Virtual TTRPG Maps

So our TTRPG group has been playing online for several years now.  We started during the pandemic, but having group members kind of spread out and most of us having jobs that require getting up kind of early means that not having to drive 45+ minutes home at the end of the night is enough of a bonus.

I like the map options.

Pathfinder offers a lot of options for tactical combat, but virtual maps also mean that I can more easily plant clues or potential rabbit holes on maps than I could when I was just using theater of the mind or dry-erase combat maps.  Chekhov's gun is too obviously Chekhov's gun sometimes when you're describing the space (or you have party members who ignore potential plot hooks completely).  But when I put something weird on a map, I'm doing it for a reason (which may be because I found a neat graphic in the asset set, but I will improv plot around them if someone takes an interest).

I have been using Dungeondraft to make maps for a couple years now.  The ability to load additional assets (I've gotten some modern ones, some Cthulhu-esque ones, and high-level city grids) gives it flexibility beyond the basic fantasy RPG set that comes with it.  It lets you export both with and without the grid, and with or without lightning, so if you want to import it into a virtual table top that lets you set those up, you can just do an image, or if you're going to print for actual table-top use, you could print it with the additional features.

Now that I've been using it for a while, once I know what map I want to make (say, a forested encounter map), I can set it up in about twenty minutes.  More complicated maps (like the Clue house) take longer since I have to place a lot more assets, but I don't usually need a lot of those.  It does mean that, if I need to, I can probably slap together a battle-map while the PCs are talking themselves into a fight.

I'm putting together a setting for a 1930s game, and for that I'm looking at using public domain images of locations from that era for non-combat maps - lobbies, offices, restaurants, theaters, etc.  I don't know how well that will work yet, but for combat I'll still be putting together standard top-down maps; I've read some things about using isometric maps, but I haven't worked out the technical aspect of it yet.  I'll also need to put together some Empire State Building floor plans - which should be easy, since they're available online - especially since I learned that only one or two of the floors was actually occupied in the time-frame I'm looking at.

There are a variety of places to get asset packs; here are some I've used:

• Cartography Assets
• 2-Minute Tabletop
• Patreon (Dice Grimorium, BluBerrey, Tyger_purr, Cthulhu Architect, Brian Patterson - those are the ones I follow, but there are tons more)

I have not yet found great options for Art Deco assets, but hopefully by the time I run that game, I can at least approximate it.

One of the other nice things about these maps is that I'm now playing with two groups, and some of them can be repurposed for the other.  I haven't needed to do this yet, but I have them in the same overall campaign setting at the moment, so should they wander into areas the other has already been, I could reuse some of the maps for my own personal continuity's sake.

What to do with Lovecraft?

As I've been building a 1920s-era Pathfinder campaign with eldritch horror undertones, I have been debating for a while what to do with Lovecraft, specifically the multifaceted bigotry that's interwoven in a lot of his work. Several events in the past couple weeks have given me some ideas on how to handle it.

Regarding Lovecraft in particular, I recently finished reading N. K. Jemisin's The City We Became.  Jemisin incorporates Lovecraftian elements in the book in a way that acknowledges his racism without absolving him of it.  Indeed, the way she uses it to build a character that embodies this year's apparent theme of "disappointed but not surprised" was really well done.  There may be layers of nuance that I'm missing as a white person or as a non-resident of New York City, but even without those lenses to read through, it's a great book.

So what I took from her treatment of Lovecraft is that you can draw on racist sources to reflect some of the tradition of a genre, but you need to acknowledge its problematic elements, as well, in a way that does not hand-wave away the harm those problematic elements create or reflect.

Having been thinking about this for a while has also been helpful for parsing some of the recent rounds of "these authors whose books you've enjoyed are, in some way, assholes."  This issue has cropped up fairly often in the past several years as people who have been harmed have been emboldened or empowered to speak up.  It's part of the theme of "disappointed but not surprised" that's been going on.  Since I'm just a reader and not hooked into any active writing groups, I only hear about it when it hits the news or the social media circles I'm in, so I will continued to be disappointed but not surprised when I find out someone has been causing harm in some way.

As a reader, I have to decide how I want to engage (or not) with work by authors who are, in some way, problematic.  One thing I am certain of is that I won't recommend an author's work once I find out they are causing harm.  I don't recommend Lovecraft unless someone is doing background reading into the history of science fiction (which is basically why I read his work - to understand references to it in other works), and I do it with warnings about the blatant bigotry.  I have read plenty of other great books that I can recommend instead.

