Tag: D&D

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Hex Mapping

A very cool collection of resources to make maps and add randomly generated content to them :- https://github.com/kensanata/hex-mapping

Also for Traveller.

Possibly holidays could disappear here:…

This and Alex’s other game stuff can be found here:

https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/RPG

Which can lead you down this enjoyable rabbit hole:

https://cosmicheroes.space/blog/index.php/2019/01/30/old-school-rpg-planet/

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A Historical Look at the OSR

A five part series so far:

Thanks to: Simulacrum: Exploring OSR Design

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-i.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-ii.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-iii.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-iv.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-v.html

This is an excellent overview that many a scholar could jump off from as desired, so thanks

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The Digital Darlene Greyhawk Map

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2021/12/happy-needfest-digital-darlene-greyhawk.html

One of the Greyhawk maps – huge amount of work, so thanks very much!
6 mile hex map! Now I maybe to make a geospatial version of this?

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AI Tomb of Horrors – Rooms 4 to 6

In similarfashion to the previous post, however this time the prompts used were rooms 4 to 6

FRESCO OF THE WIZARDLY WORK ROOM, THE ARCH OF MIST, THE FACE OF THE GREAT GREEN DEVIL

This gives us a different room 7.

  1. THE PATH TO THE FURNACE OF DEATH: Directly opposite
    and below the path to the face of the great green devil, is
    another corridor just barely wide enough for the passage of a
    character. The path is shown on the floor at the right of the
    corridor. The walls are made of the same gray stone as the rest
    of the area, which also radiates evil if a player steps on
    them. There is a trapdoor in this corridor leading upwards to
    the ceiling. In the right direction, there is nothing to detect
    but the path to the furnace of death. You must step on the
    trapdoor and step through. If you do so, you will fall to 3.
    Your character will immediately drop to 3, and the rest of your
    party will all fall to +3. If the trap is opened, everyone on
    both sides of the corridor falls to 2.

Again, that is pretty good – and a nice title for an area.

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AI Tomb of Horrors – The Entrance

pile of human skulls

GPT-3 appeared last year:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/10/05/what-is-gpt-3-and-why-is-it-revolutionizing-artificial-intelligence/

Given that was not made openly available like GPT-2, others made an open source version, hence we have GPT-J and GPT-Neo, the latter being relevant for here.

I have taken the 1.3B parameter model and thanks to HuggingFace and their model implementations, used this Colab notebook.: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1H2mUZsYhel4g5ZUOmZHtYIaP4gSW5_ow?usp=sharing#scrollTo=eBIcgwE1kVQK The 2.7B parameter doesn’t seem to work here – runs out of memory. Not surprising as it is 10GB.

I thought a fun holiday project would be to use this to generate soom module type descriptions.

There are certain limitations of how long the text prompt for the model to predict from can be, so for a first try I took the three entryway possibilities for the Tomb of Horrors.

Here’s the output:

  1. TOMBS OF HORRORS: The rooms of the torture chamber can be
    visited only if players are in the same chamber, using
    special note if they are in the same room.
    At the end of the hall, 2 pits lead to:
  1. WELCOME TO THE TOMB OF HORRORS: The rooms of the wizard’s work room
    can be visited only if players are in the same room, using
    special note if they are in the same room.
    In the center of the room (the only room not full of
    druids and other such creatures), you will find the statue
    of a great warlock, his robe stained with the blood of
    victims. This statue is the work of the warlock’s master.
    The wizard’s work room is otherwise empty.
    Torture chamber area. At the end of the hall, 2 pits lead to a
  1. THE TORTURE CHAMBER: If players are in the same room
    (or in the same space), the torturing chamber can be explored
    independently.
    One end of the chamber is a tiny chamber whose floor is
    painted in a pattern of little figures of evil or good
    design, and whose walls and ceiling are also painted in the
    same pattern. The figures seem to be moving a weight
    over some sort of anvil. The floor may be of lava or covered
    with mud. Either of these may hold the weight of a figure with
    a hand upon it. (See special note regarding the pits at the end
    of this paragraph.) The wall on the other side of the chamber
    opens up, and a chamber in the wall appears with a pit, a
    stone wall, and a lever. A prisoner is taken into the pit. The
    prisoner may be tied or, if it is tied, the prisoner is
    released if the lever is pulled, and pushed into the pit again.
    An assistant, an orc or a human being, lies dead by the lever.
    This must be done by all players in the same room. The
    chamber (or it may be filled with water) is now filled
    with water, and a person is drawn into it and the lever is pulled. The
    prisoner is still alive, as the lever is slowly pushed upwards,
    and it is possible to see that the prisoner’s body is
    thrown back down into the pit again and again as
    it is released from the lever’s grip. If you were to use
    a light, you would notice the number of men (or women)
    released into the water from the torture pit, and their
    number would be shown in the water as an illustration to
    the left. If you were to use a sword, you would notice that
    the number of men (or women) released from the

