Unleashing AI upon the Faiella-Bionin

Spent 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 sites used to generate these were: https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini  and https://app.wombo.art/

Starforged 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 pdf on itch.io, and submitted it to the jam.

Starport Scuttlebutt

When I play Ironsworn: Starforged, I tend to be laser-focused on the plot and story. It's not uncommon for me to get 10 or 20 sessions into play before I get around to adding a single planet that wasn't part of my initial Sector Set-Up. By default, I find I pretty much only add those other worlds if the narrative brings my character directly to them. That sort of misses the point of sci-fi, though. Even if I'm spending most of my time on just a few worlds, I want the grand sense that there's a whole galaxy of adventure out there, and plots in motion beyond what my little ship is doing! So I created this Oracle, which incorporates ideas from various map-making games, to breathe a little life and activity into the background.

Here's how it works: A little less than once per session, you roll on this Oracle and add a world, settlement, faction, ship or NPC as directed by the prompt you rolled on the chart. The blank void of the map gets slowly filled in, fleets cruise between the stars, and political situations simmer behind the scenes. Your world-building gets kicked up a notch as a result, and your story fits into a larger context.

 The Oracle is triggered by situations where your character is in a position to hear rumors and news reports about what's happening in the sector, so it feels organic and is easy to fit in to your ongoing story. Step into the starport cantina, to catch the latest gossip from the old spacers sitting at the bar... have they got stories to tell you!

If you've ever played Starforged, please go check out my little creation: Starport Scuttlebutt.  It's available as Pay-What-You-Want, and $0 is just fine by me.

The link: https://rbbergstrom.itch.io/starport-scuttlebutt-oracle-for-starforged 

Oberon: 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.

Star-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.

A 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 turn

Nearly a year behind in posting these. Details below the fold:

A 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 turn

I try to post these after a few months delay, so I can add GM's commentaries without spoiling surprises that come up in subsequent sessions. However, I'm currently like a year behind, so maybe I need to shotgun these out and/or give up on providing embellishments.  Details below the fold:

Log 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 turn

I don't get around to posting these very often, so I'm nearly a year behind. Details below the fold:

Horse 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 turn

I don't get around to posting these very often, so I'm nearly a year behind. Details below the fold:

A Very Confusing Map

This 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.

A 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 been updating this blog... which allows me to add in a few little clarifications without worrying too much about spoiling future plotlines for my players.

You can also Start from Session #1 or check out the index of my Amber articles.

The PCs are:

•     Dalziel, son of Prince Bleys of Amber. A scientist.
•     Maarit, daughter of Princess Sand. An orphan with a magic pendulum.
•     Medore, nonbinary orphan of Princess Dierdre .
•     Spinturnix, (aka Nix), son of Prince Julian. Grew up in Forest Arden.
•     David Weyreth is a retired officer from the militaries of Amber.
•     Abn Haram, the human-shaped son of Lady Nykae of Chaos, and the long-dead Prince Osric of Amber.  

Most of the NPCs are from the novels, such as Fiona, who always seems to know more than she should, and Corwin, whose main schtick is essentially the opposite despite being exceptionally well read.

Some NPCs are unique to this campaign, such as "Blinky" (real name Argos) who is a dragon with extra eyeballs all over his body and is guarding Dworkin's cave: sort of an upgrade from Wixer (the griffon doing the same duty in the books). Bellantine and Armistaud are "Acquisitions Specialists" from a library world called Oberon's Loupe: they may be operating on special instructions from the dead king.

 Campaign log: 10 May 2021, turn by turn