Book Idea: Cogite Ergo Sum

 I've been thinking: What if you made a book that pretends to be a chatbot that pretends to be sentient? Could one do that? I mean, you can have computation of sorts by making a choose-your-own-adventure and have the reader do some of the lifting by following instructions to find certain pages. Then you can add a couple of bits of RAM/Memory like I did with Der Dornengarten. Can you make a book that pretends to have a conversation with the reader, arguing for its own sentience, perhaps even be convincing in it? I'll have to ask a friend who studied philosophy what the killer arguments would be and then make up ways to have them flow into a conversation where one side can only pick out of multiple-choice answers like they're playing a video game. It's just an idea but what if...

Free Release: Zombie Mansion

 A new fully-fledged release by your truly: I've been slaving away what little spare time I have next to two kids and my day-job in order to delve deep into the bowels of what Twine can do. I present to you:

This is my idea of what a text-adventure-version of Resident Evil is like. I made my own story with my own main character for it but the beats are there: A mansion full of zombies. Combat that always puts you at risk of injury. A handgun, a shotgun, a close-combat-weapon and the almighty magnum for weaponry. Inventory-juggling. Finding secret items and keys. Lots of optional content.

If you play, do so mindfully: It's unlikely, you'll make it on the first attempt. There are several routes one might go and they are centered around what weapon you get second. There is also a speedrun you could try, killing only a few zombies. It is risky though. I recommend, methodically killing nearly alls zombies. You do not have to fight the bosses though. Avoid if possible. Draw a map. Study movement patterns of said bosses. Be smart. And

Have fun!

How big does a dungeon need to be?

 When it comes to dungeon sizes in games, the differences are vast. From a design perspective, the bigger of a dungeon you create, the smaller the level of detail you can put into each room. I've been experimenting a lot with world sizes in my games. The trick is to make a few rooms seem a lot bigger. But how do we do that?

Three Horror Game Scenarios

Pen and paper horror is ideally made in one-shots. Two of these I have GMd before, using my crad-drafting little pnp-system. It's possible I'll make some of these into one page dungeons or something similar at some point. For now:

The Drillhole Trilogy

1. Oilfield

• You are the survivors of a plane crash. The engine of the passenger jet just cut out.
• Clinging to floating seat cushions the high waves carry you towards a darkened oil rigg.
• Inside, everyone is dead. There are weird symbols scratched into the walls.
• There is a shoggoth in the main tank. It's angry.
  
• Twist ending: The world has ended. You are among the few survivors.
• You must stop a second event. The source of the mass death is on this oil rigg.
  

2. Abyssal Entrance

• You are a group of urban explorers somewhere in the Russian hinterland.
• An old research installation is legendary among your ilk. It is completely abandoned.
• Radio picks up scratched transmitions. They turn out to be coded christian prayers.
• The bore hole that was used to explore the depths is at the bottom of a strip mine.
• Down there there is a record of a prayer powered by a radionuclear battery.
• In the 60s, the Soviets accidentally drilled a hole into hell.
  
• The record needs to be replaced. If it isn't or if it is turned off, hell will invade earth.

3. Icy Prison

• You are political prisoners in a penal outpost all the way out on Pluto.
• Every day you get to suit up and do geological exploratory digs.
• One of your fellow inmates catches something from the hole and goes insane.
• He infects some staff. They start killing people.
• You team up and try to survive.
• Can you fix up a space craft? Wait for help in several months time?
• Or do you stop the transmission of this mimetic disease before it spreads to other worlds?

10 Sapient Aliens

Dan over at Throne of Salt posted 10 sapient aliens for Mothership. I figured, I'd join the fun. Some of these I have actually used in roleplaying, others are brand new.

Note that in my games, the word "alien" is derogatory when talking about a sentient being. Aliens are animals. People are Xenos.

Technology and Magic

I like my fantasy more medieval than the mainstream these days does it. Outside having an aristocracy, most fantasy authors basically seem to transfer ideas of old-west frontiersmanship into a medieval setting. Lone farmsteads, guarded by farmers with shotguns crossbows. While this does make a murderhobo-fantasy more plausible, it really irks me. So do ginormous fortresses a la World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings. Like - who would have built this? With what manpower? Why?