If someone is actively causing harm or an unrepentant bigot, I'm not going to read their works once I find out.  For example, I loved Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow, but then I found out about his homophobia and stopped reading the series.  If someone stops causing harm (it generally seems to be some kind of  bigotry or harassment that makes the news), atones, and actively works to not do harm in the future, I would consider reading their work again, but I don't know that that happens very often.  Everyone has a personal comfort level regarding redemption and forgiveness, but redemption requires atonement, and I'm not optimistic that I'll be able to pick back up a lot of the authors I have recently been disappointed by as a reader.

Another recent topic I saw come across Twitter was writing POC main characters as a white author.  (I'm pretty sure I only saw tangential pieces of what was a broader conversation because, again, I'm just a reader and not hooked into any writer networks.)  A lot of my early writing is, frankly, naive when it comes to issues of race, because I grew up naive about issues of race.  I'm not published, so my ignorance is not hanging out there for the world to see, but the discussion has made me think about my capabilities regarding writing diverse characters, what kind of work I need to do to include them in stories without doing so in a manner that would be offensive, and the best practices for writing outside one's own experiences.

This leads me back to The City We Became; I've become someone who reads the acknowledgements section at the end of books - I don't know how, but it's only been within the past year.  Seeing the extensive list of sensitivity readers Jemisin consulted for her diverse cast of characters really drove home how important that kind of feedback is when working with characters whose experiences may be different than your own.  Research can only get you so far, and sources can be biased.  If I want to eventually put some of my work out there, I need to put in the effort to not be someone creating harm, even if it's through ignorance.

Adult Red Dragon: Modified

So Part II of the campaign I'm currently running will send the players, eventually, into the British Isles.  In the course of putting this part together, I decided I might need to scale up a monster for thematic purposes, and I noticed that the rules for scaling up monster stats (to make them bigger) could be flipped, to scale them down.

The thought process went something like:

• I hadn't decided where to send them yet in Scotland.
• What about the Shetlands?
• Shetland ponies.
• Shetland dragons?
• Just how far can you scale down a dragon?
• Dragon swarms?

So what does it look like when you take, for example, an Adult Red Dragon and scale it down from Huge to Fine?

Something like this:

Adult Red Dragon
CE Fine dragon (fire)
Init +10; Senses dragon senses, smoke vision; Perception +23
Aura fire (5 ft., 1d6 fire), frightful presence (180 ft., DC 21)

Defense
AC 40, touch 24, flat-footed 34 (+16 natural, +8 size, +6 dex)
hp 127 (17d12+17)
Fort +11, Ref +17, Will +15
DR 5/magic; Immune fire, paralysis, sleep; SR 25
Weaknesses vulnerability to cold

Offense
Speed 20 ft., fly 100 ft. (average)
Melee bite +22 (1d3-3 (1)), 2 claws +22 (1d2-3 (1))
Space 1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks breath weapon (10-ft. cone, DC 24, 12d10 fire)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 17th)
At will—detect magic, pyrotechnics (DC 15), suggestion (DC 16)
Spells Known (CL 7th)
3rd (5/day)—dispel magic, haste
2nd (7/day)—invisibility, resist energy, see invisibility
1st (7/day)—alarm, grease (DC 14), magic missile, shield, true strike
0 (at will)—arcane mark, light, mage hand, mending, message, prestidigitation, read magic

Statistics
Str 5, Dex 22, Con 13, Int 16, Wis 17, Cha 16
Base Atk +17; CMB +15; CMD 22 (26 vs. trip)
Feats Cleave, Greater Vital Strike, Improved Initiative, Improved Iron Will, Improved Vital Strike, Iron Will, Multiattack, Power Attack, Vital Strike
Skills Appraise +23, Bluff +23, Fly +24, Intimidate +23, Knowledge (arcana) +23, Perception +23, Sense Motive +23, Spellcraft +23, Stealth +36
Languages Common, Draconic, Dwarven, Orc

This may need additional tinkering, and I'm not sure if or how to change the Challenge Rating, but I think if you can strap it to your gloves, you basically have a super beefed-up Burning Hands ready to go.

Europe, 718

So I'm running a D&D campaign again.  Despite having (probably literally) dozens of fictional worlds to pull from thanks to twenty years of writing (crappy) fiction, I like running campaigns set on Earth.  Past, future, either works.  So the current one is set in the era of Charles Martel, 718, before the battles definitively keeping the Moors in Spain and not in France.

The twist, of course, is that a dragon wiped out Constantine and his opponent at the battle of Milvian Bridge, so Constantine never became sole emperor of Rome.  The dragon has taken up residence in Rome, the eastern empire has split off as Byzantium, the Franks moved into western Europe, the Celts still have some small footholds, and Christianity didn't become the dominant religion in the region.  Islam is still moving up through North Africa, but the cultures in Europe are still more varied.

