Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Misc. Notes

It's been a while, and I don't have any large projects to share, but I'd like to keep up the habit of writing here. So I'm writing up some notes I have lying around.

What's That Island

Another island generator in my growing collection.

Where to get it

The Oddvent Oddpendium

What is it

A pair of d100 tables for "Landmark" and "Twist" (38 entries each).

Sample Output

Island 1

Landmark: Blue Grass
Twist: Crashed Sky-Boat

Island 2

Landmark: Gusts of Wind
Twist: Metal Skeletons

Island 3

Landmark: Lone Mountain
Twist: No Time Passes Here

Island 4

Landmark: Huge Waterfall
Twist: Whispering Wind

Island 5

Landmark: Dense Cacti
Twist: Doomsday Device

Island 6

Landmark: Blue Grass
Twist: Metal Skeletons

Notes

This table uses the same type of terse entries as Chris McDowall's Spark Tables, but is just a little more specific. There is the obligatory "Island is a Turtle" entry, which should have been its own point in these roundups. Some things like "Misty" or "Underwater" aren't exactly "Landmarks", but they're evocative so I'll let it go.

Magic Mouth Mishaps

Currently I'm favoring simpler magic systems, but one thing I liked about the revised Lamentations spellcasting rules was that it made you consider a minimum number of distinct miscasts. I made a table of them for Magic Mouth. I tried to make them sufficiently LotFP-ish, but I'm still not sure if I got the timing of the miscasts right, as I have yet to actually play with the revised rules.

  1. Continued recording for double duration.
  2. No volume control. Playback causes sonic damage.
  3. Backmasked. Voice sounds demonic and words are gibberish.
  4. Fourth wall-breaking. Spell captures the caster's player's most recent voicemail.
  5. There is no trigger, the spell just plays on loop and can't be stopped.
  6. The intent of the recording is inverted (e.g. "not" is added in front of the right words).
  7. Actually records the caster confessing a secret.
  8. Actually records a secret about the campaign world, or a heresy. 50% chance true.

What is the volume of a gaseous human?

Assumptions:

  • A "standard" adult is 70 kg.
  • Standard temperature and pressure.
  • 68% of the body is water, and the remaining molecules are large enough to be relatively few in number and therefore negligible.
  • If the previous assumption is one extreme, then the other is that the body is 100% water. This will let us bound the possible values.

Then we do some dimensional analysis and bad math (18 ≈ 22.4, 68% ≈ 50%):

70 kg kg⋅mol 22.4 m3
18 kg kg⋅mol
70 kg kg⋅mol 22.4 m3 ≈ 70 m3
18 kg kg⋅mol

So if a human is 100% water,then they will take up ~70 m3 as a gas, but at the other extreme, they'll be about ~35 m3.

Spark Tables

I've become enamored of Into the Odd's spark tables (above). And I've been looking for them pre-assembled because I'm lazy. I was pleasantly surprised to find this list of 100 Adjectives Used in Basic English, and sad to discover that it only has 99 adjectives in it. I added the ubiquitous "roll twice and combine" to round it out to a d100 table, but this doesn't feel great if you were already rolling twice to find unexpected combinations. I might consider subsetting this list as a starting point for my own spark tables.

  1. able
  2. acid
  3. angry
  4. automatic
  5. beautiful
  6. black
  7. boiling
  8. bright
  9. broken
  10. brown
  11. cheap
  12. chemical
  13. chief
  14. clean
  15. clear
  16. common
  17. complex
  18. conscious
  19. cut
  20. deep
  21. dependent
  22. early
  23. elastic
  24. electric
  25. equal
  26. fat
  27. fertile
  28. fixed
  29. flat
  30. free
  31. frequent
  32. full
  33. general
  34. good
  35. great
  36. gray
  37. hanging
  38. happy
  39. hard
  40. healthy
  41. high
  42. hollow
  43. important
  44. kind
  45. like
  46. living
  47. long
  48. male
  49. married
  50. material
  51. medical
  52. military
  53. natural
  54. necessary
  55. new
  56. normal
  57. open
  58. parallel
  59. past
  60. physical
  61. political
  62. poor
  63. possible
  64. present
  65. private
  66. probable
  67. quick
  68. quiet
  69. ready
  70. red
  71. regular
  72. responsible
  73. right
  74. round
  75. same
  76. second
  77. separate
  78. serious
  79. sharp
  80. smooth
  81. sticky
  82. stiff
  83. straight
  84. strong
  85. sudden
  86. sweet
  87. tall
  88. thick
  89. tight
  90. tired
  91. true
  92. violent
  93. warm
  94. wet
  95. wide
  96. wise
  97. white
  98. yellow
  99. young
  100. roll twice, combine