Direbane is an abode to share artifacts, simulacra, histories, and other items of note related to ongoing years adventuring.
*** DROP BOX ISSUE *** APOLOGIES, LINKS ARE MISSING AND NEED TO BE ADDED!

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

New Stuff at Hypertext d20 SRD!

http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm

Dang! It looks like The Hypertext d20 SRD has been rolled into some company called BoLS Interactive, LLC. And at first glance, that appears to be awesome!

I had long-used Hypertext d20 as a reference for our long-running Wilderlands of High Fantasy v.3.5 campaign (2004-2011) and my home brew 1st Ed/v.3.5 hybrid game

I'm looking up Sanctuary spell (I'm like, vis a vis my little movie clip, "Can an character really move around covered by a Sanctuary spell?") when this flippin' COMMERCIAL ADVERTISEMENT pops up on screen. Splitters! Anyhow, I'm like, whutev, and backing out to the page where I started.

Then I notice THERE ARE NEW SHITS IN HYPERTEXT D20!!!

Fantasy Name Generator NEW!
Fantasy World Generator NEW!
Fantasy Adventure Generator NEW!
Fantasy Inn Generator NEW!
d20 NPCs/Items/Traps Generator NEW!
d20 Demographics Calculator NEW!
d20 Dungeon Generator NEW!
d20 Random Encounter Generator NEW!
d20 Magic Shop Generator NEW!
d20 Treasure Generator NEW!

 The "Fantasy World Generator" creates a hex map with over 19,000 hexes!!! You set amount of land/ice, whether rivers, cities and castles and VOOOM!

The "Dungeon Generator" is INSANE!!! It creates an entire dungeon, monster-traps-treasure-etc, with map of 30+ rooms!

I expect that there are some playability quirks that won't become apparent unless gamed live, but at first glance I may never run out of material during a gaming session ever again!

Back when I was but a wee lad and good computers had RAM measured in kilobytes rather than gigabytes, I actually created a program in BASIC that used random encounter tables in City State of the Invincible Overlord, and a buddy of mine, J.A.S., once ran a gaming scenario straight from the random dungeon tables in the 1st Ed. DM's Guide,. This is like that process on steroids!!!

I know, I am a purist too who spends a godawful chuck of time spent on this planet creating scenarios to confound and amaze my gaming friends. However, there are times, often late at night when the brain is tepidish, when the party runs up against limit of what has been prepared or heads off map.

These new Hypertext d20 tools are, at minimum, a fine backstop against running out of material.

******* Ha, well didn't take long to expose the limitations inherent in the system. Generated a 20th level, colossal, abyssal dungeon and the only moster types over all the rooms were ropers and aboleth mages...

Monday, September 19, 2016

Blipping Campaign, The Motion Picture

Here is an intro to a 90's D&D documentary I hope to edit through before I die. Basically, all our gaming film (not arguments, just the actual gaming) taken during the Blipping Campaign which ran from 1989 through 2005, however our last video was recorded in 1996...