games is looking for feedback for their "Settings with Strata" method of building a fantasy sandbox. I've not tested it out yet, and I certainly don't think incorporating history into the worldbuilding process is especially original (see Bat in the Attic's method, above), but I do intend to try this out and provide feedback for the author. Gundobad Games is a blog written by a professional antiquarian historian, and their RPG output is strongly informed by their academic background. 

The author also produced Brazen Backgrounds, which contains twenty-four "period-appropriate backgrounds" and accompanying random tables, some of which I incorporated into myown sandbox campaign.

If the opportunity arises (and time is precious, owing to NaNoWriMo), Iwill attempt a run-through of the process and make a post on this site.

WHAT WOULD CONAN DO?

WARGAME DESIGN EXTERNAL BRAIN

http://whatwouldconando.blogspot.com/2019/10/wargame-design-external-brain.html

This one gets a share because I'd be interested in seeing a few more people pick up this idea and run with it. I used to enjoy wargames, and it would be great to see it get the DIY treatment the way Old School D&D has over the past decade. I still have the chit-based wargame from Gazetteer Ten: Orcs of Thar (which I think may have used the same core mechanic as the naval combat game that came with Gazetter Four: The Kingdom of Ierendi, and no, neither of them used the BECMI mass-combat rules known as War Machine, although both gazetteers contained comprehensive army listings for their respective nations using War Machine Rules) and I may try to create a rip of that in the near future.

Anyway, have a look and see what you make of it. If it grants an extra incentive, this is the blog of the person who created Troika! which is suddenly ubiquitous, at least in the online spaces I currently patronise.

WAS IT LIKELY?
ORACULAR DUNGEON GENERATION AND THE PLEASURE PALACE OF THE MADMAN KING
https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2019/10/oracular-dungeon-generation-and.html

The random generation of dungeons has been at the forefront of my mind since my slowly-lumbering-to-completion project Keepers in the Dark began last month, and it was  with keen interest that I looked upon Was It Likely aka Screwhead McDuff aka Jones Smith's latest post about that very subject.

Unfortunately I have not yet been able to do a full run-through of the procedure (the author's example dungeon took more than three hours to create), but two facets that stand out are a) Jones Smith is keen for you to "...let... yourself become a medium [for/of] a creative process that exists outside of yourself " and b) the methodology pre-supposes a kind of user layering, which the author describes as a "force", and works in a similar way Gundobad Games strata method for sandboxes (in the very broadest sense).

Please have a look for yourself and let Jones know what you made of it. 

HMMM MARQUIS

DROW & LLOTH - A RETELLING OF THESE POISONOUS PEOPLE

http://hmmmarquis.blogspot.com/2019/10/drow-lloth-retelling-of-these-poisonous.html

To conclude, this week's juiciest offering comes courtesy of Marquis Hartis' brilliant mind. Here' he dissects worship of Lolth, the drow spider-goddess, in a sprawling text exceeding 6,000 words. If something of that length doesn't appeal to you, let's see if any of the following whets your appetite:

1. A fresh interpretation of the drow, drawing thematically upon real-world Aztec culture (and I wonder if there was any inspiration from D&D BECMI Mystara's Hollow World Shadow Elves) , Patrick Stuart's Veins of the Earth, other (A)D&D Drow canon and (one suspects) the author's research into Babylonian magic (look upon thy list of miracles and weep!)
2. An erudite interpretation of divinity the divine in a fantasy multiverse, extrapolated from the top down into cultural practices of a fantasy civilisation.
3. Cool pictures of sexy scary dark elf ladies.
4. Some of the most evocatively named magic to ever grace a spell list (actually, the author calls them miracles,a s their specifically for divine casters)

The last item is probably what really crowns this stupendous piece of work: if you want a quick taste, have another look at the same author's Bronze Age magic list http://hmmmarquis.blogspot.com/2019/08/commandment-magic-user-spells-based-off.html

Here ends the second Five on Friday. Have an inspiring weekend.

Sofinho

(DM in Exile)