May 2019

8 posts

Scattered D&D Notes from Old Website

These are from early 2018, or earlier.

Inventory Implementation

Consider writing functions which generate an inventory characteristic of a given NPC which can be run to produce their inventory when they are first created. Such functions could then be re-used to describe the possible kit for allied NPC types, such as when a player is searching for hirelings.

Some inventory contents, as well as slots on the body, could be integrated into dynamic descriptions of a character.

Dynamic Description

We could use this toy function to provide a basic textual description of a character.

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Names of Accent / Diacritic Marks

  • breve: ă (NOT the pinyin 3rd tone)
  • hacek: ǎ (THIS is used to mark pinyin 3rd tone; pronounced "hachek" because it's a Polish word)
  • circumflex: â
  • grave: à
  • acute: á
  • oganek: ą
  • macron: ā
  • diaeresis: ä (often called by its German name, "umlaut")

Ratio of Author Blog Text to Blog Comment Text

Take the ratio of "post length:total comments length" forms a rough measure of "how many words of discussion does Joe Blogger provoke per post? per word of writing? per week?" Would also be worth measuring length of comment chains.

Links

Highlighted hyperlinks promoting people and projects.

Favorites

  • The Tao of D&D, by Alexis Smolensk (along with his Patreon-members-only blog The Higher Path, of which I am a supporter.) I consider Alexis the world's foremost practitioner of DMing. He has written skillfully and at length on every topic related to running roleplaying games.

  • Gwern Branwen is an independent writer and researcher with deeper and wider interests than anyone else I know of. I admire him for his peerless productivity on a vast range of topics.

  • The Scholar's Stage, by Tanner Greer, is well worth your time, and I believe it so strongly that I support him on Patreon. In the author's words, Scholar's Stage is a forum to discuss the intersections of history, behavioral science, and strategic thought, with an emphasis on East and Southeast Asian affairs. Try starting with "On Days of Disorder".

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