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This is both a wiki (a website editable by all) and a blog (an online diary about the stuff AlexSchroeder reads and does). If you’re a friend or relative, you might be interested in reading Life instead of this page. If you’ve come here from an RPG blog, you might want to head over to RPG. There are other similar categories to be found on the SiteMap.

Für Rollenspieler gibt es ebenfalls eine eigene RSP Kategorie.

2013-05-23 One Page Dungeon Contest Status Update

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Google Spreadsheet is my friend…

We’ve been tallying the nominations, looking at our favorites and comparing notes. It looks like we’re going to have 17 winners this year. This looks about right, compared to previous years. In 2009 there were a lot of honorable mentions and runner-ups but only three winners. I personally like to spread prizes around and celebrate the sheer variety of submissions we get every year. It’s a win for everyone.

Year Entries Winners
20137217
201210724
20117115
20106418
20091123/6/12

I hope we’ll be able to finalize the list soon enough!

What will happen next:

  1. assemble a PDF with the winners
  2. publish the list of winners and link to the PDF
  3. celebrate!
  4. notify winners by email and ask them to create a wish-list based on the prizes donated by our sponsors
  5. try and maximize happiness using another spreadsheet
  6. notify sponsors and winners and have sponsors send their prizes directly to the winners (except for the cash prize; I’ll handle that one since the sponsor wants to remain anonymous)
  7. celebrate again! :)

Hopefully my work is done before June 8, because that’s when I’ll leave for a two week vacation to Sardinia. Yay!

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2013-05-17 Pendragon RPG

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Recently Joshua Petronis-Akins asked in the Pendragon RPG Google+ community: Could anyone sell me on Pendragon? What makes it cool?

Coming from a D&D background, this is what made us want to play Pendragon RPG and The Great Pendragon Campaign:

  • a multi-generation campaign—play your knights, their sons, and their grandsons
  • the annual cycle—every session is about the adventures during the summer and the “levelling up” in winter
  • personality traits—knights have multiple traits that come in opposing pairs such as just vs. arbitrary and usually whenever you increase one, the other decreases; these traits sometimes get used to determine what the character does in spite of what the player might wish

I really like the combat system: your skill is a number; roll below this number to succeed, roll the exact number to succeed critically. In a round, there is no need to roll for initiative. It’s all opposed checks. If you want to fight multiple opponents, you must split your skill between all your opponents and roll for each one. This is devastating. If you hit, roll damage. The opponent checks whether this value is higher than their knockback stat. If so, succeed at a horsemanship test or fall off the horse. Armor reduces damage. You can further reduce damage using a shield, but only if you had a “partial success”—only if you succeeded in your check but lost against an opponent who succeeded with a higher roll.

Critical hits count as 20. If your skill rises above 20, just add that much to your roll. If your skill is 23, you roll 1d20+3. Thus, your crit range in effect is 17–20.

It’s interesting, it’s different, and it still works.

Our campaign is still in the Anarchy period.

There’s a German campaign wiki, if you want to take a look: Ritter von Salisbury.

Things we’re not that much into:

  • the resources game—gaining manors, building fortifications, hiring men, the minutiae of earning your taxes, paying for upkeep
  • the family events—we switched from the table in the rulebook to Telecanter’s Dramarama (with a few changes once we discovered that too many of our relatives kept eloping with butchers and tax men)

I bought the books in 2011 from RPG Now, and they’re still doing fine:

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2013-05-15 Treasure Hunting In Niflheim

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The party had just finished The Eternal Boundary and had found a treasure map that would lead them into The Gray Waste. I prepared a very linear adventure that you can see on the on the right. I decided that the map represented an incomplete list of dangers to be overcome:

  • near the roots of Yggrasil sleeps the dragon Níðhöggr…
  • in the woods the “children” of Hekate roam freely, the trolls of Niflheim (I’m claiming that Hel and Hekate are the same)
  • there are big, flightless birds in the swamps with big hands instead of wings and they are called Diakka…
  • there is a plain where nightmares ride, the mighty horses of black riders…
  • the larval petitioners live in the sea of fog…
  • the island of the black trees is the realm of a ghoul-witch

I also had a number of NPCs in mind:

