Blog Posts

ANOINTED23, 1/15 (end of full week 2)

January 15, 2023
dungeon23, anointed23, anointed

Picture of my planner, week 2(Previous) Day 15! Halfway through. Here's the daily for that: Monday, 1/9: Point (1), the Sanctuary. (I'm going to be using the Sanctuaries to do two things. First is re-emphasize the Anointed's connection (via ritual) to the Church; second is to give some way to foreshadow some themes of the area. This is done from the description of it and a prayer set at each.) The place is new, but hastily-erected: it's half fallen apart. ...

ANOINTED23, 1/8 (end of full week 1), some rambling on planning for Attributes/Regions for ANOINTED

January 8, 2023
dungeon23, anointed23, anointed

Pointmap from 1 to 9.A bunch of chicken scratch writing from January 2 to 8.(Previous) So we're at day 8 for this Region. Here's the breakdown of what that looks like: Thursday, 1/5: I wrote a new enemy (Scavenger) that I'm picturing as like somewhere between a hyena, wolf, and vulture. Tactics are to approach/surround (they have a very good move for this with Advance 4/Retreat 2) and pick off from there. ...

ANOINTED23, 1/4

January 4, 2023
dungeon23, anointed23

The Delta Sinkhole entry as above, now with a little map.The Half-Dreg entry and two points, as well as two combat maps.Three entries so far. Map is going on that first grid for space reasons. I definitely didn't screw up and write Point 1 on Jan 9th already. Ignore that (1) on the map for now. Combat maps for fights go on the grid on the right (they're hexes in the actual game, but the way I have it set up is basically hexes). ...

Part 2: Escape from CICP-1 Scenario Teardown

January 3, 2023
ttrpg design, liminal void, total//effect

Ok. This is the part where I talk more firmly about the scenario. (See the map above.) The goal of this scenario, as repeated from above, is the same goals as Level 0 in general: Establish some "starting points" for characters, and give some playstyle options. Figure out, through play, what kind of people your characters were and are. (The Background mechanic is the obvious version of this, but even more subtle decisions inform a character. ...

ANOINTED23, 1/1

January 1, 2023
dungeon23, anointed23

The Delta Sinkhole entry.For my first Region I’m making the swamp. The idea I have is basically a downriver swamp that was enough of a crossroads to build walkways over it. Over time, it’s been clogged with the detritus of centuries of war from upstream: materiel, corpses, undying warriors left as waste. The near-constant flow had attracted scavengers, making it hard to maintain; and eventually there was nobody left to maintain the walkways. ...

Liminal Void Quickstart and Scenario Teardown, Part 1: Background, Quickstart rules

January 1, 2023
ttrpg design, liminal void, total//effect

Map of CI Central Processing Station 1 (CICP-1)I'm in a posting mood because I'm putting off finishing writing a press release/kit so I figured I'd ruminate a little bit about how I put the Liminal Void Quickstart rules and scenario, Escape from CICP-1, together. Mild spoilers for the scenario under the fold if you care about that sort of thing, but most of the big scenario stuff is going to be in a follow-up post, but also it's just long and this seems polite. ...

Dungeon23 tech showcase: cyclic dungeon generation

December 29, 2022
dungeon23, anointed23

Figured I'd get a little into the sausage on one particular thing I found that I'll be using quite a bit. Cyclic dungeon generation is a really, really cool thing that I saw posted about on twitter (from @riseupcomus I believe?), and from there I've seen other people posting about it too. In general it's a great read just for picking out good design patterns for making little moments in a level, dungeon, etc - Zelda is described as the big influence but you can see this kind of technique for design going pretty clearly into a lot of soulslike areas, for instance. ...

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 3

December 9, 2022
worldbuilding, liminal void, total//effect, phipps23

Ok, no more icons. Here’s the next step: Integration Name the following Two Factions A Settlement A territory A Dungeon A Season Your Icons and Inspirations should help a lot here. Be explicit about how your icons relate to these larger organizations or areas. You don't have to use all of them. Given that this isn’t really a fantasy thing as such, “Dungeon” and “Season” are going to have liberties taken with them. ...

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 2d

December 8, 2022
worldbuilding, liminal void, total//effect, phipps23

Origin, 1+2a, 2b, 2c Part 2d: Icons for “The wildly disruptive nature of independent ship ownership” Event: In the early days of the Jovian colonies declaring independence from Mars, Mars had shut off all wormhole beacons in an attempt to starve them out. One lone sympathetic freighter, however, brought enough supplies via off-network beacons to keep them supplied so they could maintain their resistance. That ship is long since gone, but is celebrated yearly on the Jovian Independence Day on June 1st. ...

Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 2c

December 6, 2022
worldbuilding, liminal void, total//effect, phipps23

Origin, 1+2a, 2b 2c: Icons for "Being thrust suddenly onto the fringes of society and having to figure out how to deal with that." Event: When the Terran and Martian beacon networks were merged, a lot of stations became redundant. Everyone manning those stations were fired and reactors were deactivated as soon as the merger went through. The stations who had suitable engineering knowledge to restart them did so for the sake of everyone on the station, but for their trouble, they were blacklisted from all future corporate work. ...