As you can see, that is pretty good for autogenerated based on a few paragraphs prompts from a generic model trained on close to a terabyte of stuff from the internet, and not tuned to the experience as in something like AI Dungeo – https://play.aidungeon.io/. It even recognised the room numbering of 1, 2, 3 and continued on. It is generating text, so not going to finish sensibly all the time. Not much work for a DM to join those together and edit a sentence or two though.

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Cepheid’s Dungeon Tool – the Mite Massacre

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rus2u7HBCNQe_Mi0zhMXZQJbDY4lQ-02vfgBuE6grQM/edit#gid=1081359187

Yesterday I knew I had a random dungeon generated in text that wasn’t the DMG, so went to have a look in pos-migraine can’t be bothered doing anything recovery. Found the below.

The above dungeon google spreadsheet has a nice way of drawing a map by using conditional formatting which a handily done graph paper type grid already.

Add the random character generator for Labyrinth Lord from

https://truculent.org/llchar/?MakeChar=True&stats=3D6&class=Dwarf&align=Random&level=1&sex=Random&name=Random&userstat%5B%5D=&userstat%5B%5D=&userstat%5B%5D=&userstat%5B%5D=&userstat%5B%5D=&userstat%5B%5D=&username=

Which also lets you save characters as pdfs and there is a work and prep free start to an adventure. I created 6 characters at random, ending with three clerics, an elf, a thief and a fighter. All was going ok until they came to a chamber that had 25 mites (monsters from the Undercity 1-1 HD evil little humanoids that trap everything. The trap in this case being a poison gas cloud, save or 10p damage. Which of course will kill all first level characters. 3 survived to get the hell out.

Which led to some fortuitous hiring of 6 men at arms, 3 nomads and a thief as long as randomly gaining three more party members to replace the dead cleric, elf and fighter and a punitive organised expedition to retrieve some dead comrades. Spending some of the games from the 5K in gems in the room with the luckily non-vampiric giant bats.

Raise dead in the Undercity tables is 15000 gold, a bit out of the price range for 1st level characters but at least they get a funeral, revenge and gear going to a good home.

http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=20616196&resolution=320http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=20616196&resolution=320


https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ru.jpghttps://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ru.jpg

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Mokuy Evolution

The idea started after I saw the statues below. I thought, hmm, why not an OSR setting of bushranger era Australia, say around 1820? Could have lots of things apart from bushrangers: pulp vigilantes, monsters, exploration, super science cities, time travel….

Random Fridays: Mokuy
Images from the above

Mokuy statue

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Significant Dates in Australian Colonial History