  • Njal, a priest and a drinker and a melancholy man who would act as a guide, if they wanted to pursue their connections with priestess Anja of the Freya temple
  • Raud, another priest and a gloomy, apathetic victim of Hades, who can provide them with information about Hades and who’ll offer to lead them to Hopelessness and through its gate to Hades (but this is a false lead since this gate will lead to the upper layer called Oinos where the Blood War rages)
  • Lissandra “gate-seeker” will contact them if they brag about the portal they know; she is described in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil; she can lead them to Alluvias Ruskin (in the same book) who will sell them “the holy axe with the wooden root-grip of wisdom” which will be required to travel to Niflheim via Yggdrasil

This was the first challenge: figure out whom to trust and discover through questions that Raud would lead them to the wrong layer on Hades since Oinos ≠ Niflheim. This was also the opportunity for them to learn about the apathy of Hades. One player expertly decided to spend 100gp on books with jokes, fart machines and other ludicrous things to drive away apathy and despair.

They don’t contact Njal but they do talk to Raud and end up going with Lissandra. They made such a good impression on her, in fact, that she decides to tell them about a merchant called Kherion Mallibrun (described in the section about Death of Innocence in the Planes of Conflic box). In return, he wants them to protect him from Hekate’s trolls.

This was the second challenge: take along a guide and avoid fighting rock pythons and giant squirrels on the branches of Yggdrasil.

The dragon is easy: the third challenge is simply to be quiet. The cleric is prepared and casts silence. No problem.

The woods and trolls present the fourth challenge: unbeknownst to the players, I had decided that the forest houses both wolves and trolls. Even though the party was silenced, the wolves had picked up their scent and the trolls were following the wolves. One player who plays a character that can fly decided to take a listen and fly overhead. He soon discovers the wolves and using the fillings of a little rocket full of itching powder they disable the wolves’ scent ability and the flying character distracts and enrages the trolls until they break off the chase.

In the village, they see that the merchant is selling colorful textiles and the fifth challenge is finding a guide to the island. They discover that there is a hunter of nightmares who will lead them in exchange for the funny articles one of the characters had bought. This part was all improvised but it worked well.

He warns them of the giant, flightless birds. Luckily they are slow. The party buys horses for the three characters in plate armor and can thus outrun the the sixth challenge, the Diakka birds.

I had thought that the nightmares would be the next challenge but at the table I suddenly felt strange using the nightmares as predators. As I had seen one of the players get really excited about the prospect of catching and taming a nightmare, I decided that the seventh challenge would be the temptation of catching a nightmare. The party would have to start a fight. And they didn’t…

The eight challenge had not been listed on the “treasure map”: flying yeth hounds. The party moved away from their baying (it’s effect only works within 100 ft.) and decided to avoid the dogs. It worked.

At the edge of the sea of fog, they left their guide who, when asked, said that all they had to do was ignore the larva. And they did. No talking, no eye contact, no listening. Again, the party used silence to bypass the ninth challenge. It worked.

Finally, they reached the witch, the tenth challenge. I decided to use witches from the Shark Den section of the Caverns of Slime, Vialashta and Kurmatesha, the four lesser witches, the tengu horn, and my own treasure I had rolled up. As you can see, I had prepared a different night hag in my notes (including a 65% magic resistance)… Oh well. There was a lot of talking, bluffing and haggling involved, a short discussion on the merits of both Odin and Hekate, but in the end, the orc witch has charmed the talking character and disappeared into the tent and the fight was on.

The party consisted of a cleric 5, a fighter 4, an elf 2, and some henchmen: two giant apes, a cleric 4, a fighter 2, and a magic-user 1.