There's also magic and elves and classical monsters and all of that, so it's not exactly your vanilla European backdrop.  Teasing out which cities exist, what the plagues of Justinian did to the population, who's in charge where, which languages are extant, what the technological levels are, and things like, has a bridge been built here yet? have all taken some digging, guesstimating, or sometimes sheer fabrication.  It's interesting for me finding textual gaps in the historical record, or areas of sparser research - in a hundred years it's Charlemagne Charlemagne Charlemagne and you can find tons of information on life and culture at the time, but back up to Charles Martel and you're doing a bit more guesswork.

So the party has arrived in Gundelfingen an der Donau, and I'm being reminded that I'm much more comfortable pronouncing German than French.  I think they've decided to continue up the Danube to Regensburg, which means I get to switch encounter tables from what they were facing in the Black Forest.  I think this one includes angry fish!

RPG Shopping IRL

So the other day I found the NYPL's online store.  This was both a great and terrible thing; I was previously unaware of how many tote bags I needed from them.  And then I found the travel pen set, and I realized that I could totally be assembling my basic Dungeons  & Dragons equipment kit (non-weapons and armor, although I could probably come pretty close to those just at Walmart).

 So what's my standard kit entail?  This list is based off the last character I played that had better than an 8 Strength (which is what my current sorcerer has, and it's severely pared down for her).  Since D&D doesn't generally include utility knives, I usually substitute in a dagger.  Overall this list runs 58g, 6s, 3c, and weighs 70.2 lb.

I frequently am the log-keeper for our group, so I tend to give my character the materials to do so (writing implements, etc.).  This is true even when the character is a sword-and-board fighter, as was the one this one is based on.

For the real-life equivalents (or approximates), I looked at L.L. Bean, Walmart, Home Depot, Hannaford (the grocery we most frequently use), Jo-Ann, Michael's, and Staples.  A few of those can probably be consolidated into Walmart depending how big it is.  Amazon was helpful for weights when the other stores didn't list them.

Game Item		Real-Life Item	Cost	Store
Backpack		White Mountain Pack	$199	LL Bean
Abacus		TI 36x solar calculator	$20	Walmart
Animal glue		Elmer's Glue-All	$3	Walmart
Canteen		Nalgene 16 oz bottle	$10	LL Bean
Coffee pot		Stainless Steel Percolator	$30	LL Bean
Crowbar		24" ripping bar	$10	Home Depot
Fishing kit		First cast outfit	$40	LL Bean
		Deluxe Fly Selection, Eastern	$49	LL Bean
Grappling hook		Folding Grapnel	$11	Walmart
Honey (jar)		Honey	$4	Hannaford
Mess kit		Sea to Summit Camp Set	$30	LL Bean
Poncho		Coleman Adult EVA Poncho	$8	Walmart
Silk rope (50 ft.)		3/8 inch braided poly rope (100 ft)	$9	Home Depot
Skillet		Lodge 8" skillet	$11	Walmart
String (50 ft)		#18 Twisted Mason Line (250 ft.)	$3	Home Depot
Thread (50 ft.)		All Purpose Thread (225 yd.)	$3	Jo-Ann
Waterskin		Osprey Hydraulics Reservoir	$34	LL Bean
Whetstone		Pocket Stone	$7	Home Depot
Pouch, belt		Utility belt pouch	$5	Walmart
Flint & steel		Single Flint Striker with Flints	$5	Home Depot
Hip flask		Stainless Steel Flask	$5	Walmart
Magnet		3/4 in. Magnet Discs (3 pack)	$4	Home Depot
Sewing needle		Hand needles size 2 (12 pack)	$4	Jo-Ann
Waterproof bag		Ultra-Sil Compression Sack	$30	LL Bean
Candle, 5		Citronella Tealights, 25 pack	$4	Walmart
Chalk (5)		Crayola white chalk, 12 pack	$1	Home Depot
Coffee, ground (5 lb)		Medium Roast Ground Coffee	$9	Walmart
Ink		Acrylic Calligraphy Ink	$6	Michael's
Inkpen		Manuscript Calligraphy Pen Set	$11	Michael's
Journal		Journal, Black Leather, 5-1/2" x 8"	$15	Staples
Powdered milk		Carnation Instant Dry Milk	$5	Hannaford
Scrivener's kit		33 Piece Calligraphy Pen Set	$16	Staples
Soap		Ivory Simply Original Bar Soap	$3	Hannaford
Trail rations		Fruit & Nut Trail Mix	$12	Hannaford
Bedroll		Camp Sleeping Bag	$70	LL Bean
Shovel		Shovel	$10	Home Depot
Dagger		Folding Knife	$15	Home Depot

Real-life totals: $711 and about 43 lbs.

