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
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.
- Continued recording for double duration.
- No volume control. Playback causes sonic damage.
- Backmasked. Voice sounds demonic and words are gibberish.
- Fourth wall-breaking. Spell captures the caster's player's most recent voicemail.
- There is no trigger, the spell just plays on loop and can't be stopped.
- The intent of the recording is inverted (e.g. "not" is added in front of the right words).
- Actually records the caster confessing a secret.
- 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 |
≈ 70 m3 | ||
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.
- able
- acid
- angry
- automatic
- beautiful
- black
- boiling
- bright
- broken
- brown
- cheap
- chemical
- chief
- clean
- clear
- common
- complex
- conscious
- cut
- deep
- dependent
- early
- elastic
- electric
- equal
- fat
- fertile
- fixed
- flat
- free
- frequent
- full
- general
- good
- great
- gray
- hanging
- happy
- hard
- healthy
- high
- hollow
- important
- kind
- like
- living
- long
- male
- married
- material
- medical
- military
- natural
- necessary
- new
- normal
- open
- parallel
- past
- physical
- political
- poor
- possible
- present
- private
- probable
- quick
- quiet
- ready
- red
- regular
- responsible
- right
- round
- same
- second
- separate
- serious
- sharp
- smooth
- sticky
- stiff
- straight
- strong
- sudden
- sweet
- tall
- thick
- tight
- tired
- true
- violent
- warm
- wet
- wide
- wise
- white
- yellow
- young
- roll twice, combine