The enemies:

  • Vialashta, the one-eyed crow priestess of the orcs (HD 9; AC 8; Atk 1 orcish hammer (1d6); MV 9; curse at will, roll d6: 1. slowed, 2. blind, 3. stupid like an ox, 4. weak as a baby, 5. contract the plague, 6. crippling pain; save vs. spells to avoid)
  • her four witches (HD 5; AC 8; Atk 1 cudgel (1d6); MV 9; curse 3×/day as above)
  • Kurmatesha, the orc witch (HD 9; AC 9; Atk 1 staff (1d6); MV 9; spells as per her spellbook below); she has the horn of the mountain cedar which summons twelve tengu once per day: crow-headed, flying swordsmen (HD 5; AC 7; Atk 1 two handed glass swords (2d6); MV 9 fly); if attacked she will polymorph into a shadow wolf (HD 9; AC 7; Atk 1 bite (2d6); MV 12; howl of pain (anybody touching the ground within 60 ft. must save vs. petrification or be stunned for a round and save vs. death or suffer 1d6 damage from bleeding ears)
  • the hanging tree (HD 15; AC 3; Atk 8 branches and roots (1d6 each); MV 0); the branches of the hanging tree are loaded with twitching corpses: twelve armless ghouls are hanging up there, unable to free themselves (HD 2; AC 9; Atk 1 bite (1d6); MV 12)

Kurmatesha is reduced to less than 10 hit-points in two rounds. She, in turn, blows the horn and summons the tengus, then polymorphs into a shadow wolf. The party then kills her and have a quick chat with the tengu. They want the horn (and their freedom), but one character is close enough to the horn to blow it again, at which point I decide that the tengu are all dispelled.

The second half of the battle is a running battle as the witches are standing under the hanging tree, cursing all that approach. With a desperate rush, a character delivers the arrow that has silence cast on it to the witches. The witches start releasing ghouls but they are being turned as fast as they are being released. Finally, when the crow witch Vialashta is finally held using magic, the remaining lesser witches flee into the sea of fog.

The witch tells them that the hanging tree is guarding the treasure and since they stocked up on oil and hadn’t used any of it, I decided that burning a 15 HD tree required 15 flasks of oil—and having bought 20 flasks of oil without having to use them against the trolls, that was no problem at all…

  • 20’000 gold pieces
  • 10 gems worth 1980 gold pieces (1000, 10, 50, 10, 10, 500, 100, 100, 50, 100)
  • two pieces of jewelry (“the crown and sceptre of the Ulfides”)
  • a halfling chain +1 and a small shield +1 (“the magic armor of a halfling hero with the heraldry of the Oxwrestler clan”)
  • the horn of the mountain cedar (I already fear that this item might be too powerful!)

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Comments on 2013-05-15 Treasure Hunting In Niflheim

What does the horn of the mountain cedar do?

– Harald 2013-05-15 11:40 UTC



Ynas Midgard
@ Alex Nice game :) What a memorable treasure trove.

@ Harald “summons twelve tengu once per day: crow-headed, flying swordsmen (HD 5; AC 7; Atk 1 two handed glass swords (2d6); MV 9 fly)”

Ynas Midgard 2013-05-15 15:43 UTC

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2013-05-14 When To Roll

Recently I left a comment on Philip Watson's thread on Google+ where he wondered whether players should know when their thief failed to hide. I said:

I let them roll in the open but will delay the roll until immediate consequences are at hand. Player says their character is hiding, no roll required. Orcs are coming. Now you roll—and if you fail, they spot you.

Consequences happen right after the result of the die roll is known. As a referee, I have have no “information advantage” and thus the question of unfairness doesn’t come up.

I was reminded of Courtney Campbell’s blog post On Skill Deconstruction: Why Roll for Resolution? He lists five reasons for rolling dice.

  1. time constraints
  2. in conflict with another entity
  3. a serious consequence for failure
  4. impossible to model at the table
  5. (partial results can make the procedure more exciting)

I’m trying to have thieves succeed automatically whenever possible. I’m going to opt for dice rolling when the conditions listed above are true. If the dungeon has wandering monsters, each failed roll to open a door or unlock a chest means one check for wandering monsters. If there are no monsters, we don’t need to know how long the thief takes to unlock the chest. It will succeed eventually.

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Comments on 2013-05-14 When To Roll


-C
I still struggle with this often.

Extra rolls are a fast route to a dull game. Normally I roll for opening doors just once, on a failure there is no chance of surprise. The attempt always draws a wandering monster roll.