Weirdly enough, in real life, the hiking backpack becomes the most expensive piece.  It could probably be downgraded to an $80 one, but not without losing the capacity needed to carry gear for multiple days.  This gear set didn't even include a tent of some sort - probably desirable for most outdoor treks over multiple days.  The basic two-person tent at L.L. Bean runs $170 and weighs 7 lbs.  The game equivalent is 10g and 20 lb.

The tealights are probably the worst candle you can get as a light source; in-game candles only last an hour, so I went with the real-life equivalent.  Basic ones seem to most frequently come in mass quantity.  Since this character had darkvision, a light-source was extraneous; a lantern and lamp oil would normally be necessary for any extended travel in the dark.  That runs 7g and 2 lb. for the standard hooded lantern, and lamp oil is 1s for a 1 lb. flask that burns for 6 hours.  For the real-life equivalent, I'd probably go with a $7 floating waterproof LED flashlight that lasts 20 hours on 3 AA batteries from Walmart.

Another thing I'd probably look at for a standard kit is a hatchet; this is a basic item that RPG equipment lists frequently lack, but a 6g/3 lb. handaxe is probably close enough.  A Fiskers 14" hatchet from Home Depot runs about $26 and weighs 1.3 lb.

Looking over the list, substituting equivalent items, I've got... pretty much everything but the percolator, whetstone, grappling hook, sleeping bag, tent, hatchet, and that much trail mix.  So while I'm not set up for actual camping or survival, I'm pretty well set for RPG-style adventuring.

Sorcery!

Well, I got sorted into Slytherin again.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; I'm not cutthroat enough to be a Ravenclaw, not generous enough to be a Hufflepuff, and I'm definitely not brave, so that rules out Gryffindor.

Slytherin, but with a unicorn-core wand.  Go figure.

We've just started a new game Monday nights, and I'm playing a sorcerer, possibly for the first time ever.  I don't generally play high-charisma characters, so although I prefer spontaneous casters, when I do go that route, they've been wisdom-based.  But then I found the Sage Wildblooded alternative, and, well.

She's got a ridiculous Knowledge (Arcana) check for a level 1 character, a bit of skill with alchemy, and an 8 strength, so hopefully I won't end up carrying all of the party's detritus again.

I got the impression as I was putting her together that she's a bit arrogant, a bit impatient with those who can't keep up with her, and inclined to be a bit petty.

The alchemy background means she's averse to fire spells bigger than what's necessary to light a Bunsen burner, so acid and force will likely be her main focuses.  Her sorcerer bloodline (Sage is Wildblooded from Arcane) means she gets a lot of sort of "classic" spells as her bonus spells - things like invisibility and dimension door and wish - so she'll probably pick up some of the others, like knock and magic missile.  And that petty streak?  She'll probably pick up bestow curse, too.

I have an easy time getting in her head.  I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

Putting points in Linguistics

Okay, right, so I'm the kind of nerd that wonders things like, if I were a character in a role-playing game, what kind of statistics would I have?  Just how many points is that history master's worth?

I've spent way more time thinking about this than I probably should.  Pathfinder uses the d20 OGL system for the most part, with some tweaks, and has around thirty skills that players can put points in for their characters.  So I've been looking at that list and debating where I likely have points.

• Acrobatics:  Probably 0
• Appraise:  Definitely 0 - I'm pretty bad at knowing or guessing how much something is worth
• Artistry:  For the Literature subskill, maybe 1 or 2 points
• Bluff:  0 - I'm not good at bluffing at all
• Climb:  Probably 1 or 2 points; I spent a lot of time up trees as a kid
• Craft:  This has multiple subskills, and is basically skills that make something; Cooking probably 3 points; Clothing 1 or 2 points; Alchemy (substituting for chemistry) maybe 1 point
• Diplomacy:  Given my years working at a customer service point, I'm estimating about 3 points
• Disable Device:  In game terms this is about traps and locks, so 0
• Disguise: 0 - I can't even really put on normal makeup
• Escape Artist:  Probably 1 point
• Fly:  Uh, we'll go with 0
• Handle Animal:  Probably 1 point
• Heal:  I don't really remember enough first aid or CPR to have points in this, so probably 0 (really, no one should be looking to me for help if they injure themselves)
• Intimidate:  Probably 0
• Knowledge:  This is a multi-part skill in game terms; Arcana - 0 (unless you apply it to tech instead of magic, then maybe 1); Dungeoneering (this is caves and such) - maybe 1; Engineering - maybe 1; Geography - probably 2; History - 6; Local - maybe 1; Nature (this includes life and earth science type stuff) - 2; Nobility (this includes legal and political stuff) - 1; Planes - 0; Religion: 2
• Linguistics:  You get a language for every point you invest, but you also get bonus languages for your intelligence score, so this is either 1-2 or 3-4 points, based on the number of languages beyond English I've studied (German, Russian, French, and Spanish)
• Lore: this is a specialized knowledge area skill; I figure I've probably got 1 point in this for copyright issues
• Perception:  I don't think my Wisdom score (the affiliated skill) is that great, so I probably have about 5 points in this, based on what I notice while driving at night versus what my husband notices
• Perform:  This is another multi-part skill; I'm basing the points on years of lessons divided by two: Keyboards - 5, Trombone - 2, Singing - 3, Oratory - 1
• Profession: Another multi-part skill, similar to Craft but which doesn't produce physical goods; Librarian - about 7 points; Gardener - maybe 1 point; Scribe - maybe 1 point
• Ride: 0
• Sense Motive: probably 0
• Slight of Hand: probably 0
• Spellcraft: probably 0; if applied to tech rather than magic, maybe 1
• Stealth: maybe 1
• Survival: maybe 1
• Swim: maybe 1
• Use Magic Device: probably 0;  if applied to tech rather than magic, maybe 1

