Nah, we'll just SELECT * from both tables and loop through the arrays in JavaScript to associate the records.
The simple shapes come together to make some really interesting linked paths! And I did design it with the idea of being able to add in more rooms, or spells, etc, as you want, since it is a solo game. I really wanted to keep everything 1d6 friendly
I would have Daggerfall flashbacks if I tried to map that 😅
You could do that as an alternative to finding stairs down - instead you find a gentle slope that goes under the previous tunnels, then start a new floor.
Since I'm playing in a notebook, I will just shorten or slightly extend rooms as needed and make doors (they must have been hidden the first time through 😅) to connect to previous rooms. Here is a messy example from a recent game.
I love the approach of having "hard coded" rooms that happen at certain intervals. I wish I would have had this a few weeks ago when my group was exploring a cave system. I love that d20 table. I may use that for the game I'm running with my kids that is (of course) set in the Minecraft world 😄
Yes I was just thinking a few minutes ago (after my Dwarf Warrior's untimely demise) that I should try human again next, and really there isn't a situation where they are better. I think I should update it to +1 attribute and +1 skill, so they don't get modifier bonuses that boost them long term, but start slightly farther along than other races.
It's meant to be played on graph paper. The general idea is a randomly generated dungeon crawl. When you get to a door, you roll 1d6 and draw the next room! Each M is a monster, and each L is loot, which also has random tables to determine what is what, or you could use random tables from any other system with the general idea.
Ended up going in a slightly different direction with this - I made a mini solo RPG that uses random maps (6 different room shapes) but you could play it with your magnetic tiles as well! I’m still finishing up development and making tweaks as I play, but it’s finished enough to play test, if you are inclined to try it out with my maps or your own 😄
A Solo dungeon crawler RPG that can be played with only a pocket notebook, pencil and one d6
I started working on a solo notebook RPG after getting sucked into GnollHack on my phone ruined my progress on reducing screen time (also RIP Grindor, level 19 elf ranger, killed by Scorpius due to me not understanding illness mechanics😭).
I wanted something on paper that has a similar vibe (though this has nowhere near the depth). Just fighting monsters, exploring infinite dungeons, collecting loot and learning spells.
I have never written an RPG system before, but it was fun! I'm still finishing up development and making tweaks as I play, but it's finished enough to play test!
I love the magic system in Genesys, with just basic spells (attack, heal, augment, curse, etc), some varying effects with suggested flavor (e.g. "Ice" adds ensnare to an attack, but mechanically it doesn't matter if it is vines, goop, whatever), and how much that effect increases spell difficulty. It lets the players go into a brainstorming session trying to come up with a spell to get out of a very specific situation, and having the game support almost anything.
E.g. this create water idea could be an attack spell with the poisonous quality (making it a hard check), which requires the target to make a hard resilience check or take a bunch of extra damage and strain, which for a skilled mage against a non-boss creature (e.g. an overly ambitious bandit) is well within one-shot range. If they pass the check, they would still take damage from the attack, but would be able to cough up most of the water before it got too serious.
This system sounds very cool also, and I have recently heard of Mage in another thread. I would like to play a system that gives players the ability to come up with spells that the GM doesn't know ahead of time (I seriously dislike long lists of predefined spells), but also has a little more of that hard magic-science set of rules to satisfy my inner Sanderson fanboy. I have built in some external scaffolding around the magic in my Genesys setting that does this, and it has been a ton of fun so far.
My main gripe is that I wish I had more time to play RPGs (more than a couple sessions a month) so I could try out more systems.
Love that! Makes me want to set up a bunch of map tiles and run a random "draw the next room from a deck" dungeon crawl.
In the old Bionicle Adventure Game, whichever player got to the edge of the map drew the next tile, and got to choose how to connect it, if there were multiple valid paths in/out.
But have you tried Outlook (NEW) and Teams (NEW)?? Microsoft made changes to deeply integrate copilot into them, while making the UI unintelligible and broken as well. It's a much more authentic Windows experience
Yeah, every thing they say is "horrifying" about this, and that they call "AI gone wrong" is just describing exactly how LLMs work and what they are designed to do.
Like of course the AI doesn't have opinions on your actual writing - it cant! And of course it says whatever the user wants to hear, that's literally just describing what an LLM does.