1486Diaz rounds Cape of Good Hope.
1497Vasco da Gama sails to India via the Cape.
1512Portuguese discover the Moluccas.
1520Magellan enters the Pacific.
1567Alvarez discovers the Solomon Islands.
1595Cornelius Houtman pilots Dutch ships to the East Indies.
1598Dutch established at Java.
1606Quiros discovers the New Hebrides.
Discovery of Torres Strait.
The DUYFKEN in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
1611Brouwer’s new route to the East.
1616Dirk Hartog on the Western Australian coast.
1622English ship TRIAL wrecked off the west coast.
1627Nuytsland discovered.
1636Van Diemen Governor of Dutch East Indies.
1642Tasman discovers Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand.
1644Tasman in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
1688Dampier in the CYGNET in Australian waters.
1699Dampier in the ROEBUCK in Shark’s Bay.
1768Cook’s ENDEAVOUR voyage.
1770Cook’s discovery of New South Wales.
1772Cook’s RESOLUTION voyage.
1779Banks suggests founding a convict settlement at Botany Bay.
1782End of the American War of Independence.
1783Matra’s plan of colonization in New South Wales.
1785Sir George Young’s plan.
1786Determination to found a settlement at Botany Bay.
1788Foundation of Sydney.
Laperouse in Botany Bay.
1789Establishment of New South Wales Corps.
Settlement of Norfolk Island.
1792End of Phillip’s governorship.
1792-5Administration of Grose and Paterson.
1795Hunter Governor of New South Wales.
1795-6Bass and Flinders make voyages in the TOM THUMB.
1797John Macarthur buys merino sheep.
Discovery of coal.
1798Bass discovers Bass Strait and Westernport.
Bass and Flinders circumnavigate Tasmania in the Norfolk.
1800King Governor of New South Wales.
Voyage of the LADY NELSON from England.
Flinders’s voyage in the INVESTIGATOR.
1802Murray discovers Port Phillip.
Flinders meets Baudin in Encounter Bay.
1803Flinders circumnavigates Australia.
Wreck of the PORPOISE.
Flinders imprisoned in Mauritius.
Collins’s Port Phillip Settlement.
1804Foundation of Hobart.
Settlement at Port Dalrymple.
1806Bligh Governor of New South Wales.
1807Arrest of John Macarthur.
1808Mutiny in New South Wales; deposition of Bligh.
1809Macquarie Governor of New South Wales.
1810Extinction of New South Wales Corps.
Liberation of Flinders.
1813BlaxIand discovers a way across the Blue Mountains.
Evans discovers the Bathurst plains.
Davey Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
1814Death of Flinders.
Establishment of Civil Court in New South Wales.
1816Bank of New South Wales founded.
1817Oxley explores the Lachlan.
1818Oxley explores the Macquarie.
1819Commissioner Bigge in New South Wales.
1821Brisbane Governor of New South Wales.
1823New South Wales Judicature Act passed.
Oxley in Moreton Bay.
1824Wentworth’s AUSTRALIAN.
Foundation of Brisbane.
1824Annexation of Bathurst and Melville Islands.
Hume and Hovell’s expedition to Port Phillip.
1825Alteration of western boundary of New South Wales.
Lockyer explores the Brisbane River.
Arthur Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
1826The ASTROLABE at Westernport.
Settlement at Westernport.
Darling Governor of New South Wales.
1827Lockyer’s Settlement at King George’s Sound.
Darling’s law to regulate the press.
Alan Cunningham explores the Liverpool Range and the Darling Downs.
Stirling examines the Swan River.
1828Enlargement of the Legislative Council of New South W ales.
Westernport Settlement abandoned.
Sturt discovers the Darling.
1829Annexation of the Swan River.
Whole of Australia claimed as British territory.
The PARMELIA conveys first immigrants to Swan River.
Publication of Wakefield’s LETTER FROM SYDNEY.
1830Accession of William IV.
Act establishing trial by jury in New South Wales.
Sturt explores the Murray to the sea.
Perth founded.
Governor Arthur’s ‘Black Drive.’
1834Act to establish Colony of South Australia.
The Hentys settle at Portland.
The Dorsetshire labourers transported.
1835John Batman in Port Phillip.
1836Mitchell explores Australia Felix.
Adelaide founded.
Lonsdale takes charge of the Port Phillip Settlement.
Bourke’s grazing licences policy.
1837Accession of Queen Victoria.
Melbourne named.
House of Commons Committee on Transportation.
1837-40George Grey’s explorations in Western Australia.
1838Gawler Governor of South Australia.
Military settlement at Port Essington.
1839Latrobe appointed superintendent of Port Phillip.
Strzeleeki finds traces of gold.
1839Death of John Batman.
Lord Durham’s report on the state of Canada.
McMillan’s first expedition to Gippsland.
Abandonment of Moreton Bay Settlement.
1840Order in Council discontinuing transportation to Australia.
Eyre starts for the centre of the continent.
Strzelecki’s journey through Gippsland.
1841Grey appointed Governor of South Australia.
1842Robert Lowe in New South Wales.
Act for the Government of N.S.W. and Van Diemen’s Land passed.
1843Ridley invents the stripper.
1844Convicts shipped to Port Phillip.
Sturt’s journey to the interior.
Leichhardt’s first exploring expedition.
1845Grey appointed Governor of New Zealand.
Burra copper mine discovered.
1846Fitzroy ‘Governor-General’ of Australia.
Lieutenant Yule hoists British flag in New Guinea.
1847Gold found in Port Phillip.
The Gladstone Colony at Port Curtis.
1848Melbourne elects Lord Grey to the Legislative Council.
Leichhardt’s last expedition.
1849The RANDOLPH in Hobson’s Bay: resistance to convict immigration.
Port Essington abandoned.
1850Western Australia becomes a penal colony.
University of Sydney founded.
Australian Colonies Government Act passed.
Railway from Sydney to Goulburn built.
1851Separation of Victoria from New South Wales.
Hargreaves digs for gold on Summerhill Creek.
Gold found at Ballarat.
The diggings commence.
1852University of Melbourne founded.
1853Tasmania named.
Town of Gladstone founded.
French annexation of New Caledonia.
1854The Eureka Stockade.
Hobson’s Bay railway built.