So there was a point to this, right?  The language app I've been using (Duolingo) recently added Russian to its offerings.  I took four years of German in high school, then a semester at Purdue, then transferred to a college with no German language offerings.  So I started taking Russian and did three semesters there.  I took two semesters of French condensed into twelve weeks over one summer, and French is the one I remember the least of.  When I first got the Duolingo app on my phone, I started off with Spanish, since it was something I hadn't studied at all.

Anyway, adding Russian to the app means I can now practice four other languages every day!  I really want to pick up Mandarin and Latin (and Hebrew and Arabic and Swahili), as well, but they're not in the app yet, so it would be more work to add them into the mix.

Based on my skill points and spread, I'm probably either an Expert (an NPC class) or a Bard of some sort.

Prince of Wolves

Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross

Two books into the Pathfinder novels, they are proving to be quite good at fleshing out the campaign world while being entertaining.  I had started with Winter Witch since the next person running the game after our current adventure is planning to run something in that area; Prince of Wolves is set in an entirely different area of the campaign world, Golarian.

Prince of Wolves follows a Pathfinder, Varian Jeggare, and his bodyguard, Radovan, into the country of Ustalav in search of a missing member of the Pathfinder Society.  While the lands of Irrisen explored in Winter Witch were full of trolls and goblins, Ustalav's major threats are undead and werewolves.  D20 RPGs generally have one or more pantheons of deities, and different ones have stronger followings in different areas of Golarian, so the way the inhabitants of Ustalav interact with their deities, and which, was also different from those in Winter Witch.

Pathfinder anthropology aside, the story itself is told in first person, switching back and forth between Radovan and Varian.  This construction works fairly well for giving events from both's point of view, but it sometimes takes a paragraph or two to figure out whose perspective is behind each chapter.  (I don't know if this is an element of the ebook format, or if the print version has some kind of distinguishing cue.)  Radovan's storyline at the points the characters are separated is better structured; the segments where Varian is alone at a manor in Ustalav feel a bit rushed.  The separate paths weave back together coherently, however.

Thus far the series shows promise, with both books having compelling characters and enough plot twists to make them hard to put down.

Jargon Creep

I'm both a librarian and a gamer.  I suppose I was technically a gamer first, but given my slightly compulsive organizational habits and, well, compulsive helpfulness (ask a question and see if I can try not to find you an answer), librarian may have been inevitable once I had the requisite schooling.

Both areas are fairly steeped in jargon.  Raid, weed, stack: all common words that have enough of a jargony twist that when you're talking about the gaming or library usage, they cause confusion if thrown into general conversation.  Some samples I find creeping into my general vocabulary:

