tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21427576275155531702024-03-13T19:35:30.041-07:00Transitive Property of GamingDangerous assumptions about how gaming relates to life. Also a place for r_b_bergstrom to keep an archive of things he flung out into the gaming fora and wikis of the world.rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.comBlogger1164125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-27776776797564599382024-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:002024-01-23T00:05:17.245-08:00The Blood Nebula and The Devil's Armpit Ran my first session of a new Spelljammer campaign tonight. (5e Spelljammer gets a lot of bad press, and I only agree with some of that. I'll probably save that critique for another post some other time.)The PCs are Pirates, and/or friends-of-pirates. The PCs are also delightfully weird. Captain Kiera Glitternoodle is a Fairy Bard Pirate. She has a damaged wing (so that her full rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-72220491820141456492023-12-12T01:17:00.000-08:002023-12-12T02:18:12.504-08:00Dworkin the Barimen, and my Tinfoil Unicorn Hat Weird Amber DRPG thing, well, actually a weird Amber novel thing, that I figured out today, and have never seen posted anywhere. **SPOILERS for some novels from the 1970s****Also: WARNING if you're a "young earth creationist", something I'm going to say below might offend you.** I have a theory on why the character of Dworkin in the Amber novels is at one point given the name "rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-47128289313519521422023-01-16T02:16:00.001-08:002023-05-12T09:44:50.506-07:00The Return of Dungeon 23 My computer has been replaced, so I'll be able to type up my scribbled notes about the rooms in my Dungeon 23 sometime in the next few days. Until then, here's the current state of the ground floor of my map: EDIT: And then, as soon as my computer was replaced, I fractured a rib, and as dumb/lame/pathetic as that sounds, found it too painful to sit in a chair and type. For several rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-55931036259132986752023-01-08T13:00:00.002-08:002023-01-08T13:00:41.654-08:00Days without computers My computer died.while it's in the shop, I'm continuing to work on the Dungeon23 challenge, but won't be posting much as it's really a pain in the keyboard trying to post to blogger from my phone. rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-32584075562893914892023-01-04T23:20:00.002-08:002023-01-05T01:46:46.133-08:00Dungeon23, Bridge 1.4Room 1.4: This is a 70 foot long stone bridge connecting the north barbican gatehouse to the Northwest Gate of the Castle. The stone handrail is mostly intact, the surface is heavily scratched and mostly free of moss. Two sculptural elements adorn the bridge, one of which is considerably more broken than the handrails. Both stone sculptures appear to be creatures with humanoid torsos and rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-90831099911258982852023-01-03T23:46:00.004-08:002023-01-04T22:04:05.578-08:00Dungeon 23, Room 1.3Room 1.3: This is inside the base of the Northern Barbican Gatehouse. When the barbican was originally built, this base was a solid rock foundation, in-filled with stone debris and aggregate. It was still intact when the castle was defeated by sorcery and treachery, but in the years since, it has been consumed by the acidic roots of several semi-intelligent plant monsters. Their digestion has rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-82292528460776651692023-01-01T23:18:00.005-08:002023-01-03T23:04:05.081-08:00Dungeon23, Day 2(I'm jumping the gun a little, getting ahead on this because I don't anticipate having time tomorrow night. Don't want to fail the challenge on day 2.) Room 1.2: The upper floor of the gatehouse. The eastern section has a Scorpion (treat as a Ballista, per the DMG) that can be pivoted to aim out any of three firing ports. Additional slightly smaller arrow slits allow for crossbow shots rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-80767702103337994352023-01-01T03:00:00.002-08:002023-01-01T23:18:44.412-08:00Dungeon 23: Day 1. I've decided to try the "Dungeon 23" Challenge. The goal is to make a 365-room, 12-level Mega-Dungeon, one room at a time, one room per day for a year. I'm sketching out the map in my RocketBook, so that I can snap regular photos of it and post them here. Probably won't take pictures every day, as it's one thing to find a few minutes to draw a room and think about what might go in it, but rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-7943853762269246582022-12-04T20:33:00.001-08:002022-12-04T20:33:34.746-08:00Music for the HellrideAmber Campaign continues to truck along, for 55 sessions thus far. The playlist I frequently listen to while doing my Amber prep is mostly Classic Rock, Prog and Metal. For the most part they are songs about fantasy themes. Proper music for a hellride. Blue Öyster Cult, Cream, Deep Purple, Dream Theatre, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Hawkwind, Heart, Horslips, Iron Maiden, Kansas, Led Zeppelin, rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-17008410849713037162022-10-01T20:14:00.001-07:002022-10-01T20:14:10.763-07:00Target Swap Had a session of Feng Shui tonight with a fight that went twice as long as I thought it was going to. It was one of those situations where each villain had a specific weakness that corresponded to a different hero, and the PCs noticed, but chose to fight different foes anyway, at least until the fight was nearly over. One NPC had a Defense of 12 vs Ranged Attacks, but a really rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-31829615839250609752022-09-29T18:17:00.001-07:002022-09-29T18:18:00.959-07:00Blank White Cards I've decided to run a little bit of Blank White Cards at an upcoming convention, and needed a picture to put on the Tabletop.events page for the sign-up sheet... and discovered that basically every picture I have of cards we've made includes either NSFW content, or some card with rules text that's probably going to be intimidating for new players, or cards with inside jokes you had to be rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-7390570209277876192022-09-03T19:41:00.000-07:002022-09-03T19:41:13.947-07:00Is Ape Pagoda Dead?Amusing silliness from the Feng Shui campaign tonight, as we went way off-script and into the weeds.For context, The PCs were traveling in 690 AD and had managed to not screw up their chance to meet with Her Majesty Emperor Wu Zetian, Queen of Kings, Mistress and Commander of the Dragon Throne, Holder of
the Mandate of Heaven, the Living Incarnation of the Devi of Pure