As much as I get frustrated with AI companies pushing this stuff so hard, if users bothered to understand even at the most basic level what they were using, we wouldn't have these issues
I do that too 😅 I'm getting better at avoiding the scary trigger words and getting them to agree with the principles
I'm the guy but instead of a pyramid scheme I'm just trying to get all of my friends to install Linux and switch to fediverse social platforms
Recently came across this post on writing up a redacted document of all of the important info related to the world / story, and un-redacting things as the PCs discover. This lets them know what they don't know, and kind of the shape of what they don't know. https://ttrpg.network/post/20269477
Which reminded me of this well-known write up, Don't Prep Plots, which, while not entirely incompatible, is at least a very different approach.
Got me thinking of the way I do things, and a mix of all of the different things I have read. I try to run a pretty sandbox style game, but still have a lot of stuff going on in the world for the players to follow. In many cases the players will go towards something I haven't prepped or thought much about, and that improvised collaborative story telling lets me as the GM find out new information about the world right alongside the players.
I have started to think of this kind of gm prep as "Mad libs prep"
Mad Libs is a game where there are pre-written sentences, with blanks that need to be filled in by the players. E.g. "We get into our <noun> and <verb> to the beach" - players don't know what the sentence is when picking the words, so you can end up with that becoming "We get into our toaster and sleep to the beach". The idea is to have enough existing structure that things can get where they need to be, but with enough unknowns that can be filled in with whatever the players (who don't know the whole story) throw out there.
For GM prep, this can be knowing that there is an evil wizard who wants to take over the kingdom, and he needs <noun> to do it. The missing noun can be filled in by the players without them knowing.
For example, they become very interested in hunting for ancient magic artifacts? The essential <noun> is a legendary amulet and now the PCs are in a race against the mad mage to decipher its secret location.
Or maybe the PCs become monster hunters for hire, and the <noun> is the scale of a dragon or something similar, and the PCs run into the evil guys and uncover the plot.
Or perhaps the PCs really latch on to a side NPC that doesn't have much background fleshed out and <noun> becomes this person, who has some previously unknown connection to events that is discovered along the way (e.g. Martin Septim in TES IV).
The idea in general is to have enough material to know interesting things will happen, but not getting hung up on having every detail filled in. This also can be holding the things you do have prepared loosly, so maybe you had planned for the BBEG to have a secret lair in the mountains, but the PCs are really into a swampy forest area and end up wanting to spend all of their time there. Rather than "Ok, the BBEG has been up here uncontested the whole time and now the world ends, you all die" - the <location> of evil layer is now deep in the wilderness, which can lead to a lot of changes, creating new lore, creatures, quests, etc.
Maybe all of this stuff is obvious but I am a relatively new GM and have mostly been figuring it out on my own. I'd love to hear other prep methods and tips!
Kind of frustrating that one of the main points against Linux is anti cheat, which basically comes down to Spyware that assumes you are a hacker if you run Linux, so the game publishers ban your account. That isn't a Linux problem, since often these are games that run fine on Linux.
I love this idea. Would have been perfect for my current game, though I have enjoyed the flexibility to adjust things the players don't know yet.
That could still work with this approach but you'd have to be intentional about keeping changes within the same scope / size
I have been playing Genesys, and I LOVE it. I'm not playing in a sci-fi setting, but the whole premise behind Genesys is that is is adaptable to any setting, and from what I have seen of the system, it would be great for something like that. There are tons of rules for vehicle stats, combat, etc. and it has guidelines for how to design and balance your own vehicles.
If you are interested in making and playing in your own setting I would definitely recommend Genesys.
If you are wanting something with an existing setting that matches that vibe, then I'd first check and see if some of the community made settings will fit that, and if not, then maybe look elsewhere.
There are a ton of community made resources for Genesys on DriveThruRPG and also in a dropbox maintained by one of the community members, and that dropbox has some resources for an Expanse setting and other sci-fi stuff that would be a good starting point: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/raqr7usuzwizglm/AACMnwsNyT5DPHyjokWZwQLOa/Community Content?dl=0&lst=&subfolder_nav_tracking=1
I would also say you should definitely get the core rulebook AND the expanded players guide, as that has tons of good resources and better guidelines for creating vehicles, as well as other useful things. It's really a fantastic GM toolkit.
EDIT: Also regarding the dice, which can be kind of hard to get, they have an app that you can use, as well as charts for converting normal polyhedral dice to the Genesys symbols, and what I personally do is just use the Star Wars dice, which are the same (with slightly different look to the symbols) and are more available, at least where I am.
Love talking all things trrpg. I primarily GM Genesys RPG, sometimes also Star Wars RPG and Hero Kids.
Also into Linux, 3D Printing, software development, and PC gaming