• Weeding.  If I mention to someone outside the profession that we're weeding at the library, it almost inevitably causes confusion.  It's really pretty straightforward - just instead of removing undesirable plants, we're removing books that, for some reason, no longer fit in our collection.  The material could be outdated, the book could be in poor physical shape, or the library's purpose may have evolved such that it's no longer relevant to the patrons.  For example, if our college drops a major, we'll probably have items in the collection that are no longer going to get used.
• Raiding.  People unfamiliar with MMO (massively-multiplayer online) games can have a hard time grasping the idea of raiding.  The general concept is the same as what peoples have done for centuries - grouped up to go attack something.  But in a gaming context, if the person's point of reference is, say, Pong, it may be hard to understand.  Raiding is a group of people in a game getting together to go assault an enemy stronghold.  In World of Warcraft, that generally means monsters controlled by the game, but there's also player-versus-player scenarios that use the same kind of group.
• WTB/WTS.  These tend to drift into my social networking posts (Twitter, Facebook, G+); they're shorthand for "want to buy" and "want to sell".  "WTS cold, PST" is shorthand for "Want to sell cold, please send tell."  ("Tell" is the inline command for a private message in many games.)  Translation: "Anyone want my cold?"  "WTB A/C" may have crept into my updates sometime this summer (I don't remember), but "Want to buy air conditioning" did apply to most of the summer here at the library.
• Everything related to maintaining order in a book collection: stacks, shelf-reading, shifting, and so forth.  Stacks are the collection of shelves; shelf-reading is making sure the books are in order; shifting means moving a section of books, generally to better distribute them on the available shelving.
• Library of Congress call numbers.  So many people only know the Dewey Decimal System (if they understand classification at all) that mentioning book subjects by their LC number doesn't really get me anywhere.  The P's, the S's, the T's - literature, agriculture, technology.  The only reason my home collection is in Dewey and not LC is because my collection isn't big enough to need LC's granularity.
• Fumble.  Fumble probably came into gaming from football (dropped the ball), but in Dungeons & Dragons, if you roll a 1 on a 20-sided die in a situation where a 1 is the worst possible roll, that's a fumble.  It means you not only failed in what you were trying to do, but you also botched the job so badly you probably hurt yourself in the process.  Normally this only applies to attack rolls and saving throws.  If you tried to play darts and the dart somehow ended up in your leg instead of the dart board, you fumbled.  If the situation in which the failure occurred wasn't a saving throw/attack roll kind of situation, however, you're more likely to have...
• Failed a spot check.  That pen you're looking for that you can't find that's sitting on the desk in front of you?  Yeah, you failed a spot check.  Fell off your deck?  Failed a balance check.  (If you hurt yourself when you fell off the deck, you possibly fumbled your reflex save.)  Skill checks can't be fumbled (you can actually succeed on a 1 if you have enough skill points invested in the one you're trying to use), but failing them can have disastrous results (especially if climbing or swimming are involved).  I generally notice deer along the side of the road at night; my husband doesn't.  Guess who has a higher spot check?
• /commands.  World of Warcraft's in-game command-line input is preceded by a / - so /dance makes your character dance; /hug will display the hug echo (generally "X needs a hug!" or "X hugs Y." depending on whether you have someone targeted).  You can actually do combat via the command line if you can type fast and know the commands.  (Occasional interface bugs have led me to chain-typing /cast Steady Shot for my hunter.)  But while most people #hashtag on Twitter, I compulsively /command - so instead of #hungry it's /hungry.  I really need to get out of the habit if I want to jump on the hashtag bandwagon.  (When people post bad days on Facebook or whatnot, I'm more likely to /hug than *hugs* - especially on G+ where the asterisks make the word bold.)  If you don't play WoW, though, the / may be unfamiliar.  In a way, this is similar to when I was still playing on the MUD regularly, and I would compulsively type in my gossip macro de jour (gg or gos usually) when replying to people in AIM.  I still occasionally "fbs" if I'm sitting at the keyboard thinking; that was the macro I made for "fill bottle spring" on the MUD, where you had to actively make your character eat and drink, or you'd starve/die of thirst.  If you ran out of water while you were out in the world, you'd have to go find some, so I got into the habit of filling my bottle every time I returned to the town square (also known as Recall...).

There are others, of course, but these are ones I've noticed slipping into everyday usage.  A lot of the library jargon I try to catch myself and talk around as I'm talking to someone, because things like OCLC, consortial borrowing, LVIS, and whatnot are sometimes easier to just use other words to start instead of trying to explain them in full.  (LVIS is said like Elvis, but is not Elvis, for example.)

Unfortunately I sometimes forget just which words are library jargon, and which are the ones the patrons use to describe something.  OPAC?  Catalog?  At least with a lot of gaming jargon, the origin is more obvious to me.  It's more concerning when words that shouldn't be jargon confuse our students: journal, article, volume, and issue should not be foreign words to them (or at least not to the native speakers of English), but unfortunately sometimes seem to be.  That's where the compulsion to help people learn comes into play.

Schoharie Creek

I've been driving across Schoharie Creek to get to work for over six years now.  At first it was three times a week, mostly in the afternoon or evening, since I was working part time.  For three years now it's been five days a week.

Irene was not kind to Schoharie County.  Other places - Greene County in New York and much of Vermont - were hit harder, and neighborhoods along the river in Schenectady and Troy in New York saw flooding.  Relief and recovery efforts are underway; the small towns may take years to get back to normal.  The Gilboa dam is sound - for now - but it's in the back of everyone's mind.

I-88 bridge across Schoharie Creek was barricaded.  Traffic was diverted onto Route 7.