1855Transportation to Norfolk Island ceased
1855New constitutions come into effect in New South Wales, Victoria,
South Australia, and Tasmania.
Ballot Act passed in Victoria.
First anti-Chinese legislation passed.
1858Torrens Real Property Act passed.
1859Colony of Queensland proclaimed.
Kingsley’s GEOFFREY HAMLYN published.
1860McDouall Stuart reaches the centre of the continent.
1861Burke and Wills expedition.
Cowper’s quarrel with the New South Wales Legislative Council.
1862McDouall Stuart crosses the continent to Port Darwin
Duffy’s Land Act.
1863South Australia undertakes to administer the Northern Territory.
New Caledonia a convict colony.
1865McCuIloch proposes protection in Victoria.
1867End of transportation to Western Australia.
Gold discovered at Gympie.
The Darling grant controversy.
1868First Queensland Act to regulate Kanaka labour
1869John Forrest’s journey in search of Leichhardt.
1870British troops withdrawn from Australia.
Adam Lindsay Gordon died.
1872Overland telegraph line from Adelaide to Port Darwin constructed.
1873John Forrest explores the interior.
Moresby’s discoveries in New Guinea.
Stephens’s ‘free, compulsory, and secular’ Education Act.
1874University of Adelaide founded.
John Forrest’s journey from Perth to Adelaide.
Fiji annexed by Great Britain.
Clarke’s FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE published.
1875Ernest Giles’s inland journey.
1877Dispute as to payment of members in Victoria.
High Commissionership of the Pacific established.
Brunton Stephens’s poem, THE DOMINION OF AUSTRALIA, published.
1878Black Wednesday’ (January 8).
1879First Australian Trade Union Congress.
1880Capture of the Kelly Gang.
1880Payment of members carried in Victoria.
1881Reform of the Victorian Legislative Council.
1882Discovery of Mount Morgan.
The Kimberley gold rush.
Henry Clarence Kendall died.
1883Silver discovered at Broken Hill.
McIlwraith annexes New Guinea.
1884German annexation of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, the Bismarck
Archipelago, and Samoa.
1885Federal Council established.
Soudan contingent from New South Wales.
1887Anglo-French Condominium in the New Hebrides.
First Colonial Conference.
1888Intercolonial Conference on Chinese immigration.
ROBBERY UNDER ARMS published.
1890Great maritime strike.
University of Tasmania founded.
1891First Federal Convention.
1892Coolgardie gold-field discovered.
1893Corowa Conference on Federation.
1894Women’s enfranchisement in South Australia.
1895Victorian Wages Board system established.
Paterson’s THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER published.
1896Henry Lawson’s IN THE DAYS WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE published.
1897The second Colonial Conference.
1897-8The Federal Convention.
1898First Federal Referendum.
1899Second Federal Referendum.
First Labour Government (Queensland).
Australian contingents sent to South African War.
1900The Commonwealth Constitution before the Imperial Parliament.
1901(May 9) First Commonwealth Parliament opened.
1902Immigration Restriction Act passed.
Third Colonial Conference.
1903First Deakin Government.
Amended Naval Agreement.
1904The Watson Government.
Reid-McLean Government.
Dalgety selected as site for federal capital.
1905Second Deakin Government.
1906Amended Anglo-French agreement as to New Hebrides.
1907Act for construction of Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta railway passed.
Imperial Conference.
1908First Fisher Government.
Revocation of choice of Dalgety. Canberra finally selected as site of federal capital.
1909Third Deakin Government.
Imperial Defence Conference.
Compulsory military service instituted in Australia.
Lord Kitchener’s report.
1910University of Brisbane founded.
Second Fisher Government.
1911Referendum for amendment of constitution.
Admiral Henderson’s naval report.
Imperial Conference.
1912University of Perth founded.
1913Cook Government.
Referendum for amendment of constitution.
The AUSTRALIA completed.
1914Third Fisher Government.
Great European War.
Fight between the SYDNEY and EMDEN at Cocos (November).
1915Hughes Government.
Anzac.
1916First Conscription Referendum.
1917Second Conscription Referendum.
Transcontinental Railway opened.
1918Great battle on the Somme (August 8); capture of Mont St. Quentin by Australian forces.
Defeat and surrender of Germany.
1919Ross and Keith Smith fly from England to Australia by aeroplane.
1920Visit of the Prince of Wales to Australia.
1923End of Hughes Government.
Stanley Bruce Prime Minister.
1924Visit of Special Service squadron of the Royal Navy to Australia.
1927Federal Parliament opened by Duke of York at the Commonwealth capital, Canberra.
1928Flight by Bert Hinkler from England to Australia, and by Kingsford
Smith and Ulm from America to Australia and from Australia to New Zealand.
1929J. Scullin Prime Minister.
1930First Australian-born Governor-General appointed: Sir Isaac Isaacs.
1931Statute of Westminster.
1932Opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge.
J. A. Lyons Prime Minister.
Imperial Conference at Ottawa.
1934Victorian Centenary celebrations attended by the Duke of Gloucester.
1935Italy attacks Abyssinia.
Jubilee of King George V.
1936Death of King George V
accession and later abdication of King Edward VIII
accession of the Duke of York as King George VI.
1938The ‘Munich Crisis.’
1939Death of J. A. Lyons; R. G. Menzies becomes Prime Minister.
Second World War begins.
1940Australian forces share in North African campaigns.
1941Tobruk.
A. W. Fadden Prime Minister, August-October.
John Curtin Prime Minister.
1942Darwin bombed and Rabaul captured by Japanese
Battle of El Alamein.
1943Italy defeated and Mussolini overthrown.
1944Invasion of Europe and Battle of Normandy.
Defeat of Referendum on increased powers for Commonwealth.
General MacArthur lands in the Philippines.
1945Defeat of Germany (May).
United Nations’ Charter signed.

