Steady progress is being made in developing the Scarlet Horizons setting and rules. I'm up to thirty-eight Heroic Deeds and five spells. I have sixteen character classes — four of them core classes, the others subclasses of one of the core classes.

Eleven character classes are at least marginally complete, and five others need my attention. In the rules I'm creating, I'm incentivizing multi-classing in a number of ways, and in some limited ways creating a disincentive: what long-term player wouldn't eventually want his PC to take 20+ levels in the Fighter core class, given the bonus hit point those levels offer?

It's now been three days since I did any work on furthering the escapades of Matthias d'Slaytonthorpe — scholar-mage and his cleric-mystic fellow Seeker — Aurioch 'Aury' d'Rosenberg.

It's all well and good to develop the Scarlet Horizons setting and rules, but I don't want to miss out on the actual game play. Our heroes have, after all, only recently survived an ambush by froglings in the bog southwest of Helix, near The Blackened Forest.

I'm going to have to figure out a way to convert defeated monsters and treasure into Experience. Matthias and Aury need a total of 2.0 Exp to attain 2nd level. Let's consider possible ways to translate defeated monsters into Exp.

Warning: spit-balling section below:

As a starting point, let's say that for each HD that a defeated monster possessed, we'll assign a starting fraction of 0.001; if the monster had any special resistances, we'd add 0.00025. And perhaps for each attack per round beyond one, we add 0.001.

If the monster was particularly weak or mediocre, subtract 0.00025.

Armor class below 7? Add 0.00010; below 4? Add another 0.00010. Below 1? Add 0.00015.

What does this give us in composite for a single frogling?

0.001 (per Hit Die)
subtract 0.00025 (weak vs robust creature HP/saves)
AC 6 (add 0.00010)
Special ability 'Jump' (add 0.00015)
Attacked as part of a group (add 0.00015)
PC(s) harmed by monster or compatriots at least once (add 0.00015)

This yields 0.0013. Multiplied times ten froglings: 0.013.

End spit-balling section

I did land on Fractional Experience values for defeated froglings.

Yesterday, I posted about the Circle ability of the Scarlet Horizons thief core class. That ability is related to sneak attacks that yield 3x backstab damage. The Circle maneuver is easier and will be more broadly applicable, however.

And so last night's work brought my labors on the core and sub-classes of Scarlet Horizons to 62.5% completion.

I also added several more Heroic Deeds this evening. I particularly enjoyed writing this one:

Heroic Deed: Oh, Look! More Torches!

Available to all classes at all levels. Sometimes you're in the dungeon longer than anticipated. You'd be surprised how many dungeon deaths are the result of the loss of illumination — one mis-step and a trap, monster, or crevasse takes your life! More often, however, it's your former allies who kill you: Adventurer A: "I told you to bring more torches!" Adventurer B: "You never said that, and I wield a two-hander! How would I even make use of a torch? Adventurer A: "Try wielding this, you @*!#!!" When you sacrifice a Risk Die, you suddenly find three more torches: "Let me check my pack one more time..." or "Oh, look, a chest full of gold, gems, and ... three torches!" Whenever this deed is used, there is a 50% per coin that 3 gold royals are also discovered.

This brings me to 29 deeds, with descriptions written for 26 of them.

This evening, I worked on my Scarlet Horizons combination game setting/system. I added the Cleric core class, and I'm fairly happy with it. I'm also mostly finished with the writeup for the core Thief class.

Earlier this afternoon I was able to add several Heroic Deeds to a growing list.

Work was okay. I covered a 4 pm group. No major stressors.

I continue working to move old blog posts to my new domain: bryanmiller.us.

A Gentle Introduction to Roleplaying Games

Terms Defined in this Series of Posts:

- Armor Class
- Dungeon Master
- Initiative
- player character
- Round

Dungeons & Dragons is probably the most well-known example of what is known as a roleplay game. In a roleplay game, you take on the persona, or role, of a protagonist, usually an aspiring hero, but sometimes a miscreant.

Whether you assume this role via a video game, such as Baldur's Gate III, or with several friends sitting around a table with a Game Master and character sheets, the idea is to immerse yourself in a rich unfolding story in which you are one of — and sometimes the only — key actor. The computer programming handles the mechanics of how things resolve — does your sword strike land? Are you able to climb the castle wall without falling? Do you manage to hold your breath long enough to swim through the underwater tunnel?

In a CRPG (computer roleplaying game), the programmers who wrote the game have undergirded the unfolding story with a set of rules that govern what can happen, and the computer itself interprets those rules and referees what takes place.

In a table-top roleplaying game, such as Dungeons & Dragons, you and a group of friends gather together and the exploration, battle, and derring-do takes place in each person's imagination — just as it does when playing a computer roleplaying game such as Baldur's Gate III.

Player Characters

In the tabletop version of a roleplaying game, there are usually two or more people who take on the role of players, and each player controls and makes decisions for a character. These characters are the actors in the unfolding adventure or story.

The players are the people sitting around the table, each player assuming the role of his or her character — in essence, stepping into that character's shoes, living in their skin. Because of this intimate connection between the player and her character, that character is often known as a PC — a player character.

The Dungeon Master

One of the people sitting around the table for your Dungeons & Dragons (or some other) game usually takes on a role known as the Dungeon Master or the Game Master. Sometimes this person is simply called The Referee. This Dungeon Master describes the world, the conditions, the complications — she interprets the world for the player-characters.

When a player wants his character to do something, he tells the referee. If it's something commonplace that can be taken for granted, then there is no need to do anything further — it just happens. But if it's something risky, dangerous, with a possibility of failure, then the Dungeon Master is the arbiter who decides the outcome. Frequently, the DM does this by telling the player to roll a certain die or set of dice. The results of the roll help the Dungeon Master describe what happens in response to your character's actions.

Are you intrigued by the possibility of confronting and slaying epic monsters, discovering secrets long lost to history, developing never before seen magicks, or exploring steaming jungles, dark forests, or civilizations lost in the sands of a desert? If so, you would probably really enjoy a roleplaying game.

If you want to learn more, leave a comment requesting that I hurry and author the next article.

I'd estimate I'm probably halfway through the development of Glaive Seeker, a play-in-your-browser game I'm authoring with Squiffy for the player in my Earth Apotheosis game on r.rpol.net.

I've not been impressed with the robustness with which Squiffy handles variables. Twine seems more robust in that regard. In fairness, though, I just wrote a very brief example source file, and variable incrementing worked as expected. So perhaps I have syntax errors in the game I'm writing. I'm not experienced using Squiffy, after all.

I'm thinking that Twine is a more mature tool, certainly in terms of its age. However, in doing some reading about the new v3.01 Harlowe story format, it seems far more complicated than what I want to fool with or need. At the time of this writing, I'm thinking future games or tutorials might best be fit by the SugarCube2 format for Twine.

Incidentally, the nodes screenshot above was taken from a layout created using Twine. That's right, I'm using Twine to help visualize the flow of my Squiffy story.

I shared the above screenshot with my player on 9/16/2019 (note that this assertion conflicts with the date shown above this post's title; that's because Flatpress uses UTC time) in msg 120 of a private message thread and will be interested in the player's reaction.