I really dislike false modernisms in my fantasy. If you want street lamps and cell phones, please, by all means, use a modern setting. Urban fantasy is great in allowing you to do magic and swords while having all conveniances of modern civilization. If you can't think without smartphones, then don't. Fuck speaking stones. Fuck eternal lights. Let me state it here:

ANY SUFFICIENTLY MUNDANE MAGIC IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM TECHNOLOGY.

There, I said it. If every other dude can cast light/bread/whatever, there is no medieval society. Nope.

So magic better be rare, hard, opaque, weird, dangerous. Have the supernatural as a hint, not an everyday thing. And don't forget: If you can actually feel your god's power via visible and undeniable miracles they work through your or someone else's hands – please don't call it fucking faith.

My son as a game master

As a gift for Easter, I produced a Heroica Fanfiction Audioplay for my older son. Fifty minutes of fantasy-action, just for him, including the bosses and monsters he and I made up. I even gave his favorite characters the best moments. This, after repeated listenings over the holidays, inspired a creative frenzy in my son. While I was doing things like household chores, he was upstairs in his room, labouring away with the boxes of Legos that he inherited from me. Then he presented me with an adventure of his own making. He'd play the bad guys, I'd play the heroes. He was going to be my game master (although he doesn't know the term, this has happened totally organically).

His idea of a great adventure was that the Goblin Kings (The Twins, we usually call them, as we have two of them and they together form a boss encounter) have gathered all the monsters in their keep. Except for the Spitting Snake and the Giant Spider, all bosses are there as well. The goblin fortress is seperated from the human village by the bridge. In it there is the main hall full of horrors and troops, as well as three side wings. In one there is first the Kraken, then the Hydra, its den serving as a treasure chamber full of gold, potions, and a key. One is the throne room with the two Goblin Kings. The last one is another side wing. It features two hidden keys and a secret door that leads to another land.

That other land is the goal of the quest, as my son informed me. The kidnapped king of Heroica, father to Prince Alrik, leader of the heroes, is held there – but the heroes don't know that yet. I was allowed to have four active heroes at the time, the other four waiting as backup at the village tavern.

Mathematically, my team was very unlikely to defeat the massed foes in the main hall. My first strike team consisted of the Prince, the Knight, the Priest and the Thief. I had a plan: The team would head straight for the treasure chamber, where the Knight would hold the monsters from the hall off while the other three dealt with the Kraken and the Hydra. Then everyone would retreat with the loot to the village, where the treasure would allow them to heal and gear up.

The plan went reasonably well. While I lost the Knight and the Thief, the Priest and the Prince got out with the treasures. I filled the ranks with the Archer and the Druid and started back to the Goblin Fortress. That's when things got even more RPGish.

My son had used the turns I had spent buying stuff in the village: He had set an ambush with werewolves on the bridge. That failed to stop my heroes. When a single Level 1 goblin came out of the fortress, I decided to negotiate. I told it/my son that he didn't have a chance as a single goblin against four heavily armed heroes. My son conceided. The goblin decided to become a good citizen and went onto the big ship to take a nap. Later, while my heroes were entering the fortress again, he would go to the village oak to nibble on its big branch. As my son explained, goblins love meat and wood. He was the smartest of the goblins and thus decided to be a good guy.

Inside the fortress, my heroes encountered another wave of enemies in the form of miscelaneous smallish monsters and the Dark Druid. Then the remaining goblin forces surrendered – under the condition that my heroes leave the throne room and their kings alone. I decided that these were acceptable terms for Prince Alrik, after he had learned that the goblins didn't have his dad. The heroes went into the wing with the magic door undisturbed and we decided to call it a night and continue the adventure/campaign in my son's other land another day.

It was only half way through that game of Heroica that I realized that I was in fact playing a roleplaying campaign designed by my son. He is only five and can't read or write but the graspable little character sheets made from Lego combined with the simple tactics of the dice rolls and loot system enabled him to become a game master. I am astonished and proud that he put thought into things.

He even heeded my advice from an earlier game and gave me a good reason to go into a dead end full of boss monsters (all the treasure and a mission-relevant key). During my last assault he even realized that his guys should try to kill my healer (the Priest) but after that failed, he figured the smart thing for the goblins would be to give up. I'm glad he isn't one of the bloodthirsty kids that assume that murder is the only way to play this. And I'm very very curious what the land beyond the magical door has in store for my quartet of heroes.