http://gutenberg.net.au/timeline.html

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Currency Lads & Lasses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_lads_and_lasses

 
Currency lads and lasses (collectively known as currency or the currency) were the first generations of native-born white Australians. They were the children of the British settlers, including convicts, who arrived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, beginning with the First Fleet in 1788.[1] 

In the early years of the Colony of New South Wales, the term "currency" was used to refer to any money other than pound sterling, which was the only legal tender.  Owing to a shortage of sterling, "currency" circulated freely, but was  not always accepted – the term carried implications of illegality,  inferior quality, and subordination.[2] By analogy, native-born colonials came to be known as "currency", in  contrast to the British-born "sterling". The first reference in print to  the native-born being called "currency" was in the Sydney Gazette  of 13 September 1822, in a letter signed by "Lydia Languish" calling  for more social events to be organised for "currency lasses".[3] 

As applied to people rather than money, the term originally had  derogatory connotations – by the early 1820s, "currency had stuck for  male and female native-born and everyone knew what it implied". However,  it was soon reclaimed by the native-born as a positive term, in order to distinguish themselves from more recent arrivals.[3] In Two Years in New South Wales, published in 1827, Peter Miller Cunningham wrote: "Our colonial-born brethren are best known here by the name of Currency, in contradistinction to Sterling,  or those born in the mother-country. The name was originally given by a  facetious paymaster of the 73rd Regiment quartered here–the pound  currency being at that time inferior to the pound sterling."[4] In 1832, Horatio Wills – born in Sydney in 1811 to a convict father – founded The Currency Lad. It was "the first newspaper published in the colony which specifically set out to protect the interests of the native-born".[5] 

"The currency" as a whole were usually separated according to  gender as "currency lads" and "currency lasses." In 1849, J. P. Townsend  wrote: "whites born in the colony...are...called 'the currency;' and  thus the 'Currency Lass' is a favourite name for colonial vessels,"[6][7]  and, according to Edward E. Morris, also for hotels.[1]  In 1852, the term was still being used: "A singular disinclination to  finish any work completely, is a striking characteristic of colonial  craftsmen, at least of the 'currency' or native-born portion."[8] However, when Morris published his Austral English in 1898,  he indicated that the term was obsolete.[1]

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