-C 2013-05-15 08:58 UTC

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2013-05-14 Scrobbling Fail

Ever since I stopped listening to music on iTunes, scrobbling is absolutely broken. I listen to music on at least three different Apple devices, sync them with iTunes every now and then, checked “Enable iPod submissions” using playlist “zuletzt gespielt” which is defined as matching both of these rules: “last played in the last 3 months” and “media kind is not podcast” with live updating. I listen to music practically constantly. If you check my profile, you’ll note huge gaps everywhere. Why is that? Are the devices “overwriting” each other? iScrobbler says 586 items queued. Ok… All I’m seeing is two new items. :(

Update: Apparently I'm an idiot. It just takes a long time (a day?) to process the tracks submitted. Yikes, sorry for the bad press, iScrobbler!

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That’s a lot of titles…

You’ll notice that The Beatles have made a big comeback in 2013. :)

2013

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2012

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Update: Apparently there's another abandoned scrobbler… ScrobblePod.

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2013-05-13 Other Favorite Entries

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I just posted my nominations for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. I also liked the following entries.

I saw Roger the GS’ recommendations the other day. What about your favorites?

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Comments on 2013-05-13 Other Favorite Entries


Paul Gorman
Your link to your nominations points to the Edit page.

Paul Gorman 2013-05-13 19:32 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Oops, fixed. Thanks!

AlexSchroeder 2013-05-13 21:15 UTC

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2013-05-13 My One Page Dungeon Contest Nominations

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I’ve finished reading the submissions to the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. As always, an interesting mix of styles. Less tombs than in previous years. The ever popular “get into the dungeon and trigger a trap” is there. Bandits, undead, but no pirates! This year’s popular rare monster must have been the gibbernig mouther. It showed up in three submissions. :)

Gibbering Mouthers:

I wanted to comment on my nominations for the contest winners. I’ve done this before (2010, 2011, 2012). Writing it all down helps me think it through.

  • Daniel O'Donnell, Down Among the Dead Men: beautiful map; lovely visuals such as a well surmounted by the jaws of a giant shark or acolytes on stilts “tending” the undead in the water. It’s gruesome. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Gus L., The Brittlestone Parapets: a lovely amalgam of trench warfare, undead soldiers, Beowulf, D&D as an implied post-apocalyptic setting; and it comes with an inspiring map, an interesting list of random encounters, the witch comes with the list of spells prepared, one faction can be hired for a few weeks. It’s fascinating. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Jobe Bittman, Into The Demon Idol: an iconic image, a beautiful map, the giant grab pincer. Best of all: the option of reanimating it! A potential long-term change for your campaign. It’s tempting. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Misha Favorov, Court of the King of No Men: a map that allows multiple approaches; the most important notes are on the map itself. That’s what I love! The two simple magic items are interesting without being overengineered: a sword dealing wounds that heal within 24h, a hammer that can be thrown once a day, a rod that allows you to control the movement of an opponent (but nothing else). It’s sylvan. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Paul Gorman, Faery Ring to Alpha Ari: not the only adventure using myconids and various fungus effects, but what I liked in particular was the strange mix of fantasy and present day space exploration; the observatory and the tiny island on the one hand and a map that looks appropriate for a Mars colony. I also like how enemies come in all sizes from pixies to giant. I’m not sure it would simply fit into my campaign.
  • Ramsey Hong, Something Happened At The Temple Near Glourm: a beautiful map with village and five dungeon levels; multiple stairs and entrances; notes on the map itself. This dungeon is beautiful. It’s terrifying. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Rob S, Citadel of the Severed Hand: another beautiful map with notes on the map itself; it also features myconids and “shroom effects”. The part I like is the tragic figure of the orc boss with his staghelm who hates the torturer demon because she has his son in her power. The entire setup with the two slaves is genious. It’s evil. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Roger SG Sorolla, Devil's Acre: when I first read about it on the author’s blog I thought that it was an interesting take on the complex of sin, vigil, prayer, temptation, saint and devils, and all of that in a D&D context. My campaign hasn’t featured these topics, however, so I’m not sure how well it would work for me.
  • S. J. Harris, The Baleful Spring: a small tower always comes in handy. This one has a tower with an evil master and a ship with a neutral captain. I like the framing story: two diplomats trying to secure a peace accord have gone missing. It’s nothing fancy with a functional map. It’s useful. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Simon Forster, Church of Consumption: a beatiful map; another cult trying to raise a demon. Unfortunately it’s very linear. Strangely enough it appears to be open on both ends with major treasure sitting right next to one of the two entrances. But… it’s so beautiful. And I love the imagery of the cultists eating their dead god, the meat grinder, the ghouls dreaming about eating the same dead god, one day… It’s gruesome. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.

