Quasiwizard

 I have about 50-60 hours in the video game  Caves of Qud  ( wikipedia ). I have been enjoying it a ton. I am going to share some thoughts I have on it.   1. Water   Water, in the game, serves several purposes. It is necessary as a basic bodily need, in game; you need to drink it or you die. Thus collecting water is a necessary part of the game. It steadily gets used up, only to be replenished. It serves as fuel for travel across the map: the farther you go, the more water is used.  Water is currency: you use it in trade as a bartering item. This makes sense; it is sparse in the setting and thus valuable for its biological function. You can gain and lose water not only through the collecting and drinking, but also through trade. More uses are gained for water (payment), but it combines two types of resources, supplies for travel and money.  Water is a tool. In  NetHackian  style, water comes with a context menu of actions you can use it for. ...

 Here are 6 more hexes .    Dense jungle impedes every step and vision beyond a few dozen feet. Beasts such a neotiger, or a toxomacroreptile, are apex predators. The jungle is doused in near midnight, but climbing the abundant branches allows for interference by devious primates. The rapid cycles of life produce dye ingredients, striated hides, centennial blooms, and novel fungi that fetch high prices on Jascian markets - should they be differentiated from imitators. Most of the jungle in this region is gone. A shooting star's fractured body sits in the center of a dry, brittle, blasted heath. Deformed creatures roam the landscape: a rodent covered in eyes, a bird with spider's legs and as many wings to match, a termite the size of the house. Flora are locked gray in the moment, every leaf, flower, and trunk turned to cement. The root network of the once-jungle has fractured open veins of minerals, gems, and flammable gas. Earth-moving magics or a mining crew could ...

Understand how challenges and rewards interact with room layout. A deathtrap in a chokepoint of the dungeon makes dealing with the trap necessary for progress. Is this a crucial obstacle or a permanent hindrance? Loops allow the party to approach a challenge from a different angle. What might be in the room that needs a new perspective? Branches allow interchangeable exploration of rooms. Should the room contents be interchangeable? Interconnectivity promotes exploration and keeps players hooked. Locks and keys (not necessarily literal) are enticing as they show you rooms, implicitly or explicitly. What might be worth locking up? NPCs may give information about the dungeon - what information might be smart to give? Fragmented items gives hints to another part. What is so dangerous it needed breaking? Secrets are tweaked by their degree of concealment, but hints don't give answers. A gap in a map suggests a hidden room, but only suggests. When should a gap hide a secret? Knowing the...

 "Before the game begins it is not only necessary to select a role, but it is also necessary to determine what stance the character will take - Law, Neutrality, or Chaos." (Book I)    What stance will your character take? Law, Neutrality, or Chaos? What kind of question is that?   Alignment. Its common uses: player prescription for character morality descriptor of a character's personality Trap mechanics (e.g. Nightwick Abbey) Language choice Its issues too limited of a moral descriptor too abstract/interpretable can be meta-gamed by objecting of what "REALLY" is lawful or something not actually descriptive of anything concrete My proposal Have a setting with clear opposing organizational sides, and only describe alignment in terms of the organizations In Times that Fry Men's Souls , describe the characters as British- or American-aligned or neutral In Nightwick Abbey, make it clear you're working to reclaim the abbey to its original purpose, simply loot...

 This could be a fun holiday tradition, the 12 hexes of Christmas. That would be fun. That's not exactly what I did, but you are free to your own interpretations.   I sat down and wrote 12 hexes with pen and paper. Here they are, all typed up. For use with Troika! or Vaults of Vaarn, or for anything you like. 1-6 are in one column, 7-12 in the next. I might do more. This is incomplete, a game of fill in the blank, and you get to place the blanks where you think they go.   1. A pocket of forest holds the same amount of life as the miles of desert surrounding it. There are signs of past civilization - abandoned homes and fire pits. A large sinkhole contains a giant blind porcupine and a heavy chest. The chest contains an egg-sized lump of priceless metal - recognizable only by a blacksmith or machinist of high skill. 2. The desert slopes down into a canyon of a rushing river. Traveling along the riverbed invites attacks from the local raiders and bandits. Signs of scuffles ...

 I have spun up an IRC server, for fun. If you want to try it out, visit  my web interface  for a temporary glance, or download an IRC client of your choice (e.g., hexchat ). You can connect to quajzen.page port 6697 (TLS).  Email me  for concerns logging on (or find me on discord).   If you are unfamiliar with IRC, it's Discord from the 90's, but a protocol (chat room structure) and not a centrally managed app. That means when you log into my server, its entirely run by me and not a company. All server maintenance, server moderation is up to me! That means if the server ends up busy, you may have to wait on me or my appointed moderators to respond. Like a Discord server, I suppose. On the other hand, I do solemnly swear not to scrape your data.  IRC has a remarkably similar structure to discord (huh! funny...). In each server, there are individual text channels (but no voice channels). It's less feature-ful than discord (though the web client handles ...