Dyson's Mapper contest colored map with room numbers

Check out this page of Dyson's: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/friday-map-mappers-challenge-ii-the-deep-halls/

I only got a few rooms actually keyed so far, but did spend about an hour applying room numbers, so if that step will help some other folks start keying, here's that version of the map:

I'll post my key once I either finish and use it or run out of steam. I'm using DunGen to help move me along.

Bug Hunting in DunGen

There are two bugs that I know of currently: The Redraw button used to work before the library update but does not work now for me, and I see "novice adventurer" listings with both the base level 1-2s and the next tier up that should just say "adventurer".

Not yet burnt out on DunGen programming

Though probably getting close to setting it aside again while I do some other things...



Today I put in a first cut at Wilderness style monster distribution, and got in another feature I have wanted to start - NPC detailing (individual class, level, and attitude for an initial set of monster types), and treasure scaling for DMs who find my basic treasure roller too generous or stingy for their campaign. Also a few more monsters in yesterday's Wilderness list, and some tweaks to the dungeon monsters list. Treasure generation was really buggy there for awhile today, but I seem to have sorted that out.

Now that theming and basic NPCs are in place, I need to actually start using it to populate a campaign and see how it feels in practice.

Example of a Wilderness graph with location 2 selected:

I'll probably adjust the wilderness distribution to be a bit less biased in favor of lowbies, as right now the level of each is the lower of two 1D6 rolls, so there are a LOT more 1sts than 6ths.

To Do list:
Wilderness customized tables for location details and traps & keep tweaking places and monsters
Names and physical descriptions for NPCs and some monsters
Names for wilderness places
Customized demon and devil characteristics - individuals and groups
Customized dragons and giants
Add your own list of monster types to include in the theme dialog
Maybe some other sort of custom monster generation
Maybe some tying of wilderness creatures to favored locations
Theme tags for dungeon locations and theme selection for locations like that for monsters
Fill in some of the magic item tables - books in particular don't actually specify what they do.
Possibly tweak treasure gen some more.
Add a control to scale magic item frequency relative to treasure amount.
Add personal magic items for levelled NPCs
Add color/shape selection to location dialog and edge dialog
Some sort of keeping track of creatures placed in generation and putting in initial relationship between groups into the notes field.
Give cities a similar treatment to the wilderness once naming and some rules for linking a place with typical inhabitants is in place, probably with a bit more coherence regarding grouping things into districts, naming places, etc.
Possibly a no graph mode for easy generation of lists on a phone during a session.
Possibly a more conventional map mode

Let me know if any of these appeal as things you would like to see sooner rather than later.

DunGen now has monster themes!

Now you can click the Theme button, pick some tags for monster types you are looking for and it will bias monster selection in favor of monsters that match that set of tags. http://meta-studios.com/dg/dungen.html

DunGen Import/Export

Added the most primitive possible Import/Export feature that addresses the basic problem. It consists of a text area and two buttons at the bottom of the window. Scroll down to find them.

The export button dumps the JSON data structure into the text area. You can copy from there to an email and send it to yourself or a friend, and paste from the mail into DunGen there and hit Import to load up the dungeon.

You can edit a bit on the field to experiment with things like colorizing edges and nodes. But be careful not to break the data structure if you want to import.

After importing, give it a name and save it to your browser's local storage to access it again.

DunGen goes Mobile

What's new?
Upgraded DunGen from vis.js 3.6 to 4.4 today. Thanks, Almende devs. Vis.js on GitHub, it's awesome! They do all the graphical and animation heavy lifting in my app. I just hook it up with a bunch of random generation tables. There is more to do to take full advantage of the new version, but it is now working and the edit tools work on both computer browsers and mobile (tested from my Android tablet). This closes one of the big gaps in DunGen. It means anywhere I have WIFI, I can edit dungeons on the tablet.

I'm so excited. The upgrade was suprisingly easy. They did a good job with console hints and docs to get through the basics of adapting to the new API.


Coming up...
There's a lot to do now on two major fronts. 1) Data portability, and 2) Themed dungeon generation.

Portability
It needs some solution for accessing stored dungeons from more than one device, so one edited on a computer can be used on another or a tablet at the game table. This probably means a server and either accounts or tokens. Accounts means having to deal with basic security, password retrieval, etc. Blah. A token solution, where it saves with an identifier and anybody that knows the identifier can retrieve the record, is a bit more awkward in one way, but may be easier for sharing. The other option is a file export/import scheme where you mail a copy of the dungeon around. Not sure how that would work on an iPhone though, which doesn't give convenient file system access and it would be awkward to edit from different machines and keep track of which one has the latest "truth". Export/import would have an advantage in editability as long as the file format is human readable, since editing could be done in any text editor and then reimported.

Themes
I want to make use of all the tagging I did of monsters to allow for customized generation by themes: the cultists in their Temple or the Necropolis full of undead, with a dialog to list tags to include, and constrain the generator to roll only  or mainly things that have one of the selected tags.