The One Page Dungeon Contest is just so damn useful it amazes me every year.

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Comments on 2013-05-13 My One Page Dungeon Contest Nominations


B. Pace
The Demon Idol is my favorite - although I’m a bit biased since that is my favorite old school book cover :)

B. Pace 2013-05-16 03:16 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Having painted the Otherworld Miniatures demon idol, I concur! Best old school cover. :)

AlexSchroeder 2013-05-16 08:17 UTC

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2013-05-08 Distributing XP With Emacs

This topic ties together two topics that probably don’t see too much overlap.

  1. I play role-playing games of the D&D old school variety.
  2. I use Emacs to help me do simple stuff on a daily basis.

The problem: the party of characters my players run is huge. Even if there are usually only around ten characters that are part of a single session, there are more than thirty primary and secondary characters on the status page. Given the wiki table for the status page, how can I quickly add up the correct XP and gold values? Any XP gained is shared equally amongst the characters that took part in the session but any gold gained is distributed according to each characters share. Primary characters get a full share, secondary characters get a third of a share.

I used Emacs widget mode to create a page like this:

XP total:   805          
Gold total: 7191         
[X] Schalk
[ ] Uluf
[ ] Witschik
[X] Schachtmann
[ ] Sirius
[X] Logard
[X] Arnd
[X] Tinaya
[ ] Pyrula
[ ] Pijo
[ ] Garo
[X] Zeta
[ ] Pipo
[X] Fusstritt
[ ] Thor
[ ] Jack
[ ] Gloria
[ ] Hermann
[ ] Urs
[ ] Alpha
[ ] Beta
[ ] Gamma
[ ] Boden
[ ] Basel
[ ] Bern
[X] Nuschka
[ ] Moranor
[ ] Axirios Hectaxius

[Go!]

And here’s the code to do it:

(defconst fünf-winde-regexp "^\\(|\\[\\[\\(.*?\\)\\]\\][ \t]*|[ \t]*\\(1\\|1/3\\)[ \t]*\\)|\\([ \t]*[0-9]+[ \t]*\\)|\\([ \t]*[0-9]+[ \t]*\\)"
  "Regular expression to parse the Status page.
\(let ((str (match-string 1))
      (name (match-string 2))
      (share (match-string 3))
      (xp (match-string 4))
      (gold (match-string 5)))
    ...\)")

(defvar fünf-winde-buf nil
  "Source buffer.")

(defvar fünf-winde-xp nil
  "XP share.")

(defvar fünf-winde-gold nil
  "Gold share.")

(defvar fünf-winde-party nil
  "Charakters in the party.")

(defun fünf-winde-xp-and-gold ()
  "Hand out Gold and XP."
  (interactive)
  (let ((buf (current-buffer))
	(names))
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward fünf-winde-regexp nil t)
	(setq names (cons (match-string 2) names))))
    (switch-to-buffer "*Fünf Winde*")
    (kill-all-local-variables)
    (set (make-local-variable 'fünf-winde-buf) buf)
    (make-local-variable 'fünf-winde-xp)
    (make-local-variable 'fünf-winde-gold)
    (make-local-variable 'fünf-winde-party)
    (let ((inhibit-read-only t))
      (erase-buffer))
    (remove-overlays)
    (setq fünf-winde-xp
	  (widget-create 'integer
			 :size 13
			 :format "XP total:   %v\n"
			 0))
    (setq fünf-winde-gold
	  (widget-create 'integer
			 :size 13
			 :format "Gold total: %v\n"
			 0))
    (setq fünf-winde-party
	  (apply 'widget-create 'checklist
		 (mapcar (lambda (name)
			   `(item ,name))
			 (nreverse names))))
    (widget-insert "\n")
    (widget-create 'push-button
		   :notify (lambda (&rest ignore)
			     (fünf-winde-process
			      fünf-winde-buf
			      (widget-value fünf-winde-xp)
			      (widget-value fünf-winde-gold)
			      (widget-value fünf-winde-party)))
		   "Go!")
    (widget-insert "\n")
    (use-local-map widget-keymap)
    (local-set-key (kbd "q") 'bury-buffer)
    (local-set-key (kbd "SPC") 'widget-button-press)
    (local-set-key (kbd "<left>") 'widget-backward)
    (local-set-key (kbd "<up>") 'widget-backward)
    (local-set-key (kbd "<right>") 'widget-forward)
    (local-set-key (kbd "<down>") 'widget-forward)
    (widget-setup)
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (widget-forward 1)))