When Schoharie Creek came out, every bridge across it - from the Route 30 bridge in North Blenheim to the New York State Thruway and Route 5S bridges in Fort Hunter, where the Schoharie flows into the Mohawk River, were shut down.  I don't know that they were all underwater, but there was water across I-88.  That scenario I had been mapping in my head (How do I get home if the dam goes?) didn't even require the dam breaking - it just had to have record flood levels.  Luckily for me, I was on the home-side of the bridges when it happened.  I just couldn't go to work until the bridges reopened.  With the Mohawk also over its banks and many of its bridges closed, I'm not sure I could have even detoured north of the river to get there.

Schoharie Creek, about five years ago, was the inspiration for the elemental dragons I created for one of my Dungeons & Dragons settings.  Some mornings when you come down the hill on I-88, just past the 103 mile marker heading west, there's a snake of fog above the creek, tracing its route through the valley.  Unfortunately I'm driving when I see it, because I would love to get a picture of it.  Schoharie Creek has a mist dragon.

Recent prose

An idea I've had for a while, but had not yet put on paper. If it gets further than this, there are at least two other characters I know will be introduced. (My mage/knight/thief pattern will probably remain intact.)

====================

Flit woke confused. He was confused because he knew he was Flit, and he had never had a name before. He was hungry, and less than ten yards from his perch, a mouse was sitting in the open, on a bare patch of dirt. It was a white mouse, with red eyes. He had never seen one like that before, but a mouse was a mouse.

He dove, but the mouse didn’t run for cover. No, when he was barely three feet from her, talons extended, she held up a paw in his direction, and spoke.

“Hold animal.”

Flit felt his wings stiffen, and he glided over her, thudding awkwardly to the ground just past her, stuck in his gliding position. He was more confused now, because the mouse had spoken to him, in the noises humans made, and he had understood her.

She walked over to stand beside his head and sat back on her haunches. “What are you called?”

Flit just blinked at her. She expected him to answer, apparently, and he couldn’t move. Around her waist was belted a narrow strip of leather, upon which hung the tiniest of pouches, and a sliver of metal with a bit of thread wrapped around one end was tucked in it. He could feel himself starting to panic, which was worrisome, because he understood that he was starting to panic.

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I suppose you can’t talk at the moment.” She made a small gesture with one paw, and he felt all his muscles relax.

“What did you do?” he exclaimed, stumbling around to stand up. Flit was not sure if he was more concerned that he had vocalized the human words, or that it had been reflexive, or that he was thinking about being concerned.

“My name is Sylvia. I am a priestess of Lune, the goddess of the moon.”

“You’re a mouse,” he said.

“And you,” she said, “are a pigeon hawk. I believe you are confused about your diet.”

He leaned his head down close to her. “I am a kestrel,” he objected, “and I eat mice quite often.”

“Perhaps,” she said, putting a paw on his beak. “But not me. If you persist in trying, I shall have to do something more drastic than simply immobilizing you.”

“Why am I speaking to you?”

“Because you tried to kill me,” she said, then shrugged, which was somewhat awkward with mouse shoulders.

“I mean, why am I speaking?”

“Ah. I believe the usual cause is wild magic. There is a wizard’s tower in the woods very near here. It has been abandoned for quite some time, but unusual things happen in the area.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have been researching it for close to three months.”

“You’ve been what? Do mice even live three months?”

“I am almost four years old,” she said indignantly. “I was struck with magic powerful enough to make me understand things no mouse does. Do you think it did nothing else?”

“I have no idea.”

“How did you know you’re a kestrel?” she said.

“I have no idea,” he repeated, a little more miserably this time.

“I have been like this over three years,” she said, patting his beak. “How old are you?”

“Six years.”

“Are you new to the area?”

“Got chased out of my old territory three months ago by a pair of hawks,” he said, a little dejectedly.

“Ah.” She dropped back down to all four paws. “Well, I should get going. I do not travel quickly, and it will take me some time yet to get to the tower.”

“Why are you going to the tower?”

“The wizard acquired a reliquary holding a lock of my goddess’s hair. It is to be recovered, and returned to her temple in the human city of Landsfall.”

“Who told you this?”

“My goddess.”

“Oh.”

She turned and headed off in the direction of the distant woods, and after a moment, Flit took an awkward hop after her.

“Do you – do you want me to take you there?” he asked her.

“With claws like that?” she replied. “No, thank you.”

“You have… little grasping hands, yes?” he said, keeping pace with her now and looking at her paws. “You could hold on.”

She stopped and looked up at him. “What is your name?”

“Flit.”

“Tch, a sparrow name,” she said. “Very well, then, Mr. Flit. The tower is in the forest, although I do not know if it is tall enough to be seen above the trees.”

“How do you even know where you’re going?” he asked, wincing as she climbed her way onto his back. “You can’t possible see above the grass.”