Once that is working, I go through all the node and edge templates (maybe magic items too?) and set up tagging for them, so the places can fit the theme as well and the critters.

Later...
Small content expansion happens whenever I think of something else to add to tables, but after the big things are handled, the next up is probably to expand on some of the NPCs and more intelligent monsters so they generate with names, and are more fleshed out with descriptive text and some loose stat guides or OSR compatible stats.

Zombie Dungen

Awakened my Dungen pointcrawl dungeon generator from its deadly slumber with an update tonight. So what's new?

I finished the notes field that saves with the graph and the contents table. So now there is a place for a GM using it to add free form notes for use in running a game from the page.

The top part above the graph was rather cluttered, so I cleaned it up. Removed some stuff, moved some more. Settled on holding the table of dungeon contents in one place, below the graph, which gives more room for the graph itself. But to allow for navigating past the graph in mobile, where the graph eats swipes, I added a couple buttons for moving around as a first cut at navigating.

Next up is graph editing on mobile, since the vis.js graph library has a version out to support it. That will be a bit more challenging, since the library has some breaking changes in its API and data structures involved in fixing things like that. A quick glance at their release notes suggests it may be a longer session to bring in the new version and update to use it.

Big Game of A Fistful of Kung Fu

Had enough stuff done to roll it out for real tonight. We had a big turnout with six of us playing, and I knew the rules better thanks to the previous trial game and the one with Zach Walter who showed me the bits I was missing the first time.

6 players x 250 points and 3 Chi each. It played well except that six people is pushing it for this system in terms of time spent waiting. We started the second turn with a rules revision to have each player on a side activate one guy at the same time to move it along a bit faster, instead of card activation. But it happened that Eric's protagonist found the secret martial arts scroll in the shepherd's tent and whisked it offboard in his first activation of the second turn, ending the game, so that option did not get a full exercise. This time it was mostly my terrain, and a mix of my collection and Eric's, some painted by John, for the figures. 

We used two rules tweaks to make bruisers worth taking at 35 base points. They got Quality 3 instead of 4 and took one more effect point than a regular Extra to knock out (2) or kill (3). 

Aaron, who won our first outing, had a terrible time this game, with his protagonist getting knocked down several times in the first turn and burning all his Chi to keep the bad results down to that degree. He reacted several times, mostly just to stand back up. 

This is a good rules set, very cinematic in feel, and I recommend it highly. Just aim for games of 2 to 4 people.

Pirates Progress

Got in several hours of painting on the pirates batch for Fistful of Kung Fu Saturday. Maybe 1/3 done? Less, if I use them to learn to do non-metallic metals. Here's where I left off. Some were still wet with glazing for shading/highlighting, they looked much more matte the next day. Anyway, feels like they are moving along. Aiming somewhere between my usual tabletop quality and a fancier glazing style, for maybe a couple hours a figure overall. Sunday was an all day game of MMP's Angola, so didn't make any more progress this past weekend.

Pirates vs Ninjas in A Fistful of Kung Fu, Part 1: The Plan

A few months ago I picked up the Osprey rules "A Fistful of Kung Fu" by Andrea Sfiligoi, based on the skirmish system from "A Song of Blades and Heroes". Reading them through I liked them enough to gush a bit to a couple of my minis gaming friends. Aaron was intrigued enough to go off and order some ninjas to paint up for it. I figured to do a modern gang with some old Foundry Street Violence guys and a more traditional gang with some Chinese pirates, mostly from Eureka, with a few odd pieces from Foundry and Copplestone that might work their way in, if I want some that are semi-westernized in outfit and equipment.

Well, at DundraCon, Aaron said the ninjas were in and asked when I was pulling the trigger and wanted a least a month to paint the ninjas. I said "Okay, lets do it in a month." Then we backed off a bit and set it for two months. I got home and the immediate problem was where in all my storage the Chinese pirates had gotten off to. Last weekend I confirmed they were most definitely not on or near the shelf where I best remembered them being, but tonight I located them and took the starting picture. Fortunately they are primed and based from earlier efforts, so I should be able to get right to it.  Not exactly the most photogenic background, those are some of the boxes I was digging through.

So my plan is to get these guys done up, finish off the remaining partially assembled 4Ground Japanese house,  find the docks pieces or make some, and if there is time, scratchbuild a junk for my boats collection.  With some of the other accumulated Asian scenery, this will make a picturesque table. I'd like to do two table setups, one for a village and one for a dockyard.

Mid-April is the target.

If I stick with the traditional ones, I think the woman or maybe the guy in white primer will be the Protagonist and the guy with the two big maces the Bruiser. If I do include the Copplestone Chinese Bandit Chiefs third from left and way over at the right end of the back row, they are likely to be the Protagonist and Bruiser. Will probably work up both lists and see which I like better.