(defun fünf-winde-process (buf total-xp total-gold party)
  (message "(fünf-winde-process (get-buffer \"%s\") %d %d '%S)"
	   buf total-xp total-gold party)
  (switch-to-buffer buf)
  (save-excursion
    (let ((xp-shares 0)
	  (xp-share nil)
	  (gold-shares 0)
	  (gold-share nil))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward fünf-winde-regexp nil t)
	(let ((name (match-string 2))
	      (share (match-string 3)))
	  (when (member name party)
	    (setq gold-shares (+ gold-shares
				 (cond ((string= share "1/2") 0.5)
				       ((string= share "1/3") (/ 1.0 3))
				       (t (string-to-number share))))
		  xp-shares (1+ xp-shares)))))
      (setq gold-share (/ total-gold gold-shares)
	    xp-share (/ total-xp xp-shares))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (re-search-forward fünf-winde-regexp nil t)
	(let ((str (match-string 1))
	      (name (match-string 2))
	      (share (match-string 3))
	      (xp (match-string 4))
	      (gold (match-string 5)))
	  (when (member name party)
	    (setq gold (format (concat "%9d")
			       (+  (string-to-number gold)
				   (* gold-share (cond ((string= share "1/2") 0.5)
						       ((string= share "1/3") (/ 1.0 3))
						       (t (string-to-number share))))))
		  xp (format (concat "%9d")
			     (+  (string-to-number xp)
				 xp-share)))
	    (replace-match (concat str
				   "|" xp
				   "|" gold))))))))

I’m not sure I’m spending my time wisely, but there you go. I used to have a simpler piece of code that helped me distribute XP and gold separately. The drawback was that it would ask me for every person in the table “was this character in the party? (y/n)” and that’s a lot of yes and no replies if you go through the list twice.

It’s also a stark reminder that simpler old rules doesn’t automatically mean less work for the referee. With D&D 3.5, I had a spreadsheet to compute the XP gained based on challenge rating and character level. It wasn’t something to do quickly without a book in front of me. Now the complexity of the task has been reduced, but the number of characters has exploded to compensate!

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2013-05-07 iPhone Sync and Not Enough Disk Space

Once again, I’m syncing my wife’s iPhone using iTunes and half way through the process it claims that it can’t do it because the computer is out of disk space. With more than 9 GB on the main hard disk and much more on the external hard disk (and a link from ~/Library/Application Support/MobilySync to the external hard disk), this is simply impossible. Strangely enough, synchronization continues anyway.

Luckily I remembered what to do: open preferences, find the backup for my wife’s device and delete it. Done. Now I can sync without any messages interrupting it. Strange.

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2013-05-07 WMA to MP3

This is based on How to Convert Unprotected WMA Files Into MP3 Files. I’m leaving the instructions here for my future self. :)

for file in *.wma; do
  mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 \
    -ao pcm:file="${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" "$file"
  lame --preset standard "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" \
    "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.mp3"
done 

Use locate lame|grep 'lame$' and locate mplayer|grep 'mplayer$' to find the location of your executables. On a Mac, they’re probably not on your PATH… I installed MPlayer OSX and iTunes-LAME to get the executables. You’ll need to do something similar.

This is the result I just used for some files with upper case file extension:

for file in *.WMA; do
  "/Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer_intel.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer" \
    -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 \
    -ao pcm:file="${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" "$file"
  "/Applications/iTunes-LAME.app/Contents/Resources/lame" \
    --preset standard "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" \
    "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.mp3"
done 

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Referrers: Planet Emacsen rsp-blogs.de FrontPage Dreams of Mythic Fantasy Akiyama's Blog The City of Iron

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