Radiance, yadda yadda rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-69861106227353870902022-07-08T02:24:00.004-07:002022-07-08T11:40:53.667-07:00 AI's have seen things you people wouldn't believe... AI have seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack-ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... C-Beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate... All those moments will be lost like tears in the rain... My feed at the AI tool where these were created: https://www.midjourney.com/app/users/391651176476573706/It seems you need an account to be able to access my rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-31803145922972596522022-07-04T21:34:00.006-07:002022-07-06T18:14:11.992-07:00Mathematically Confirmed: Advantage is NOT +5 Last year I wrote a blog post pointing out that the D&D rulebooks are WRONG when they say that "Advantage" is equivalent to +5. It's actually equivalent to just +3.25. A couple days ago, the excellent youtube channel "Stand-Up Maths" did a video on exactly this topic, and came to the same conclusion I had (though he proceeded to push the math much further because, y'know, he's a rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-73440208822128634072022-06-05T13:52:00.003-07:002022-06-05T14:39:37.719-07:00Unleashing AI upon the Faiella-BioninSpent far too much of today asking AI to paint me pictures of the Faiella-Bionin, the underwater staircase that leads to the kingdom of Rebma in the Amber books by Roger Zelazny. I really only needed 1 picture for my next session of the Amber Diceless Roleplay, but now I have an embarrassment of underwater riches:And here's a few that one of my players generated along similar lines: The rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-10157905094054633532022-05-19T00:44:00.004-07:002022-05-19T00:54:07.825-07:00Starforged Jam There's a game jam going on for Ironsworn: Starforged. I've been meaning to try a game jam one of these days for like... the last 5 years at least... so I dusted off a custom Oracle that I used in a session or two of Starforged, spent a night brainstorming another 20 entries or so, and trying to getting it formatted roughly along the lines of the official books, etc. I just put it up as a rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-20230198377899548412022-03-15T01:32:00.001-07:002022-03-15T01:32:21.148-07:00Oberon: Zero, Brand: Thirteen We're 40 sessions into my Amber campaign, and one of the PCs may have just brought the dismembered parts of Brand out of the Abyss, and convinced two other PCs to help him keep them alive in the hopes that it might grow back into a Brand*. How cool is that? *=Or maybe even grow into 13 distinct individual Brand's. It's complicated.rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-75275674303905037332022-03-09T21:19:00.004-08:002022-03-09T21:19:37.378-08:00Star-Forged: The Eluss Fold Occasionally playing a bit of Starforged in the evenings. (It's the sci-fi/space version of Ironsworn.) The above is my map of The Eluss Sector, which I assembled from Assets available on Roll20. The Luminous Coil is my PC's ship. The Cacophony is a derelict ship he investigated. The Ophidian Mantle is a enemy vessel we've tangled with twice. rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-43060336748212687932022-03-03T19:00:00.006-08:002022-03-03T19:00:00.255-08:00A Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 23 The following is the campaign log for the 23rd session of my current
Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. Campaign log: 5 July 2021, turn by turnNearly a year behind in posting these. Details
below the fold: Scene 1: David and Maarit chat with rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-58323585573216475862022-03-02T19:46:00.004-08:002022-03-02T19:46:00.264-08:00A Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 22 The following is the campaign log for the 22nd session of my current
Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. Campaign log: 21 June 2021, turn by turnI try to post these after a few months delay, so I can add GM's commentaries without spoiling surprisesrbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-25318024181328522822022-03-01T19:38:00.007-08:002022-03-01T19:38:00.214-08:00Log 21, A Horse Of Another Timbre The following is the campaign log for the 21st session of my current
Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. Campaign log: 7 June 2021, turn by turnI don't get around to posting these very often, so I'm nearly a year behind. Details below the fold: rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-43151246541730279272022-02-28T19:00:00.031-08:002022-02-28T19:00:00.220-08:00Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 20 The following is the campaign log for the 20th session of my current
Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. You might want to Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles. Campaign log: 24 May 2021, turn by turnI don't get around to posting these very often, so I'm nearly a year behind. Details below the fold:Scene 1. rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-135301730104280092022-02-27T15:21:00.005-08:002022-02-27T15:26:26.762-08:00A Very Confusing MapThis was a piece of artwork I made for my Amber campaign a while back: It's basically a map of the universe. No, seriously. There's tons of plot points and clues hidden away on it, but the signal to noise ratio isn't great, and there's not much of chance of anyone correctly interpreting any of them. The campaign is still in progress so I'm not likely to spoil it here any time soon. rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-62490486872111433432022-02-27T14:28:00.005-08:002022-02-27T15:33:01.002-08:00A Horse Of Another Timbre, Log 19 The following is the campaign log for the 19th session of my current
Amber Diceless RPG campaign, entitled A Horse Of Another Timbre. One of
my players keeps a log of the scenes, and another maintains a quote
list. As usual, I have combined them with a few extra notes of my own
after the fact. I post them here several months after... nearly a year later, as I've not rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2142757627515553170.post-619469779068649112022-02-15T19:47:00.001-08:002022-02-15T19:47:00.289-08:001000 Years and very few complaintsThese minor complaints about a few weird Prompts in the excellent solitaire journaling RPG Thousand-Year-Old Vampire didn't quite fit into my previous posts about the game. Thousand-Year-Old Vampire is a ton of fun, and these don't really break anything, but they are... minor rough spots that aren't quite up to the slick artistry of the rest of the project.I noticed that I do sometimes have rbbergstromhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04642655645136452700noreply@blogger.com0