“Oh, I rode most of the way here atop a wagon of grain,” she said.

“Here from where?”

“Landsfall.”

“Where is that?”

“To the north, almost two hundred miles.”

“That’s a long way off for a mouse, isn’t it?”

“Quite. I doubt most ever travel further than a mile from where they’re born.”

“Are you holding on well?” he asked.

“I should hope so,” she said.

“All right then.”

He took a pair of steps and was airborne. He could hear the mouse’s high pitched squeal of terror as he gained altitude, and then she was praying.

“I’m not going to drop you,” he said. “We’re just getting high enough up to see if we can see the tower.”

“My eyes are probably not good enough to see quite so far,” she said.

“Mine are.”

====================

PS: Copyright 2011 Katherine Brent

1903

So I want to run a d20 "modern" game in 1903.

I'm not sure why 1903 - maybe because the Harry Nilsson song about Dayton, OH, is 1903. Maybe because, subconsciously, I know it's when my great-grandmother was born. (The one I knew, anyway, of the four.)

Anyway, 1903 is fascinating - the first World Series, Ford's Model A came out, the Wizard of Oz was on Broadway, the Wright Brothers' first flight.

Hopefully the gaming group will go for it.

Kobolds!

We're playing kobolds right now in my D&D group.  Teehee.

Oh, and by the way...

The Random Inn Names table:

Step 1:  Roll two d6; one determines the tables for the first part of the name; the other determines the tables for the second part.

1 Color
2 Number
3 Miscellaneous

1 Animal
2 Person
3 Object

The first part of the name can be color, number, or miscellaneous (all a d8).

1 Green/Gren/Gruen/Verd
2 Red/Rot
3 Blue/Blau
4 White/Weiss
5 Black/Schwarz
6 Gold/Gelb/Geld
7 Brown/Bruen
8 Silver

1 Lone
2 Three
3 Seven
4 Dozen
5 Fifty
6 Score
7 Hundred
8 Thousand

1 Happy
2 Sad
3 Dancing
4 Laughing
5 Oaken
6 Shady/Quiet
7 Gilded
8 Lazy/Sleeping

The second part is either animal (d10), person (d8), or object (d8).

1 Stag
2 Ox
3 Bear
4 Boar
5 Hart
6 Dragon
7 Griffin
8 Lion
9 Eagle
10 Wolf

1 Maiden/Maedchen/Maedel
2 Wright/Smith
3 Elf
4 Dwarf
5 King
6 Knight/Knecht/Ritter/Chevalier
7 Bard
8 Monk/Muench

1 Grapes/Apples/Pears
2 Rest
3 Bucket
4 Oak/Pine/Elm/Tree
5 Rose/Lily/Iris
6 Loaves/Pies/Buns
7 Quills
8 Bottle

And that's pretty much it.  In the first test, my d6's seem to favor numbers and people.  Hm...

Random Towns

Last night I was working on the new region that the D&D group will run into the next time I pick up DMing, and in the middle of coming up with names for the various principalities and city states, I made a random town name table for randomly encountered villages and such.

It is a multi-step process. The first table, determining which table is used for the first part of the town name, is thus:

1 Color
2 Animal
3 Person

After rolling on this table (generally a d6 is used, so 1-2 is 1, etc.), one goes to the appropriate table to determine the first part of the town name; color and person are a d8, and animal is a d10:

1 Green/Gren/Gruen/Verd
2 Red/Rot
3 Blue/Blau
4 White/Weiss
5 Black/Schwarz
6 Gold/Gelb/Geld
7 Brown/Bruen
8 Silver

1 Stag
2 Ox
3 Bear
4 Boar
5 Hart
6 Dragon
7 Griffin
8 Lion
9 Eagle
10 Wolf

1 Maiden/Maedchen/Maedel
2 Wright/Smith
3 Elf
4 Dwarf
5 King
6 Knight/Knecht/Ritter/Chevalier
7 Bard
8 Monk/Muench

After the first part of the name is determined, one rolls on the suffix table, which is another d8:

1 Ford
2 Bridge
3 Brook
4 Bach
5 Stream
6 Crossing
7 Burg
8 Bridge

Most of the combinations work out all right; some of them may need minor grammatical adjustment (to things like, say, the classic Rothenburg, or Bard's Crossing).

Next project: random inn names.

Proof of nerdiness, part 2

I just calculated the weight and cost of a mithril 2"x4".  I am such a dork. >.<

(If you must know:  A 2"x4" (they're usually ~8 ft long) made of iron would weigh about 218 lbs (iron is 7.86 g/cm^3), so a mithril one would weigh half that, about 109 lbs, and given that mithril is listed at 500 gold per pound...  it costs about 54.5k gold for a mithril 2"x4".)